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

Off the battlefield: non wargaming game night

I played games with my family tonight. My older brother and his family were in town and we played the Big Bang theory and poo. The Big Bang theory is similar to trivial pursuit but all of the questions are about the Big Bang theory television show. It was fun but since I am not a super fan I didn't do so well. My 12 year old nephew however knew almost every question that was asked. It was funny when his dad said that the question was too obscure or too hard and he just blurted out the answer as if it were just common knowledge. I really liked playing rock, paper, scissors, lizard, Spock, whenever someone disagreed with the answer on one of the cards.  Overall it was a fun game.

I brought Poo! it is a very fun game. Each player is a monkey and it involves 'throwing' poo cards at the other players and trying not to get too much poo on yourself in the process. It has different cards that are worth different amounts of poo that you play on the other players and they have cards that will either block the poo entirely or deflect the poo to other players instead or you can play a card that will clean some of the poo off of you.  If you get 15 poo on you you are out of the game.  The last clean monkey wins. we all had fun and my younger brother won that game. This game is fun for a family night game I know that my kids like playing it as well.

Here are some pictures of the two games that we played.  Hope you have fun playing some non tabletop miniature games sometimes as well.

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.