On the Bench - 16th of March

Now that the Wolf Knights are all complete it's time to start something new.  I was going to do a single model, something high quality, but I'm on a bit of a high from creating a unit so I decided to do another one.  Keeping in the Dogs of War theme I decided to break out the Alcatani Fellowship.  Had these guys for ages and I will probably rename and theme them once the painting is further through. 

Keeping with the non metallic metal theme I was going for a polished brass kind of look for these guys.  Vallejo English Uniform for the base, Armour Brown for the shadows, Iraqi Sand for the highlight and white for the tips. Sounds like a lot but with loaded brush it is a quick 4 step process.  I don't know if I'm all that happy with the blue pants though and I'll probably change that. 

Pretty happy with the helmet and plume.  There are two types of plumes, which is a shame because I like the Mohawk style one pictured here. 

Going to do about 20 or so for this regiment, count them as dogs of war for KoW and EoS spear men for 9th.   A second regiment will let me make a horde in the future, but one at a time.

Thats what's on the bench today. 

The Wolf Knights of Tyris Gate

“The tunderous north can be an unforgiving place, and so with it’s people. Dorak trudged his horse through the icy plains following the quickly dissappearing tracks of the elusive wolves of the bitter lands. Today would be a better day, today his hunt would bring him fame and fortune. With the pelt of the wolf he would be accepted into the order and the Ice Queen would know his name and the chance to behold her beauty would be his.”

Had a great time painting these guys.  They are old hammer knights of the white wolf.  So much better than any of the new knights from games workshop if you ask me, at least the empire ones. 

All the metal is done with non metallic metal with the loaded brush (a quick form of wet blending).  The base follows the same style as my halflings fighting cocks and there are nearly 200 of those lavenders, phew. 

I play 9th age and Kings of War.  The bases are interlocking individual bases that are the right size for both games.  Individual models can be removed (should have taken a photo but you can see the lines between the bases).

The Wolf Knights of Tyris Gate are the body guard of the Ice Queen of Tyris.  Their banner is modeled after her horse barding.  They roam the land selling their services in the search for fame and fortune and building their brand as brutal and unforgiving killers.

Thought I would try something else here as well so I shot a video of the unit to get a more natural feeling of the unit.  Would love some feedback if you watch it. 

Project Complete!   Lastly, here's a few photos of the bases before I put the models on. 

On The Bench - 1st March

Slow hobby progress for the last few weeks as I've been on a little holiday.  Had a great time but little painting done.  I have done a little now I'm back, and started on the base for my wolf knights

The flowers are easy, bur damn there are a lot of them!!

Same basing technique as the halflings, but not in a skirmish style.  Regiment of knights for Kings of war or 10 knights for The 9th Age.  Lots of flowers to finish up and then the grass to add. 

Four of the knights are done, barring a little weathering and cleaning up that I'll do at the end.   All done in non metallic metal mostly with a quick loaded brush.

Not a great photo but you get the idea.  Started working on the unit captain too, love the old model and quite fun to paint

Still quite a bit to go, hopefully he'll look wicked when I'm done. 

So that's what's on the bench today.

The Ice Queen of Tyris

Ok so originally the Ice Queen of Kislev before her homelands were destroyed and she moved to Mantica.  I really love this model.  She isn't the fantastical animated glowing spikes messy elaborate giant of the new games workshop figures and I love her for it. 

I went with a very monochromatic cold colour scheme for the ice Queen.  Only 4 colours in total are needed to paint her.  Dark Sea Blue, Midnight Blue, Azure Blue Elfic Flesh.  Also a mix of black and white. 

The horse weatherbeeta (I think that's what it's called) was my first attempt at free hand.  From black I shaded the moon haphazardly with an airbrush, then masked it with a round piece of tape, shaded the sky, painted the mountain and trees, then dotted the stars.  One thing to note, White is very hard to freehand with, the stars are light gray and just dotted white. 

Had a ball painting this witch.  She has so much character!  I'm pretty happy with the result and plan to take her along to the scale model show tomorrow for a bit of fun.

Nightstalker Shadow Hounds

Now that my swamp base is done I've been working on some shadow hounds to occupy it to define my night stalker army style.  I wanted something dark, nightmarish, black and evil but also a little colour.  Eyes aren't really enough colour for me, but the Tyranid models that GW use have lots of areas that I can set to glow with the inner purple power of these creatures.

