Summer Update...

One thing I can't help noticing about the beautiful weather we've had in the UK over the last couple of weeks is that it doesn't half dry out the paint on your palette quickly!  Not that I'm complaining.  I'm a slow painter at the best of times, but my need for swiftness is rather pressing at the moment.

In less than two weeks (as of writing this), on the 27th July, 4Tk Gaming in Colchester is holding its annual Summer Open Day, incorporating the Golden Gears 2013 painting competition.  As this is not only my FLGS, but also a tremendous supporter of the wargaming hobby in general as well as the shop who kindly bought Ayako Ito during the Heroes For Heroes painting event earlier this year, I felt compelled to enter.  And of course, we painters do love to show off our work, don't we?

Now, one miniature in a few weeks is no problem, though a stretch for me at competition standard, but my painting guru Gus Pollard has instead managed to somehow convince me to enter not one, but FOUR categories; Single Figure, Troop/Unit, Vehicle/Monster, and the Open Category.

EIGHT MINIATURES.  (Again, for most professional painters this would be a breeze, but for me it's a big deal).

Luckily, I'm cheating with the Vehicle/Monster category, I have a certain Mantic Kings of War Orc Giant which fits the bill nicely, or I could enter my Space Wolves Land Raider.  Neither of them are perfect, but I do love them.  (I wonder if I could enter them both...?)

The problem with the other categories is that I actually have to get something painted!

So what am I working on, then?

Well, the Open Category was a bit of a given.  How could I resist painting the beautiful 'Artemis' from Hasslefree Miniatures?  This miniature was made for competitions.  Large areas of metallics, large areas of skin.  There's no superfluous detail - it is a miniature which does not allow you to hide poor painting - which of course may be my downfall!

Artemis - Work In Progress

For the Troop/Unit category, I decided to enter my five-strong Ito Clan starter set for GCT's Bushido.  I fell in love with these guys while painting Ayako Ito from the same range.  They are five vastly different, characterful miniatures which meld both history and fantasy seamlessly.  The greatest challenge for me I think will be the cobra-headed warrior, Akimoto.  As you can see from the work-in-progress photos, I'm deviating from the traditional greens of the Ito Clan to go for a more serene and oceanic turquoise feel.

Ito Clan (and Artemis!) - Work In Progress

Finally, the Single Figure category is a bit of a secret at the moment.  All I will say is that it's a sci-fi miniature from Mantic Games.

Ooooh!  The intrigue!!!

But why all the secrecy, I hear you ask?

Well, as of this month, I have become part of Ironwatch magazine's 'Iron Forge' team along with some other fantastic miniature painters.  Each issue, we will all be trying to submit some beautifully painted miniatures from Mantic's many excellent games.  However, I'd quite like to give the magazine an air of exclusivity - or at least, first dibs, so where possible I'm trying not to show my submissions until they've been published in Ironwatch first, which I'm sure you'll agree is the decent thing to do!  All I will say about the miniature so far is that I'm very pleased with how it's shaping up...

Sorry there's nothing more concrete at the moment, but hopefully there will be lots of exciting finished projects to show by next month!

Now for more painting!

MUNGO SMAAAAASH!

In preparation for the Bloody Hells' first ever battle in Mantic Games' Kings of War tonight, I thought I'd quickly post up some images of the newest addition to the army, Blind Mungo, my Orc Giant.

I love this model, not least because it's pretty rare.  It's a resin cast of one of Mantic's three-up orc sculpts - the original large-scale sculptures that the 28mm miniatures are based on.  You can see from the photo at the top that, when compared to a 'normal' orc, this miniature is a monster!



At first glance, this miniature looks like
any other 28mm miniature... Until you see
the other orc...!

I began by painting the metallics in two
different tones before roughly highlighting
both with Chainmail.

I followed this with several black and brown
washes to 'dirty' up the metal before giving
the areas a drybrush of Chainmail.

I then highlighted the metals using lots of
thinned layers of Skull White to represent
light glinting off it.

I began the browns by basecoating them
with Scorched Brown, before washing the
areas with Devlan Mud.

I then built up the highlights from Bestial
Brown to Bleached Bone before finally
washing the areas with thinned Devlan Mud.

For the whites, I basecoated with Citadel's
new Ceramite White.  I then washed the areas
first with Devlan Mud, then with Regal Blue.

Finally I built the highlights up gradually
using lots of thinned coats of Ceramite White.

I began the skin with a 1:1 basecoat of
Vermin Brown and Scorched Brown.

I then built the colour up with a 2:1:1 mix
of Dwarf Flesh, Vermin Brown and
Scorched Brown.

The next highlight was simply pure
Dwarf Flesh.

I then added a 1:1 layer of Dwarf Flesh and
Skull White before a 3:1 layer of Skull White
and Bleached Bone.  I then gave it a 1:1 wash
of Ogryn Flesh and Gryphonne Sepia.

Finally, I re-applied the extreme highlights
before adding a glaze of Scorpion Green to
the most prominent areas to give it an
'orcish' look.



Finally, I added gallons of blood to the shield and axe by first painting it on with thinned Blood Red and then adding a 1:1 mix of Blood Red and Chaos Black onto the areas where the blood is the thickest.  Finally I added some gloss varnish to give it a really icky-sticky look!

I loved painting this miniature, even just to a gaming standard, and I think he was really worth all the effort.  Below are some images of the finished article:


If you want to see some more of The Bloody Hells, you'll find them in the Tabletop section of the Flare Gallery!

To see these and more of my miniatures...

Looking to the Future, and an Awesome Year Ahead

Well firstly, a HAPPY NEW YEAR to everyone!

(Okay, so that's almost three weeks late, but I'm assured that it's the thought that counts...)

I'm really looking forward to seeing what 2013 brings and I already have several projects and events lined up for the early part of the year.

This post is a run-down of just a few of them...

HEROES FOR HEROES - ENDS 31st MARCH, 2013

The first and foremost will be my contribution to Heroes For Heroes which is an event being run by my friend Rid from Fanplastic Little Men.  From now until the end of March, a huge group of painters from far and wide - both professional and amateur - will be painting miniatures which will be auctioned on Ebay.  All of the proceeds from these sales will be donated to the Help For Heroes charity.  Help For Heroes provides direct, practical support to wounded, injured or sick Service personnel, veterans and their families.  This event has already had support pledged from companies like Tor Gaming, GCT Studios, Mantic Games, Cymbeline Games, Tabletop Nation and Gamerz Nexus, so if you would like to take part in this fun and very worthy event, go to the Heroes For Heroes Facebook page to find out more!

April will be a busy month for me event-wise, with two visits to wargaming trade shows, Diceni in Norwich and Salute 2013 at London's Excel Centre.  I'm really excited about these as I've never been to an 'independent' wargaming show before.

DICENI - 7th APRIL, 2013

The first of these will be Diceni on Sunday 7th April at The Forum in Norwich.

The official website (www.diceni.co.uk) has the following to say about the event:

Artwork by Matt Dixon

"Diceni is a gaming event that will be held at The Forum in Norwich, Norfolk on 7th April 2013 which will promote every aspect of gaming including tabletop, card and boardgames, LARP and RPGs.

Entry to Diceni will be free so why not come along and find out about gaming in all its varied and interesting forms? We will be covering historical, science fiction and fantasy genres and there will be a range of games being demonstrated - you will be able to take part in all of the games although you may have to wait your turn!

We are hoping to have Living History outside the front of the Forum and a local Sci-Fi group in costume as many of science fiction's most well known characters."

I look forward to going along and having a look around, especially as my friend Tom from Cymbeline Games will be there, plying his (very reasonably-priced) wares.  What interests me the most though is that there will be some award-winning painters from Platoon Britannica offering painting tips and advice - so I can't wait to see what new tricks I can glean!



SALUTE - 20th APRIL, 2013

Just two weeks after Diceni comes Salute (www.salute.co.uk), one of  the largest independent wargames shows in the UK.  This event is going to be awesome, not least because I get to take my Kings of War orcs along and spend the day teaching Cymbeline Games and Fanplastic Little Men the true meaning of pain in a series of no-holds-barred 2000pt games!

