Mi casa...

Well, As part of the Real Life Package TM it looks like we're buying a house:


(Artist's impression)

I normally try not to put too much personal stuff on this blog because, frankly, nobody cares. But one small reason I'm excited about this move is that I'll finally be able to replace this


Old painting space

with this


New painting space

Actually, right now I don't even have "a space" at all, and all my stuff lives in a little wheeled cart so I can paint at the kitchen table and then put it away. So needless to say I am looking forward to this :)

Some works in progress...

The Doctor's TARDIS
35 mm



The TARDIS. It's blue. When it's done, it'll be less-patchy blue, with a nice base.

Riflethings
15 mm



I thought I'd do these guys a little differently, to show them working as a team. Or, you know, hanging around a trash barrel, but whatever.

A couple of Things

Riflethings
15 mm




Just a couple of 15mm minis. I have two more of these Things to finish up... perhaps next week? I have a Khurasan order coming in with some oil barrels I'd like to add as base dressing. (I also finally ordered these, which I'm looking forward to painting... and I see there are some new Riflething sculpts available, if I want to expand my collection)

My available "hobby time" has settled down to ~ 5:30-6:30 am, which is nice because I've got a big cup of coffee in front of me, the house is quiet, and my wife and kidlet are asleep. The downside is that absolutely nothing noisy can be done, which rules out, eg. listening to some inspirational Bolt Thrower, or firing up the Dremel to grind off some attached bases :P

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Also, for the record, I'd like to thank javi for producing this amazing piece in his inimitable style:



For those familiar with the game Half-Life, it's a... nose-crab. Not really any less parasitically horrific than the standard headcrabs, IMO.

Riflethings, Take 2

Riflethings
15 mm



I got a start on the rest of my Khurasan Riflethings. Nothing too exciting, the rest of these won't have quite the "hero" base that the first one did. It's neat, but looking at it in my display case, it's almost diorama-like and less like what one should put on members of a squad of minis (even for display). I think the last two Riflethings will be based together on a larger base, just to be different.

We come from the land of the ice and snow

Robot Yeti
28 mm



In between probing the mysteries of cancer biomarkers and looking after No Such Agency Jr-ette, I managed to paint this up. It's a Yeti from the 1967 Doctor Who serial "The Abominable Snowmen"... but I guess you could use it as a regular Yeti, too.

Alas, I think this guy really got his mother's hips.



"No, YOUR line is 'AAAAAAGH!'"

The Christmas Loot

I hope everyone had a good holiday-of-your-choice. For me it was Christmas... and I finally got some hobby-related gifts! From my brother:




Yep, that's a 28mm scale TARDIS among the resin stuff in pic 1. Also some nice resin industrial/spaceship bases and a Lovecraftian pillar thing. I'm eager to try out the magnifying visor whenever I have time to paint my next project :) Might make painting eyes easier on my rapidly-aging eyes.

Tasty... and Trans-Dimensional

One of my readers *cough javi cough* reminded me of my Christmas gingerbread tradition recently... so here's this year's creation:

Lighthouse
230 mm



Perhaps not overly elaborate, but I try to make each one a little special. The light is a little LED tea light, covered by a clear plastic cup. This will be a gift for some friends, but I'll probably make a second similar one to keep.

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Also, I thought in the spirit of much of my recent painting, I'd post this very old work:



On the back in my dad's writing is "Dr. Who's TARTUS (sic) Gingerbread house, Christmas 89 with K-9 mechanized dog". Any inaccuracies can be blamed on the fact that I rarely actually got to watch Doctor Who at age 15, and I was probably working either from memory, or the illustration on the cover of one of the episode novelizations...

The Fourth Doctor

The Fourth Doctor
28 mm




My favorite Doctor, all done! Just in time to reconcile the Tesh with the Sevateem, and defeat the Zygons, and the Sontarans, and the Rutans, and Weng-Chiang, and Sutekh, and become President of Gallifrey...

