Windmills on my Mind Part 2 - Painting and Glee

Hi folks, remember this: Windmills... Part 1? Don't blame you, it was back in October, granted, the very last day of October but still, that was a long time back. To be honest, it's been a dry spell for hobby for me. It's actually been two full months since a painted model rocked up on this blog. Just one of those things. But now, I have a biggie to start 2015 with:

Bring on Quixote! The windmill is complete. I waxed rhapsodic about this last time so I'll try to keep my hyperbole to a safe minimum but whoa. The quality of the work Tabletop World put into their sculpting just leaps out when you spend hours painting the thing. Best of all, like all the best models, it started to tell me a story through the little details. It's starting to look tatty, the shingles are starting to break (bad when you want nice dry flour). It clearly isn't being well maintained. The story that rolls in my mind is that the miller is currently in military service (there's a war on after all) and his wife and - what the heck, lets add a child - daughter are keeping the mill working in his absence. The ladies are going to have to get brave and fix that roof and sails soon or there won't be much of a mill left.

I tried to take some step by step shots of the stonework as I went but ohdeargod did the camera hate me. It just looked grey in every step. So I'll just talk you through it. Skavenblight Dinge covers the entire thing in a nice stoney basecoat. Technically you could just start highlighting there and then but to make it look better we need to force some tonal variation into the grey. Tonal variation is totally going to be the words of the day for this post, if it was a video I'd keep a little counter on screen with a "ping" every time I said it. So anyway, tonal variation (ping): I got out of my paint boxes every single vaguely grey, beige, grey-brown, greyish green, greyish blue, all of them. Each got mixed with Skavenblight Dinge and then painted over a stone. I'd wager each colour only appears on about a dozen stones on the whole windmill. Tiny variations but enough to give that natural variety. Then a pair of highlights, first with Administratum Grey then Longbeard Grey put a common theme all the way through the stonework while defining the texture. Stonework is fairly easy but time consuming.

Woodwork went a slightly different path. I then sloshed Badab Black over the German Camo Black-Brown basecoat to define the shadows. Three highlights followed, all drybrushed, first German Camo Black-Brown again, then two highlights of German Camo Black-Brown mixed with Administratum Grey (2:1 then 1:2). Old wood isn't very brown, it's more grey-ish. Tonal variation (ping) was added by using thin glazes of other browns to make the planks individual. Into the recesses of the shingles (deliberately left the planks underneath the shingles free of green) I added several layers of green enamel weathering paints in order to make a mossy vibe to the recesses. Unfortunately as they are beautifully translucent the camera ignores them. Grrr. The metalwork is just AP Gunmetal mixed with black, washed black and a thin glaze of Ammo Rust Streaks.

The windows are Val Dark Sea Blue, washed with black and gloss varnished. The window leads are then painted the same dark metal as the roof but without the rust streaks as lead doesn't rust like that. A nice by product of washing the leading was matt areas around the leading looking like muck building up.

Around the base of the tower I needed to get some muck and dirt that the wind, rain, passing cows etc have stained the stonework with. For this, I again turned to enamel weathering paints. Streaking Grime, Winter Streaking Grime and Dark Streaking for Green Vehicles (essentially, muddy brown, muddy green and a stronger slime green) were variously heavily stippled around the base of the tower. Odourless thinner was used to soften the intensity and fade out the colours before a second round of green was applied to the lowest stones. It looks good in the photos but so much better in person. Superb stuff. Technically the colours I was using were AK Interactive bought a while ago, these days I prefer to buy from Ammo of Mig Jimenez because reasons. Now I've rabbited on about these paints a lot over the last few years. They've completely replaced pigments in my work because they don't rub off, can be removed if you make a mistake and do almost everything pigments can do. Heck, if you add some plaster of paris they can do everything pigments can do. Pigments are great for dioramas and display models. They can't be beaten for conveying the physical presence of dust and rust etc. But dioramas are not touched. Wargaming models are, a lot. So for that reason, enamels is now my go-to weathering product. For as long as I've rabbited on about these things I've said "I must get a tutorial or something worked out". Well here it is, sorta:

Left to right: Dots and streaks applied, first "stumping", second "stumping" see below

The sails are another of those jaw-dropping Tabletop World creations, it would have been easier and more cost efficient to produce one sail and cast four for each windmill. Tabletop World instead made each one unique. It really helps the overall look of the mill and I applaud craftsmen taking decisions to make a quality product rather than just to increase the profitability of a product. After doing the woodwork and attendant metal banding (so, so many bands, twitch), it was time to look at the sails. A mixture of Val Stone Grey and Deck Tan makes a lovely canvas tone but isn't terribly good at coverage so three thin basecoats later I had the main colour. Highlighting simply careful drybrushing of a lighter (more Deck Tan) version of the same mix and then pure deck tan focussing on where the gorgeously thin sails tent over the wooden frame. The ropes were picked out in a more yellowish tone (sorry, didn't write down which) and then shaded with enamel Streaking Grime. I used the enamels as I knew what was coming next.

Lining up nigh on all the enamel weathering paints I had (except for rust and slimy green) I started putting dots and streaks along the length of the sail (leftmost picture above). This will look awful but trust the pirate viking. Give it a few minutes or so to dry off a little (enamel paints can take anything up to a day to cure, it's one of many reasons why they're useless for painting the main body of the model) and then we start "stumping". Stumping is when we take a clean brush, damped down with odourless turpentine or the more aggressive white spirit, and smear and fade the marks we made in stage one. Think about the direction the rain and other factors will move the muck in. The result was the middle photo, more subtle, but still a bit too "painted" for my tastes. A second stumping resulted in beautiful, subtle, washed-out, difficult to photograph muck. Brilliant. Mig has a bunch of tutorials on his site that explain it much, much, much better but there you have it!

After fitting the sails (made much, much easier by the prep work done in part one) I couldn't resist throwing a realm of battle tile and some trees down and seeing how it looks. Pretty damn good I think! One day I might make a base for it to give a bit more story (sacks of grain, worn path leading to the door etc) but that does limit where I can place the mill during terrain deployment. We shall see. Tabletop world assure me that they are making more cottagey type buildings to go with the grand urban structures so the village will grow. Speaking of story, in game I was thinking of some rules to reflect the mill's more unique features. Usual rules for occupying buildings but the building gains flammable despite being stone as flour dust? That stuff is explosive:

Doesn't seem like there'd be enough dry dust to take out the building but having flaming weapons deal double wounds... that seems enough. All in all, a really fun project and I can't wait to get my hands on another building so the village can grow. Tabletop World, I applaud you.

Feel free to throw questions and comments at me below, until next time folks.

TTFN

Happy New Year and... We're Back!

Hi folks, first, from Mulder, Mrs PVP and I a heartfelt happy new year to one and all.

Mulder parties hard

I think, along with a lot of people, 2014 will be a year we want to mostly forget, here's to 2015 being made entirely of win. Oddly, part of that win is the resumption - in a much reduced capacity - of commercial operations here at PVP HQ. When I closed PVP a while ago now it was largely because I couldn't maintain capacity and protect my wrist (RSI) and couldn't see a way to it ever making enough to support me properly. However, after months looking for work in a still very unfriendly economy. With being "unemployed guy" doing me no favours at all and there being no obvious disadvantages to running a business making not a lot at all. I'm thus reopening until I find something more permanent!

I am changing the way I work a little, want to stick to my strengths rather than offering a service that others can do cheaper. My strength has always been crafting exactly what a client wants for character rather than churning out basecoat-drybrush-wash hordes. Have a look at the hire us section for details. I've raised the prices a little - but here's the thing, I still won't even make minimum wage on these prices - but you'll get the care and attention that I lavish on everything. I paint better than I photograph so the results are even better in the flesh. The main reason for the change is to allow me to also have time for the other half of the business that I occasionally post here, bespoke props for LARP.

