Painting Progress – 20101120

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Past week or so, I’ve been jammed up, waiting on hobby time to make itself available and for some bits to show in the mail.
The bits finally showed up, so I made sure some hobby time presented itself.
First on the list was Skulltaker’s Chariot; I’d been waiting on some wheels to complete the chariot and the juggernaut to pull it.  All of that came together splendidly, until I realized I’d forgotten to order a base for the whole thing.  D’oh!  That should hopefully show up next week.
Tonight, while waiting on some code to checked in so I could compile it, I got the ball rolling on the rest of the Daemonettes.  (I think I’m going to call them “Bloodbrides” or something goofy.)
Speaking of Slaanesh: I’ve started on my first non-Khornate unit for my Daemons.  (The Daemonettes don’t count: they’re for the tournament only.)  I hadn’t set out to shift to an ecumenical list, but a deal turned up where I could buy two Varghulf for $10 each.  Ended up grabbing some other kits from the guy, one of which I was immediately able to turn around and trade for a third Varghulf.  One of those Varghulf turned out to have a fairly miscast arm, which meant a call into GW for a replacement.  
So, with a good amount of greenstuff work, I’ll be fielding four slightly converted Varghulf as Fiends of Khorne.
Not much going on here.  Because they’re so mono-posed, I wanted to do something to make them each a little more unique… and more Khornate.  I’m not entirely satisfied that I’ve made them sufficiently less mono-posed, but I think it’s probably the best I’m going to be able to manage.
Basically, I just stuck some Bestigor horns on their heads.  Lots of greenstuff work, though.  Tons of gap-filling, too.

Painting Progress – 20101108

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Did a lot of random work over the weekend, mostly due to being stuck at my desk while remodeling trucked along.

For starters, I assembled SKULLTAKER and the chassis of his SKULLTAKER CHARIOT.

I need an auction to come through for some bitz before I can go much farther than this, so we’ll have to see how long that ends up taking.  Might be a bit before I finish him.  The chariot’s got something of a wider profile than the pair I built last month: the spikes are the wider, larger sort, and they’re angled out instead of parallel.  Skulltaker’s not a little dude and steps needed to be taken to fit him into his ride.

Briefly considered having the Mouth of the Abyss pull the chariot… but even though its about the same size as the Juggernauts it just looks so smaller, so that’s not going to fly.

Also, got some good deals on some stuff.  I’ll post about most of it as it comes together, but I did snap up a box of Daemonettes to paint up for the Battle for the Cure next year.  Part of the appearance scoring calls for a squad painted pink: after some thought about painted up an octet of pink Bloodletters, I decided it’d be better to just run a squad of pink Daemonettes.

So, I played around with some approaches.  Found one I liked.

In some ways, it’s not perfect.  Red on pink?  Ick.  It was key to me that they tie in with the rest of my Daemons; this is pretty much a one-off unit.

Anyway, as a result, most of the colors are done the same way as with my Bloodletters, etc.  I’m extremely happy with the pink flesh.  Probably more appropriate for Pink Horrors, but whatever.

Pink Flesh
– 3:1 Baby Pink (Apple Barrel) : Dheneb Stone basecoat.
– Ogryn Flesh wash
– 3:1 Baby Pink : Dheneb Stone heavy drybrush
– 3:2:2:1 Water : Baal Red : Matte Medium : Leviathan Purple wash
– Dheneb Stone extreme highlight

The Baby Pink / Dheneb Stone mix isn’t exact.  Each time, it started out with a 2:1 mix that I added more pink to until it looked right.  I ended up keeping some of the dried, unused paint to help get the ratio about right down the line.

The wash is spectacular.  Man, I’ve really started to love putting matte medium into washes that I’m watering down.  It works miracles to keep things from splotching up.

Also, for the heck of it, I put a little pink ribbon on it.  It was an easy little pain in the ass to do.

It’s checkbook receipt onion paper sliced extremely thin.  Brushed with superglue and then wrestled into shape.  That part was the hardest: such a small thing to do.  Then hit with some Tentacle Pink, highlighted with Baby Pink and washed the pink wash above.

I’m very happy with how they came out.  I’ll have to paint up another seven at some point: I won’t need them until March, but it’d be nice do knock them out while I can remember how I did the first one. :)

Finally, I did a good bit of work on three more Bloodletters.  I need a non-Icon-bearing Bloodletter for two of the squads and an Icon-bearer for the third.  Hopefully, I’ll wrap them up pretty quickly: I think I’m a little bored with painting them.

