Rocketgirl and friends

Hi folks, I'm back and I brought shinies!

These are a quartet of Inq28 operatives - probably not related in the client's own backstory but mashed together to prevent endless one-model-painted-posts (if people would prefer more regular but limited or sometimes repetitive posts let me know in the comments). The gang is a pair of - I think - Toughest Girls in the Galaxy, a kitbashed crusader from GW components and a nautical chap the origin of which I have no idea! an Aether Pirate from Miniatures of the North. As usual assembly all client, only colours are mine.

still struggling with colour fidelity, imagine this more crimson.

First up - as she looks most "in charge" of these four is the model I was thinking of as The Exorcist all through painting. The brief was for crimson robes, OSL staff and some sort of banishment scroll. So that is what we went with! I decided that I would pair the crimson with deep gold and mid brown leather. The colours worked nicely but needed some black lining to push the boundaries as there wasn't enough contrast in the scheme. Black lining is something we need to bring back more, especially those of us who like naturalistic schemes. The internet's obsession with "pushing contrast" makes great photographs but leaves us with that very cartoony, unrealistic look. I understand why studios do it. Trouble is, as photo sharing online is the way our community primarily interacts on painting it has become an unwelcome truism that high contrast is the only way as we're not judging the painting, we're judging the photos of the painting. A thin black-brown line is enough to break up the areas of detail and give us clean delineation of detail without that high contrast push. It may be old school, but it ain't useless.

There are bonus points available for anyone who recognises the banishment sigil on the scroll ;)

The crusader had an even simpler brief, red and white with lots of leather. I decided on a darker, more threatening red on this one with the white used very sparingly on the sleeve slashes. Initially, thinking of the lots of leather brief, I had the trousers in leather, but they were so clearly sculpted as fabric that it just looked wrong. I wound up deciding that the red was a uniform and the balance of the whole piece was improved. Speaking of which, the little spot colours of brass also help the balance. Before the helmet was brass with steel details it looked a bit plain and there was a weird stripe of brass across the midriff of the model with the sword hilt, belt and pouch aquillae all brass. Picking out the inner helmet in brass shifted the contrast colour back to the head and also had the side effect of making the helmet look much, much fancier.

For the Rocketgirl and her ageing retainer the brief was French Napoleonic voltigeurs. This means a rich blue with black leather, white trousers and white piping along with a yellow collar detail and red cuffs if available. Given that I was basically painting the Rocketeer I couldn't resist copper and brass as the mask and wing details. The blue flashes on the wings were another of those balancing considerations. It's hard to explain sometimes what I mean when I talk balance as I rarely photograph the times where it doesn't work. Might work up something tutorial flavoured at some point.

I'll level with you, I found this model to be quite crudely sculpted, the piping is massive and the epaulettes are chunky and irregular in size. I've clearly been spoiled rotten by the quality of modern miniatures. The ageing retainer was handled in the same way as the rocketgirl. The exception is the coat which I chose to paint the same grey as the voltigeurs of old. Initially I had it blue as well, but it just looked wrong. The grey works much nicer and also gave me the "industrial" colour of the middle of the wing on rocketgirl. My usual "add light grey instead of bone" method for the final highlights on the skin gave the aged look to the ageing retainer and all was good.

That's all for today folks, I know it's been a while between posts but these things happen right? Should have more shinies very soon.

TTFN

Combat Servitors Multipass

Hi folks, more shinies! Well... rusty and oilies today:

Yup, today's offerings are a pair of crude combat servitors, the one on the left is a conversion of a Mantic ghoul (one of the few Mantic sculpts I like) and the one on the right is a resin figure from I know not where. I just did the painting so can't say too much about assembly so we'll skip straight over that and into painting!

First up we have zombie-cyborg-Leeloo (yes, I saw what you did there sculptor, I got the reference with the "thermal bandages"). By the way, if you've no idea what the hell I am going on about or what the title references then you need to see the Fifth Element at your earliest convenience. Now would do, go watch it, I'll wait...

...Fun wasn't it? Anyway, the brief for these included that the skin should be not the usual death-pale servitor pallor but instead ill and waxy. Now this is a tricky thing to hit as it is mostly a quality of how the light reflects from it but colour wise it is usually yellowish, jaundiced, so I went with that. Now it is pretty much impossible for me to give you a recipe as I was fiddling with colour mixes back and forth but I know that Ungor Flesh and Rakarth Flesh were involved and mixes of washes and glazes made of blends of Flesh, Sepia and Yellow washes. It's more yellow in the flesh (badum-tish) but I'm still trying to get colour fidelity right. Miiiight need a greycard (photo nerding on your own time Jeff).

The one I was thinking of as the Arco-flagellant was simpler, less straps and things. I'd decided that the chainsword needed some classic 40k bling so broke out the hazard stripes. Both lenses were my usual Thunderhawk Blue shaded with black. Not a huge amount to talk about with him. Oh, the clothing is a very handy colour, Vallejo Stone Grey. A decent "shabby rags" colour.

That's all folks, more shinies inbound soon.