I don't know how long it'll last, I might suddenly get a full time job offer and need to close down again, but with the rise of part time contracts being the norm I expect to be able to keep it going a while :)

Hobby content will be cranking up again in the next few weeks, got all sorts of projects in the works so painted miniatures all over the shop soon :) Until then, here are two funky sword gifs as a late christmas present.

from the sublime...

...to the ridiculous

TTFN

Merry Christmas everyone!

Merry Christmas one and all from Pirate Viking Painting! 

We'll be back in the new year, reinvigorated for more little plastic man shenanigans. See you then.

Useful References

Hi folks, I often talk about how useful/important research is to getting the result you want. Well, I've been doing a lot of musing lately about skin painting, I've got Caucasian pretty much down and using Dwartist's excellent mix has led to nice Afro-Caribbean tones (currently secret Inq28 project but I'll share after I inflict them on my players), but there are dozens more and it's often tricky to get a starting point for the midtone. Well, a photographic artist has provided us wargamers with a really interesting resource:

"Humanæ" by Angélica Dass is a work in progress artwork with the midtone colour of each participant (ratio of pink people is a little high at the moment but work in progress) defined by its Pantone colour. Much easier to compare a paint to a swatch than the ever changing shades of skin so I'm hoping it'll be a useful starting point. Thus I figured share it here! [it has a naff interface at the moment, use the tiny red "fore and back" at the bottom to scroll the pages]

Ideally, I'd like to see more companies making - and sculpting - a better range of skin paints and face shapes but until they do, we'll have to keep on finding useful shades in the existing ranges and sharing them. I think I know some of the reasons for the reluctance to move beyond the Caucasian norm in wargaming, race is one of those very, very touchy subjects. Almost better to be thought of as white-centric than to offend by mislabelling people or worse, missing an ethnic group out while featuring others. I'd say, time to grow up wargaming industry, accept the fact that some people will throw toys out of the pram and handle it when they do. Another reason is expense, flesh tones are tricksy, adding dozens more is expensive. But as we're seeing in Humanæ there are probably existing tones in your ranges. Would it be so hard to label them as Burnt Umber / Afro Carribean Skintone? Of heck, just call them the skintones and let us figure out that they can be also used for other things.

Anyway, that's it. Thought I'd share a resource and some thoughts. If you've got a nice solid skin recipe for the hundreds of non-Caucasian skin tones out there then feel free to share it in the comments! If I get enough I'll make a sort of library of them. There's dozens of reference sites for animals (Equusite for horses is one I use a lot), nice to see one for humans.

TTFN

On the Workbench - Yo Ho, Yo Ho, A Goblin's Life For Me

Really bad eggs! Hi folks, given that it had been a little while since I posted anything (my creativity has been channelled elsewhere recently) I thought I'd share the some conversion work. In this case, Goblin Pirates!

Now, before I start, I should offer some caveats. This is probably going to be the last you see of these guys for quite some time. I plan my hobby some time in advance and these are for after I do some Empire. I do though get bored so have models available for a bit of converting glee when painting becomes samey. So while I've got a converting article here, don't expect to see them painted for some while. Sorry! On with the show: These fine chaps are the command groups and one of the characters of the last of my Goblin tribes. Joining the Bitter Moon Night Goblins and the Black-Head Forest Goblins will be a tribe of common goblins. Sadly, I don't really get on with the "Genghis" common goblin models. Nothing too wrong with them, just not my cup of tea. Following on with the Hochland Campaign at the Beard Bunker I had the notion of a bunch of goblins living as river pirates on a small flotilla of stolen boats. This festered away until I saw the Black Scorpion Goblin Pirates models. "That was the vibe for me" thought I. Some musing later I also realised that Ogre Kingdoms gnoblar models would work great with a little conversion (mostly weapons) as gobbos. The River Pikey tribe were born! (Pikey is a pejorative term for gypsies where I grew up and goblins really fit the stereotype)

left to right: chariot champ; 3 unit champions; big boss

The thousand points of River Pikeys has three block units in it so needed three command groups. I had a good look through the Black Scorpion models I had available and figured which of the poses would work best for standard bearer and musician conversions. The remainder became unaltered champions. In the photo above, the Nelson looking one on the left is going to be standing in the bow of one of the chariots (boats with wheels added!) as a champion. The captain model on the right is going to be the leader. Still need to find an appropriate shaman but the hunt is on. So with everything divided out I needed to get to work converting.