 I used loaded brush a lot on these guys to get the blending of light gray to black to give them some depth.  The purple is simply white and then layered up to purple and a drybrush OSL.  I wanted a good effect without spending a month on each unit and I'm happy with the result.

Next step for me is the second unit of these Shadowhounds.  This unit is the lead and the second troop will be behind.  The scenic bases will match and join together with magnets when done to make a regiment.

On another note, I've added a subscribe link to my blog in case you're interested in hearing about what I'm working on.  

Creating a Swamp Basing Scheme for Kings of War

My last post was on the inspiration for the swamp basing scheme for a Kings of War Nightstalker army.  Since then I've completed my first base.  This is for a troop of cavalry and will be used for Shadow Hounds.  Those models aren't painted yet so won't be attached for a little while more, but I'm using Hormagants from the Tyranid range of GW 40K.  Water effects are easy and fun, so here's how to give it a go.

The finished product

Step 1 - Cut your base

There are lots of places that will pre-cut you some MDF to the size you want and that's fine.  I have a large sheet of acrylic that I use and I just cut it with a jig saw and sand it down when I'm done.  It works fine and makes a good starting base, plus it's a little cheaper.

Step 2 - Mounds and Lakes

I use Fimo Modelling Clay for this step.  You can use something else if you like, Milliput for example, but just be sure that it's easy to sand once you're done.  I like clay because it's super cheap and you use quite a bit.  Mold it into place on base just as in the picture.  The low parts will fill with water.  If you have a log or a stone, make impressions in the clay before it dries.

Once the clay is all dry, snap it off and glue it down.  If you used Milliput it will bond to the base, but clay won't so use a little super glue will bond it.  Once bonded, mix some white glue with water and paint over it.  This creates a tougher surface and ensures it won't chip later.  Once again if you used Milliput this isn't necessary.

Step 3 - Sand, Rocks and Logs

Glue your rocks and logs down into the previously molded shapes you made in your clay.  I just used superglue for this part, white glue would work too just take longer to dry.

Clay and putty have too smooth a surface to look like mud or sand when painted so you'll need to add some texture.  You can use Modelling Sand (whatever brand you like) but I'm stingy so I just use cheap sand from the hardware store.  I got 10 Kg for about the same price as a small baggy of sand from a craft store.  It's fine, it's clean and it works really well.  If you want it finer (mud looks better with REALLY fine sand) like I did, just crush it in a mortar and pestle first.

Mix your sand with watered down white glue and paint it on over the mounds.  Clump it where you want to make it look wetter, messed up or mossy.

Step 4 - Who wants Moss?

Spread undiluted white glue across any surface you want to be mossy.  Don't add water because you won't get enough depth from your moss.  While the glue is still wet, you have a while white glue dries slow, pour on as much sand as you can or dip your base into the glue.  Press the sand down to spread the glue through the sand and then wait a few minutes.  The glue is pretty tacky when wet so you don't need to leave it to dry, so tap the excess sand off your base.

Stick down some extra skulls or rocks or whatever you like and you're ready to paint once it's dry.  You could add some things like mushrooms now but I find it easier to pick placement a bit later.

Step 5 - Paint.

Pick your colours, undercoat black, paint, ink, drybrush, airbrush, whatever you like.  This isn't a painting tutorial but if you're reading this and you want to know my formula just leave a comment below and I'll post it.

Step 6 - Plants

To make my plants I went to my local hobby store and bought everything that looked leafy that I could use.  I cut the leaves off and arranged them into plants.  To make the ferns I bought a few plastic palm trees from Eckersleys, cut the fronds off and stuck them together with a greenstuff base.  It's easier than you think.

Once you've put them together, undercoat black and paint them.  They're plastic so they are fragile and the paint might crack so cover them in mat varnish of your choice.

Mushrooms are easy.  Get a small peice of wire, put a small ball of greenstuff on the end and wrap it around into the stalk.  Then get a larger ball and just push it onto the end.  They look great and add some real contrast to your base.

