Defined paint schemes

I am pretty happy with the choices that I made for the color scheme, and method for my Tyranids.  I had another idea about painting groups of minis the same scheme that I think that I am going to try out.  I am going to premix the various levels of highlight that I am building up and save decent sized quantities of them in air-tight containers.

This green to tan color scheme has about 6 -7 layers of color changing before I pop out the final highlights with tan mixed with a little white.  These I am going to premix which will hopefully help speed up the assembly line of painting multiple miniatures.  Also, this will allow me to take breaks from this project without worrying about scheme consistency.

I figure that I will do this pretty much only for the greater areas of the miniatures, not the detail area’s such as the red bits around the mouth, or the claws.  Those are pretty simple to replicate in any case.  This will help me with using glazes to blend the highlights a bit as well.  It will be easy to simply water down some of the previous color’s paint for the glaze.  I was stumped for a while as to how to add this to a painting process without adding a bunch of steps.

Time for another test stealer I guess.

Genestealers!

I began some preliminary work on my Tyranid project over the last several evenings between my other obligations (homework, and sleep). I had been thinking about the way that I wanted to paint the ‘nids for a while, and had even done some rough tests that I was really happy with. Here are some images of the second round of those tests.

I have to say that I am VERY happy that I did a test run before committing to the way I painted this mini. First of all I realized a few details that I would like to start to build up ahead of time, such as the fleshy red areas around the mouth and the wrists. Also to be very sure about the state of my can of dullcoat before I hit any volume of minis. I used a can of Armory flat spray, and the crap left this weird dusty coat on the mini.

I was so pissed when I realized this! I think that it was an issue of humidity, I have run into this in the past. The test spray didn’t show any funky results, but that was only on a piece of cardboard so I may not have been able to see that things were amiss. I was able to clean this guy up and to restore some of it’s paintjob with a brush with water in it. The thing that kills me is how much this coat of spray desaturated the paint’s color. Dullcoat does this a little usually, but this seemed a bit on the extreme side. I’m using a test mini next time to get a better idea as to what I will end up with. Oh well, that is why this is a prototype, and luckily, I have a lot of Genestealers, so it is not a huge loss.

After painting this model, I decided that I would do something with his broodmates that I haven’t done with many models in the past. I decided that I should paint the arms separately. This will allow me to get at the areas of the face and lower torso better. I have often avoided this method in the past as part of my general painting strategy, but now, with these critters, I think it will really help.

Some sweet looking new greens from Reaper

Reaper has a section on their website that I really like taking a look at from time to time, and I highly recommend it to anyone who is interested in sculpting. Go here to see the latest greens that will be going into production for their various lines. I really like this guy, and I will have to keep and eye out for him on release day.

This was sculpted by Tim Prow. I remember that name from White Dwarf back in the days of yore. It is cool to see that he is still slinging putty.

Gencon 2007

I went to Gencon again this year, and as I usually do, I had a blast. While I didn’t have any scheduled events, and failed to do most of the demos that I wanted, I still had a great time cruising the convention, meeting people, talking shop (smack), and hanging out with friends who I attend the convention with every year that I go. I was able to try out several of new games this year including Samurai, and Tannhauser, both of which are a lot of fun, and I recommend them highly. Other than some purchases and feelings of painting inadequacy checking out company’s display minis (Privateer Press has some of the most amazing samples of painting skill that I have ever seen), this con was fairly light on miniature related activities for me.

Some of the amazing minis in the Privateer Press display booth.

I played a both frustrating, and fun of Hordes with Felix, my Trollbloods taking on his Circle of Oroboros puppies. The game was very good, and challenging. The only downside was that I was hounded by some awful dice rolling that was a bit of downer. It was good to hang out a lot with both my Chicago crew, as well as my old group from Michigan over the weekend.

Felix trying out Anima Tactics.

I spent the rest of my time helping out at the Gamer Concepts booth slinging t-shirts, which is always an adventure! Sadly I missed the miniature painting competition this year, and wasn’t able to make it to the sculpting gathering to visit with Sandra Garrity and company. I am still in a mode of hyper inspiration that I tend to have after Gencon, and if I can get things squared away with an apartment move at the end of the month, I will try to tap it to get some work done on some of my miniature projects. All in all the time went by way too fast, but it was time well spent.

The Horror

I’ve posted a working article about a character that I had started working on when I was intending on creating a chaos army for Warhammer Fantasy Battle. Click here to check it out.

I had posted this article online a while ago when the project ground to a halt due to some other events in my life. I have been itching to complete it, and I am going to try to use this blog as an inspiration to do just that. The army project mentioned below is no longer going to happen, but this character is pretty sweet so I will definitely complete him in the future.

Xenite’s new blog…

I have been dedicating more time to gaming, miniatures, and sculpting over the last several years after a long break from the hobby. This page will be dedicated to showing some of my painting and sculpting projects as they happen. I have some painting articles that I am looking forward to posting online, including a step by step guide to how I have been painting my Flames of War miniatures, advanced conversion projects, and some thoughts on making terrain for gaming. I have several new projects that will be kicking into gear as well over the next several months that I am looking forward to talking about once I can find the time!

I have been a fan of creating my own little worlds. This hobby is one way of experiencing that I think. I also like sharing that with other people, and while creating things for a game system, you kind of get to add to a collective creation with others. I think thats the main reason why I want to start a blog on what I am doing, to add my part to this collective in a more substatial way. The internet has become a major tool since the time that I first became interested in little metal soldiers, and I have been inspired by, and learned a ton from some amazing articles that other artists have posted. I would like to contribute to that.

Sadly, this meager introduction will have to be it until I get back from Gencon. The con will probably give me a good bit of inspiration to post here more often however. Until then…