Verdigris – Honored Imperium

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I’m working from home this week while we have some remodeling done, so it wasn’t hard for me to rotate my chair 90° and fiddle with what I touched on Monday night while waiting on an e-mail.  I’d say this thing easily took less than an hour (spread across a workday, but ready in time for the game store tonight).

I set things up by getting the statue ready.  Here’s what it looked like before:

This came together very easily.  Spent a little more effort on it than I normally do: Tin Bitz base followed by a heavy Brazen Brass drybrush, a less emphatic Shining Gold drybrush and a fairly light Burnished Gold drybrush.

I mixed up pretty much the same color I tried out last night.  (Apologies for the crappy focus.)

Roughly equal amounts of Goblin Green and Ice Blue (with a bit more blue than green) and a tiny dab of white (Morrow White; I love the P3 whites).  After mixing this, I immediately decided to add more blue.  In hindsight, I think even more blue would have been the way to go. I’m thinking that maybe 2:1 Ice Blue : Goblin Green might be the better way to go.

Then, a fairly light drybrush of this pretty much everywhere.  That gets me:

Finally, I based it the same way I’ve painted all of my 40K terrain: Ceramcoat Charcoal base, a heavy, heavy Ceramcoat Hippo Grey drybrush and a light Rain Grey drybrush.  This combo looks fantastic.  Really.

The end result is something I’m happy with.  It looks like old brass.  Not super old, not super weathered, but definitely old.  It’s clear there’s room for improvement: more blue, more streaking and some pooling, but I’m happy with it.

Thoughts?

Adventures into Verdigris

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I picked up an Honored Imperium back when it came out.  Very early on, I decided I wanted to paint it up as brass/bronze and weather it up with verdigris.

Mind you, I don’t weather my minis.  When done well, weathering looks amazing, but more often it ends up looking, in my opinion, pretty terrible.  Really, really terrible.

So, expectations for myself are pretty high… but this is a pretty safe place to try it out on.  It’s a piece of scenery that I can strip back down without too much trouble, not a freaking army.

I’ve played around with a couple of approaches.  Unfortunately, I’ve stripped and repainted over some of them before I realize I’ve done it and forgotten to take pictures.

A Gentleman’s Verdigris

Probably the best (and only) great verdigris tutorials come from b. smoove.  He’s got two, in fact: his Chaos Marines and a darker, greener approach for Ogres.

I haven’t quite followed his walkthroughs to the letter (I was working on it and got test models mixed up and switched halfway through: d’oh!).  Here are some results from, following some of his steps.

This is from going much heavier on Burnished Gold (as opposed to the Shining Gold I usually use), with a wash of Scaly Green, Goblin Green and Hawk Turquoise and then an attempt at AGO’s metallic wash (1:1:2 Thraka Green : Leviathan Purple : Water) thinly applied.  It’s lacking a final drybrush of Burnished Gold, though.

Look at the backpack here.  This is kind of a halfway: my usual brass (Shining Gold -> Burnished Gold -> Devlan Mud) and then wrapping up the AGO Ogre way: a wash of Dark Angels Green and Scaly Green followed by a Burnished Gold drybrush.

These look ancient and evil.  Really nasty.  It’s really a great freaking effect.

I like this look… but not for the statue and not for generic patina.

Secret Powders

Also, after an extended e-mail exchange by the unbelievably helpful Mister Justin asking for his advice on how one would go about using weathering powders to get verdigris, I went ahead and ordered his Oxide Weathering Pigments.  (It’s interesting: there are a ton of videos bouncing around the internet on how to use pigments for rust and, the best of my knowledge, no videos about how to use pigments for verdigris.)  

Here are some examples of unskilled efforts to use the oxide powders:

This Tin Bitz with a heavy, heavy Brazen Brass drybrush followed by some stippling of the various powders.
The same stippling of powders, but this time over my usual Brass recipe (Shining Gold -> Burnished Gold -> Devlan Mud).
Even though I’m basically at monkey+football stage with this I think it convincingly ages the mini.  It looks like the real stuff.
And yet I’m not entirely happy with it.  It looks like real patina except, in doing so, it kills the illusion of scale. I mean, basically, the reason we paint these little dudes is to make them look like they’re not a couple of inches tall… and this patina makes them look like extremely little aged statues, not aged statues at a different scale.

Where I Think I’m Going

I think these two approaches aren’t working for me because patina works a little differently.  b.smoove’s approach (and every other approach I’ve seen on the internet) is based on getting the green/turquoise in the deep spots, via a wash.  But, Googling around shows that, really, that verdigris is really on the high spots, not the low spots.

