Danelliad the Impetuous, High Warden of Westralia

I've really got to stop letting my mates name my miniatures.  Say hello to Danelliad the Impetuous, High Warden of Westralia, as so named by my mate Alex who was to supply the shield in return for naming rights, but I ended up free handing one instead.

When I was last at my parent's house I stole this miniature from my father to paint for him as a gift for his birthday.  He's seen it already and is heading over soon for a trip and I'll give it to him to take home.  It's the first time I've painted a miniature as a gift, also my first high elf model and I don't feel nearly as clean as I expected to feel after finishing it up.

I had fun with the cloak testing out some techniques for textured material.  The NMM was really good fun on this guy too.  i think a little sharper contrast on the helmet and mail would have been nice but I'm happy with the result.  Most of all I'm happy to take away a first place at MOAB's painting comp in the single figure category for the 2nd year running.

Hope you like it.

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 Captain - Non Metallic Metal Adventures

Finally finished the captain.  He didn't take all that long, but I got held up waiting for the right tools to finish his base.  He's a 28mm model from the Heresy miniatures line in white metal.  I normally prefer to paint plastic and resin, but this model is one of my favorites.  He has so much character and so nicely crafted I just couldn't wait to paint him.

The metal is entirely NMM (Non-Metallic Metal).  White to Dark Gray to Black for the metal plates, White to English Uniform to Burnt Umber for gold and White to Dark Sea Blue to Black for the sword.

The base is just cork, green stuff for the cobblestones (I got a green stuff roller from Laser Shark Designs, great web store), static grass (woodland scenics I think).  The lavender is made from bristles of a paint brush (a big one for painting walls) painted green then dipped in sand.  The sand is painted purple and then they are just stuck into the grass tufts.  Really simple.

I had heaps of fun painting this guy and learned a lot about NMM.  Questions, comments and criticisms are always welcome.

Non Metallic Metal - Practice Practice Practice

Non metallic metal, or NMM,  is a daunting endeavor.  Almost every video you see will look painstakingly difficult and time consuming.  The outcome looks fantastic and best of all you don't have to work with metallic paint.  I hate working with metal paints because the clump, they are hard to get even and in bright light they they are so reflective it's hard to see how you are painting.  They also get into your water and infect your other paints of you don't change your water.  

My Dogs of War / Kingdoms of Men / Empire of Sonnishtal are largely heavily armored humans and I want to paint a whole army with NMM, so with that in mind I needed a faster technique.  I stumbled across the loaded brush technique and here I am.  

Completed first attempt  

​You can find heaps of detail on how to perform the loaded brush technique of wet blending on Painting Buddha, a wonderful site that you should really support if you find them helpful.  They make amazing videos. 

So the trick with this technique is practice practice practice.  Learning how wet to make the brush, how much highlight to put on the tip depending on the size of the material and how bright you want the highlight and the right thickness of each of the paints.  When you do it right the results are amazing and right now I get it right 1 in 2 or 3 (or 4) attempts. 

So to practice I'm painting a unit of Knights.  The pictures on Here are the WIP, and almost the whole model is done with the loaded brush.  They are far from my best work, but it is quick, maybe half an hour for the metal on each horse, and I'm getting faster.  Please (pretty please?) ignore the shoddy work on the extra bits like gloves and faces, like I said these are practice models for the NMM look and otherwise paited up to "battlefield" quality.

Final horse, obviously not complete but the armour is