The Painting Doldrums; terminators and ALEPH

Sorry for the brief absence - too much time watching CS:GO tournaments and not enough motivation to pick up a brush. That changed tonight, though I have to say I'm not exactly happy with the results of my last few hours' efforts.

First off, some more Epic. I knocked out these terminators in about an hour, and they're so bad I only bothered taking one photo. Will have to go back and fix them up sometime.

And then some more progress on my Infinity stuff, or to be exact, my brother's Infinity. Remember that Aleph model I posted months ago as a WIP? Well, I wasn't happy with it then, and despite making a bit of progress, I'm not happy with it now. Need to keep working on it, especially the turquoise areas. Something about Infinity models just makes me struggle to paint them. My style isn't clean and smooth enough.

I also made a start on the bases for them. The idea is to have them fighting over glowing 'chunks' of data, tying them in with the whole AI synthetic stuff. The photo is absolutely awful, it looks considerably better in real life, which isn't saying much I guess. I'm really struggling to create the kind of translucent glowing effect I want. *le sigh*
So yeah, not a great night really. I'd really appreciate feedback and comments on the Aleph, tell me where I'm screwing up. Ultimately if my bro's happy with them, that's good enough, but since they're basically a gift from me for his birthday months ago, I'd like to do a good job on them.

Thanks for reading,
~Alex/Magos

Bloody Bindis; more Infinity, with basing

I went to see Thor: the Dark World yesterday, thoroughly enjoyed it, like I have most Marvel films, despite not being a reader of comic books.
Today I sat down and knocked out another Infinity figure, the Sakiel from my Tohaa starter box. I also did the basing for both Tohaa, with mixed results. Not much more to say about them. The Sakiel is... ok. Not amazing. The orange on his symbiotic suit thing is super detailed, but really hard to shade properly without losing the brightness I wanted. In general he's a bit rougher than my Kamael, which is pretty normal I guess for me. My test models tend to have more attention paid to them, everything else becomes a matter of replicating the result, while trying to cut down on the steps (since my test models often end up having loads of layers and washes as I look for a certain shade or tone).
Overall though, he's good enough for tabletop.
The bases... do they work? I'd really love feedback on them - I've already had some good, mostly positive, feedback on the Kamael, now I'd love some on the bases. I really wanted to make them look truly alien, I'm just not sure if they look good or not. Also, the colours on the foliage match the colours on the models. This seemed like a mistake at first, but now it kind of makes sense to me - we have green/brown camouflage to match with our plants, why wouldn't aliens with aqua and purple plants have similar coloured armour?

Anyway, feedback on the bases in particular, thanks for reading,

~Alex/Magos

Demon Space Monkey; an Infinity paintjob I don't hate

Well folks, today was a big day for me. As of about 10 hours ago (I'm posting this at nearly 2am...) I am the owner of a car. Without getting too much into boring real life crap, one of my goals this year was to use part of my wages to save for a car. While I may not have earned as much as I could have hoped, I still managed to save a few grand this year, and today went down to the local car yard and to have a look at a vehicle there. Long story short - inspection, test drive, haggling, taking time to arrange insurance and withdraw money (more green than I've ever held in my hands before...), culminating in me owning a 1998 Ford Falcon.
Nothing fancy or anything, but it will hopefully give me a a good few years of service, which is all I want from it.

Anyway, just thought I'd share that exciting piece of news :)

On with painting stuff, and something almost as exciting for me - I painted an Infinity figure! And I like it!

Yes, as my one previous post on here about Infinity shows, I find these gorgeous figures difficult to paint to a standard I find acceptable. Tonight, however, on a whim, I decided that rather than knocking out another base of Epic figures, I'd paint one of my neglected Tohaa models. I didn't have any cohesive idea of what I wanted it to look like, and so it was basically a process of trial and error. The end result, however, I am pretty happy with. The photos show a few areas I need to fix, but otherwise, I think it looks good.
Part of the success I think is my use of more intense colour. This is a recent development in my painting technique, and I plan to write full post on it in the near future, but as is hopefully apparent from browsing my more recent work vs my older stuff (though since this blog is mostly newer models, it's probably not very apparent) is my recent shift to using very intense colours and strong contrasts in painting. Something about these strong colours really appeals to me, it seems to make the paintjobs more vibrant and eyecatching. My painting style really does not lend itself well to the kind of ultra smooth blending that so many of my favourite painters demonstrate, but I'm definitely inspired to try and emulate the amazing work of Mousemuffins from WAU, who does incredible things with colour and contrast.

