A Tale of Malifaux Bloggers 2

For anyone who might be interested, there's a Malifaux blogging/painting motivational thing getting off the ground along the lines of the "Tale of X Painters" events from various sites.

I'm not personally going to be involved for a number of reasons (available time and non-compliance with the rules being two), but I figgered I'd put this out for anyone who's interested in Malifaux, has a blog of their own, and might want to get involved.

The organizing site/post is here: A Tale of Malifaux Bloggers 2
And on the Wyrd Forums here: http://wyrd-games.net/community/topic/105889-tale-of-malifaux-bloggers-2/

First Two Daydreams - Final Pictures!

 Much like with the Malifaux Ice Golem, I got creative with Secret Weapon Miniatures' Crushed Glass Bundle with these Daydreams from The Dreamer's crew. I used a technique similar to building up the snow exploding out from underneath the Ice Golem's fist in order to build up what I'm intending to ideally look like a "barrier between worlds" - as if these guys are partly in the 19th Century real world and partly in Malifaux. I glued clear chunks of dried crushed glass/clear resin cut to shape as small upright pillars, and then filled in gaps and built up the shapes with additional coats of crushed glass/resin mixture. I went back with acetone over the "barrier" to melt it all back to translucency and applied a mixture of Yellow and Green Games Workshop Inks. To tone the saturation of the inks back a bit, I used a trick I read about elsewhere and brushed on household bleach along the top edges of the barrier to cut back the color a bit.

 

 The Daydreams themselves are the Black Friday sale release in translucent pink plastic, but at suggestion from my wife I went and washed them with SW Amethyst Wash and then a mixture of that wash and Vallejo Model Air Intermediate Blue directly painted into shade areas. I used leaf litter from Secret Weapon as well as Gale Force 9 static grass to round out a new "dirt" color recipe I tried.

 

 With these figures, I'm trying to tie most everything together color-wise: the wood planking is a new recipe, but it mixes in some of the steps from the dirt colors and is shaded with the same Amethyst as the figures themselves; the leaf litter, grass, and dirt are all washed with a GW brown wash color, same as one step in painting the wood planking. The only thing that doesn't tie in elsewhere is the green-yellow barrier, so as to stand out more.

 

 

Feedback and suggestions appreciated, as always!

#hobbytiptuesday - Agitators!

 Thought I'd share this (again) because it's a practice I still follow, and I think it's been key in maintaining my paints over the years: using agitators in my paint bottles. Every paint bottle I own has an agitator in it, and here's why - over time paints separate, just like any other solid medium in a liquid suspension. The pigment and binder come out of solution from the carrier liquid - with metallics, this is even more pronounced as the aluminum (maybe mica) precipitating to the bottom due to weight.

 Every once in a while, it's a good idea to give your paints and inks a good shaking - not just prior to use. I have a 6mm glass bead in all my paint bottles, and adding this is still a ritual whenever I get a new color, same as "labeling" the bottle with some of the shaken paint afterwards. I've been a few times now to retail craft stores, usually with weekly coupon in hand, to pick up glass bead necklaces for a few dollars.

 Why an agitator, you may ask? Well, because it helps to more thoroughly mix the paint in the bottle, for one, without the need of toothpicks or brush ends or anything else that will take away from your supply of paint while mixing. For another, it acts as a force multiplier - you may be shaking the outside of the bottle and sloshing the paint around inside, which may be good enough; on the inside, you have a weighted object that's churning the paint back together at an even faster rate.

 What to use? Something with some weight to it, something that's inert, a and something that won't catch inside your paint bottle. This is why I use 6mm glass beads- they're small enough to fit down the necks of dropper paint bottles like those by Vallejo and Reaper, they've got some heft, they're made from inert material so as to not react with your paint itself (I've tried metal sprue and zinc-plated BB's and both of those turn ugly after a few years), and even better, you can get them in large numbers for cheap (did I mention craft store coupons for lengths of bead necklace?).

Oh, and a blog post from many years back, which still holds true:
Shaking Violently Being the Next Best Thing to Strangling

Ice Golem - Final Pictures!

 The snow effect used on the base was achieved with Secret Weapon Miniatures crushed glass, presumably designed just for snow and ice effects - it's the Crushed Glass Bundle, which comes with "Realistic Water" resin to apply the loose crushed glass and seal it in place. I can actually sculpt it and layer it the same way I use my other basing materials. Great stuff!

I motivated myself toward getting final pictures of the finished Ice Golem:

 One thing I really liked when laying down the snow effect was that it was translucent - a first layer I mixed with white paint to represent solid snow; the second layer I left as-is for fresher snow. The best thing about it, I think, is the seepage of the Realistic Water around the edges, which makes it look like meltwater esp. on the edges on the base and the low mound on the paving. I used a less "wet" mixture for the outward-exploding snow (mostly cemented clumps of the previous white paint mixture), and just gave it a light coat of paint-free mixture to even things out.

 He's by no means showcase quality - I could've spent lots of hours on the ice crystal effect, say, and straight painted him entirely instead of using washes, but I was aiming ideally for speed. The most involved part was the highlighting and general tidying up. I really like how the eyes show up on the side-view pictures, since I used light flesh tone instead of white.

Comments and criticisms appreciated!

Translucent Pink Daydreams

I just wanted to show off a work-in-progress picture of the two Translucent Pink Daydreams I've been working on for the past little while. I got the Translucent Pink "Hide and Seek" set during Wyrd Games' Black Friday sale.

The figures are shaded, the bases are painted, and everything's sealed in several coats of different sealants so as to be safe on the table. I still need to finish decorating the bases to represent woodlands and a 19th Century orphanage/nursery split between worlds, but this is straight from my iPhone to the world.

Critique and suggestions appreciated!