TTFN

Vostroya Today Cover Shoot

Greetings people (never have figured out a satisfactory clever collective noun for readers of PVP), today we have a rather more glamorous guardsman than usual:

I'm fairly sure that she is one of Raging Heroes sculpts and one of the better ones in my opinion. Less obviously sexualised (note "less", as opposed to "not"), more a soldier. However the pose did strike me from the get go as, well, a pose, she looked like she was striking a suitable heroic pose for a cameraman somewhere behind the fourth wall. So in my head, that's what she became, a trooper pulled out for the commissariat's civilian propaganda and recruitment wing, more on that later.

The sculpt is nice enough, technically very nice, lots of crisply cast details and equipment, nice. There are two minor quibbles I have, one is her hair which is filling a big undercut for the one piece casting of the body and head and thus only looks good from one angle. Fair enough, it's a technical rather than an aesthetic one but I might have tried to find a less obvious place to sacrifice. Hey ho, I am neither a sculptor, nor a caster so I know nothing, no-thing. The second is more of a subjective thing, it's the face. There is a tendency for female faces to be impassive masks devoid of expression. I know the problem stems from trying to get an attractive sculpt at 28mm scale where the slightest twitch of the sculpting tool radically alters the end result but I believe these were digitally sculpted so... Ah, I guess it's a personal thing, I think character comes from expression, displaying an emotion - determination, trepardation, fury, concentration... something. Anyway, on with the painting!

The brief was a delightfully Inception-like thing. I was to paint a Vostroyan-esque figure in the beige Death Korps scheme that was itself based on an old Vostroyan figure! Thus the scheme will be a familiar one to long term readers. Most of the choices thus made for me by Past Jeff I was able to just relax and enjoy the process. Really, the only choices I had to agonise over were the hair - I ended up going for platinum blonde to make the face pop from all the beige and to reinforce the already catwalk model physique - and things like the fur trim on the coat and hat. One big section that had me scratching my head was the flag. She's holding a large piece of fabric in her right hand, clearly a flag of some sort but not held with any respect, more a trophy. I figured I wanted a little bit of red and gold on the flag as, well, I'm painting a Vostroyan and I have something of a Soviet bent to my Bolt Action collection. Trouble was, that was going to be a very, very bright spot and would draw attention away from the face. Not ideal.

The solution came to me by first painting the flag as a captured arch-enemy banner. I would drag the flag through the dirt of the battlefield, thus dulling the colours and keeping the focus where it ought to be. My normal dirt weathering sequence wasn't going to work too well with my client's preferred urban basing. Mud doesn't work well with rubble. Thus I started by stippling a drybrush of Val German Camo Black-Brown - it's got to be a very dry brush - building up layers of dirt. Then Stormvermin Fur and finally a little light grey (can't remember which) mixed with the Stormvermin fur. I used a clean wet brush to do a little blending of the final layers that hadn't fully cured and finished the whole thing off with some spots of black for soot. Perfect. A point of interest but not a distraction from the rest of the model.

With the shoot finished (the camera and I are gradually reaching an accord) I couldn't resist a five minute photoshop job and create a trashy supermarket tabloid cover for her. I think Vostroya Today works ;)

TTFN

The Toffs of Colony 87

Hiya folks, guess what... we got shinys to look at!

Yup, not only are the last three Colony 87 residents finished but I am finally, finally wrangling the new camera into shape. Thus... content for the blog for the first time in too long. Lets get straight to it: These chaps are - like all the other colony 87 residents - nice, slightly cartoony resins with bags of character. While the cartoonishness has never been quite to my liking I really love that this range exists. More roleplay-esque characters need to exist for sci-fi in particular but heck, just more in general please! Speaking of these characters, let's meet these:

First up we have the corpulent governor. Over-fed and indulged this peacock struts about the Colony armed discretely with a tiny digital weapon (seriously, the ring on his left hand is a digi-weapon). I actually ended up painting both this chap and his missus below twice as I started off reaching for the purple. Heck, purple is rich and I wanted these two oozing money, trouble was, it looked terrible. For some reason the purple just did not work. So I ditched it and went instead for a dark but vibrant red (that the camera completely failed to capture due to the layers of ink that went in to it) and a bottle green tunic. The combination seemed to work fine and the greying blonde - ridiculous - hair carried the yellow accents up into the head.

His missus shares hubbies colour scheme but with more brass armour plating. While painting her I was trying to figure her story (helps with the colour selection and effects), eventually I got to the point where some seriously dodgy science had been brought to bear in order to allow the tiny be-ruffed heir to the dynasty to be born. I painted her skin as pale and drawn, made the tubes that enter her nose (if they were supposed to be jewellery - nose chains - then they are waaaay to thick) be supplying cleaned blood and nutrients and assumed that the armour was actually an augmetic suit to help her walk. Yup, happy stories provided free folks, sheesh.

