Wow... A Work-In-Progress Converted Khorne Berzerker

 Well, I've been out of the hobby awhile. Lack of motivation, poor mental outlook, a lot of personal stuff going on, etc. I've not painted any figures from my Chaos Warband since, oh, October? One big thing contributing to my general lack of motivation was my belief that I had my Kroot Hound (the one that won Honorable Mention at the 2008 Chicago GD) stolen from a Military & Historical Collectible show in November of last year that I took some figures to when I went along with a local painting club - turns out I found it last week buried in an underlying area of my figure case... restored some of my faith in painting/humanity.

 I put brush to figure last night with one Khorne Berzerker conversion I had the sudden urge to paint - my painting area's been in disarray since a basement renovation but I decided to ignore the clutter and take a stab at painting again. Man, I feel rusty and out of practice!

 The color looks quite a bit off compared to the figure on my end, unfortunately, because my photo setup is dismantled and I need to get things back together. I also forgot how I used to edit and balance my photos, it's been so long... I was aiming for a lighter Space Wolves Chapter color scheme, like the near-white they used to use way back when (1992 or so?). I settled on a halfway point between the current primarily GW Shadow Grey scheme and a mixture of GW Space Wolves Grey and GW Skull White.

 I'm not sure what color to paint the decoration on the chest armor - gold? copper? bronze? Suggestions would be appreciated, because I'm not sure what the current standard is (this is a 3rd Ed. chest piece and I don't see any of this style in the recent Codex). Thanks!

Return of the Son of Odds 'n' Ends, Mk. VIII

 You may have noticed the lack of regular updates in the past several months - this is due to a number of things that I really don't need to get into in detail (my health, family life, unemployment, starting a new contract job, etc.) - sufficent to say, though, I've not had nearly as much time and motivation to post regular updates on painting and such... because there hasn't been much going on in the way of painting and such!


1) I'm wondering if slightly tweaking things in terms of site layout or blog formatting or what-have-you might be the way to go? It was suggested (thanks, IntereoVivo!) that maybe I could/should take suggestions as to the topics and content I put up. Dunno why I hadn't thought of this before, but I think that might be an excellent way of keeping things alive and fresh. I've got a ton of projects (or potential projects) that I could use for "demonstration" purposes here - on-sprue minis, drawers full of 20+-year-old lead fantasy and sci-fi figures, stuck-together-but-not-glued gaming figures, many figures that would easily make for good display-quality pieces, and even scenery or "display base" odds 'n' ends that I could be posting about. Assuming the trend of limited time continues, short posting on my part of stuff like "This is how I'm pinning the 54mm resin soldier" or "Here's a few approaches in painting black I'm taking that could give you different 'finishes' as an end result" would probably be much easier (and less demoralizing) than having a whole blog to fill and very few finished things of late to post.

 To that end, I think a "Contact Me" box or a "Make Suggestions Here" blurb highly visible on the site would be good. Any ideas on how best to approach the layout of the site? Maybe email me! This ties in with...


2) I've been using a newly-bought-and-self-assembled computer for several months now after some technical difficulties in operation and finally have things reinstalled again to the point where I can make worthwhile updates - for a good month there, the computer was in the shop and/or empty for all my web editing software, and with all my site images and templates and such backed up on a spare HD. That being said, I also moved to a format here not so long ago with the main Painting by Tinweasel site serving as sort of a stripped-down framework with all kinds of added content, and the Painting by Tinweasel Blog serving as sort of a central hub and news/update feed. The blog is self-sufficient, but the full website needs a lot of layout changes and behind-the-scenes tweaking now. Since I have to do that anyways to get everything looking neat and tidy and non-redundant (double header bars, etc. Yuck!), is there anything that people would like up on there?

What, if anything, might people like to see? Or, better yet, how could I get the most use out of a supporting website that statistically gets only about 1/3rd of the views of my Blog despite having a Gallery of painted figures, a section on painting Tips and Techniques, and even some (slightly older) Tutorials?


3) I've joined the local Michigan Historical Miniatures & Model Club at a store not too far from me here - The Michigan Toy Soldier Co. Essentially, the store encourages all sorts of figure painting (like my Games Workshop Chaos Space Marine army and my Golden Demon Competition pieces, some of my stuff being in their display case currently!) and even stocks a fair amount of tabletop gaming stuff at a great discount - their main focus, though, is historical miniatures and models, painting and modeling supplies, and toy soldiers and collectible figures. I'd highly recommend the store to any miniature painters, and the staff are all great! The Club I signed up for is kinda an informal thing meeting one night a month, and we've all decided to go in on a "club figure" that we can all paint, pose, convert, or whatever, with the end result being a group display at a show (or two).

