A Griffon under Glass

Greetings all, today I can combine a couple of elements into something deeply nifty. The groundwork I showed last time is the foundation for this:

This is a diorama commission intended for display (although I have also made a more normal base so that the Griffon can be used by the client). Quite a lot of the elements have been seen before - the Griffon for example - so I shall focus on the newer elements of the paint job.

One of the questions some may have is why has this taken so long? It was started in February. Truthfully it is this: Two house moves, sourcing the cover (see below) for a sensible price and then solving the logistical problems of fitting the Griffon into the cover using the base. The house moves were the biggest problem as everything has to go in boxes and the Griffon always seemed to be the last to be unpacked. Thankfully it is finished now and ready to go! My client has been very patient and for that I thank him warmly! Now, painting! Check out the wings, these were almost my undoing! The pattern is a modification of the natural Peregrine Falcon colouring and was achieved with an excellent brush, a magnifier and steady hands. Take lots of breaks when doing long duration, close work as the eye and brain get very tired and there is a temptation to rush.

The colours of the rider - he's a roleplay character - were a dark blue and black with a unicorn as his sigil. Try as I might I could not get a unicorn on the cloak so the pennant got a pair of them instead. The very bright silver is made by painting pure Mithril Silver - I still keep a pot - and then shading with very thin blue and black inks mixed with thinner medium.

I toyed with adding another colour with the gemstones, perhaps a red? But I was worried that the sheer size of the gems and their placement would make them a dominant colour. Instead I decided that a nice blue surrounded by pale gold would do just nicely.

And there you have it! A lovely display piece and hopefully an appreciated present for its ultimate recipient. If anyone is curious the cover is a classic cloche, a sort of mini-greenhouse. They can often be a little easier to get hold of - unless American, you guys have all the covers ever! - and have that pretty handle to pick them up by. Well, until next time folks, oh and next time is my 200th post. Good lord, I'll have to think of something nifty for it.

TTFN

Work in Progress: High Elf Griffon Rider

This is part one of what I suspect will be a rather long series of posts! One of my latest commissions is to paint the High Elf Griffon rider from the Island of Blood box set. Not just paint though, construct a mighty scenic base for this critter and make a nice presentation case. Just for now though, I am working on the griffon itself:

This is one of my favourite models of recent years. I just love the posing and the realistic sculpting of the bird and cat elements of the griffon. At the moment it obviously lacks the wings (in order to make it easier to paint the rider. After cleaning, liquid green stuffing and priming the griffon model I got to work on the cat half.

Getting the tiger element the right colour is interesting. You want it orangey, a rusty brown. Trouble is that orange is not really the right colour! After messing about with a number of different shades I finished up mixing Macharius Solar Orange and Khemri Brown in a roughly 60:40 ratio. This is highlighted by adding increasing amounts of Dheneb Stone. Dheneb Stone is also used to paint the pale underbelly. This helps to link the colours of the underbelly to the top half. The stripes (and the griffon's feathers) are painted in German Cammo Black Brown (or Scorched Brown and Chaos black mix) and were painted from extensive references.

The bird element was so obviously a falcon that I decided to paint it as one of my favourite birds, the peregrine falcon. Again, extensive reference images were used to get the markings just right. German Cammo Black Brown is used to basecoat the dark feathers, Dheneb Stone the light. The dark feathers have the quill texture painted in with black and the light feathers have the same thing done in white. Then the classic peregrine edging to the feathers was added. The dark feathers were edged in a mix of Cammo Black Brown and Dheneb Stone and the Black Brown shade was used on the white.

The skin turned out perfectly. A clean coat of Iyanden Darksun is highlighted with Skull White and shaded with Gryphonne Sepia. That is it. The most perfect colour for bird skin! Claws and beak are painted in black highlighted with the addition of Khemri Brown.

Thats it for today, I will be working on the wings and rider next week.

TTFN!

Mojo Returns! Death Company and a Wizard!

