Blog Deer Riffs' thinking, inking and skinking.

Looks amazing! The feathers turned out fantastically. So much great detail. The pink with the purple scales looks so good.

Normally for the square bases that I want to keep I clip the sides off and cut the corners down a bit.

 

You could also take a file to it and round off the edges to make it look like more of a mound. If you have any skulls kicking about you can add them before you texture the base to make it more natural, too.

 

Meanwhile, the purple saurus conundrum is still weighing heavy on my mind. I've given it a crack with my Old Blood on Carnosaur from the start collecting kit. I started with the same xerxes purple undercoat as the skinks and then a shade of drakenhoff nighthshade ink. An extra coat to darken it more and then dry brushed with pure xerxes purple and some highlights of xerxes purple mixed with palid wych flesh. I used a changeling pink dry-paint as a highlight for the scales on the Old blood, that was a cool new experience too.


I'm really happy with how the Carnosaur came out - it was a really awkward sculpt and I had to fill a lot of gaps with liquid green stuff. I did some more glazing work on the scales and stone work on the throne which I think is going to be a really valuable technique to have in my painting repertoire going forward from here. Since taking these photos I've 99% finished the base and will post up some pic of the finished model.
I don't know if an outside observer would be able to particularly tell that the big purple dinos and the little pink dinos are related to one another, but I'm hoping that with consistent basing and the weapons and armour all being those bone colours they will look like a cohesive force.

Lastly I have been assembling some saurus warriors and have done some preliminary painting on my bastiladon. I'll take some pics tomorrow. It's such a cool model. I'm doing it's shell in the same colour as the skinks' shields. Not sure what colour for the gem stone yet... I'm thinking a very bright red/orange - any thoughts on what would look cool against the pink skinks, blue shell and bone/brown stonework?

 

I just feel like it takes the pressure off when going to paint the "good models"; like I've had a test run, made some mistakes and learnt from them. I try to do something a little bit better each model I paint. To me, it's nuts to expect to paint something perfect the very first time. It's a journey and a learning process.

 

Your oldblood looks epic! The carno ks gorgeous. I really like your colours. In Oldhammer, it would make sense for the oldblood to be darker, as the scales darken on saurus with age and experience. So if you wanted you could go lighter purple on the warriors.

 

Yeah, I completely understand - I think this was a unique experience in that I had the expendable models that I'd basically recycled from my childhood. I don't think I'll be so lucky in the future. I'd probably do the same as you - practising on sprue. Maybe I could cut some texture in to it to practice drybrushing or stick two bits together to practice getting ink into the recess between them? Alternatively I do have a heap of spare skink arms lying around so it might just be small practice areas?

@Ritual great idea! I'd never even considered filing the base down. Thanks for the tip

 

Awesome stuff!
Really like your skink priest, I am also a huge fan of the sculpt. Also really nice carnosaur!

What I do is practice on the spare models that come "extra" in the boxes, for example the 4 skinks out of the 24 that come in a box. This anyways makes more sense if you played classic warhammer (or 9th age I guess, I haven´t tried it out), as the infantry had to be ranked up, and I found it to be the easiest to do so in multiples of 10. So that way when I get a skinks box I think about it as two 10-men (lizards?) regiment trays and other 4 for colour testing or basing bigger models

 

Really good stuff there! Loving the gradual transitioning (the carnosaur and marines are possibly my favourites) As for practicing on spare models, I don't really have many actual spares to try on (although a lot of people use ebay to buy dirt cheap pre-painted models that need stripping, much like what you've done with the space marines above). I mainly try out a scheme on the first model of the unit and see where I can go from there in terms of new schemes or improvements - that or I look at my much older models (from when I first started) and try to update or experiment on them. Also, I think with the shading and glazes on the space marines, it looks like you're almost going into osl (object-source lighting) territory; where there is a light source (shown or implied) on the model that creates light and shadow. It can be quite a challenging technique to achieve, but the space marines show it really well for being experiments in shading/glazing! (Heck, I've never even attempted osl! Think you've inspired me to give it a go! )

P.S: There are many tutorials on the internet which might be worth googling if you ever consider learning more about osl

 

@Soxii, regarding osl. I guess that's what I was going for. It's definitely a very harsh light - not sunlight, hence the white reflection spots. Thank you for the compliments. I was aiming for a really stark chiaroscuro like in a Caravaggio painting:
or like a noir comic. Perhaps they're under a turret spotlight? My first attempt was on a Tau crisis suit model.

