Blog Joshua's Paint Blog - Back from the dead!

Check the garden section of a diy market... they probably sell it as mulch material or ground cower... as if you can get a sample... that stuff is already predried and you don't need to hurt any living trees...

 

I might do that! I took a very little amount off a very big tree. She will be okay

 

Not that I'm condoning stealing, but I don't think that your neighbors or local office park will notice if a few pieces of pine bark are missing from their flower beds. It's kinda the same with going to the local kids playground and retrieving a cup of sand out of the sandbox. Nobody's going to miss it.

That being said, I've bought truckloads of chipped pine bark to use for a soft ground cover for my kids playset, so I've got tons, but my house is also surrounded by several hundred acres of pine trees so that's where I go when I need some bigger pieces, like on my Stonehorn or Thundertusk. I always look for the pieces that are practically falling off though. They are usually the ones that are already practically dry, but I'd still let them have a while to sit in a very dry environment.

 

Yeah that's what I did as well. The pieces I took we almost breaking off. You do have to watch out for the mossy ones too. I'm sure those would not age well. I'm in the insurance world for a living, so my knowledge of botany is very limited, but I'm assuming it could rot or decompose.

 

If dried completely and treated with paint and glue even the mossy ones should stay in good condition...

 

Good to know. I have a solid collection of bark right now, but I will probably get my next batch from a different source. Still trying to improve my basing game. It can be fun.

 

I need to tap into Lustria's vast knowledge. Who here uses or has used Army Painter's Colored Primers? I don't have an airbrush, even though I really want one, and I was thinking about investing in some Goblin Green and Skeleton Bone to speed up my Skink painting process. I suck at painting fast, but I have a plan, and includes fast, colored zenithal priming and glazes.

Is it worth the investment? I've had some recent primer issues but I think most of them are due to the weather.

 

@Aginor uses army painter I think ... not sure about the specific colors though...

 

@Crowsfoot any good place to find colored Automotive primers? I can only find black and white at my local Walmart.

 

Below is a terrible picture of my first set of Salamanders. I have my crap phone right now and it turns all the colors weird versions of themselves. I'll take some better pictures when they are finished. I tried to finish the group in one sitting and focus on speed and less quality. Tabletop standard. Did a lot of experimenting and learned a lot. I promise you they are not that red and yellow, they are really quite orange!!

I hate this picture because of what it did to the colors, but I had to share it as a teaser! Much better pictures and finished Sallies coming up soon! It was a nice break from Skinks.

 

Thanks! I had a long session of highs and lows but learned a lot.

I figured I'd share a little bit more of painting experience for anyone that is interest.

I started this little project off by using it as an experiement to practice wet blending. I took my inspiration from .

I have done a little wet blending but not much. I mixed up 5 colors ranging from off white to dark brown! I then did one side of the above dinosaur from white on the bottom to dark brown on top with oranges in the middle. It worked great and looked great (this is not what you see above...). I was feeling really happy and invincible.

Then things went wrong. I had a second thought. I thought that adding some brown spots near the top of the model would break it up in an organic way. While not a bad idea, it went horribly wrong. I should have scarified that one model as a Test model sacrifice to the gods, but I didn't. I tried to save it by turning the spots into stripes and then added them to the other 2. Then I did something worse. It was getting late and I made another bad decision. The browns ate up the really nice rich oranges at the top of the model so I wanted to bring them back out, but I mixed up the wrong color orange and also put it on way too thick. Between that and the brown stripes the blend was killed. In the words of Ron Swanson it was "clubbed to death before my eyes." But it still kind of looks cool.

I have 3 more dinos and I'm going to adapt and learn from my mistakes! Making mistakes always helps me learn. I hope to finish these guys with some highlights and then show some better pictures and show you guys my wet blending skills too! I know the above doesn't show it but I swear I can do it!

 

Great looking sallies, and thanks for the tutorial!

 

New pics! Finished my Salamanders. I had to do a lot of repairs, but I learned a lot from trying some new techniques. I tried paint a little faster. than I usually do and keep them at Table Top Stands. I also uploaded some better pics of my Skinks. Working on finishing a squad of 20 and their bases. Let me know what you think!!

 

Epic level skinks! They look like they mean business

Excellent color scheme.

 

Thank you! I stole the rough color palette from a pic online and then made it my own. My original skinks, on top of my EoTG, don't really match up with my new, more yellow green scheme, but that's okay. I feel like it takes a few tries until you hammer in what you like and the best way to paint it. These are brighter which is great because they are meant for the table top.

I'm pretty happy with how the Sallies look. Their heads are literal BLOCKS but the old sculpted GW scales match our scales pretty well!