Enough blather, time for pics. I'd really love feedback and advice on this paintjob, what works and doesn't. Like I said, there are a few things I can see that need touching up, and of course, the base isn't finished. Finally, I'd like to especially mention that the face on this model is my absolute favourite part - it was the first thing I painted and had it not worked I likely wouldn't have finished the model.

Finally, I initially painted the straps in a rainbow effect, from purple to teal. This looked crap, so I repainted it as you see. I did, however, take a photo before fixing it, and thought I'd add it.

Thanks for reading,
~Alex/Magos

Straight from the Li-berry; more Imperial Fists

Another day, another post about Epic - I promise to introduce some variety soon!

Again, not a whole lot to say about these. I got a bit sloppy in parts and will probably go back and tweak things, like forgetting to paint the rhino lights. Derp. I also tried to take on board some of the feedback I've received, with using a brown instead of black for shading (still too dark, but I like the stark contrast...), and using white in my hazard stripes (it does help them stand out). Also, I realised too late that the devastator symbol on the rhino doors looks like a peace symbol... Lulz.
So yeah, pics:

More soon - I've been feeling the hobby buzz the last few days.
Oh, and a small milestone I passed a little while ago but didn't note at the time - I've passed 200 models painted for the year. Pretty pleased! Hoping to reach 250 by year's end.

~Alex/Magos

The Great Boxing; more Epic

Spent the last day and a half trying to organise my stuff in preparation for moving - lots of boxes, not for packing  (still two months away), but just to try and organise things. Have to get quotes from removalists. Always hate having strangers looking at my stuff, I'm sure they just see a bunch of boxes and weird man-dollies. Oh well. At least I'm now better organised and tidier than I've been in a long time.

Anyway, tonight I assembled and based some more Epic. This will mostly round out my 'standard' stuff, future additions will probably feature more conversion/variation.
The list now stands at:
1 HQ
2 Elites
2 Troops
3 Heavy Support

Thanks for reading,
~Alex/Magos

Painting Whirlwind; more Epic

I'm managing to stay fairly focused on my new Epic stuff it seems, to the detriment of the other projects I'm procrastinating on *cough*bloodbowl*cough*
But that's ok, got plenty of time for that.
For now, enjoy some Whirlwind artillery support!

I went back and added numbers and insignia to the two side panels on the rhino - will plan to follow this system for all my vehicles. Yes, this means the rhino has two fists on its front... guess when it tank shocks anyone I can tell they got double fistpunched.

Thanks for reading,
~Alex/Magos

Aren't You a Little Short for a Space Marine?; more Epic marines

Knocked out another base of Epic figures tonight, this time a tactical squad for my small Imperial Fist force. Not a whole lot more to say about them, so pics:

With their ride:

Thanks for reading,
~Alex/Magos

Something Tiny, Something Epic; real life, Bloodbowl and 6mm 40k

Few things to share today, more Bloodbowl, a new project, and some personal stuff. 

On a personal front, at the start of next year I will be moving from my current abode in rural NSW, to the (less) sunny shores of Warrnambool. The biggest upshot of this is that there is actually a gaming club in Warrnambool, not to mention that it's far closer to my spiritual home gaming club, the Massive in Melbourne.

So hopefully this will mean gaming will once again be a weekly occurrence, as opposed to the handful of times a year thing it's been for the last four years. 

On the downside, well, moving sucks (and I've done it more than most people), and there'll be the hassle of finding gainful employment etc. So chances are this blog will become (more) infrequent during January/February as I pack up, move, and set up again. Probably won't get much painting done.

Anyway, enough of the boring real life nonsense. I got some painting done tonight.

First off, a WIP pic of the next member of my Bloodbowl team. Not much else to say about him yet.

And finally, I began another project tonight. Surprise. I've long been interested in the idea of trying to play 40k using 6mm epic figures. Most of the range is now OOP, but there are a number of quality proxies available. I got myself a small OOP marine force from ebay for not many pesos, and in the future will look to add Tau, Tyranids, Sisters of Battle and other such armies. For now I'm just going to be doing occasional bases up with what I've got.
My space marine chapter of choice has always been Imperial Fists - tough, defensive, my favourite sort of playstyle. I also like yellow.

So tonight I painted a squad of veterans (denoted by carrying assault shields), these will function as sternguard. I also painted a rhino, ostensibly to transport the squad, though eventually I'll be getting the parts to make razorbacks for the smaller squads and save the rhinos for the larger ones.

While the painting/sculpting (Mk3 helmets on a couple dudes) may appear rough, keep in mind that these guys are 6mm tall. I've never painted anything this small before and they're a bundle of fun, if fiddly. Might go back and try to neaten up some of the eagles/fists.

Thanks for reading,

~ Alex/Magos