Tsathogga, Part 2

 I've been painting away in fits and starts on Tsathogga, The Frog God - today was the first weekend day I've not had to work at all in roughly a month-and-a-half and moreso, I actually had an opportunity to get some decent work in on this guy's underbelly. (Not complaining about working per se, more about the lack of free time...) There's been a few other pics I've taken of various color stages on his underbelly and neck, but when it came right down to editing pics tonight to post something, I don't really think they showed anything worthwhile compared to this last one - essentially I went through a number of color changes, from greyish-green to pale grey to fleshy and finally, to this point which ends up being a combination of all of them!

 While I think I probably should go back and add another layer of highlighting, between how this looks photographed and the feedback I received at this season's first meeting of the Michigan Historical Miniatures Club earlier this week, I really think I ought to just push on and start adding coloration to the rest of the figure. In case my as-yet-untried airbrush masking skills crash and burn I won't have so much to redo, or more optimistically, when I get the rest of his skin tone and blotches and stripes and things blocked out I can decide how exactly to lighten up the underside a bit more - cool colors, warmer colors, more grey, and so forth.

 Feedback, as usual, is always appreciated - especially any suggestions on how to approach realistic contrast of a figure at this size (again, he's almost a good foot long from tip of his front hand to back of his hindmost foot). I'm guessing the easy answer would be to "exaggerate the highlighting and shading even moreso," but that's something I consistently struggle with, even on much smaller figures.

Inducted Space Wolves Berzerker (and a Friend)

I kicked around a couple of ideas for the Aquila color on the inducted Space Wolves Berzerker, and in the end decided I'd see what would happen with taking one of my usual bone basecoat color and adding metallic medium to it. A little bit of highlighting, a wash or two of the same blood colors I'm using for the Berzerker armor, basecoating the brass trim, and some tidying/clarifying of the beard brings things to this point:

Specifically, I used 1:1 GW Vomit Brown/VMC Metallic Medium as a basecoat for the SW chest decoration, shaded a bit with GW Gryphonne Sepia, and then brushed on a few shading washes of the dried blood color I'm using on the non-grey parts of his armor.

The other Berzerker has his armor painted (not highlighted) and the basecoat applied on the brass trim. I'd ideally like to do something for the clawed hand along the color of this guy's face: http://www.coolminiornot.com/202765

I'm having a hard time trying to figure out the actual colors of the face on the Bloodletter CMON link I posted - it's an older paintjob, so I'm assuming some sort of grey/Bleached Bone mixture highlighted up to white. If I were to replicate it, maybe GW Dheneb Stone/grey highlighted up through Bleached Bone > Skull White, or do you all suppose that would that look a little wonky?

Infinity Speculo Killer WIP

Work continues on doom_of_the_people's Commission Giveaway Contest figure, albeit with another commission I'm prepping in fits and starts in the background and a few other things going on (we adopted a puppy last week, for instance, to "replace" the one that died of parvovirus a few months ago - I never realized how much adjustment it takes bringing a new animal into the house!)

At his request, I've done a fair amount of weathering and sun-bleaching effects on an "autumn"-style color scheme. The underlying armor panels are brownish-yellow and orange-yellow, alternating in parts, and the whole figure has been lightly airbrushed with an off-white - I'm still getting the hang of it, but it's a fun thing to play with. It was a lot paler until tonight, when I had the inspiration to add some additional cool coloration that ought to tie the warmer (if muted) browns and autumn colors in with the soon-to-be-glowing monofilament weapon and a few other (surprise!) Object Source Lighting effects. I used an initial glaze of GW Shadow Grey brushed towards the crevices across the figure, followed by a Shadow Grey/VGC Sepia Ink mixture to delineate the panel lines and such a bit more - I'm aiming for a look of grime deep-set in the crevices of the armor, or possibly dust mixed with oil.

Anyhow, here's the figure as of this evening:

I've already started with basecoating the Secret Weapon Miniatures base on which she stands, which ideally will end up looking like broken concrete - I plan for the pipe to be oozing something vile (with continued approval, of course).