I'm pretty satisfied with the red/burgundy colour of his jacket, despite pinkish highlights which admittedly seem realistic enough. Apart from the eyes, which were not well sculpted and a challenge to make just manic enough, the scarf was probably the toughest part to get looking right. But that was almost the most critical part, considering how iconic it is:

"101 uses for Tom Baker's scarf"


Fortunately, someone has devoted a whole website to careful descriptions of the scarf, including instructions for how to knit your own... I love you, internet.

The colour out of space

Red is a pain to work with, everyone knows it. Transparent, lousy coverage, generally hard to make it look the way you want. I generally use a warm primary (GW Blood Red) for most red things, but for the Fourth Doctor's burgundy-ish jacket I chose a cooler crimson. I used this random Mage Knight mini as a test piece to try and work out the troublesome red highlighting issue, and hopefully learn something:



Left side: Games Workshop Crimson Gore/Scorched Brown base coat, shaded with Scorched Brown, highlighted up with mixtures of C.G/yellow. A very warm result.

Center: Games Workshop Crimson Gore/Scorched Brown base coat, shaded with Scorched Brown, highlighted up with mixtures of C.G/white. This gave me the pink highlights that people tend to try and avoid.

Right side: Games Workshop Crimson Gore/Scorched Brown base coat, shaded with Scorched Brown, highlighted up with mixtures of C.G/Bleached Bone. The result is slightly less pink than mixing with white.

I'm not sure either look is particularly satisfying, but as always, this is a learning experience. And... this isn't for the Golden Demons or anything. I just want my growing Doctor collection to look pretty good :)

Less Human than Human

Khurasan Riflething
15 mm



I managed to squeeze this little guy in before the end of my parental leave... only one of five, but I did want to test my colour scheme before I (some day) paint up the rest of the squad. Inspiration was the Overwatch Elite from Half Life 2.

Still working on my Fourth Doctor. Not surprisingly I'm not the first person who thought Dalek parts would make good base decoration. But I'm glad I didn't have to hack up a metal figure to do it :)

Objective...ist.

I'm in the middle of some things now, so: a "look what I found" post to keep the blog flowing while I paint away...

I'd never heard of Lead Bones before... but this is pretty cool. Anyone who enjoyed "Bioshock" should recognize these 15mm heavies:



Sure to keep your underwater temple to Ayn Rand safe and secure from any pesky players roaming around out there! They're available at Recreational Conflict, along with a 28mm version! I'll have to pick up a set someday, when I've finished painting everything else in my stash. It's a pity their shipping charge to Canada is $12; it's enough to make me "Go Galt"... :P

EDIT: the seller posted on Lead Adventures to clear up the postage thing, you should pay less for small orders that fit in an envelope instead of a box.

"Would you like a jelly baby?"

I'm pretty busy these days... but I still managed to start a new project, in between diapers and naps...

The Fourth Doctor
28mm



Between the dark and creepy nature of many of his adventures, and his character's Bohemian charm, the Fourth Doctor, played by Tom Baker, is many North Americans' favorite Doctor Who, and is definitely mine! This is another Black Tree miniature, a nice sculpt that is instantly recognizable.

I decided this figure deserved a unique base, and I came up with the idea of using my new Instant Mold to steal some detail to jazz it up. It was pretty easy to duplicate parts of an unpainted Dalek figure to make the wreckage seen here. The result looks pretty good, and fits well with his satisfied expression. I know the Fourth Doctor never encountered white Imperial Daleks... but I was never much for continuity anyway :)

And I thought NMM was hard...

Beautiful? Definitely. The biggest challenge of my life so far? Oh yes. But so rewarding, even though I barely have time to add this post, let alone sleep.

We'll see when painting happens again... but it will.

In honour of Change

Champion of Tzeentch
28mm

Change... it can be good or bad for us. Too little change and we become inert, dull creatures of habit. Too much, and life descends into chaos, a swirling maelstrom with no direction or control. Tzeentch is the Chaos god of Change, the seducer of those who seek knowledge or power, to change the world to their advantage.

