Painting Challenge Part IV

The wyvern is done and its been a long slow journey filled with mistakes and pitfalls and even a crash but today marks the day I completed the painting challenge (my first ever). Only a single day before the deadline but I did have two things that kept me from completing it sooner, the aforementioned crash with the subsequent need to reattach the wings and playoff hockey (I'm a Bruin's fan) which usually cut into my painting time. All that said I feel quite good about my accomplishment. This Wyvern unit marks another 80 pts worth of Warmaster painted. The value of the unit will of course depend on if the wyvern carries an Orc hero (160 pts) or the general (175 pts). This puts my Orc Warmaster painted units grand total to 370 pts (not including hero types).

Here is a shot before I worked on the base itself...

I was going to put field grass on the base but with the wings on it was just to hard to get my fingers in at the right angle and its really not as easy as it looks. I plan to use it on the general on foot base and possible a few others (maybe even going back and adding some to say the trolls) but that is a tale for another day! While you wait please enjoy the pictures.

Damn wings are blocking my light!!! Well, now I know how the infantry feels when this bad boy flies over!

This is one of the few pictures that you can actually see the gum line of the wyvern is painted red!

I'm very proud of the shading on the wings.  :D

Its hard to see the detail on the base with the shadow from the wings.

"Say hello to my little friend!"

"You talkin' to me?"

Here is a shot of the base where you can at least see more of the details.

 One day I will learn to use this camera to take awe inspiring shots but in the mean while what you see is what you get! Anyway, I hope you have been enjoying following along with the painting challenge and have a great Memorial Day Weekend!

Painting Challenge Part III

All the dry brushing and touch-up work has been done. There was only one thing that I didn't really like and that was a heavy hand on one side of the rock on the base. I ended up doing a light black wash over it to tone it down just a bit. I'm hoping that will resolve the issue and then all that will remain would be work on the base itself.

The wyvern is on the mend as we speak. Wings are glued back on and dry. I have applied a brush on primer (the Black Gesso) to the exposed areas of metal from the crash landing. All that remains is to reapply two base colors and two washes to the affected area and it will be as if nothing happened. So realistically I should be done in three or four days.

I snapped a few shots with my camera phone after I got the wings reattached but before I applied the brush-on primer. You can clearly see the gap in the paint where it was reattached in the second picture. I will take pictures in my light box once the base work is done.

If you go up from the raised back foot where the base of the wing is you will see the break. This was before I did any repairs other than gluing the wings back on however. Once I'm done you will never even be able to tell it was there.

Flight of the Wyvern

I was planning to post a few pics for my painting challenge last night when my wyvern took an unexpected flight and both wings popped right off. There appears to be no damage that can't be quickly and easily fixed but it did delay the picture taking. Should have something up in a day or two as I figured it would be easier to work on the base without the wings on anyway. Oops!
On the plus side I definitely feel like I am getting better at this painting thing even if I'm still slow as molasses. :D

Painting Challenge Part II

So, additional progress on the painting challenge miniature. About mid-last week I had gotten all the base colors done and over the weekend I experimented with several different wash combinations. I decided the teeth, claw, metal and scales I would wash with a black to create some definition and these areas which would be finished off with some light dry brushing and proceeded to do just that. This turned out well so I turned to my second wash which would cover the flesh areas. I went with a desert yellow but when I made the first wash it was to watered down and didn't cover the base color as much as I wanted. So I made a second batch and ended up doing two coats. The end result is much closer (still not perfect though) to what I had imagined. The only down side was I continued to paint even though I was tired and ended up getting some of the desert yellow between the scales so I spent the next night cleaning that up. The final result is that I want to do one more coating of black wash on the scales and a few areas I missed on the first time around and then I can move onto the next phase the dry brushing.

Here it is in all its glory, but this made me realize one thing I really got to get my light box setup!

Slightly different angle. Been trying to think if there is something I could add to the base to make it a bit more visually interesting but so far I got nothing. Suggestions appreciated.

Oh, and some more good news. I still can't find my camera manual so I went out and downloaded a PDF version of the Canon website so I could figure out how to get into super macro mode. Both of these pics were taken with my Canon PowerShot SX10IS. So once I finish up the DIY Macro Light Box I am building I will be able to post some real pics of the Warmaster units I have been slaving over.

Painting Challenge Part I

So it has been a pretty full week for me and I have made little progress at the painting table. However, I have most of the base colors done including all of the major colors. Just have the brown for the leather bits on the wyvern, and grey for the orcs armor. I should have that done tomorrow night then I'll move on to the washes. So far so good!

Initially I was pretty stumped as to what colors to use. I mean its an Orc and Goblin army and so will be default have a lot of green in it, but I also wanted to shy away from using the colors that I have picked out to distinguish units from each other, which are red, blue and I haven't had to use it yet but I think orange. So I knew I needed to find something else and I turned to the interwebs for inspiration. A quick search on Wyverns and a brief scroll through the images and I had my colors.


I decided to go with brown-yellow underbelly and purple scales. i think these two color choices will help the model standout against the green/brown/grey of the rest of the army. He are the two pictures that inspired me.

This is the purple I am going for only slightly darker.

This is the brown-yellow that I am aiming for.

Orc Warriors update

Just a quick note about my Orc Warriors so you all don't think i'm ignoring you. I have gotten the base green orc flesh color done. I consists of a dark green base (VGC 72028), sick green mid-tome highlight (VGC 72029), followed by Thraka Green citadel wash, and then a highlight of goblin green (VGC 72030). The next phase will be the brown base coat for the wood, skull and leather bits. There is a lot of area that needs to be covered and at the advice of a friend I am using a #2 brush but it is still very slow going! Once I get past the base coat the next few colors go really quick but the base coats are agonizingly slow!!! Just a couple sample pictures...

Can't really see much at this point as there is still a lot of black but they look pretty good in person!

There you can get a better idea of what they look like.

As a final note I have entered a friendly painting challenge. It was started by two of my buddies on a local gaming forum. It starts on May 1st and ends of May 31st. We have to give weekly updates and the whole miniature right down to the flocking on the base must be completed by the deadline. There is nothing on the line (at least for me) as it is a friendly (complete with trash talking :D) competition. There were some side bets made last month about who would not complete this that or the other thing so this month I decided to throw my hat in the ring. Here is my entry which I will start on the 1st. This won't take me to long and then I will be right back to finishing my Orc Warriors, or at least that's the theory anyway.

The Orc General on Wyvern is my Roberts Guild May Paint Challenge Entry. The Malifaux figure is there only for scale purposes and will not be tackled until later.