One Lonely Khorne Berzerker

 This was only supposed to be just a picture of the inducted Ultramarine Berzerker in my Disciples of the Four Chaos warband, but in true 'zerker style a friend muscled his way into the photo shoot:

 I'm hoping I've got the red down reasonably well - I'm a little ambivalent about a slog through the reds-into-oranges on these guys (all future 'zerkers included) as I've been there before with an all-red squad (Vior'la Tau), but the biggest part of the work was taken care of with the airbrush. Now I just need to add highlights and details.

 The red look about right? (It's roughly an accurate match from my monitor to my figures this time around, surprisingly!) I'm not necessarily aiming for a garish bright red, but more for the color of blood. I used a mixture of Red Gore, Scorched Brown, and Mechrite Red to try and get good coverage - I figger it should be somewhat of a darker mid-range basecoat color.

Plaguebearer WIP [Update 4/28/2010]

For some inexplicable reason, I woke up at 4am and couldn't fall back asleep. At least I got some painting done. These may very well be the last work-in-progress pictures of this Plaguebearer:

These are better pictures color-wise than what's come before, I think. I believe I may have figured out my color balancing issues with this guy, and maybe even future pictures. The problem with this particular figure is that the red + green on him end up mixing towards the pinkish-beige end of the color wheel (if there is such a horrible place), much like the "official" Cleaved Chaos Space Marine scheme put out by GW in the most recent CSM Codex (it's even more noticeable, the pinkish tinge to the beige, that is, on the color test figure I painted up a long while back). The color is tricky to capture in pictures, especially since I'm using translucent paints and inks on this particular figure and the eye sees things differently than the camera due to, I dunno, light refraction or something. (That's my official excuse, and I'm sticking with it!)

That said, I think the face is lacking something, I just can't quite put my finger on what to do or change to give it that little extra bit of "oomph" - my understanding is that milky white is the "official" eye color for Plaguebearers, but I may have to take some artistic license. I already tweaked them a bit so that the unbalanced-looking larger eye has a grey ring around the outside, sort of like a milky cataract or something. Any suggestions on kicking the appearance of his face "up a notch?"

Plaguebearer WIP [Update 4/26/2010]

 Well, I figger I'm about done with this guy. I went for dirtier bandages - weeping wounds underneath and stuff like that would be a bit much effort, I think, since I'm just painting this guy up as a color test for a commission piece I'm working on simultaneously. I tried painting actual brass for the first time on this guy using an actual brass-colored paint (P3 Brass Balls! Woo!) - my Golden Demon Skaven Warlord brass areas had a make-do attempt using a mixture of Dwarf Bronze and Black, but I think I like the lighter, more gold-toned version here better since I was actually able to dirty it down and get better contrast between the edges and the main color, I think.

 I also highlighted up the wounds, but they looked too awkward and stood out too much - a glaze of green over the figure and into the depressions again seems to have evened things out. I'm not about to go back and highlight the entire figure, since I really just want this guy at tabletop level or so (although there's been a few more steps involved, I don't think I'll be repeating this scheme on any of the other 9 Plaguebearers I now own.)

 I'm curious to hear what you all think of the maggot coming out of his mouth. Staring at a reference picture of a pile of 'em trying to get the colors right was a little awkward, especially since my wife is squeamish about them and caught sight of the color picture sitting on the printer before I took it down to my painting den quick-like. (She gives her thanks, folks! Heh.)

  Anyone have an opinion on basing color for him? I'm thinking a neutral cooler color of some sort (like flat brown dirt, maybe?) or something along those lines. I want him to be standing on something like urban ruins, wreckage, debris, or exploded earth - a 40K battlefield appearance to go along with the rest of my Chaos force, in other words. Painting concrete my usual way would make his base as underlying red as this guy already is (but he's got a lot of green over the top of that, so I dunno). I really don't want him overwhelmingly green/red, so I'm open to suggestions... maybe blacktop, which I painted the basing of my first Chaos Space Marine to resemble? Again, I dunno.

Plaguebearer WIP

 I did a little bit more work on this guy tonight, mostly deepening the shading and working in some more color so as to see what it would look like if I used those colors on the one commission piece I'm working on. I then went and airbrushed on a "highlight layer" and thought I messed it all up, but after a lengthy drying it seems to have sorted itself out to satisfaction - this airbrushing is a finicky thing, and I guess I still have a long way to go in the learning curve as to how thick to apply new coats and how much pressure on the trigger with which to run.