Hello all, first, let me thank everyone who sent messages of support to my Grandfather. He really appreciated them. The good news is that he is out of the hospital and doing much better, this plus a weekend of fun and giggles has recovered my hobby mojo considerably. Last night I was able to finish off two "drying time" projects and I am deeply chuffed with how both of them turned out. For those unfamiliar with bulk painting strategies a "drying time" project is something you do during the times when the models you are working on need some time to let washes dry or glue on bases set etc. In order to prevent distraction setting in you work on another model. Keeps the discipline going. So, here are two drying projects: the first of the Death Company and the Island of Blood High Elf Mage.

Kicking off with the Death Company; given how fiddly they are and how few there are in the army I decided to paint them all as individual characters. The models are a hybrid of Sanguinary Guard legs and Death Company torsos. The other legs and torsos are combined to form the honour guard. The painting is reletively simple. The red, gold, bone and gems are all as per previous Blood Angel posts. The black armour is painted using my favoured method of mixing increasing amounts of Fenris Grey into black and then edge highlighting with pure Fenris. I like the blue/grey black highlights for armour, gives a natural progression. I tend to use Khemri Brown for cloth instead. When the highlighting is finished I paint in the metallic colours and then wash the whole thing in Badab Black to tone down the blue.

Unlike the gemstones on the normal Blood Angels (purple in hue) I painted the Death Company's gemstones red to increase the percentage of red on the model. Basecoat the gems in scab red, shade the top corner with a mix of scab red and black; then blend scab red and blood red sequentially across the gem. Highlight the bottom edge with first a blood red/blazing orange mix, then blazing orange and finally dwarf flesh. Yes, really dwarf flesh. Try it sometime. It is the perfect finishing colour for the gems and makes them look slightly different to the vomit brown highlighted red armour.

EDIT: Damnit, I have just noticed that I misspelled Forsaken on the model. Curses. Lesson to be learned there, check the damn spelling, even on simple words. Grrr.

I had an idea that when repainting their armour black that the Death Company rename themselves. Divorcing themselves from their former lives and accepting their doom. The name "forsaken" seemed appropriate, the scrappy style seemed appropriate given the frenzied thrashings of a marine in the grip of the Black Rage. Some servitor trying to hold him still to repaint a name suggested a shakey style!

Secondly we have the next part of Project Island of Blood: The mage. I cannot stress enough how brilliant this model is. I painted it in two parts; leaving the cloak detatched to allow me to get at all the little details. Keeping with the bone and red feel I decided to paint the majority of the model in bone but have the sash and cloak lining in red to make him stand out from the troops around him.

Speaking of the cloak lining, I wanted to paint a subtle design on the red. I was looking for abstract, repeating patterns. Eventually I hit on Japanese art. The High Elves have a slightly Japanese feel to them anyway and so I figured that it would work. Using a plum red would mean that it would only be obvious close-up, from futher away the cloth would just appear red. The design is a repeated cloud pattern comprised of triple arcs overlapping and forming a bank of cloud. If I had kept this going all the way up the cloak it would have been far too busy. So I broke the pattern and painted individual abstract clouds all the way up.

 

When you have a paint scheme like this, with similar colours in close proximity the areas of detail can blend together and make your painting look messy. To avoid this I used a technique called black lining to divide the seperate areas of detail into discrete colours. This is well illustrated in the photograph below, while the finished product looks crude in this high magnification take a look at the long shot above to see how crisp the effect makes areas of detail. The technique was also used around the face, hair and helmet to give deep shadows.

 

I was agonising over what colour to paint the ball of energy for some time. It needed to contrast or compliment the paint scheme so far. For a while I contemplated purple, green was a possibility but would have been too remeniscent of Skaven magic. Finally I settled on a light blue which would have the right High Elf feel, contrast the paint scheme and lift the model further from the rank and file soldiers around him. The blue started from a basecoat of Enchanted Blue over a layer of Necron Abyss. I highlighted it with increasing amounts of white until it was almost white, I then washed the area with Asurman Blue and re-highlighted the pale areas. I then washed the areas that I wanted lit by the magical energies with a very, very dilute Enchanted Blue and white mix. The same wash was finally applied to the basing, a highlight of a lighter blue finished off the lighting effects.

