On the workbench now

My workbench has been brim full of commission work but I did manage to squeeze in a couple of personal projects.

First up, a Gripping Beast Monk (limited edition miniature) I received from my good friend and fellow Suricata Club member José Martins (Adamastorus). A joy to slap some paint on and I did manage to try out a couple of things in unfamiliar territory (OSL on the hand and some green tinting on the eye lids - nice and subdued as to not make him look like e cheap whore). On the whole I´m happy with him. May come around to make the base look more alien though (perhaps with some reddish Martian tint). I dub him "Ping the Pittiless" - totally unrelated to Ming the Merciless :)

Ping the Pittiless

And a couple of 15mm BF Sturmtigers WIP

Peadoted Sturms

These will be finished up soon.

Cheers,

Pedro

Reaper Djinn

Before I jump head first into my 1st Crusade Arab SAGA warband I did one last fantasy figure. A Reaper Djinn - just the thing to ease me into the middle-eastern theme.

Last post here was a WIP of the figure where I mentioned a number of things I was not happy with. I've gone and fixed them in tonight's painting session and am now quite happy with how it turned out.

Quite different from the way it looked last night and I am now happy with it.

Next up on the workbench, Perry Muslims :)

Work in Progress - Reaper Djinn

I will change the whole smoky bit, as I´m not at all pleased with how it turned out. Will make it darker and more unnatural, using either greens or blues in the deep recesses and some OSL to make it pop. As it stands now it really isn´t doing anything for the overall effect.

Went for some fine dark lines on arms and chest to try and emulate body hair. Not quite there, but good enough for a first experience.

Rest of the miniature is pretty much done, just a coat of matt varnish away and a touch up of the base.

Retro fantasy undead mounted Lord

I personally need to take a brake once in a while from a project so that I don't become bored with doing it. In my particular case I normally use fantasy to take a brake from historical painting.

I had this miniature lying around (among a pile of similar miniatures) for a while after I picked it up at a local store who was having a sale on the whole range. It comes with a mounted and foot version.

I used lots of blacks and grays to work on my highlighting/shading and tried to do indirect lighting in pale green (not completely happy with how that turned out though...).

Quick footnote: basing material is from a recent basecrafts.com order (autumn leaves was actually a freebie in said order). Inexpensive and excellent (plus, superb service). Recommended.

Another 2011 batch re-photgraphed

Some random miniatures from several 2011 (some older) projects.

 General Georges Mouton, Count of Lobau (from Perry):

A couple of Perry japanese (this are the greatest sculpts I ever painted):

French Napoleonic command stand to use in a MaW adaptation to 28mm, again from Perry - a mix of plastics and metals:

Conan, for CROM (highly recommended simple skirmish ruleset). A em4 miniature, originally from Grenadier (I think...)

 

A Kushite companion for Conan, also bought at em4:

Today I finished the Rogue Trader Duel mini, but will only post it after the voting is ongoing (that will be Monday).

Reiksguard for retro-fantasy Painting duel

All my photography woes cured by a 6500K daylight bulb :)

And here is the result: a Reiksguard painted for the 1st Setti.tv Forum miniature duel (the theme of which was "Retro Fantasy Duel"):

Marauder Reiksguard

Tomorrow I'll take a photo of the other half of the duel - an early 90s Marauder Lich.

The 2nd duel is already under way, themed "retro-40K AKA Roguetrader" (a single miniature this time around). I lost the first challenge to Meninobesta's excellent Otherworld Pig faced Orc, let's see If I can claw one victory back and claim a draw :)

Photo setup tests and some more past miniatures.

I tried some of the advice I got regarding lighting but, more importantly, I got my old Fuji S304 SLR fixed.

This post will start pretty boring as I post the exact same 3 miniatures from the last one, to document the possible improvement. I´ll try to avoid being totally tedious by showing some other 2011 completed work.

The same 3 miniatures, different camera and some fancy baking-paper-covering-desklamps work.

A bit better when I compare them with the real thing in terms of color accuracy, but still some detail is lost (washed out) and the pictures are not crisp. More on that latter.

So while I was at it, I snapped some photos of some other minis from 2011 projects:

Another retro Necromancer, from Marauder (base still plain MDF):

Conan for CROM skirmish games, from a barbarian sold by em4 (originally from the Grenadier range of barbarians, as far as I can remember):

 A FoW Gebirgsjager Objective marker:

Perry Miniatures General Lobau, for a Men at War 28mm adaptation (also, for Songs of Drums and Shakos skirmish)

 A battalion command base done with a mix of plastic and metal Perries, also for MaW;

 A couple of battalion bases (6 make up a battalion), again, for MaW. These particular ones are Voltigueurs. Again, Perry plastics:

 A WIP test figure (a Battlefront T28) for 3-tone camo I´m working on for a project I really have to get into, a Finnish Midwar Tank Company for an upcoming Portuguese big tournament (the GTS). From what I´ve researched, I´m pretty happy with the camo tones and now I must tackle the rest of the tanks.

I spent all evening fidgeting with various photo settings.

Conclusion - to improve anything of significant, I´ll have to either get a better camera or a lightbox. I´ll go for the cheaper of the two and try and get myslef a lightbox as soon as I can.

And that will be it - I won´t bother anyone anymore with test posts of the same old miniatures again and again as I try and perfect the photo setup, as this is far from interesting to anyone but me (and only slightly at that). I´ll just keep using the best possible setup at my disposal and "get on with IT!" - IT being that this is a miniature hobby blog, not a slight-baby-steps-towards-being-able-to-take-a-decent-photo-of-a-miniature-blog.

First and foremost on the workbench are the Finns I mentioned above and a 2nd Miniature Duel, with a theme to be decided (already have, really) by me, so expect that to feature throughout the next posts.

Cheers,
Torradas

Some 2011 miniatures - part 1

I'll be filling some backlog of miniatures onto the blog as time permits, also as a way of testing some different photo setups, until I'm comfortable with the way they turn out.

For the photos in this post I tested using a blue gradient background, and my cheap Fuji compact set with macro on a tripod and with flash forced off.

First up, a Battlefront 15mm German half-track:

Now, a GW old-style skeleton horseman (for a CROM Fantasy Warband):

And a Tentacle Faced Wizard from Reaper:

Didn't turn out too bad, still not quite happy with focus and lighting.

EDIT: Just got a hot tip from Meninobesta and the next setup will feature a diffused lighting focus through the use of some baking paper.  

Painting Duel #0

The 1st Painting Duel, Me vs. Meninobesta.

This year me and my mate Meninobesta will try to get a painting duel thing going in the local (Portugal) hobby forum.

The rules are simple - You challenge a fellow hobbyist to a duel and name the end-date for the challenge. The opponent names the "weapons" (theme, scale, number of miniatures) and the duel is up!

For this inaugural challenge we had about 4 days, with New Years Eve thrown in the middle of the period (for me this translated into a couple of painting sessions, with maybe some 2h for each). The theme was retro-fantasy duel with 2 miniatures, 28mm, with scenery. 1 photo only.

The voting is now up till the end of the week, winner gets bragging rights and can put a little notch on his paintbrush ;)

My entry was a couple of old Marauder miniatures. A MM65/1 - Reiksguard Knight 4 and a Liche from the MM51 Undead Character pack, both from about 1992/1993.

Meninobesta´s was an Otherworld Pig-faced Orc fresh from the Christmas lead loot and a good old Heroquest plastic Dwarf.

And now for the pics, that are a blatant illustration of another thing that needs improving this year - my photo skills, or lighting setup, or camera (or indeed all of these...):

Enough text - my entry:

And Meninobesta´s entry: