Learning to glaze

I tried glazing for the second time today. I was painting a Cygnar Hunter and wanted to add some effects to the axe. So I tried to use some non metallic metals techniques to add some blue to the steel of the axe. I think it turned out ok for only my second try. Much better than my first attempt but not as good as I would like. I will keep trying new techniques and hopefully some day I will be as good as many of the painters out there. 

Other side

Second side was better than the first. 

Getting back in the painting mode

Well as any accountant knows the first few months of the year are generally filled to capacity for one reason or another. I have just finished up the "busy season" and now have a bit more time to paint. I got myself an air brush and I am quite pleased with how much faster I have been able to base coat models. Today I got three units base coated in about 45 minutes. I made quite a mess and I have found that cleaning the air bush has been more time consuming than I thought it would be. But I know that if I do not keep it clean it won't work for very long at all. I look forward to learning more techniques that will allow me to paint more than just base coating with it. But I do believe that will come with time and practice. Anyway just wanted to post a pic of the units that are on my painting table at the moment. Hopefully I will knock these out this weekend and move on to some solos that I have had my eye on for a while.

Washing over primer and the Black 13th

So the next project on my painting table is the Black 13th.  I was originally going to paint all of my Warcasters next but since I use these guys in several of my lists I thought that they deserved to be painted first.  While looking at them it is kind of daunting because they have so much fine detail on them that I really didn't know where to start.  Then I remembered an article written by Tinman XL on his Steam powered TV blog.  He had started to paint a miniature with a lot of detail and he used a wash to help him pick out where the details were just by washing over the primer.  I decided to give this a try, here are the before and after pictures of the primer wash.  I was surprised at how much contrast it added and now I am painting with more confidence that I am painting the right colors in the right places because I can see the details better of what I am painting.  Anyway i just thought that I would pass on this little tip that I tried out and let you know that I think it works well and I will definitely use it for models with lots of detail in the future.
Here are comparison pictures of primer only and after applying a wash.
Comments are welcome.

Siege finished

Well I finished Markus Siege Brisbane last night. Take a look. I am pretty happy over all with the way that he turned out. I am still leery about trying to put battle damage on him right now though.  I am going to watch a few online tutorials about that before I give it a try.  If it turns out I will put pictures here.  The way that I am going to base him is just your standard sand with a little bit of grass.  Maybe one of the things that I should learn how to do in 2013 should be some advanced basing techniques.  If I do that I will document my frustrations and successes here.
As always comments are always welcome as well as constructive criticisms.  I have never claimed to be good enough to win painting contests, I am just shooting for a good tabletop quality and I enjoy sharing with others in the hopes that you may like them as well.

Painting Siege part 2

Well I made some progress on siege tonight but I am getting too tired to paint so I am heading to bed. I made some progress but still have a bit to do. I will probably finish him up tomorrow. Anyway here are a could work in progress pics.

Painting Siege

Ok all, Markus "Seige" Brisbane is the next project that I have on the painting table. I really enjoy Seige's background fluff and he seems like he will be a bad ass on the table once I get around to using him in some lists.
My plan is to paint him very similar to how I painted Nemo. Orange as the base with tans and browns for the secondary colors. But a big difference is that I want to try to paint some cracks and chips in his armor because he likes to mix it up a lot more than Nemo.
I finished the first coat of orange on his metal armor and once it is dry I will go back over it then I will get his head and then I will get the padding in between his armor pieces. Once I am done with that I plan to pick out the details like the leather pouches that he has all over. I also want to make his hammer glow. I haven't quite gotten that down yet but I figure if I keep practicing I will get it right eventually.
I have a few lists in mind for him but I will be looking over the forums for some ideas before I start using him. I hope that he will b good with the new steamroller rules but I guess we will see how he does.

On the Painting Table Week in Review

Since my last lost I haven't painted that much.  I have been incredibly busy with work and family issues and I haven't had much time for hobby.

Here are the rest of my light jacks that I painted over the year end.

Hunter
I tried glazing for the first time.  The blue blade on his axe was supposed to be a gradual fade from silver to blue but I guess the technique is harder than it looks on youtube.  Oh well I guess it will just take some practice and I will get it down.

The Firefly Twins Zip and Zap

Theory machine musings

Ok I am admittedly a noob when it comes to playing the game of Warmachine. I have played a couple dozen games against almost that many opponents. Tomorrow will be my first tournament of any kind. We will be playing 50 points steamroller 2013 beta pack rules. I have been really tempted to try out new things but a tournament is probably not the place to be figuring out new warcasters. I will probably take Stryker 1 and Nemo 2 because I have the most experience with them. I take Nemo tier so that I can take 5 pow 12 stormsmith stormcallers. They seem to work quite well with a stormwall against infantry heavy armies. I will be using a stormguard unit as my tar pit to stay within the tier.
If I think I am going up against high at our I will take Stryker. In the Stryker list I will use stormwall and a defender in the battle group. A unit of ATGM with UA and a hunter attached. A couple solos like Gorman and Eiryss. I thought about adding Victor Pendrake because my local meta is skewed towards hoards but changed my mind.
I will post the lists that I ended up taking and my record after the event. Wish me luck.

Later

Orange Minuteman

Ok I finished the rest of my Cygnar light jacks over the Christmas holiday. I will be posting the pics over the next couple of days. The first one Is the minuteman. I have really liked this model. The sculpt is really nice and I have seen some awesome conversions to make it look like it is flying. I really think it turned out well.
Later

Epic Nemo

All right I was able to get to my favorite caster lately over this weekend. Nemo has been very fun to play at tier one because I can take extra storm callers. I am going to finish the stormwall so I can really get some lightning action going on in a 50 point list. So the next step to playing a fully painted army was painting my caster. I know that I still have some things to do but here he is base coated and washed.

Cygnar charger

I finished the Charger for my orange army last night. I really like painting chargers but I don't need any more for my army. My plan right now is to finish up my light jacks and the. Paint a couple of casters that I use most frequently and then move on to the heavy jacks.

Orange Lancer

I finished the lancer first. I like the changes that I made to the general paint scheme. I haven't sealed it in case I decide to change anything else right now I still consider this scheme to be subject to change. After I have had a few weeks to decide if this is right color for my army I will get them l sealed its a good mat sealant. Any way I will be posting the finished pictures over the next. Couple of days as I get to them.

Work in progress report orange Cygnar army

Ok so December is usually taken up by all of the things going on. I probably won't get to my local game store at all this month and painting time is almost as hard to find. However I do manage to get to painting last night at around 10:30 and got about an hour and a half in before I had to turn in. I got quite a bit done though. All I have left to do on these warjacks is the tan areas, some highlighting and touch ups, and the fine details like the rivits and things.

Cygnar Orange Crush Army

Ok so maybe I am crazy. Or maybe I just didn't like having my Cygnar army painted like Everyone else's army. I was looking for alt paint schemes and came across a couple of orange schemes that I liked. I am starting with my light warjacks and repainting the smooth surfaces. I am going to try to get a earthy burnt orange color. I am starting with the old solar orange foundation from citadel. I am going to do a devlin mud wash and work my way up for the highlights. The metals will be done with the ancient metals from reaper, ancient bronze and ancient copper mostly. The padding and accents will be tan washed with devlin mud as well. Here is a picture after my first coat of orange. I will be putting another coat of orange before I move on to the other steps that I just outlined.

Stormwall up.... Kind of

Well I have mostly finished putting together the stormwall. Unfortunately I did not notice the major manufacturing defect in the right arm socket. There is a huge bump that stoops the arm from seating properly.

I am going to use my dremmel tool to grind it out. The dremmel can obliterate fine detail that I don't want to get rid of quite easily. I am sure it will be able to get rid of something like this without much problem. The main thing that is holding me back from doing it tonight is the fact that it is resin. And I do not have proper ventilation or a dust mask so I need to stop at the Home Depot on the way home tomorrow and get one.
Other than that set back I like how it turned out for the most part. I had envisioned it smashing a Cryx he'll jack wreck marker but it doesn't have long enough arms to make it look convincing. I guess I will try to work it into the base or many the base of my storm strider that will be finished soon as well.
Anyway here are some of the pictures of the assembly process.
Enjoy