Step 7 - Water

This is the hardest step and you can't just paint over it if you stuff it up, so take care and run a few tests first.  I did 4 test runs with different levels of ink and base paint colour to determine the colour scheme I wanted and settled on a fairly transparent green with a hint of brown.  The mix is roughly two table spoons of resin to 5 drops of ink (Vallejo) in a ratio of 4 green (Black Green specifically) to 1 brown ink.

The resin I've been using is Envirotex Lite.  It's readily available and pretty cheap.  Some forums will suggest other options, another is ICE Resin, but I've never tried them.  Envirotex Lite does a good job and is very simple to use.  Use gloves when you use it, not because it's overly harmful to your skin but because the risk of getting some on your fingers and then putting them in your eyes is high if you don't.  There are heaps of tutorials on you tube on how to use Envirotex Lite so I won't go into it here.  Google is your friend.

Once I was happy with the test results I used masking tape to mark around my diorama the height I wanted the resin to go to.  I had previously picked 6mm because masking tape comes in that height from the hobby store but you can pick any height.  

Then it's just a case of pouring your resin in.  Pour it in VERY slowly.  The best way to do this is to drill a small hole in the side of the cup holding your resin and drop it through that in a continuous stream.  It won't push into all the gaps on it's own, I used a toothpick to push it into any gaps that it's viscosity prevented it from going on to.

Step 8 - Cover and Let Cure

Cover it up so dust doesn't get in, trust me you'll regret it if it does or even worse if a bug crawls into it and get's stuck in the resin!  Once done, roughly 24 hours to be sure, pull the tape off and sand the edges flat with the finest sandpaper you can.  Use a gloss varnish to clear up the edge and here's the result.

Thanks for reading, I hope you get something out of this post, please leave a comment below or share this post.

Basing the Night Stalkers

In my previous post I talked about the inspiration behind the Night Stalker army I want to build.  In this post I'm looking into the basing of the army.  The creatures themselves will be mostly black with some OSL, so the bases really need to make the army.  The bases need to create a nice contrast with the evil black creatures stalking through them.  I've decided that I want a deep green swamp basing with plenty of water effects, colourful growth and deep green growth.  Fallen logs and moss will play a big part.

Here's my inspiration research.

Swamp bases work well when there's stark contrast between the elements.  I need to combine this with the stark contrast with the night stalkers treading through them.  I recently picked up a two part water effects resin kit and the next step is to get competent with that.

I've also never created mossy surfaces.  I really like the second picture with the mossy rocks and logs.  I've sourced a few places that sell stumps but I'm planning on using real sticks along with some greenstuff to model the fallen logs.

I'm still looking for a good place to get small plants like ferns and reeds from, but I'll try the color scheme and water effects first and make sure I can do it first.

Night Stalkers - My First KoW Project

Now that I've completed my first Kings of War tournament I've decided that I'm going to blog a little more about getting into the hobby.  My particular inspiration is coming from the new Night Stalker list.

What I love about this list is that there are no models for it.  Not only that but the list doesn't really have a counterpart in any other game.  The team that created it has drawn inspiration from Babylon 5 (one of my favorite TV series ever), the Tyranid army (the only 40K army I ever played) and from the looks of the lists from several classic horror films.

I've done a bit of research to help me find the right inspiration for this army.  Here's a gallery that shows what I'm thinking this army should look like.

Nightmare Horror

Demon Hounds

Also a good example of OSL on a dark colour.

Babylon 5 Shadow Creature

Imagine these crawling out of a swamp to eat your children

Good OSL on Black

Dream Stealer

Shadowy Banshee

Good OSL on Black

Nightmares

Glowing Eyes and Mouth

Black Lighting Effects

Dark Evil

Just goes to show you can create a lot of character without colour or definition.  Now how do you make that true for miniatures?

Shadow Monster

Black is a colour that can really blend into the background, so lighting is going to be important.  Basing will also let me have very dark models without making the whole thing feel unpainted.

I'd like to try a few techniques that I haven't worked on before with this army.  The first is going to be for the base, and that's water effects.   This army is going to be based around lush green swampland filled with water, fallen logs, critters, plants and moss.  Probably not a lot of grass, but reeds and weeds a plenty.  A dark and bold green will be the primary colour for the bases and I plan to produce one of these before even assembling a single model for the army.