July 10th, 2008 by Missy

All I ever post about lately is Warhammer.  It’s that whole obsession thing.  Anyway, my VC spearhead arrived today, although I admit that I am having some trouble being excited about it.   My paints haven’t yet arrived and I don’t really want to start anything new until I have the new paints otherwise.. yanno.. models within the same unit won’t match and I (of course) want to do my special characters with the good stuff.

I suppose I can’t truly blame the lack of paints, however.  Today has been a very blah day.  No real reason, I suppose, but there it is.  Ever have a day like that?  I mean, I won’t say that nothing went wrong (an incident with Katie and the complete and total lack of privacy that Dan and I have), but nothing worth how EHHHH I feel today.

I really, desperately hope that my paints arrive tomorrow.  There’s nothing like spending money to perk me up.  I should have been a dilettante, seriously.  I’d be awesome at it.

(As an aside, I suppose dilettante isn’t the correct word to use here as I don’t particularly mean someone interested in the arts, I simply mean a useless woman who does nothing but host parties and shop on her husband’s credit.  My brain is failing me at the moment, however, and refuses to produce the word that I want.  It isn’t debutante, it isn’t socialite.. but anyway..)

July 7th, 2008 by Missy

I received a wonderful suggestion on Dakka for my Grave Guard’s weapon — instead of just doing a blue glowy thing, it was suggested that I have the weapon faded from glowy into rusted. I decided that doing something like that might be beyond my current level of skill since the rusty look I am using isn’t one particular paint, it’s more of a stippling technique, and my blending technique isn’t a true blending technique.. it’s just creative use of assloads of mixes of similarly shaded paints.

So I decided to go with the same theme, but executed a bit differently.  The idea here was to have a rusted weapon (you know, been in the ground forever, etc) that is charging up with power because it is being held by the wight.  His power coursing through the blade is causing the grime of ages to crack and fall away and presumably, the weapon would eventually just be some glowing nimbus of awesome power.. but it isn’t there yet ^_^

Unfortunately, I don’t think that I achieved the effect that I was looking for.  What I think I’ve ended up with is a rusted weapon with blue squigglies on it.  I wish that I could just paint what is in my head.. it looks so good there.

July 6th, 2008 by Missy

Work progresses apace on my Vampire Counts. I’ve basically finished my first Grave Guard. You can see in this photo that I have made the highlights on the cloth more extreme, in addition to uh.. adding arms and a head and a weapon and all that cool stuff. All that is currently missing from the model are his shoulderpads (painted, but not attached) and detailing on his base. The shoulderpads are unattached due to the fact that I’m not quite sure about the weapon. I’ve gone for a very tarnished look with the model, but decided to give the blade of the weapon more of a magical feel since it’s a “wight blade” with killing blow and all of that jazz. I’m just not sure how happy I am with it. Are the colors too subdued? Should it be brighter blue? Should it be red to break up some of the monotony of the model and to further tie it in with the rest of my army (which will feature more of a red feel than blue)? Anyway, opinions are always welcome!

On to more happy news — the army that I ordered on ebay arrived today. The painting isn’t very good (not that I had expected it to be), but it should all be salvageable. The models have very thick coats of paint on them, but so long as Castrol Super Clean doesn’t let me down..

One of the Grave Guard is flat missing a head, but I should have an extra lying around from my box to repair him. Also, the previous owner didn’t bother trying to fix the fact that Grave Guard lean forward as if they’re about to topple, so I’ll need to separate their torsos from their legs and reposition, but once again — they should basically come apart once I put them into some CSC.

I’ll likely finish painting my box of Grave Guard and the models from the Spearhead before I bother stripping these down and repainting them. They’re.. passable. Not what I would ever consider to be tabletop for myself, but they’re better than fielding bases with nothing on them, so I’ll leave them be until I’ve painted up everything that hasn’t been touched yet.

My next project will probably be to paint the Varghulf from the Spearhead box. I’ve decided that the Varghulf is what I will enter into the painting competition that I previously mentioned is being held at my FLGS. Darling hubby bought me the Vallejo Model Color Suitcase with 72 delicious colors and I think the Varghulf will be a wonderful model to christen it with once it arrives. I imagine it will be getting here soon, as we ordered it from The War Store and Neal is, of course, ridiculously awesome. I am assuming that it will arrive before the Varghulf, actually.. I was going to buy a Varghulf down at the gaming store (the contest rules require that you purchase the model from the store, with your receipt as your entry form) but they didn’t have any in stock. Anyway, I ordered one from them and I’ll buy it to have my receipt, I’ll just paint whichever model I get first.. I imagine that there shouldn’t be any problem with that and the rules, since I still purchased a Varghulf from the store ^_^ I figure I’ll paint up both models, keep the one I like better, and sell the other on ebay. I’ve wondered for a while what I could get for one of my minis (especially since I’ll be taking extra care with it and I think that my tabletop minis are already quite nice). Time to find out, I suppose!