On top of this, there's a really tightly-contested painting competition which takes place every year that, in all honesty, it'd be rude not to enter!  If you want to see any of the fantastic entries and winners from previous years, you can do so at the Salute Painting Competition Gallery.  Some examples of a few of my favourites are shown below:

Unknown Artist, Twilight Knight

Andy Dean, Eldar Farseer

Conrad Mynett, Wraith

Unknown Artist, Pirate

CLASH OF KINGS - 9th & 10th FEBRUARY, 2013

One of my bigger projects last year was to attempt to get an 1800pt Kings of War orc army assembled and painted ready for Mantic's Clash of Kings tournament on the 9th and 10th of February, 2013.  Sadly, although I had been greatly looking forward to this fantastic weekend of gaming, due to events out of Mantic's hands, they were forced to move the tournament to a different venue which, unfortunately, I am unable to get to.  This means that I will no longer be attending the tournament, but all is not lost!  Firstly, I have still managed to get all of my orcs painted (hurrah!) and there is no way I would have been able to do that without the deadline which the Clash of Kings gave me.  Also, as a few of my friends from the Chelmsford Bunker are also unable to now attend, we decided to hold our own gaming weekend in one of our garages - aptly named A Clash of Paupers - so there will still be plenty of blood spilled by my orcs!

'Archangel' by Scibor

Of course, it's not all about visiting trade shows and playing games - there will actually be some painting going on this year as well!

My first major project of the year will be Scibor's beautiful 'Archangel' miniature.  A fantastic winged knight, this can only be painted as the mighty Sanguinius, Primarch of the Blood Angels!  I can't wait for this one as his golden armour will be a great challenge to test my non-metallic metal mettle!

I'll be starting this project within the next couple of weeks, so keep an eye out for plenty of work-in-progress images as I go along.

Though the date is yet to be confirmed, I'm also looking forward to the Chelmsford Bunker's Bunker Brush 2013 competition.  I managed to (just about) win last year's competition against some extremely stiff competition with my Orc Flagger miniature.  This time will be even tougher, with everyone's skills improving since last year.  I'll be pulling out all the stops on the technical front this time with the beautiful yet simple 'Artemis' from Hasslefree Miniatures.  Obviously, there are plenty of areas of skin to practice smoothly-blended flesh tones, not to mention a huge shield which is begging for some non-metallic metal techniques.

In terms of gaming miniatures, I have several projects coming my way.  I'll be painting a Republique of France naval fleet for Spartan Games' fantastic Dystopian Wars, not to mention attempting to better the success of last year's 'Starkiron Tony' Dreadball miniature by painting a whole team of them!  And of course, where would I be without the magnificent Blood Bowl?  I'm hoping to be able to fit in (amongst all these other toys) one of Warlord Games' wonderful female dwarf teams.  They will be the Belladonna Brimstones and will look a little different to the dwarf  teams  you may be used to - 'Tiny tattooed Goths' are about the closest words I can find to fit the image in my head.

And with all of this in just the first part of the year, 2013 is going to be massive!

There'll be more updates soon.  I hope you've all got as much to look forward to as I have.

Starkiron Tony: Painting Mantic's Dreadball Player

Excitement is reaching fever-pitch both in gaming stores and across the internet this month at the imminent arrival of Mantic Games' latest release, the mighty 'Dreadball'.

When Mantic ran their Pre-Release Party at Tabletop Nation, I was lucky enough to have the opportunity to go along and try it out, and I can honestly say that IT IS AWESOME! It's a very fast game which manages to satisfy the Holy Grail of gaming - to be extremely quick and simple to play, yet with a tremendous amount of strategic options available to make every game a unique adrenaline-fuelled roller-coaster ride.

And did I mention that it's rather inexpensive to boot?

I'm very much looking forward to getting hold of a copy of the game when it's officially released as anyone who followed the Dreadball Kickstarter project will know that there are some great new miniatures coming over the next couple of years.

But anyway, back on topic - what have I been painting recently?

Yes, you guessed it. Dreadball!

I was very excited recently to get my hands on a resin cast of one of the Corporation players whose plastic counterparts will be included in the boxed game and set to work straight away on painting him.

Now, I'm a little bit of a Marvel Comics fan and the minute I saw this miniature, I knew exactly what colour scheme I wanted to use. There is no escaping from it. I can't talk my way around it.

He is Ironman!

So now that all that is out of the way, here's how I went about painting him:

This really was a lovely miniature. Being resin, good quality resin, there were no bubbles or distortions and the mould lines and flash were kept to an absolute minimum. There were a great many different panels and armour sections on him, meaning that the options for painting him in different team colours is almost limitless.

I wanted to make sure that when I came to painting the many different panels and armour sections on this chap, I didn't get confused as to what would be yellow and what would be red, so I decided that once I had undercoated the miniature white, I would glaze the areas with their respective colour to make it a bit easier when it came to the actual application of the paint.

I am hoping to mimic the effect I used for the armour of Mantic's orc Flagger, which mixed metallic and colour paint to create quite a striking effect. This will be slightly more interesting if it works however as I will be using two very bright and vibrant colours, rather than greys and dark blues.

RED ARMOUR

Here is the almost-complete basecoat on the red armour. I mixed Boltgun Metal and Red Gore and thinned the whole lot down with Winsor & Newton Flow Improver.

The main benefit of this over using water will hopefully be slightly more vivid colours on the finished mini - though this is an experiment in its use, I'd never tried it before.

On the plus-side, the Flow Improver simply refuses to dry on the palette and the mix sat there at room temperature for over three hours and did not even thicken, let alone dry out.

Of course, the downside is that the same applies to the paint on the miniature, so painting everything over the course of many very thin coats takes about twice as long!

Having finished the basecoat, the next job was to shade the red plate armour. I took the basecoat (Boltgun Metal / Red Gore) and added Necron Abyss and virtually washed it over several coats into the deepest areas of the armour.

I wanted this miniature to look like it was lit from floodlights in a Dreadball arena, so I also made sure to paint the bottom of the armour plates in shadow and concentrate the highlights on the top parts.

For the final shading, I added Chaos Black to the mix and painted it into the very deepest areas.

At the moment, the miniature looks like it has been dipped in mud, but eventually - once the highlights are added - the areas should look pretty good.

The next stage was to add the highlights to the armour.

I began by applying a mix of Boltgun Metal and Blood Red to the highest parts of the armour.

Once this was finished, I added more Blood Red to the mix, continuing to work it up towards the lightest areas.

Finally, I highlighted the edges of the armour with pure Blood Red.

As you can see in the photo to the right, the armour isn't really finished yet. It quickly became obvious that an extra highlight of Blood Red / Blazing Orange was needed to bring up the red a little before the Skull White 'hot-spots' - the points where the reflection is strongest - were added.

So here is the red armour 'finished' (to a point), ready to have some directional lighting effects from the Arc Reactor (geeks will know...), the eyes and the ports in the hands when the whole miniature is completed.

After neatening up the white highlights a little, I glazed the right side of Starkiron (his right) with Hawk Turquoise and the left with Regal Blue before strengthening the white once more.

It was nice to finish this stage as the red armour formed the bulk of the miniature, so I knew that it would all hopefully be downhill from here-on-in.

YELLOW ARMOUR

The yellow armour was begun with a 2:1 mix of Shining Gold and Snakebite Leather.

Once I had a smooth basecoat, I began to shade it by adding a small amount of Chaos Black to the base. I had to be particularly careful because the pigment is so strong that any more that half a drop and the entire mix would have been too dark to use. Once the first shading pass was completed, I added a touch more black and painted down into the darkest areas.

After the shading was completed, I took the original basecoat of Shining Gold and Snakebite Leather and began to highlight it up, simply by adding small amounts of Skull White over about five stages.

I then added the same Skull White hot-spots to the gold areas before once more glazing with Hawk Turquoise and Regal Blue. As with the red armour, I then re-painted the pure white highlights to take them back up to their original brightness.

After this, it was simply a case of painting the grey metallics, which were basecoated with Codex Grey and then shaded and highlighted by adding Chaos Black and Skull White respectively.

Finally, the miniature was finished by adding the eyes, palm-ports and Ark Reactor on his chest. These were all painted using a mix of Ice Blue with a heavy amount of Skull White added, before building up the colours to pure Skull White. The 'glow' of these lights was added to the metals by lightly glazing the Ice Blue / Skull White basecoat onto the armour in the places which it would naturally fall.

With only four blocks of colour, this miniature turned out to be a relatively simple one to get to grips with.

Of course, were there time, I would certainly love to go back and paint the metallics much more smoothly, and better, but this project was only ever intended to be a relaxing break before the gruelling task of painting an entire orc army in a matter of weeks - and it certainly did the job!

And in case you're wondering, here are the images of the model completely finished:

That's it for now, but as always, if you want to see any more miniatures from Flare Miniature Painting don't forget to...