I think that’s part of where the powders are failing me, too: rust collects in the crevasses, unlike patina.  brushing and wiping this stuff on the smooth spots is a lot harder than the details, you know?
So, I think I’m leaning more towards a dry-brushed verdigris approach.  Color-wise, I’m going something more like the Oxides: lighter blue-green.  
Here’s a half-baked attempt at what I’m thinking.  (Look to the head, flamer and pauldrons.)
I think I’d have to go a bit (but not a ton) heavier.
What’s interesting is that the right leg (the one I haven’t really drawn attention to) is almost perfect in the way it covers the area (if not the color): but I can’t remember how I did it!  I’m pretty sure it was one of the b.smoove washes (cut with some forgotten combination of Future, water, matte varnish and rubbing alcohol) followed by an, “Oh crap!  I didn’t mean to wash that!”
Anyway, this is what I’m working with at the moment.  I’ll continue to share my progress.  We’ll see what I end up with.  
Thoughts?  Comments?

Chariots of Khorne

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Finally finished off the Chariots of Khorne.  They’ve sat around mostly assembled for a couple of months, but only took about two weeks to paint.

The model itself combines a lot of kits:

  • The Heralds are from the Forgeworld Khorne Daemon Prince and Herald kit.
  • The left arm on each of the Heralds is from the plastic Bloodletter kit.  The resin Herald is holding a corpse, and there isn’t really room for that in the chariot.
  • The juggernauts are from the Khorne Chaos Lord on Juggnaut kit.  I wanted it to look different and more awesome than the juggernauts being ridden by my Bloodcrushers.
  • The Chariots are, for the most part, scratch-built.  The bulk of them are spare knuckles from the Soul Grinder kits with some plasticard providing the floors, sides and axles.  
  • The wheels are from the Chaos Chariot.  This is the most annoying thing about the model; it’s kind of a waste.
There’s kind of a lot of brass, so I decided to break it up a bit by painting blood splatters on the juggernauts to match the splatters on the Heralds.

Chariot of Khorne WIP

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Today’s been the blissful, low-key day that I’ve needed for a bit.  So, it was only natural that I spent the bulk of it painting.

I’d been taking step-by-step pictures until I hit a point where I just… stopped.  So, there’s not much point in sharing those.  However, since we’re about to call it a night here, I figure I might as well document where I’m at.

I’d say I’m more than halfway done.  I need to highlight/wash the base and do the little hair tuft on the juggernaut’s chin and I can call the chariot part of this thing finished*.  Then, the Heralds themselves will be pretty quick work.

Not bad for a day’s work!

* Aside from whatever bloodsplatters I decide I need to do.  I can’t really start on those until what’s underneath is painted.

Tracking Hobby Data

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My first real professional software development gig was as a research assistant with the Texas Coastal Ocean Observation Network, a system of meteorological tracking stations up and down the Texas Gulf Coast that’s been collecting data since, in some places, 1989.  The system’s literally tracked how much water is under the Corpus Christi Harbor Bridge, every six minutes, for 20 years.  That’s a lot of detailed data.

TCOON’s done some really interesting stuff with that data.  They’ve got some incredibly accurate forecasting tools, for example.  The system’s greatest strength is its volume.

This is definitely a lesson that’s stuck with me over the years: heaps of information can tell you things.  Of course, the only way you get heaps of data is to start collecting it.

Tracking My Hobby Data

At the beginning of the year, I said that I’d be using the Lone Pilgrim Points Tracker to track my painting progress through the year… and I have.  However, rather than just keeping a running number in a sidebar that I increment occasionally, I dump all of that stuff in a spreadsheet.  There’s a link to it in the sidebar, but it’s certainly easy to miss.  So, allow me to direct your attention to:

The spreadsheet was negligibly easy to set up, and takes little to no effort to keep up to date.  (Zealot had suggested that the maintenance would be onerous.  So far, it has not been.)  If anything, I’ve found that logging work in the spreadsheet really communicates an immediate sense of accomplishment.  This was especially true with the way I tracked progress on my Daemon army.  I could literally see progress bars filling up.

It also helps me keep things in persepective.  I brought this up just about a month ago, when I had the same sort of moment Bill just had: “I feel like I’ve accomplished nothing.  Oh, wait… I’ve gotten a lot done!”

(I’m going to post some charts.  These are all driven by the Google Spreadsheet!)

