Sunday 31 January 2010

Musings About Muses Pt1

No painting this week, there was a Blood Bowl 7's tournament held at the club yesterday and I spent a fair bit of time sorting out how the boards would be got to the right size. In the end a simple solution involving cardboard boxes cut into a "mask" to cover up the unused squares and thin card used to mark out the end zones and lines of scrimmage completed the whole thing rather well as it turned out.

My run of consistency at club events continued as I "won" the wooden spoon for coming last again...still, it was an enjoyable day and I think I came away with the most casualties caused over the day, (mainly due to the beat-down I gave Ian's female Norse team...though with 3 turns left of the game & all his team off the pitch injured or unconscious I still couldn't pick up the ball for the win Grrrr), so at least my team was good at something :)

So, as I have nothing to show or talk about regarding my painting projects but still trying to keep regular postings going I thought I'd wax a little lyrical about the people that have inspired me to do this hobby, the sculptor and painters that I admire.

Sculptors first. It's the mini's that get me hooked into a game or company, I don't think I've ever had a set of game rules because they were good, it's always the look of the miniatures that grabs my attention, the rules are a secondary concern.

Over the years I've come to own far more models than games system I've played & I've come to appreciate certain sculptors styles over others and will gladly pick up mini's by them even if I don't necessarily have a use for them at the time, (though I am trying to stop that these days, I really do need to work on the stuff I've got as much as possible without ading to it).

Thinking it over I've got a list of sculptor whose styles I really like and in no particular order they are:

Werner Klocke - turns out I have a few of Mr Klocke mini's, long before I put a name to the work I kept seeing mini's that I really wanted from a number of different companies & quite a lot of them turned out to be his. All 4 of my oft-mentioned fantasy heroes group are Werner Klocke sculpts.

Edgar Ramos - Love his H.O.S.T range and the self-sculpted Ramos model for Malifaux is one of my faves of the whole range.

Kev White - Mr Hasslefree has managed to get a fair bit of money out of me over the last few of years with no real use for any of the models, but damn if they don't paint up pretty fantasticly, I may not always have a use for them, but Hasslefree is the only exception I have to buying mini's don't have a definitive use for .

Steve Buddle - Eolith's founder is the 2nd of the sculptors on this list that frequent the Forum of Doom, one of my regular online hangouts (I tend to lurk rather than post, but every now and again I'll pop my head up). 54mm is a scale I have no experience with, no use for other than the love of painting, but still I return again & again and almost own the whole range, keep your eyes n the blog as I intend to get as many as possible painted this year.

Felix Paniagua - I really like the Trollblood faction for Hordes, in fact when Hordes Mk II comes out later this year I'll probably start a small force of them for the game. Mr Paniagua is the guy that sculpts most of them & his own miniatures over at Avatars of War are awsome.

Juan Diaz - Love or hate GW you have got to admit Juan Diaz is a great sculptor, he's responcible for some of the best mini's GW produce.

Brian Nelson - GW sculptor #2 and the man that re-defined what Space Orks were supposed to look like, since he's over at Forgeworld I've have to fight the urge to spend a horrendus amount of money there. I'm not sure how much longer I can keep it up.

Adam Clarke - FOD sculptor #3 on the list, Black Scorpion do make some fantastic mini's, the Fantasy Pirate range is probably my favorite, that Giant is brilliant.

Paul Muller - It's not just because he sculpted 2 of my favorite Pulp City A.R.C. mini's, although they did firmly cement his place on the list :) Paul Muller does muscle tone like no-one else, the Ghouls he did for Heresy were a great evolution to the ones he did for GW, and his Not-Frankenstein's Monster model is one that I have to find a use for soon.

Andy Foster - To round off the list we have the 4th and final member of the FOD sculptors, the man that does some of the finest gribblies around, as well as some great characters as well. The Dragon he's working on looks amazing.

OK, so those are the guy's who produce the mini's I really like & tend to be the ones I gravitate to if I see their work on a game or for a company.

Next time I'll talk about some of the painters that have inspired me to improve my skills.

'Till next Time

J

Sunday 24 January 2010

I'm officially up and running for the year now. I've handed over the last of the 1000 Sons to Richard and I've started painting some of my own minis up again :)

So I get to put 10 points toward the painting tally, technically it should be 15, but as 10 of the marines were almost done before the new year I didn't think they could count completely, so 1/2 & 1/2 seemed right.