 I wouldn't mind feedback from anyone with airbrushing experience, or suggestions as to its use. Aside from a little light reading online, most of which covered stuff like thinning, I'm more or less finding my way along as I go.

Hobby Tip: A Cheap 'n' Easy Spray Booth

 This is a tutorial on building (like the name says) a "cheap 'n' easy" spray booth suitable for priming, sealing, basecoating with aerosol sprays - even airbrushing. I am simply providing step-by-step instructions, and am not to be held responsible for anything that may happen through the use of a spray booth such as this indoors, i.e. toxic exposure to paint fumes, exploding furnaces, or a light dusting of primer on someone's antique furniture. (Consider yourself warned and myself absolved - nothing says "bad karma" like feeling responsible for someone else's fiery, explosive demise!) Also, many thanks to Alf from the RelicNews Forums for the original inspiration!

With that out of the way, here's the materials:

• 1 reasonably-sized durable cardboard box
• 1 roll of standard duct tape
• 1 roll of packing tape (optional)
• A supply of microfiber filter as can be found at most home improvement-type stores, generally in the Heating/Cooling or Air Conditioning department
• A heavy-duty commercial-grade vacuum, AKA "Shop Vac"
• A medium-sized plastic bag - always good to recycle the bags from those impulse figure purchases!
• A pair of good shears/heavy scissors

Here's a picture of the first spray booth I set up myself (it saw about 4 years' worth of frequent use):

 I would suggest that you set your spray booth up in a well-lighted, well-ventilated area such as a garage. I would also suggest that you raise the overall level of the booth to a comfortable height to allow for easier spraying - my first homemade spray booth was at roughly floor level due to space considerations, but a small stool underneath gave me enough clearance to easily see all areas of my figures when spraying whilst sitting on the floor in front of it. My new booth is set back on a shelf of my painting desk, so I don't need to hunch over to see!

 To start, cut a squarish piece of microfiber filter a little larger than you actually want the opening at the back of the box to be - try to make the hole reasonably large, as the whole point of this setup is to remove as much of the excess paint vapors from the open air as possible. The next step is to cut a hole about 1" or so smaller than the piece of filter in the back of the box, relatively centered behind where you expect to do the majority of your spraying. Make sure to leave a reasonable border of cardboard for the filter to sit flush against on the back of the box.

For reference sake, this is what microfiber filter looks like in its natural state:

 Next, tape all the seams of the box so as to prevent excess paint being sprayed from escaping out any holes or crevices - ideally, you want as much paint as possible to be drawn towards the filter when using the spray booth. Taking your plastic bag, cut a hole in the opposite end of the opening, or, alternatively, cut the length of the bag down to a more manageable length - depending on the size of the bag, you might want to cut slits at the end so it opens neatly into four "flaps." The purpose of the bag is to act as a funnel between the hole at the back of the box and the nozzle of your shop vacuum.

 The tricky part now is to tape the sides of the filter down to the back of your booth over the cut opening so that there are no gaps and the filter sits flush and overlaps the hole on all sides - with mine, I used overly long strips of duct tape on all four sides and made sure they overlapped at the four corners around the filter. (The reason I used duct tape as opposed to packing tape is for ease of removal when I next need to change the filter or bag.) The filter doesn't necessarily need to sit into the opening, but the edges do need to be airtight against the box for the next step.

 For the final step with the box, tape one opening (likely the largest) of the bag over both the hole and the filter from the back of the box. As can hopefully be seen from the picture, I made a similar overlapping square of tape around the mouth of the bag against the box - what you can do is tape down a side and then trim off the excess bag sticking out with a pair of shears. I also taped over the first layer of tape holding the bag down so that the second layer of was sticking, at least partially, with nothing but cardboard underneath - this is to prevent the tape and bag from peeling away from your booth from the weight of the vacuum hose, which could be very messy if it happened in mid-spray session.