Finally we have their hapless bearer toting their purchases from colony stores. I think he's actually a general labourer in the original intent but I had three figures to showcase and it made sense to link them. While painting him I got the impression of "employee", he didn't seem to be acting for himself as the scavengers were or have a lot of agency. Thus when choosing his colours I went with recollections of some of the downright weird corporate uniforms I or friends have had to wear in our early years. Petrol blue was from my old Woolworths uniform as a young 'un and it paired rather nicely (in some colony exec's eyes) with a salmon pink shirt. The Amphibon style jackets they all seem to wear got the usual XV-88.

And that's all folks. Obviously there will be more shinys in coming weeks, hopefully with increasing quality of photographs as I figure out what tricks I need to get the best fidelity and reproduction of my work. Until then

TTFN

Merry Christmas Everyone (yes, I'm still here)

Hi folks, after a solid month of silence I thought it wise to let people know that I had not been eaten by a tinsel-shark (they lurk in Christmas decorations, be warned) and was in fact, well, still here.

old but topical photo

In fact the blog situation got first worse... then considerably better... if incompetent. Let me explain, no, there is too much, let me sum up: Old camera dead. Something to do with the sensor being bent/warped/something complicated and expensive. Thus worse; camera not repairable, new ones pricey. Then managed to find a nice dSLR second hand. So considerably better! Only trouble is, it is much, much more manual than my old "bridge" camera so am having to learn how to get the best out of it. This will happen soon, just not yet, because of the incompetence I mentioned earlier.

So the long and short of it is: We'll be back as soon as I can take competent photos again, should be soon. I will be going in to my normal Christmas/new year hibernation anyway but realised that if I did that without posting then nearly two months would go by with nothing. Unacceptable. Rest assured that there will be shiny new things in the new year for us all. But for now, from me, Mrs PVP and Mulder (the bony one) we wish you a very, very happy yuletide and only the finest and most marvellous 2016.

TTFN

Please Stand By

Hi folks, just a quickee to say that I am having photographic troubles (somehow I've knocked either the lens or sensor off centre which means it's shooting and focusing verrrry wrong). Suffice to say, there are shiny toys to share... and no means to do so. Lame.

Hope to fix fast, but yeah, lame.

Fire Broadsides!

Greetings one and all! Well, they've been a little while coming but they're here and ready to follow the order: FIRE BROADSIDES!

Yep, finally joining their little autonomous buddies the Drones are their big manned (Tau'ed?) cousins the Broadside Battlesuits. I've talked a bit about the details of their construction and battle damage here so I'll leave that there. I will though mention a few thoughts about the models as they are the first Tau I've painted from the second wave of designs that came through, obviously there is now a third wave too but the point is valid. These are a huge improvement on the old "pin a pair of metal cannons on the back of a top heavy plastic model and call it good" school of Broadside. I will confess I was initially a bit "awww" that the client wanted the missile versions as I really like the "rifleman" railgun configuration. But these really grew on me and I can certainly see the tactical reason you would want them in this arrangement.

Painting wise, I was using the same mixes as the Drones and for the same reasons. I wanted the suits to look like they contained soldiers and bright saturated colours like Tau Light Ochre do not do that. Instead I kept the scheme down at the XV-88 end of the spectrum to have that military drab feel without losing the "Tau desert" scheme. I will say to anyone making one or more of these: Sub Assemblies are your friend as they are a beast to paint in one piece.

What do I mean by sub assemblies? Well, I'm talking leaving the arms, smart missile system and possibly the seeker missile off while painting and doing them separately with a view to adding them at the end. I very, very rarely do this as I think it causes problems with composition, shading, highlighting, all sorts. But once you've tried to basecoat the armour plates of one of these the with the three coats of XV-88 it takes to get a clean basecoat (assuming you want thinned nice flat paint with no brushstrokes) and doing so with all the fiddliness of getting around the obstructions? You'll wish you had left it in pieces. I certainly did. Lets just say XV-88 is no Tausept Ochre and draw a respectful veil over the loss of foundation paints once more.

Thankfully, once the basecoats were on the rest of the painting really was not that bad at all, even fun in places. The scheme complements nicely and I think using the green lenses as I went for makes for a more pleasing contrast than the red on the studio ones. The bullet holes (which I'm quite chuffed with) were built up in layers, first a pale version of the basecoat to look like chipped edges, then some dark brown/black/dab of plate mail metal to be the exposed and oxidised metal, then some shinier bits for the edges and finally a bright metal centre where the round impacted. I then got some Ammo enamel "Streaking Grime" and dirtied up the area around each impact to tie them into the armour rather than looking like shiny fried eggs on the surface. Some dusty weathering on the lower legs - careful washes of the basing colours - helped tie the model to it's environment and as usual helped with the "soldier not toy" vibe.

All in all, a challenging but not unenjoyable task. They are in their cardboard dropship now making their way to their new home and I wish them the best of luck getting past their shiny model syndrome as quickly as possible. As an aside, I've been reading Iain M Banks "Culture" series over the last few months and my view of the Tau is shifting in light of it. I love the idea of the drones having individual sentience rather than being slaved. It would make the Tau a really different race with machine intellect being granted equal status to organic. Ah well, in the Jeffiverse of the year 40,000 that is totally what is happening. Never mind what canon says eh?

TTFN