They came up pretty well I think, quite glad to see the back of them though...there's only so much blue & green a person can paint before you'd rather never see those colours in proximity to one another for a quite while.

Anyway, now onto the new stuff:



Here we have Morgue Master McMourning for Malifaux alongside a Werner Klocke sculpted Dwarven thief from Reapers Warlord range who is going to be one of my fantasy game heroes. I'm enjoying McMourning, though I think the eyes & teeth are probably going to be a little tricky to paint with that hand there, but so far he's been great fun to do. Haven't got too far with the dwarf, I've been a little stuck on a choice of colour scheme for him & it's a fantastic sculpt so I want do it justice, watch this space to see how he develops.



And here we have my first 3 Pulp City minis, The Gentleman; Rook; & Howler.

I think The Gentleman is done now, just got to get him varnished, it took me a little while to work out what I wanted to do with the severed robot head he's got his foot on, and I think it's turned out ok, really nice model to paint. Rooks armour's now almost done, I need to highlight all the metal areas & the hair, then get the base done. He looks so shiny because I've used a Tamiya Clear Red wash to make the red really pop, varnishing will get rid of it. Howler's a major '80s action movie fan and has based his look on Stallone in Cobra so who was I to argue, a quick Google image search later & I had my basic colour scheme. I still have to highlight the flesh & paint the belts, buckles, gun & base but again a really fun sculpt to paint, I'm looking forward to getting all 3 done very soon.

Hopefully I'll have proper pictures of all these guys within the next couple of weeks.

More soon

J

Sunday 10 January 2010

Ok, here we go with the first proper blog of the new year.

First up, work is progressing nicely with the final set of 1000 Sons.



As you can see 4 of the 5 are on course for finishing soon, 1 however did take a header off the undercoating tray I've got and needed redoing and with the snow we've had I only got it done yesterday.

However, I decided as I was going to undercoat anyway I'd get a few more models done as well and they can sit and wait for me to paint them, hopefully keeping me from buying too many new minis (I've decided to try and not buy anything unnecessary this year if I can help it - Roleplaying, games I'm actually playing and my solo fantasy campaign are the only things I'm going to buy as required, the Smartmax stuff might get a look in, but I need to paint up my Eolith mini's before I can justify the expense).



Very blacked up at the moment so not much detail on view, but in order from L-R: Nuke; Francis Gator and Chimp-Chi from Pulp City; The Harbinger of Justice from the old Harbinger mag; a Bantam Class Battleship for Iron Stars; Dr. McMourning; Sebastian; Ramos and Steampunk Arachnid from Malifaux; Forsaken St. Mark and Huntress from Dark Age.

I've also got the last 2 members of my hero group for my solo fantasy campaign primed as well and the 4 of them will be first on my list to paint once the 1000 Sons are done. They'll be making their first appearance on this blog next week all being well.

One more pic for this week, another Pulp City model I've started doing bits to whist waiting for Chaos Marines to dry, the bad guy Rook:



No prizes for guessing where my inspiration for his colour scheme came from:) I still a lot of work to do on him though. The armour on the torso needs another highlight and wash, the halberd needs doing and the base hasn't even been started yet, but I think he's coming along nicely.

Right, well that's all for this week, I'm going to try and post every Sunday, at least for this month, so next week should see the completion of the 1000 Sons and the beginnings of my fantasy hero group, so more soon :)

J

Friday 1 January 2010

Merry New Year and Whatnot

So, what with the weather being cold & wet recently I didn't get a chance to finish off any of the last few 1000 Sons, leaving my painting points at 80 for the year, not as much as I'd have liked , but still a good total for me.

I have finally managed to get the last 5 1000 Sons undercoated yesterday so they will be the first mini's to get painted this year and I've now got the last 2 models I need for my solo fantasy campaign hero group stuck on bases so they will follow shortly after I've finished the Sons, more on them next time (hopefully with pictures).

Had a good Christmas, despite being on anti-biotics. I didn't get anything toy related, (unless you count GI Joe: The Rise of Cobra on Blu Ray), but I did spend some time contemplating the coming year and I think the plan I put up here last time should be fine, I may add some 54mm models from Eolith and Smartmax into the mix as well, though the Smartmax stuff will have to wait until after I get my car serviced & MOTed this month before I'll know if I can afford any toys for a few months & of course the redundancy is coming up fast, so I'll have to manage my money a bit better for a while until I know that I've got a steady income again.

Anyway, more soon, should have photos next time as well.

J