 The club figure is a 54mm Private of the 1st New Hampshire Regiment, 1870, put out by Michael Roberts, Ltd. - an excellent resin piece with very few mold problems (some bubbles on the base, a little bit of flash, and minor mold lines here and there) and a high level of accurate and realistic detailing. (Not that I know squat about post-Revolutionary War regimental troops, but still!) I haven't started prepping it and have virtually no experience painting historically accurate miniatures at all - but I'm really looking forwards to this, especially the opportunity to learn from some veteran painters in a "new" field. I'll be posting my progress... I'm also open to any and all suggestions at this point, as this is "a brave new world" I'm venturing into, so to speak.

Hobby Tip - Night Lords' Lightning Effect

 I haven't had time to do much in the way of hobby stuff lately, but I've been wanting to try painting this for weeks now and I'm curious what you all think:

Here's how I painted the Night Lords lightning effect:

• First I painted a thinned color for an overall appearance of "electrical haze" or "glow." I used GW Enchanted Blue thinned down to a 1:4 paint/thinner consistency and applied this with a 2/0 brush so as it have a "backdrop" color to paint everything else on. I didn't want this to look solid (hence the translucent paint) but I did want it to serve as an overall "outline" for the two subsequent colors.
• Secondly I went back with thinned Electric Blue (in a 1:4 paint/thinner ratio again) - it's an old, old color so a good substitute would be 1:1 Enchanted Blue/Ice Blue, I dare say. With this step I used a fine (#0000) point brush and more or less stippled a random, crackling line within the previous haze color. I intentionally kept it patchy and wavy while still trying to follow a more or less continuous arcing path - the next and last color I would say is the most important, as it's the "heart" of the electrical effect.
• Lastly, I applied fine stippling with thinned GW Ice Blue (1:4 paint/thinner ratio again) and just tried to make it look like crackling electricity - I didn't necessarily keep to the exact center of the previous two colors laid down, but I didn't stray outside of them. I made a few passes with just tiny dots of the brush, until I got to the point where it looked like a fine (if fuzzy) line with a few patchy gaps here and there. Done!

A Little Night Lords Freehand

 It's been a busy past month or so, what with colds, computer troubles, and a lot of other distractions. I had some free time the other day, though, and decided to do a little freehand on the inducted Night Lords Chaos Marine for my warband:

 I wasn't really happy with the finished result at first, since I'm always noticing areas where I could touch things up or improve on mistakes. Barring a little tidying up of the teeth so things are a hair more centered, though, I think my first stab at freehand in a long while came out reasonably well.

 The base color for the skull was P3 'Jack Bone and I added in some Vallejo Model Air Burnt Umber for shading around the edges, since I already had some on my palette from work on a historical 54mm Mexican War figure I'm taking a stab at. I went back and did extra shading and glazing with GW's Badab Black Wash, which I think makes an excellent color for tidying up once you wick away most of the liquid. Not really visible here is the left side of the Mk. VI Space Marine helmet, where I had to get a little creative with the bone color of the helmet since it intersected a number of vertical vents modeled on the helm.

 I'm curious what people think of the overall look, between the now-painted skull and the decayed bat wings on the helmet that I took from a Grave Guard figure out of GW's Fantasy line - does he look sufficiently "Night Lords"-ish, barring missing shoulderpads and backpack, and the eventual obligatory painted lightning?


[Edit] I tidied up the freehand a bit, especially in the lower part of the skull design, because I just wasn't happy with the overall centering of it on the helmet. From feedback of it looking three-dimensional on the figure (I'm sure most of that was the angled front view, but still...) I figgered I'd run with that a little bit more, so I increased the contrast by adding extra highlights where they would naturally fall on a sculpted skull and deepening the false shading a bit moreso.

 Here is a picture from a different angle to show off the design more as it sits on the helmet, and with hopefully a little bit less glare from my photo box lighting reflecting off the currently glossy finish of the paint:

 The feedback (and views) are definitely appreciated - it's nice to know people are getting something out of my little corner of the internet here. [/Edit]

A Bloodgor Packmaster (WIP?)

 I've more or less finished my conversion of a 40K Chaos Beastman as the Packmaster for a herd of Bloodgor (read: Khorne-worshipping Beastmen) to be allied with my CSM army at some point down the line. This 40K guy is one that I want to paint up for competiton and eventually use as a "leader" in my 40K force, but I'll likely be subbing him for a Khorne Berzerker until such time as I can model up his friends - it might be years with the time I've got to do hobby stuff nowadays.