 For the sake of a snug fit, you will want to taper the bag via wrapped duct tape so it fits tightly around the nozzle of the vacuum. With my box, I made a "collar" of sorts to fit around the nozzle of the vacuum - although this is actually an extra shop vacuum I have, it's occasionally useful to be able to separate the vacuum from the attached spray booth if I need to use it for anything else. One way to make the "collar" is to wrap a length of duct tape around a jar or bottle with the sticky side facing outwards, hold that inside the open end of the bag, mash the end of the bag around the tape, and then wrap another length of tape or two around the outside of the bag end. The tape on the outside serves two purposes: it maintains the shape of the "collar" so it fits the nozzle of your vacuum snugly, and it also holds the nozzle in place to prevent it from collapsing inwards when suction is turned on. (Don't make the same mistake I did and use a bottle with a slight "lip" around it - the inner ring of tape was tight enough that it wouldn't fit over the lip in trying to get the bottle out, and I ended up having to undo the entire taped-up bag!)

 My first spray booth was set up on the floor and fairly low, so I used a length of wood to prop the hose up so the mouth of the nozzle sat at roughly a right angle to the back of the filter inside the bag - it gets better suction this way. If you have the entire setup on a shelf or something, this prop might not be necessary. I can virtually guarantee you will need to play around with the placement of the vacuum nozzle the first few times, as it has a tendency to either suck in the bag or stick to the filter - as you can imagine, neither situation is ideal for drawing off paint fumes, and a total blockage with the vacuum running will kill the motor. With enough adjustment and a good prop, you should be fine - just remember the ideal angle is about 90° to get the strongest draw of air toward the filter of your booth. If you're really cramped for space or your vacuum continually misbehaves by trying to eat the bag, I might suggest buying an extra-wide funnel of a large enough diameter to cover the filter and hole in the back of your box entirely, and with a narrow enough spout to fit inside the nozzle of your vacuum hose. The spout of the funnel will stop the nozzle of the vacuum hose from collapsing inwards towards the filter when suction is on, and the wide mouth of the funnel will feed fumes towards the vacuum hose nicely.

 Hopefully this is all pretty self-explanatory, but let me add a few parting thoughts. The vacuum is used whilst spraying to draw excess paint and fumes towards the filter and interior of the box - ideally away from yourself and the area around where you spray. To do this effectively, you need a pretty strong vacuum (mine is 3.5 horsepower) - the stronger the suction, the less airborne paint and fumes end up in places you don't want it: your lungs, your parked car, or nearby sources of flame.

 * The micro-fiber filter is there to prevent the airborne paint particles from clogging up your vacuum itself: you will ruin a perfectly good vacuum if you skip using some sort of ultra-fine filter material or if you fail to change the filter out when it starts to become clogged with repeated spraying. For the sake of brain cells and your overall health, only spray in open, well-ventilated areas and not anywhere near open sources of flame: paint fumes can easily build to toxic levels in enclosed spaces; you can kill off massive amounts of brain cells as chemicals are absorbed fairly readily into the bloodstream via the lungs; you can cause an explosion if allowed to build up anywhere near a source of flame or heat - this includes the pilot lights of furnaces and water heaters, cigarettes, and space heaters.

Decisions, decisions...

Do I prefer an airbrush or a paintbrush now? Do I paint the segmented protrusion coming out of the Plaguebearer's mouth so as to make it resemble a giant, pasty-looking maggot, or paint it up as a dripping, putrefactingly rotten tongue? Anyone have any suggestions?

I've been trying out some new stuff here over the past few days - one of these figures was airbrushed with some additional shading touch-ups via a brush which were then gone over with an empty airbrush to drive the thinned paint into the depressions, and the other used the same colors but was strictly hand-painted via paintbrushes.

I must say I am certainly loving this airbrush, now that I've finally put it to use - it works especially well with washes. Even using windshield wiper fluid to cut my paints, the extra bluish tone from the wiper fluid adds a little extra something outside of the beige paints themselves. I applied a basecoat, two shading colors, and a highlight in about an hour! Whee! (I do have clear airbrush thinner, but I think I might stick with this wiper fluid for a while...)

I'm also pleased that my prep work on the Commission Giveaway Contest winner's Speculo Killer turned out so smooth. The figure is so delicate in appearance and what angles she has are so awkward - I wasn't sure I got everything or that things were smooth enough. After giving the figure a guide wash tonight on the "unpainted" parts, it looks like I covered both aspects well. Yay, me!