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!

Reporting In, Sir!

 If anyone's noticed the relative scarcity of updates lately, there's been a few reasons for it. One is family stuff - trips out of town, wife starting a new job, our 1-year-old with pneumonia; the other(s) are that I've been trying to focus on the commission work I'm doing. I'm ready to start painting the Speculo Killer from the Infinity range, and was hoping to do so after getting back from a trip with two days that the kids would both be at day care - well, our son's pneumonia's scratched that "free time" idea for the most part, but at least now's the easy part in that I much prefer putting brush to figure. I generally dislike prepping figures since it takes me a long time being somewhat obsessive about mold lines and flush fittings and all that fun stuff.

 I also received another commission shortly after running the Commission Giveaway Contest, and while assembling and tidying up and gluing that is still underway, I will say this - it's not a GW Trygon or Mawloc, and it's not a Valkyrie, although it's up there in scale and will be mounted on a similar blank. It's something big and evil, and it's going to be going on this base:

 I cut it out of sheet plastic stock with an electric bandsaw, trimmed to shape with a heavy rasp, and then smoothed things out with a progression of sandpaper from 60 grit up to 800. It's fun to break out the big toys once in awhile, and thankfully our son's a relatively sound sleeper!

Hobby Tip - Cuticle Stones

 I would highly recommend the purchase of a readily available and fairly inexpensive product for use in prepping miniatures, bases, sculpting, resin, and other decorative bits with your figures - unorthodox as it might sound, a common (and I can't believe I'm linking to this sort of site for an example) cuticle stone. They're known by lots of names, and I'm sure you can readily find one at a local pharmacy, druggist, general goods store, manicurist's shop, or salon.

 Essentially, when wet, cuticle stones work like automotive grade wet-dry sandpaper in stick form - I'd wager 600+ grit, maybe more like 800. In other words, this isn't something you'd want to use as your primary tool for filing/sanding of miniatures or scenery materials, but it does a great job at smoothing rough edges, taking things down in tricky hard-to-reach areas, and burnishing. The cuticle stone I've got is shaped like the one I linked to on the beauty supplies website (above) - essentially like a squared-off bullet, with a rectangular body that curves on two faces to a somewhat rounded not-quite-30­° angle straight end. So far, I've used it to get a baby-smooth burnished finish on the skull helm of a former white metal Khorne Lord now-Undivided after Dremeling off his "antlers"; stripping the multiple mold lines off of my somewhat soft resin Forge World Renegade Psyker without leaving score marks like a metal file would; adding scoring, gouges, and scrapes to resin basing and chunks of broken resin "concrete" using the right-angles of the rectangular body; and general purpose (but not heavy-duty) filing and smoothing. The nice thing about my cuticle stone is that it's got rounded curves, a broad angle, and 90° corner sanding all in one package.

 I'd recommend picking one up to anyone, just to see how they handle - let me know what you think.

Hobby Tip - Miniature Preparation

 One of the best things you can do to ensure a smooth and tidy paint job on your figures is to invest a little more time in preparation of the miniatures prior to painting. Removal of mold lines - the unsightly raised "flash" that encircles each figure (or each piece of multi-part castings) where the two halves of the mold come together during casting/pouring - is very important to the overall look of a finished model. There's nothing more annoying once a paint job's been finished to discover an untouched mold line, and nothing that screams "sloppy modeler" than leaving mold lines, venting tails, and the like completely untouched.

 The most common and expedient method, especially with plastic figures, is to use the edge of a hobby knife dragged backwards across the mold lines at roughly a 45° angle. For this type of work it's always best to use as sharp a blade as possible and to take extreme care not to cut or stab yourself, generally by cutting away from you. Another common method - a little more involved but producing smoother results, I feel - is using needle/hobby files to smooth out the flash and other irregularities in the figure. Personally, I seem to get the most use out of my Flat, Half-Round, Round, and 3-Square (triangle) needle files. A combination of knife "scraping" and filing produces the best results, but this all depends on personal choice, the tools available, or maybe more importantly: the actual mold of the miniature.

 If you're looking for more worn but straightforwards notching than you get with a hobby knife blade on things like sword and axe blades, I'd recommend using a 3-Square (triangle-shaped) hobby file - it's got nice sharp angles and a little bit of filing will get you a solid, nice-looking notch with a minimum of fuss. Another bonus of the 3-square file is that it's excellent for filing off lengthwise mold lines from ribbed power cable sculpting and the like without deforming the ribbing.