 One thing I don't like is how far forward the stock figure pose itself leans, especially with swapping out the chest armor, but I can't really change that without changing the whole dynamic of the figure - it wasn't originally meant to be that involved a conversion. I tried to limit that some by leaning him back a little on the base, and I'll just fill in under his raised feet with rubble when it comes time to basing him. The chest armor itself is meant to look like the midsection was cut out roughly after it was taken from its original wearer, so as to allow this guy to put it on. The shoulder pad is theoretically strapped on - or however SM's mount them to their separate shoulder armor. I wanted both to look rugged, like this guy's been through years of fighting and doesn't much care about keeping his armor in top condition. (I generally do weathering and battle damage on my miniatures prior to painting, as I like the realistic texture.)

 Any and all feedback would be great! I'm wondering whether he looks good enough now or whether I ought to be adding "more decoration" since he's ideally the Packmaster of a Bloodgor horde by dominance and skill at fighting - at least that's how I'd imagine they'd determine rank. There's a skull on a chain dangling from his waist in the back that isn't too visible in this picture - does he need more "trophies" or is the "appropriated" Space Marine armor and (Old School™) Imperial Guard gear sufficient? I'd considered putting studs on the back of the plate on his pistol hand, since it originally came from a SM - I filed down the finger ridges so it looks like it could be flesh, but do I need to differentiate the hand any more from its original source? (I'm going to paint it metallic rather than the same color as the SM gear, whatever that turns out to be.)

 I'm also trying to figure out what color to paint the Marine armor, since I'd ideally like a good contrast between any blood and filth painted on it; Imperial Fists, maybe, or perhaps White Scars? Anyone have any Marine Chapters they really don't like and would want to see "defiled?"

More (unpainted) Khorne Berzerkers?

 Trying to take advantage of the "forced" motivation from a soon-to-start painting competition over at the Relicnews Painting & Modeling Forum, I'm putting up my long-untouched Berzerkers on the block as an entry to try and get them done. Most are glued and have the detail work finished (scars, scratches, chipped armor, etc.), but a few are just held together with putty for posing purposes and still need some love.

The rogue's gallery in question:

 They are a mixed bunch, with one inducted former Space Wolf (wolf-head backpack not pictured) and the stand-in for my Skull Champ w/ Power Fist (he'll be demoted eventually, when I finish a planned conversion, but does nicely for right now) - the rest are more or less straight-up "vanilla" Berzerkers aside from some conversion and reposing. With these guys done, that'll be a full squad in play for my Disciples of the Four, with the Slanneshi Chaos Lord from the last update leading them at the front.

Slaanesh Chaos Lord, leading the Disciples of the Four

Here's pictures of my finished GW Chaos Lord w/ Mark of Slaanesh and "Blissgiver" Daemon Weapon:

 For starters, I'm glad I was able to repair damage from my first attempt at using waterslide decals on a figure - his hood, specifically. It turned out a little wonky texture-wise from all the stripped paint, but I painted up the rough patches to look like more warts and scarring along the lines of the rest of the figure. (Guess this means I can now go and finish up a way-old tutorial on making custom decals/insignia, yay!)

 I painted the Daemon Weapon with a slight purple tinge, with the metal going up to a white metallic color - same as the round decorative insignia pieces on his torso. I figgered since it's supposed to be a "Blissgiver," some exotic coloration was called for (outside of the grip, which I tried to paint up as being made from tanned human leather).

 With the hood I had a hard time settling on a color scheme - I was originally going to paint it white/pale, but that was just too heavy with negative connotations in my mind (think Southeastern US white supremacist group-esque) and so I ended going with pale pink. That later changed with washes and such to more of an appropriate (in my mind) fleshy color, so I'm going with fluff that the hood is made also out of tanned human leather.

 I painted the grip of his scourge and the holster of the bolter to look like tanned human leather as well, since the orangey-reddish base balances out the other colors in theory. I'm curious to hear how folks think they turned out.

 I've been painting this guy up in fits and starts for a long while now in trying to drag my way out of a depression and a whole lot of being overwhelmed with life in general. I'm not quite there yet, but at least I've got a finished figure to show for it!

 Overall, I'd say I put the most difference in contrast in this figure compared to anything else I've yet painted - a lot of areas go from near-white (or even pure white) for highlights to near-black colors for shading. Again, I'm curious as to how folks think that turned out. He's going to be the (current) centerpiece of my tabletop CSM army-in-progress, so I figgered I'd give him some extra attention over the rank 'n' file - probably make him one big shooting magnet, but c'est la vie! (Props to Secret Weapon Miniatures, too, since I think the converted base from the older Urban Streets line turned out nicely.)

Feedback - the more detailed the better - would be appreciated!