Painting progresses...

Didn't get to do too much on the Orcs this weekend (several birthday parties to attend... Diablo III open beta.... It's a hard life. ), but this is where they are at now:

The blue is just a basecoat, the yellow needs one more highlight to really "pop".

The paints I used for the skin were:
-Vallejo Olive Grey (888) as a basecoat.
-Vallejo Luftwaffe Green (823) drybrush, followed by GW Baal Red Wash.
-Drybrush again with Luftwaffe green, but more lightly than before.
-Vallejo Russian Uniform WWII (824) drybrush.
-GW Devlan Mud wash
-Drybrush Russ. Uniform WWII again, more lightly than before.
-Painted Highlights: 50/50 Russ. Uniform WWII/Vallejo Green Grey (886)
-Highlight pure Green Grey
-Highlight 50/50 Green Grey and Vallejo Intermediary Green (891)
At this point I felt that the colour was too dark and brownish, so I washed with GW Thraka Green Wash and redid the last highlight.
Tael's excellent skintones were a major inspiration for this recipe.

For Goblins and Snotlings I intend to just "slide" up this colour scale: Omit the darkest colour and highlight up farther.
So the Goblins would start with a Vallejo Luftwaffe Green basecoat and end with a pure Intermediary Green Highlight.
Snotlings would start with the Russian Uniform WWIi as basecoat and and get a final highlight with, I'm thinking, a 50/50 mix of Intermediary Green and some other colour.
I'm considering using a sandy colour for this second colour, as I don't think I have a lighter green than Intermediary....

Phew, saved them...

Well, after the "little" hickup with the paint this weekend, I made a try to salvage the Orcs yesterday. Luckily it was all just black on black, and I washed them off as soon as I could (after my clothes were saved and I did what I could on the floor and wall...), so no detail was drowned under thick globs of paint.

Yesterday I finished the potentially messiest part of the painting, the skin and metals:

Sorry for the fuzzy focues, the digital camera is dead, so I had to rely on my phone.
I'm still trying to get it to focus where I want it to...

I opted for a somewhat darker, more "natural" looking green.. To maintain the Warhammer Quest "vibe", I'll be going bright red, yellow and (maybe) blue on the clothes to compensate.

Oh, and I just noticed from the pic that the bronze/brass could use an extra highlight  as wel...

RAAAAAGE!!!!

This morning I primered those Orcs I showed in last post.

This afternoon I sat down for a nice couple of hours of painting. After touching up the (black) basecoat I closed up my bottle of black acrylic....And failed catastrofically! Somehow, when giving the lid an extra press to make sure it sealed properly,  the paintpot escaped my grasp and went flying, the lid open again!

That bottle was brand new and nearly full. There's only two or three drops left in it now... The rest went on my miniatures, my face, my clothes (soaked right through), my chair, the carpet and the wall nearly a yard away!!!
I just finished cleaning up what I still could (carpet and wall are permanently smeared, the paint dried before I could get it off, luckily it's in my mancave and not the living room) and my clothes are in the washer....
I think I'm done painting for today... :-(

Solvent based happiness

Ooh, that sounds worrying, doesn't it? Well, I haven't been huffing paint or glue (well, not intentionally)...
I just wanted to report that I've stripped my last batch of Rogue Trader plastic Space Marines. So they are (theoretically) ready for paint! No idea when that will actually happen though.

Three of them need a "double dip", so they're back into the pot, along with a batch of 5th (?) edition plastic Bretonnian Bowmen.
Why the sudden urge to dip bowmen?
Because the flavour of the month is a double feature: Warhammer Quest and Knightly Quests!

Gaming the quests of (fantasy) Chivalry and the old Chansons de Geste, has been something I'd like to do for quite some time now.
I also have a soft spot for old school dungeon crawling.
And then there is the inspiring work of Shas'El Tael (see previous post) and all the other great blogs on Warseer's WHQ section.
Put all that in a blender and that's about what I'm working on for the moment:
-Putting in a concentrated push to finally getting my wife's Warhammer Quest set painted.
-Finding and building miniatures of my own to use in Warhammer Quest and/or a more generic dungeoneering/questing game. (This is where the bowmen come in....)
-Pondering the how and what ruleswise of said dungeoneering/questing game. (Current thoughts run towards butchering the Lord or the Rings skirmish rules, since I'll be basing my stuff on round bases anyway. Problem is, I've never actually played these rules, so I have no idea if they have the "flow" I seek.)

Anyway, enough text, time for piccies. This is what's on the workbench at the moment:

Wife's Orcs

And my very own Chaos Warrior

The base on the Chaos Warrior isn't the definitive one, I'm planning to put all of my stuff on round bases (which I don't have at the moment). Partly to make it more easy to distinguish "his" and "hers", but also so I can use them in the Dungeoneering/Chivalry games.

Rats!

Hmmm, not really an active blog, now is it?

Quick recap: The Hellgate London Templar sculpt is back in storage... I've finished a pair of waraji, even got my son to try his hand at making a pair as well. And then hobby funk hit...again.
Apparently it seems that carefully managing my enthusiasm to keep jobhunting  means there's no enthusiasm left for hobby stuff. Did do a fair bit of reading though. (To wit: made a start in some books about digital art, read a book about Japanese religion through history, specifically the interactions/intermingling of shintô and buddhism and tore through the first two books of E.R.B.'s "Mars" aka "Barsoom" series.)

But, I did get something done. Something that was "in progress" for over a decade. (Sad isn't it?)
This weekend I finished the Skaven for my wife's Warhammer Quest set:

The front six were"finished" a decade ago, all I did to them was a few quick touch-ups. The rear five were finished this weekend (I had already done the fur and most of the clothing the last time I worked on these mini's, everything else is "new paint"). All miniatures then got new bases, as the old ones were pretty minimal; bare bases painted grey, ugh...

Yes, you counted right: 6 +5 makes 11, not 12.
Apparently one of the Skaven had scurried off in the intervening decade! Luckily I had a spare figure, who is now in his primered glory, waiting to collect dust get painted. Once he is done, I only have to finish...well... the remaining 79 miniatures in the box.... :-(

Oh and speaking of Warhammer Quest: If you like it, you really have to check out Shas'El Tael's stuff:
A few years back he started this thread on the Advanced Tau Tactica forum which he continued and expanded on Warseer. He also collects the images on his site.
Discovering these threads are what spurred me on to paint WHQ again.

See you next time!