The three standard bearers were simply made by carving away the weapons they held (and turning the cutlass on the middle one to a more ranking-up-friendly direction) and pinning zombie polearms into place as the standard poles. I added an empire gunpowder scoop to one to indicate that they were just using anything vaguely the right length as a flagpole, thieves see? Not a lot of work really. I still need to resculpt the little finger on the middle model to fit the pole but that'll be a job for the future. With the easy stuff done, time for the musicians.

I wanted a nautical feel to as many of the instruments as I could manage. A bell and a fiddle fit the bill. The last one's pose rather limited my options so while a squeeze-box accordion would have been more appropriate a "liberated" Empire horn was a better fit. Making the bell was just by repositioning a zombie bell to look like a swing mounted ship's bell that he's nicked off with. Likewise, the horn was just giving him a new hand (night goblin) to replace the hand-covering basket hilt cutlass then cutting and gluing the horn. Again, a little green stuff work will be needed to smooth the transitions. Finally, the hard one, the pose of the musket armed goblin left me with only one instrument that would fit. A fiddle (violin) was the only option. This... was a challenge. I wanted to use the model so sucked up the difficulty and plunged on. Carving away the musket left me with the arm positions free of interference. Next, I cut a rectangle of plasticard roughly to size and carved it by eye to be the vague shape of a violin body. All other details will be with painting. The neck was made in three parts, the curly middle bit and the two tuning pegs. These are tiny, I lost three carved pegs before I had them in place. The bow was just a length of paper clip wire, I added a strip of paper thin plasticard to the underneath and a little plasticard shim to shape the end of the bow. I'll do a little more shaping once the superglue is thoroughly cured with a very sharp blade but for now? Job done. I think it turned out ok.

So that's that! The first of the River Pikeys are ready to be painted and set sail. If anyone is curious, the army list for the Pikeys is above, I think it's going to be a fun project. I'll share it as it goes.

TTFN

Like a Shaman in a Web

For those who have been following my progress on Project Goblin will know I have been building the various elements as separate tribes. So far the Bitter Moon Night Goblins and the Black Head Forest Goblins. The Bitter Moons are the big one, tons and tons of night gobbos with attendant leaders and shamen. Until now, all the Black Heads had was their chief, Arakkit. But not any more baby!

Yes indeed, the Black Heads now have religious guidance and magical boom all of their own (and not having to rely on Shaman Joodee...) in the form of Shaman Skuttlit. Now, those with Orc & Goblin army books and possessing a law abiding spirit will be saying "but Jeff, there's no option for a spider mount for a goblin shaman..." to which I say "bum to that". Seriously, why the hell can shamen ride wolves but not spiders? Heroes can ride spiders. So I ignored the army list, transferred the cost from the hero and went with it. None of my usual opponents would care and frankly, anyone determined to make an issue out of it is unlikely to be a person with whom I would enjoy playing. Anyhow, enough of that. Painting and modelling! The basis of the model was a regular spider with the champion backrest and the awesome goblin shaman. I'm intending to use him again so I needed to make some modifications to prevent them looking like twins. I extended the staff with bits from the arachnarok (the kit that keeps on giving that one) and switched out the bone and skull for dagger. I'll probably remove the topknot when I paint the common goblin contingent.

In order to make him fit on the spider in his vaguely "arachnid surfing" pose I needed to sculpt a new chunk of carapace to smooth out the flat area the goblin normally sits on. Painting the spider was handled in the same way as each and every damn eight legged crawling thing in the army (just 10 to go...). Skuttlit was painted in the usual way for goblin skin, just adding a couple more intermediate steps to the highlights. I chose black for the robes to help him fit in with the Bitter Moons and then got to the fun bit:

Details! The cloak collar is normally painted as fur, but for a "jungley" shaman type I thought tropical bird feathers would add a splash of colour. So I did a bit of research, chose a bird for each layer and went for it. The fetish staff - genius design by the way, wolf, voodoo-ish fetish and moon, feels like one of each type of gobbo to me - was fun to pick out all the little details. The chicken foot especially worked well. Highlighting yellow with bone is the way to get that naturalistic animal yellow.