This guy is obviously based on a Heroquest warrior figure.  Plastic, easy to cut up :)  I didn't have any GW "Tzeentch horrors" to saw up for parts, so the mutated limb is based on a Genestealer arm.  The headdress, of course, is a tribute to Tzeentch's most tragic of followers, the Thousand Sons, who I have always found to be one of the more compelling stories of Warhammer 40,000.

I can't be sure when this guy will get painted... our baby is due any day now so I doubt I'll have a ton of painting time in the near future :O Change indeed!

Instant Mold

A few weeks ago I ordered some "Instant Mold" from the Coolminiornot shop. This product is a clear waxy plastic, which melts to a soft consistency in hot water and can be used to make press molds of somewhat simple items.

There are a number of demo and review videos out there, so I didn't bother doing one. But I did a quick test that might be informative. Space Marine shoulder pads are a popular target for this, so I tried out a couple for my test run.



The pieces I'm duplicating: an old SM medic and a random Terminator arm.



The softened Instant Mold formed around the parts without any difficulty, and appeared to hold a very fine detail level.



The results. I'm pretty impressed! There's some loss of detail on sides of the Medic pad. There appeared to be some air bubbles in the Terminator seal, but it looks fine out of the mold. I imagine after a few more tries I'll get a more consistent result.

One thing: some forums I've seen have pointed out that polycaprolactone is available from various sources for cheaper than IM's price. That might be worth pursuing, but since this stuff is reusable, I'm not going to worry about it.

Bug Hunt

Alien Warriors
15mm

"Is this gonna be a standup fight, sir, or another bug hunt?"
"All we know is that there's still no contact with the colony, and that a xenomorph may be involved."



OK, here's that "quick project" that took a month to finish: Khurasan's Space Demons, with an "abandoned colony" basing theme.

I resorted to *gasp* drybrushing these, and it really shows. But I'm not sure how else you could paint them in a reasonable amount of time, except maybe painting them light grey and dipping them with a pure black dip. The head carapaces were blended though, those would have looked terrible drybrushed.







"THEY cut the power? How could they cut the power, man? They're animals!"

Oops!

What? A month? I've been working on a "quick" 15mm project to post here, but somehow time has flown by.

In the meantime, this is all I've finished painting:



I promise I'll have something worth looking at soon. Really.

Adversaries through time and space

The Fifth Doctor
28 mm



All done! And I'm pretty happy with it. The Doctor's amazing trousers were a bit of a freehand challenge... and with freehand being my real weakness, those stripes did not come easy. I'm never sure how to approach shading with a painted-on pattern: in this case I shaded the tan base and then painted the detail: white & olive stripes, then red. The result is only okay IMO.

Also, I actually had to add detail to his feet 3/4 of the way through painting him, when I realized they looked more like blank, deformed dinner rolls than sneakers. It's like they were sculpted by Rob Liefield :(

As for the base... it's a cricket ball. Very fitting for the Fifth Doctor.

Sontaran Warrior
28 mm



As for the Sontaran, not the most exciting colours ever, that's for sure. I've tried to make up for it by making his ugly skin look really convincing, and putting some earth tones and grass on his base. Originally his base was going to be castle flagstones, referencing "The Time Warrior", but I decided that would be too similar to his grey uniform to look good.

Not quite cricket

The Doctor: some personality emerges... maybe a little too much personality. I'll have to dial back the shadows around his eyes just a little, lest he look like some kind of deranged drug addict:



And I started on a new adversary for him too:

Sontaran Warrior
25 mm



Sure, they look like potatoes with limbs, but the Doctor calls them the galaxy's greatest soldiers. This guy wasn't sculpted very faithfully, I had to reduce his number of fingers, and add the "probic vent" on his neck (which is only, you know, the #1 plot device associated with Sontarans):

Boom, right up the bung hole

The Fifth Doctor

The Fifth Doctor
25 mm





I'll admit I've never actually watched an episode of Doctor Who featuring Peter Davison as the Fifth doctor; my knowledge of the stories comes entirely from reading the Terrence Dicks novelizations as a child. (I think the last time I saw this actor he was elbow deep in a cow...). Still, I've been looking forward to painting my Doctors, including this one who wears celery.

A Harlequin/Black Tree miniature.