With the descision taken to paint the magic blue the colour of the crystal ball was easy. It needed to be blue as well to balance the colour scheme. Basecoated with Necron Abyss the ball was painted in stripes of Enchanted Blue and darker Necron Abyss (mixed with a little black). A couple of lighter highlights of Enchanted and White and a gloss varnish later and the crystal was finished.

Well, both of these models have been a lot of fun and I am really happy with the results. The mojo is back with a vengence and the commission work is back on track. Hope you all like them and as usual any questions or comments are welcome and actively solicited.

TTFN

High Elves and K9!

It's been a quiet week on the blog hasn't it? Well, here are the fruits of my latest labours:

I've recently acquired the frankly gorgeous Island of Blood High Elves. I spent a long time wandering the halls of the interwebs looking at colour schemes and combinations. I didn't want to do the stereotypical blue and white but needed a "clean" look to the army. I finally found one that was almost entirely cream, brown and gold on cool mini or not and loved the effect. The effect is very subtle and looks better in real life than in photography but I'm really happy with the finished look.

The colour combination basecoat is Dheneb Stone for the cream, Scorched Brown for the leather and Khemri Brown for the woodwork. The metalwork is simply Mithril Silver washed with a 1:1 blend of Badab Black and Asurman Blue and rehighlighted with Mithril Silver. The leatherwork is worked up from the Scorched Brown by first highlighting with a 1:1 mix of Scorched Brown and Bestial Brown and then a final highlight of Bestial Brown before shading down with Devlan Mud. The cream is shaded down with Gryphonne Sepia and then gradually highlighted up again, first with Dheneb Stone and then with increasing amounts of Skull White added to the Dheneb Stone.

The woodwork is achieved by lining in the woodgrain with a mix of Khemri Brown and Bleached Bone and Khemri Brown and Chaos Black. I just got some new brushes - a brand called Raphael - and they are wonderful for this sort of work. I can't stress enough about how important good brushes are. You simply cannot paint well with lousy brushes, I know a bad craftsman blames his tools but you will never be a good craftsman without them. Shell out some cash (these are £5 each minimum) and then look after them! You'll be glad you did.

The cream would look a bit washed out without at least one accent colour to lift the scheme. I was going to go with a rich purple but thought that it would look weird on the dragons. Instead I figured a strong red would work better and went with it:

The only problem was the sea and seaweed-esque (a word I never thought I would type!) ribbons on some of the sea guard. It needed to work as a "sea" colour but not leap out of the model and alter the balance of the model. As a general tip, if you want a desaturated effect build it from a foundation colour. For this mix I used roughly 1:1 Hawk Turquoise and Adeptus Battlegrey with a tiny dot of Chaos Black. Highlights and shading were done simply with Skull White and more Chaos Black. I've talked a lot about red lately what with Blood Angels and all so simply put; the red on the High Elves is the standard Blood Angels method with a tiny bit of Liche Purple added to deepen the tone. I'm really happy with how the gemstones turned out. It's a tricky thing to explain but I hope to do a proper tutorial at some point. The only part I'm unhappy with is the skin. For some reason I tried to use Elf Flesh again, I don't know what I do wrong but it always, always ends up chalky and a bit naff. Thankfully these are rear rankers and won't be noticed in the unit. I'll be going back to my tried and tested Tallarn/Ogryn/Bone mixes thank you very much!

Also this week we have another in the series of Doctor "Hugh" models that Heresy are producing. I present K9 for your delification and delight!

I decided to paint him in his modern - slightly battered - form, his "skin" is a nice metallic grey tone that I had to really think about how to replicate. I ended up mixing Fenris Grey and Boltgun Metal with a little Chaos Black. Try this mix! It's great! I was so happy with the overall finish that I am trying to find an excuse to use it again. Maybe some truly grey Grey Knights... hmm, something to muse on. Anyway, more K9 pics!

Yep, that's a tartan collar. 1.5mm across. For this I can thank my dear lady wife who pointed out that K9 has a cute tartan collar and if I was being authentic then so would the model! Thanks dear! It turned out fairly nicely anyhow.

So here is a nice group shot of my growing Doctor Who "gang" to finish this post. I've just got the next lot of commission models from my Chaos client - an Alpha Legion rhino and some Emperor's Children Noise Marines - so these will be up soon!

TTFN