At the time of painting, I was so proud of my job on this model. I showed it to the bloke who runs my local Games Workshop and he complimented me on my highlights and then suggested that I could make the dark darker to really pop the contrast. He introduced me to lahmian medium and gave me a bit of a lesson on how to use the stuff. I've got to say, the helpfulness and inclusiveness from GW staff has improved so much since I was a kid. Great guy. Anyway, that's where the space marine experiment came in.

Also regarding OSL - I tried to do some glow effects on a Tau Ethereal's weapon using a combination of dry brushing and glazes:

I'll definitely check out some tutorials online - I've watched some warhammer tv vids and I think I've got the mantra of "thin your paints" down pat. Any recommendations for tutorial vids or blogs?

@Crowsfoot & @Jorgik I think you both are so right! That's the way to do it.

 

Thanks, @Crowsfoot! That's a great list. I'll check them out.

Just like my ex-wife... I don't even know what that means. It sounded cooler in my head.


Anyways, Bastiladon is coming along. Slower than I'd like, but that'll teach me for going back to work after the Easter break.



I'm not completely satisfied with the colour of the shell, I'd like it a bit more solid blue to match the skinks' shields, as though their shields are made out the discarded husks of an old bastiladon.

One mistake I've made with this model is that I think I've assembled too much of it before painting. I've done some sub-assembly to make the parts easier to paint, but I shouldn't have stuck those two skink riders and their jungle public-transport hand rails onto the beast before painting. It's made it quite awkward and messy to paint. If I paint another one of these I'd do just the bastiladon and then the riders and their contraption seperately.
Also, I think I've stuck those poles on wrong somehow because they're quite uneven...

This week I've also done a bit more assembling too. A couple of Saurus Warriors from the start collecting box.



I'm not super impressed with these models tbh there were a lot of mould-lines and excess plastic that needed to be removed and as you can see from this little dude's drum, a few gaps that I've had to liquid green stuff. I can still see the line through the green stuff. Any ideas on how to fix this up to give it a nice smooth finish before I prime them? That'd be much appreciated.

I've taken some of @Bowser 's advice that I've seen him post around the place, and I've taken the masked troglodon riding skink from the start collecting box and done a bit of a conversion on him using some of the parts from the left over ark of sotek pieces from the bastiladon box:



I was reading in some of the Warhammer Fantasy threads on the forum about old mate Tehenhauin. He sounded super cool. The idea of this lizardman with snakes pooled around him that he sends forward to do his bidding sounded so cool. I had to warm up and bend some of the snake pieces to wrap them around his body and now I'll use a little green stuff to give the ones draped around his shoulders some tails and the same for the ones at his feet.I'm really looking forward to painting this one!



Lastly - there was some mail waiting for me when I got home today! My chameleon skinks (and a few other things) came in. I'd been camping out the gw online store for ages and the models always said "temporarily out of stock".

Then a few days ago they were available! I showed my wife and she said 'you should get one', but what I heard was 'you should get ten'. She always says I'm a great listener. At least, that's what I think she said, I wasn't really paying attention.
Now the chameleons, the Slaan Starmaster and Eternity Warden I got are all "temporarily out of stock" again. Did I get the only models in the country?!



These are my first resin miniatures. I've read that I need to wash them in (warm, soapy?) water before priming, but I'm also noticing a lot of little bits of excess plastic at parts of the model, do I need a special tool to get these off? I have the GW sprue clipper and mouldline remover, but would a hobby knife be better? I don't have one of those.

I've got a couple of ideas for how to paint these funny fellas. Either my favourite pink with some sort of cloaking effect, like these Tau stealth suits I found online:



Or, like the classic chameleon that can't decide what the heck it's meant to be blending in with so just goes full technicolor:



The absurdity of having these ridiculously bright and colourful units as a stealth team is hilarious to me.

Both paint schemes are definitely well above my technical capabilities at the moment. I guess I'll have to sacrifice some more of my childhood marines for the greater good and practice, practice, practice.

That's all I've got for now. My goal for next week is to finish the bastiladon, finish the base on the carnosaur, assemble the rest of the start collecting box, green stuff the skink-snake-priest-guy (name in progress), and get them all primed.

Piece of cake, right?

 

The bastiladon looks incredible! Absolutely stunning. Tehenhauin is great, 20 points cheaper than a regular skink priest too. I think the bright colours would look fantastic. @Fiona had great success with a colorful army.
The Prismatic Serpents

 

So happy I found this ! You are an amazing painter, I 'm inspired from your miniatures !

 

Snake cloak! Why didn't I think of that! ...That's the next conversion sorted anyway