Of course, even though I painted a ton of Skaven in July and August, it’s obvious that 2010 has been the Year of Khorne:

I’ve done a bit more than track my painting progress, though.  Since it was easy, I started tracking my performance in games.  Given my W/L/D record… I’d probably have a higher opinion of my ability if I hadn’t!

Ouch!

It also gives me some perspective on what I’m really playing:

I’m sure to revisit / repost these charts at the end of the year: I’ve only been tracking this stuff for about 10.5 months.

Room for Improvement

It’s not perfect, though.

One thing my Skaven have definitely shown me is that I like to convert some models. This system doesn’t account for any of that effort. If I convert a model and fail to get around to painting it (which is usually the case with me), it’s as if it never happened… never mind how much hobby time it actually consumed.

Assembling things isn’t a small undertaking, either. Sure, snapping together a Black Reach marine isn’t hard: but 30 of them add up. A more complete hobby system would reflect this sort of thing, as well.

Next year, I’ll have to account for this sort of thing.

Exactly how, though, I’m not sure: building a Stompa is somewhat more involved than building a Guardsman, though, and scratch-building a Khornate Daemonette (Khornette?) would be more involved than doing a weapon-swap on a Deathwing Terminator.  These differences are something I should track.

The Lone Pilgrim system only measures painting, and it does so in terms of size: a tank is more points than a marine.  The axis is different with conversion and assembly.  Maybe it makes sense to track conversion separate from assembly.  Maybe it doesn’t.  This is something I need to noodle on a bit.

Also, Lone Pilgrim isn’t perfect: it attaches the same value to dudes I paint in batches of 10 as it does to a single character who’s a centerpiece to my army.  Maybe that’s okay, maybe it isn’t.

Finally, I’ll need to add a field to scope hobby records to year.  Gaming records already include the date, but it’d be nice to see what months are my hobby-fertile ones and what months are dry.

Sharing is Caring

Once I’ve settled these things, I’m going to create an updated Hobby Tracker spreadsheet.  Clearly, I’m doing this for myself… but there’s no reason y’all can’t benefit from it, too.  I’ll post a blank copy of it and make it available for any and all to copy to their Google Docs accounts.

What do y’all think?  Do I fetishize information a little too much, or is this a healthy way to gain perspective about how I spent most of my leisure time?

Escalation League!

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As I’ve mentioned, we’re starting up an escalation league at the top of November.

I’ve been noodling about what I’ll be running through the league.  Plans will, no doubt, evolve as the league proceeds… but it’s nice to have a rough plan to have around to evolve.

Roughly, I don’t see a lot of painting work to do.  Just:

  • Heralds of Khorne w/ Chariot x2
  • Bloodletter x2
  • Bloodletter w/ Icon x1

That’ll cover pretty much everything I could potentially run in a mono-Khorne list.  Not really angling for fully-painted points or anything… it’s just I’m so close, there’s no excuse to be anything less.

It can be tricky throwing these things together: I’m sticking with Khornate units and Khornate numbers (powers of 2: 1, 2, 4, 8, 16).  That basically ensures there’s no clean progression from list to list: they can’t “grow” from one to another, which is a shame.

(At least not until Bloodthirsters start sounding reasonable: they come in convenient 250 point packages.)

I’m not entirely happy with them but, as I said, stitching these things together while such awkward numbers are involved can be tricky.  Lots of Monstrous Creatures: given that it looks like there are going to be a lot of Guard players in the league… that’s an unfortunate necessity.  Armor’s such a problem for the army.

If it looks like there’s a strong Dark Eldar presence, that’ll have to change.  I’ve yet to flip through the preview copy of the book, yet, but I’m pretty sure they’ll just tear through high T models.

Anyway, here we go:

500 Points

Elite
Bloodcrushers x4 – Fury, Icon, Instrument

Troops
Bloodletters x8 – Fury

Fast Attack
Flesh Hounds x8 – Karanak

750 Points

HQ
Herald of Khorne – Chariot
Herald of Khorne – Chariot

Troops
Bloodletters x8 – Fury
Bloodletters x8 – Fury

Fast Attack
Flesh Hounds x8 – Fury

Heavy Support
Daemon Prince – Flight, Iron Hide

1,000 Points

HQ
Bloodthirster

Troops
Bloodletters x8 – Fury
Bloodletters x8 – Fury

Fast Attack
Flesh Hounds x8 – Fury

Heavy Support
Daemon Prince – Flight, Iron Hide
Daemon Prince – Flight, Iron Hide

