Blog Aginor's Painting Blog

Aginor said:

Built the Gaunt Summoner and Ogre mage guy. Pretty nice models, well sculpted.

I won't build the heroes for now, because we intend to play with models we have.

List of available heroes that my friend, my wife, and I could play with:
- Weirdnob
- Warchanter
- Branchwych
- Oldblood
- Skink Starpriest
- Wight King
- Necromancer + Skellies
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Can you say the ogor guys name? I thought not so just call him "Oggy" like me.

I sort of regret selling my silver tower set now...

I think he is called Ogre Thaumaturge?

In German that's pretty easy to say actually. Not sure about the correct English pronunciation though...
"Thaw-mah-turge" maybe?

Fun fact: the first time I read the word Thaumaturge was in some D&D game or so. For what seems like ages I thought there was an "r" in the first syllable and it would have something to do with trauma.

There are some very nicely sculpted models in that set btw.
What I also like is that I get to build stuff from, like, eight different armies or so. I would never have bought a Fyreslayers or Skaven or Stormcast unit but now that they are included in ST I am sure I'll build and paint them.

I imagine it could help developing my painting skills, because they are so different from what I usually paint.

Ok guys and gals, content incoming!
I finished some stuff during the last week and yesterday I took photos of it. So there will be several posts with loads of images - and the way things are going probably also walls of text - here today. Enjoy!

Lately I talked to my brother, who has an amazing amount of knowledge about modelling (trains, tanks, planes, ships, terrain and many more in many different scales and with many different materials) and he gave me some tips and also some material to play with. Many H0 train terrain building techniques apply in our hobby as well, so I tried some stuff and I think it really took the quality of my bases to the next level.

One thing I learned: My sand (which I use for earth) has been too even, with too small grains. I determined the sizes by engineer standards, contemplating the size of rocks in the target scale and so on. I should have aimed for an artist's point of view though: Regular sized humans are looking at it. And that made my bases look too flat.
The other thing I learned: I LOVE electrostatic grass. My brother did several square meters of model train terrain with it already and showed me both the results and the technique, and I borrowed some of his grass and his NOCH "Gras-Master" electrostatic device. I started creating some grass tufts myself, and also created some grass bases, starting with a 32mm one and then bigger ones.

My Orruk-playing friend and I spent a whole Saturday afternoon and half of the night trying out the Gras-Master and several terrain techniques, working with "Styrodur" foam stuff, sand, small rocks, grass, PVA, wood, mixing and applying colors from the hardware store and experimenting. Also eating Barbecue and drinking half a crate of beer. It was fun.

During the following days I spent hours in my basement doing more of that kind of stuff. And I liked the results.

Problem with that: When I had finished creating the new terrain pieces and bases I didn't like my earlier bases anymore. So I re-worked some of them, applying another layer of sand, more color, and grass to them.

And with that here are my first two pictures. I added some grass tufts to a few of my heroes, and the same goes for my Salamanders and Kroxigor. For the bigger models I also added some more coarse sand and a layer of grey drybrush for highlighting.



...to be continued...

Next step was to re-work my Terradons and my Troglodon in the same way.

For the Troglodon I used grass tufts and glued them on because for using the Gras-Master you have to be quite close to the surface you are applying the grass to. I didn't want to remove the Troglodon from its base so I had to work around that. I also applied more sand, drybrushed it, added some sort of tree seed capsule that looks like a plant (found those in my garden). IMO the rocks blend into the sand much better that way. If you compare the new pictures to my older Troglodon pictures in this thread I think you will agree that the base looks better this way. I am quite happy with it.

For the Terradons I used the Gras-Master to give them a nice wild meadow to fly over. The electrostatic grass I used is #7371 from the german manufacturer "Busch".
What's great about electrostatic grass, compared to just scattering it over the surface by hand: The blades of grass are really standing on the surface instead of lying around. It makes the grass look much more natural. If you need flattened grass (to create footsteps or to make it look like wind is blowing through it) you can just press and move it around as desired while the PVA hasn't cured yet.

The grass I used for the tufts is a bit darker, not sure which brand. I found in in my brother's hobby crate and it was already mixed.
There are several manufacturers for electrostatic grass. From the top of my head: Busch, Noch, Heki, and Woodland Scenics.




...to be continued...

YES!

Another convert into the art of basing, welcome to the club

It is amazing how much difference a base makes, I've nearly done on mine, I can't wait to finish painting what I have and get onto trying display models.

I too have a "Flock box" and as you say the results are amazing.

Crowsfoot said:

YES!

Another convert into the art of basing, welcome to the club

It is amazing how much difference a base makes, I've nearly done on mine, I can't wait to finish painting what I have and get onto trying display models.