So a simple conversion and paint job leading to a nice finish, now to wear the shiny model syndrome off with a game or two... and the inevitable head-exploding miscasts of course...

TTFN

Tree's Company

Wood yew beleaf it? Ash soon as one scenery article a-pears another follows. Sorry, I'll stop, no more puns, completely stumped... sorry. Yes, today's article is all about trees, and because it was a slow process I've taken step-by-step pics too.

For this round of trees I'm using the old GW "bottle brush" trees, they're the shape of chestnut trees by the way, that have been hanging around about as long as the game board awaiting the appointed hour.

First of all you need to separate the trees from whatever root system your trees come with. If they can't be separated then you'll just have to be careful. These were just wire hot glued in to the roots, so a quick twist did it. Put the bottle brushes to one side and concentrate on the roots. Glue the roots on a base roughly the width of your trees. Handily, the 60mm flat round plastic bases citadel made were perfect. I had a bunch of them so that made it easy. In the absence of those I would recommend one of the companies making mdf bases. Sarissa Precision are a good bet. Texture them as normal and then prime - I'd recommend black.

There are some that would say this is enough trees. There are Forty here. Those people are wrong as we shall see later.

Painting begins in exactly the same way as the table, with the same colours (Calthan Brown and Tausept Ochre from the painting kit, Terminatus Stone to finish) so as to help blend the bases to the existing soil.

The colour of the trees never resolved well on the camera. Trees aren't brown y'see? They're a brownish grey. A good analogue for this is a basecoat of Val German Camo Black-Brown. Drybrushed with a mix of Val GCBB and Baneblade Brown and a final light drybrush of Administratum Grey. In real life they look browney-grey. On camera? They look primed. Grump.

Next we need to get some foliage going. This will blend the edge of the base in to the grass of the table (damn near perfectly if you check the first picture again). Just put a rough ring of neat PVA around the edge of the base and then give it a good, pressed-down coat of the same static grass mix you made the table with. It's worth making a load of the grass mix when you do the table so that you can blend all future scenery projects. This will give you a "Mongol Furry Hat" look which will look a little unnatural at this stage but remember two things. One, we ain't done yet, two, grass doesn't grow too densely under trees that are packed together in a wood. In a park? Sure, a wood, no.

What you do get a whole stack of is leaf-mold. Antenoceti's Workshop's Leaf Litter is a great analogue for this. I believe they're some sort of seed pods but they are so cheap and numerous in the pot (I used less than a third of the pot doing the entire 40 trees) that it's worth buying them. Thinned PVA brushed on lightly and then a layer of leaves sticks a thin coating of them. Sadly, they're not terribly durable this way so we break out the secret weapon. Watered down PVA.

Before we coat the whole thing in watered down PVA I'll share a tip with you. It's terribly easy to glue your carefully modelled bases to the table. To avoid this? Just stick a coin under the base. A 2p piece is perfect. Just enough gap (compare the two bases the arrow is connecting in the picture above) to prevent sticking and very stable.

Hoo boy, this next step takes some time when you are batch painting forty of the damn things. A thinned mix of PVA - about 1 part PVA to 3 parts water - is heavily brushed over the grass, leaves, everything. This will weld all the scatter materials down. At this stage I also glued a few weed tufts to about 10 of the bases just to add some more life.

When it's all dry you get quite a nice convincing leaf litter. You can now glue your trees back into the trunks and admire your handiwork!

See? Forty trees, barely covers 2/3 of a 2'x2' Realm of Battle tile. Sheesh. Clearly need more tree... especially some different species to mix up the appearance a bit. I'm also going to make some bases of undergrowth, ferns, bushes etc. to mix up amongst the trees to improve the woodland look.

Well, having either given you ideas or taught you to suck eggs I shall away to play with my wood... ahem.

TTFN