1,250 Points

HQ
Bloodthirster
Bloodthirster

Troops
Bloodletters x8 – Fury
Bloodletters x8 – Fury

Fast Attack
Flesh Hounds x8 – Fury

Heavy Support
Daemon Prince – Flight, Iron Hide
Daemon Prince – Flight, Iron Hide

1,500 Points

HQ
Bloodthirster
Herald of Khorne – Chariot
Herald of Khorne – Chariot

Troops
Bloodletters x8 – Fury, Icon
Bloodletters x8 – Fury

Fast Attack
Flesh Hounds x8 – Fury
Flesh Hounds x8 – Fury

Heavy Support
Daemon Prince – Flight, Iron Hide
Daemon Prince – Flight, Iron Hide
Daemon Prince – Flight, Iron Hide

1,750 Points

HQ
Bloodthirster – Unholy Might
Herald of Khorne – Chariot
Herald of Khorne – Chariot

Elite
Bloodcrushers x4 – Fury, Icon, Instrument

Troops
Bloodletters x8 – Fury
Bloodletters x8 – Fury

Fast Attack
Flesh Hounds x8 – Fury
Flesh Hounds x8 – Fury

Heavy Support
Daemon Prince – Flight, Iron Hide, Mark of Khorne
Daemon Prince – Flight, Iron Hide, Mark of Khorne

Thoughts?

Painting Progress – 20101013

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Finally finished off those 10 Clanrats that have been totally jamming me up.

So, that’s an enormous relief.  That puts the unit of Clanrats at:
So, 11 plus the standard and it’s done.  I’m not doing it, though!  I’m refocusing on Daemons.
Next up on the painting table:  Heralds of Khorne in Chariots.

What I’m Running with Skaven

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For the past month or so, I’ve been running a Skaven list that looks (or at least feels) pretty different from the list s I’ve been running since 8th came out.  I like to think that it’s inspired by what Rhellion‘s been rocking… but given that Rhellion wins, and I generally don’t, that might not be entirely accurate. :)

Lords
Warlord – General, Biting Blade, Enchanted Shield, Foul Pendant
Grey Seer – Dispel Scroll, Talisman of Preservation

Heroes
Chieftain – BSB, Shield, Armor of Destiny
Plague Priest – Lvl 1, Flail, Talisman of Endurance
– Plague Furnace
Warlock Engineer – Lvl 1, Doomrocket, Warp-Energy Condenser

Core
Clanrats x29 – Full Command, Shields
– Poisoned Wind Mortar
Skavenslaves x41 – Musician, Shields
Stormvermin x29 – Full Command, Storm Banner
– Poisoned Wind Mortar

Special
Plague Monks x35 – Full Command, Plague Banner
Gutter Runners x5 – Poison, Slings
Gutter Runners x5 – Poison, Slings

Rare
Doomwheel
Doomwheel
Warp-Lightning Cannon

More than anything, I wish I had another 85 points so I could shift one of the Doomwheels to Abomination-dom.

The Warlord goes into the Stormvermin, the Engineer with the Clanrats, the Seer with the Slaves, the Priest with the Monks (obviously) and the BSB in whatever unit seems most appropriate. This is, generally, the Stormvermin. The Seer goes with the Slaves because he spams The 13th as much as possible; if he miscasts in the Slave unit… I don’t really mind. The rest, I think, is pretty straightforward.

The Stormvermin remain a reliable unit, as do the Clanrats.

I’ve been relatively happy with the horde of Slaves… though I think I’d like to see them beefed out to 50. 40 cuts it closer than I’d like. Overall, though, they’re resilient and are, surprisingly enough, more dangerous than they appear. If I had the points, I’d double-down on them.

If I didn’t have concerns about Fortitude, and if the thought of painting more slaves didn’t make me want to saw at my wrists with a dull hobby saw, I’d consider swapping out one of them for more slaves. That’ll never happen, though.

The Plague Monks are… well, they’re in a horde because there’s no reason for them not to be with the Furnace. They kill the living crap out of whatever they catch (that Plague Banner, especially, makes them ridiculous; thanks to whoever tipped me off to that)… but the Furnace and their size makes them intimidating enough that that’s kind of hard.

The Furnace itself is a bit of a letdown. It’s neat, but I’ve yet to walk away from the table feeling like I’ve gotten 150 points’ use out of it. Having a 760 point unit is also something that skeeves me out. It’s gone when I actually get around to updating my list.

Gutter Runners, as we know, are good. Same with the ‘Wheel and Cannon.

It’s all a bit moot: once November hits (maybe before), I’ll be switching back to 40K for some months.