I too have a "Flock box" and as you say the results are amazing.

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Thanks!
For big models it makes a really huge difference. I probably won't redo my Skinks' 25mm bases because coarse sand tends to look weird there (skinks are tiny) and there is hardly enough space to add nice grass tufts, but I will certainly spend more time on my bigger models' bases.
I have some mushrooms built out of Green Stuff and Fimo lying around (my friend showed me some Green Stuff sculpting techniques and we tried building some out of both materials) and once they are painted I will place some of them on the bases as well.

Short interlude: UNDEAD!!!

No, not Kroak. In December I built some Spirit Hosts, because I want to play with Arcane Ruins, and a wizard can use those to summon Spirit Hosts. I got some, built and painted them, and even played them, but I based them only a few days ago. I didn't apply grass here because for our upcoming Death army we have planned doing winter bases, with ice and snow and so on. The rocks and sand are just the base layer, so those are still WIP.

For the Spirit Hosts themselves I used the same colors as for my Balewind Vortex: Primed white, added some green shade, then glazed all over it with GW's green glaze. They look a bit too..."wet" and (judging by my evolved standards) a bit sloppily painted maybe, but I still like them. I love their sculpt (although they were...interesting to build) and how dynamic they look. IMO that's one of the things you can only do properly in plastic. You cannot do that with resin I think.



...to be continued...

On St. Nicholas day (6th December) 2016 "someone" (my wife claims she has no clue who) left a Bastiladon in my boot. Well, tried, because the box was too big. Anyway, this gift was one I was very happy with.

I built it around Christmas, and base coated it pretty quickly, but I finished the model in January because I lacked a bright green color. I had planned to base it together with some other models but then *mumble mumble* stuff happened and I didn't, so it had a black base until last week.
This was the first base where I applied a larger amount of grass. And the electrostatic grass just shines there, you can apply it quite densely.

As for the model itself:
The bright green parts were done with a sponge normally used for polishing cars.
The solar engine's gems was glazed over with Lamenter's Yellow to make it shine. The small details on the model were mostly done by my wife, and I think she did a great job there.
I chose the Rhino horn head but since I still wanted to have the bronze plate I just put it on the smaller horn right behind it.
The Skink in the back is not glued to the back of the Bastiladon, but only to the solar engine. I built the Bastiladon convertible to be able to use the other version as well. I never played the Ark of Sotek but I could.
...I forgot to take pictures of the Ark, I will post some at a later point.
I like how the colors look, that desert yellow has a nice contrast to the green, and the Bastiladon is the only one of my models that actually has blue eyes.
For the mouth I used a purple shade, that created a better contrast with the teeth.
The wet looking part near the left front foot is vallejo gloss varnish, I created a small puddle of mud with that. I used that technique on other bases as well, where it is more visible.

I don't consider the base to be 100% finished, I will add a few small details there in the future, perhaps flowers or mushrooms on the meadow.






...to be continued...

Tired of reading my blog yet? No? Ok, then here's some more!

I already mentioned we built some terrain pieces, and here are pictures of some of them.

First we built some walls, to get to know the materials. We used three different techniques we learned from the Terrain Tutor and Luke's Aps (great guys, check out their videos on Youtube).

Materials:
- Polyethylen (I think) hard foam sheets as bases
- Dense Styrofoam (called Styrodur here) insulation material for the wall itself
- Sand and stuff
- wall colors from the hardware store: brown, white, black.
- grass
- PVA glue for applying the sand (mixed with a bit of water and a drop of dish soap) and grass (pure PVA glue)
- Montage glue (Pattex in that case) for glueing the Styrofoam. Will also work with PVA but the montage glue is stickier and cures faster. My brother recommended that one. You just have to be more careful because compared to PVA glue that one doesn't become transparent and it is a bit thicker.

Painting: Just primed black, then applied some grey, washed with a thinned black, and in the end drybrushed with a lighter grey. The earth is brown, then drybrushed with a bit of grey before applying the grass.

The first one is the easiest technique, but also the one that creates the most simple results. I made some mistakes here (for example not caring about the direction of the Styrofoam, thus ripping it in some lines which makes it look bad close up), but I'd still say it isn't too bad for a first try and we will use it on the table. It would be better suitable for uildings though because it looks pretty regular.
The lines are just painted onto the Styrofoam with a ball point pen and then cut into it a bit and used a coarse brush to scrubb off some more.







The second one is done similarly, but the stones are smaller and less regular, like some really old celtic wall I once saw on some pictures taken in the north of the UK (I think), some of them are then indented a bit. I borked it up a bit, forgetting some lines (I think I may have had one beer too much at that point...)
It doesn't look too good up close but it looks great from a bit further away. So... still good I guess.