July 4th, 2008 by Missy

Well, my super uber, awesome, sexy husband let me get a VC spearhead today! My army is really just about complete now. This puts me at:
40 Grave Guard
40 Skeletons (need another box of these)
40 Ghouls (probably need another box of these)
20 Zombies (definitely need another box of these)
2 Corpse Carts
8 Black Knights
10 Dire Wolves
1 Varghulf
4x Assorted lord/hero models (only one of which I actually want, but I’ll probably paint Vlad / Vamp / Necro dood and sell them)

So basically, I need.. a box of skellies / ghouls / zombies + Blood Knights and eventually some vamp models that I actually like. BTW, over to the left you can see the vampire model that I actually like. She’s Lilith from the 7th Cool-Mini-Or-Not painting competition. Not a Vampire, actually, but I’ve decided to use her as one since I like the model so much!!

Anyway, I’d really better get back to the hotel to “enjoy the sun” and all of that. I’ll post on Sunday, I’m sure.

July 2nd, 2008 by Missy

I totally dug up some old models while chatting with my friend Aaron today. What we have here is: the first mini I’ve ever painted. He was an orc of Dan’s and I remember him making fun of me so bad for the flag..

Anyway, on to my second mini! This is, obviously, an eldar farseer. He’s had a hard life as you can tell by the chips all over him and the missing arm. This is also, incidentally, my first real attempt at freehand — I just couldn’t get it right and resorted to using a thin-tipped red marker and then varnishing over it. You can tell that this didn’t save the marker from smudging to all hell ^_^

Funnily enough, while I was chatting with Aaron today (and I sent him my farseer picture) he realized that he had a pic of the same model that I had sent him ages ago before all of the wear and tear occurred. He even still has his arm! Kinda funny that he’s hung onto the picture for that long — I don’t think I have much on my computer from that long ago, but then again, I suppose my computer has been totally rebuilt a few times, and I’m not really very good at organizing my storage space anyway..

It’s fun to go back and see these old models, and think how much better I’ve gotten lately. Especially with the long period spent in the middle without painting. Makes me wonder what my models will look like even next year, if we keep painting at the rate we’ve been going at. Anyway, that ends my trip down memory lane for the day.

July 1st, 2008 by Missy

Talk about finicky! I’m putting together the arms for my Grave Guard (I figure I better put them together to paint them since they’re so teeny and I’d have no where to hold) and it’s just… wtf awful. I thought that the legs / body were too nitpicky, but this is just insane. I had to drill teeny tiny holes in both the hand and the wrist and pin them with ridiculously thin wire (so ridiculously thin, as you can see from the photo, that it probably won’t do a damn thing to hold the model together).

Oh, and did I remember to mention that, not only do you have to drill teeny little wrists and hands, but you also have to fit the arms onto the shoulder sockets first to make sure that once you get the two arms attached to the weapon, they will also be able to attach to the model? I wish Dan were home to put these together for me.. I might just make him do a batch of them so that I have them all ready to go and don’t ever have to worry about doing them myself if I get to the point of needing to paint arms while he isn’t home.

Sigh.. now to wait for this glue to dry completely so that I can greenstuff over the model (since, of course, the radius and ulna are now facing up when they should be facing forward, or at least twisted that way). Ah well ^_^ Anything for the sake of beauty, eh..?

July 1st, 2008 by Missy

Well, I’ve begun work on my Vampire Counts army.. I really should probably have been painting Bretonnians tonight, but I found myself too excited by my ebay exploits to do anything but break open the box of Grave Guard I bought a few weeks ago and set down to work.

This required sending Dan off to the gaming store since I lacked hawk turquoise and wanted to go for an icy blue deadish looking scheme with the Grave Guard. The majority of the army will probably be done in reddish tones, but I was just in love with the idea of blueish Grave Guard.

In hunting around for ideas I also came across some great looking verdigris effects and decided to give it a shot, so my Grave Guard are also wearing tarnished bronze armor. The effect isn’t perfect, although I suppose I couldn’t really expect otherwise with this being my first time attempting this technique.. I will admit, however, that I did expect that it would come out perfect :p Ah well, hopefully after doing a few models this way I’ll have it down pat. I will also admit to a little bit of irritation with the Grave Guard models. They’re beautiful, of course — but they don’t really go together very well. There are teeny, tiny, itty bitty points of attachment so they keep wanting to snap, for one thing. For another, the models look like they’re lunging forward and falling over at the same time. Ah well.

On another note, when Dan came home from the gaming store he also brought with him a flyer about a painting competition! Models are due (anything on a 40mm base or less) by July 31st and will be judged on August 2nd. Hopefully one doesn’t need to be present for the judging since that is also P-Day (Party Day, yay fun, please kill me now). I don’t actually expect to win, but I’d love to get an “honorable mention” such as it is. I’m not sure a rank and file Grave Guard is really the model to go for, however.. Dan thinks that I should paint a Varghulf. Perhaps!