The third wall is the most complex one, built out of single blocks of Styrofoam glued together. It looks pretty great IMO, it is the most three-dimensional of the three.





...to be continued...

This post is about more terrain.
I had this idea for building something like a fence or something, but didn't have a good idea on how to build it. So I thought about other barriers used in former times, to block cavalry and such. I remembered that armies used to build barriers by just building a heap of dirt and ramming wooden poles into it, similar to how palisades were built, but more angled towards the enemy.

So I grabbed some Styrodur, some hazel and some common dogwood I had dried in my basement for terrain building purposes, and made some.

Not quite finished, but already looking decent, and ready for playing. I went for a slighty eroded look there, as if they had been standing there after an earlier battle for some weeks/months.





...to be continued...

The bases look amazing! The tufts and electrostatic grass is gorgeous. These walls and terrain are brilliant! Great learning experiences, and inspiring stuff here!

Thank you!
I had a lot of fun doing these, although they had quite an impact on my schedule, pushing other things back. Guess the Skellies will have to wait.

Aginor said:

Thank you!
I had a lot of fun doing these, although they had quite an impact on my schedule, pushing other things back. Guess the Skellies will have to wait.

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Skellys are super fast to paint anyway!

Skellies can wait, they waited until after death and decay to get back onto the battlefield, they can wait a bit longer!

When I play them I'll just tell people: Originally I wanted to play a Free Peoples army but I painted too slowly so they all died.

Ok, so next one!

This is my Oldblood on Carnosaur.
Notes:
- I call him Ironman, or Tony, since his Sunbolt Gauntlet reminded me of Tony Stark's suit. I painted it accordingly. That metallic red is just gold with red shade. For the yellow I used white with yellow glaze again.
- I like the rotting (demon?) skull on top, very visually pleasing.
- The flesh turned out quite differently than expected.
- I wanted to do something different with the base here. So I asked my friend for some spare parts of his models that I could use, and we came up with the idea of Chaos Giant parts. When I saw the head I remembered a cool model I saw here, a Carnosaur eating a Troglodon, and I thought: hell yeah let's do it.
- I had the Carnosaur already glues to the (empty) base so I used a hot knife to get it off again.
- I used the Army Painter blood effect and rust effect paints on the base and model and IMO they are comparable to GWs products. It was a bit of a risk since I didn't know how it would turn out. The blood may be slightly over the top but I like it.
- originally that small pool should be a puddle of mud with just a bit of blood mixed in but I added a few drops too much. Whatever.
- The giant's head was also a good opportunity to try out my flesh tones, I will need those for the Kairic Acolytes soon.
- I had some problems glueing the giant parts on since the grass soaked up the glue. But in the end it worked.
- That model and it's base were fun.







...to be continued...

Fantastic stuff. Very bloody carnosaur model. I like your terrain pieces, and also like the bastiladon color scheme.

Looks fantastic! Great gore, awesome paint job and brilliant base.

The next model is a very special one for me. That's because it is the most complex, most time consuming, most expensive, most variable, most detailed and the one that cost me most of my sanity. I proudly present: my Stegadon.

Notes:
- I replaced two of the crew by Skink handlers, so I could convert those two spare Skinks to normal Skinks for my army. Now I finally have 50 Skinks.
- the skin is just white primer and shades, like with my Troglodon and the belly of my Carnosaur.
- I did a LOT of details on that throne, as well as on the rest of the Howdah. The small triangles on the Skystreak Bow below the golden skulls are the smallest parts I ever painted.
- I had to force myself to choose just four colors for the Howdah and not make it too colorful. Red, blue, gold and steel make up most of it, keeping it consistent with my other models. The steel and wood Howdah makes a good contrast to the purple skin tone. If you followed my posts you know I struggled quite a bit with that one, but in the end I am pretty happy with it. The "Oh No Phase" was just very long with this one. Many thanks to all of you who helped me with that!
- the base was done using the same techniques as the ones posted earlier, with puddles of mud, sand and grass.
- I added some Aztec ruin parts to the base.






Here are the two extra guys. Nothing special, just Skinks. Their Boltspitters are cut spears, their shields are accessories from the Stegadon kit.


Since the priest is not needed in this version I assembled him and put him on the base so I can use it as a standalone priest or maybe as a prophet of Sotek (will maybe add a snake to the base or so). He has a bloody golden dagger which looks kinda cool IMO.


But wait! He's not glued to that base!
He has tiny neodymium magnets on his feet, and I put another two into the base.
It was a slotted base and I glued them into the slot. I closed the rest of the slot using PVA glue and sand.
Almost invisible.


...but why the magnets? we'll see it in the next post. Stay tuned...