Death Metal and Demos!

So we are at it again. This time with a slight delay in publication, but since I'm the only one making the deadlines, I'll allow it.

The reason for the delay is that my wife and I have been  a bit busy going to concerts.
We went to Esbjerg(at the westernmost border of Denmark) to see Cattle Decapitation and Suffocation. The next day we went to Copenhagen(at the easternmost border of Denmark) to see them again. In Copenhagen we met up with Lodsiwoc of Brains and guts-fame and we had a blast! And heard some blast beats.
One of the support bands, Exuviated, I had never heard of before, but as it turned out, they were completely awesome. I had a chat with their singer at the merchandise stand and he was a terrific guy, who was just happy to actually be on tour with such genre giants as Cat. Decap. and Suffocation.
In all: A great time and two great show with some great people!

Exuviated, Belgian death metal, Esbjerg.

The kings of death metal, Cattle Decapitation, Copenhagen.

But lets get to the point!


I've been doing a bit different things, for the past weeks which is also a bit responsible for my delay. I've taken on a commision, to paint the Dreadfleet game for a friend. It has taken alot of time, but hopefully, it'll come out well.

But for the Frostgrave warband, I finally have this guy:

"Lets me shoot you wit dis arrow Is don't have!"

He is more brightly green than any other orc, I've ever painted, but I though long and hard about it, and decided to try. And I am actually quite happy with the result! Here you can really see, how the Harlequin orcs are more similar to each other, than the old GW-ones. Compare this to my wizard and youll see they have almost the exact same facial build and expression. And most of them are like that, but when mixed with other orcs, you don't really notice it. And off course the paintjob also help to camouflage that similarity.

I also got to finish up my treasure trove with now a total of eleven treasure markers. That'll get me a ways... This is another thing with this game; it has got me totally motivated to actually go digging through my bits boxes and find uses for all sorts of Sh-tuff, that I had no plans for. Motivation, here we go!

Another project, was to do a demo of a new thing I got. This is to be viewed as an independent amateur showing how well it works using the Quickshade Ink from The Army Painter. I used an old HeroQuest Orc and just gave him a basic paintjob; only basecolours.
After that, I simply dunked him in a tin of Strong Tone Quickshade Ink and actually dropped him. The scratches on his sword arm are from my trying to pick him out of the tin with a pair of pliers. Let him sit for five minutes and shake him well. Really well! And then just wait for him to dry. For at least 48 hours. I gave him a poke after only 21 hours and left irremovable fingerprints in the paint, so KEEP YOUR HANDS OFF!!!!
Before the last step I had to redo some green on his' head, where a big glob of ink had settled, but it was only two small lines, to pick out his eyebrow wrinkles.
And the last step was a coat of Anti Shine, again from The Army Painter, although any matt varnish should do the trick.

Far left: Basecoat; middle: Dipped in Quickshade; far right: finished model.

So to simplify: Basecoats. Dip in TAP Quickshade Ink Strong Tone. Matt Varnish.

In my review of this technique, I must emphasize three things:
1: Remove excess ink after dipping, with a brush. If there are any flat areas, on the mini, ink will pool there, which will give you an ekstra step before you're finished.
2: Let it dry completely before handling! If the ink is not dry, very, very little pressure will leave marks, that you can't cover in the paintjob.
3: Use matt varnish after the ink. Eventhough the ink also works as a solid varnish, the matt coat is essential. The middle picture is with the Quickshade Ink completely dry and that stuff is reflective!

My conclusion here is that dipping with Quickshade Ink is a very good technique, if you need to make lots of minis fast. I spent a total of 40 minutes on this orc, bar the drying time, and I am very pleased with the result. If I had prepped my 30-odd clan rats I could probably have them all ready for play within a week(which, if you follow this blog, you know is an extremely short paint time! ... For me...). The finished model has not been highlighted, which really shows how well the Ink finds the right places to go! I will tough him up a bit, though; highlight the ground under him and pick out his eyeballs, but after that, he will go to his' place in the cabinet.

That's all for this time! Thanks for reading and feel free to comment and criticize!

Next up: Wizard Apprentice!

As the dog barks...

I keep on rolling!

This week my main concern has been this little doggie:

 You saw him in my last post, where he only had his' base- colours on, but now he's all finished up and ready for battle!
He is a Chaos Hound from GameZone Miniatures, that I did a little bit of conversion on; he had some devilish spikes on his' back and they were removed and the cut was modelled over with greenstuff.
The paint scheme is made for him to look as if he's a creature of the same ilk as the orcs with whom he's going to go questing; the green bristles on his' back fit with the gren skin of orcs, although they have a markedly different nuance, than the orcan skin.

And here we have some critters that I painted up, while waiting for washes to dry. Actually, I'm only talking about the small wolves, since the other beasts were painted earlier, but seing as this is all the animals I have for Frostgrave so far, I grouped them together:

The Spiders and small wolves are from a pack from Reaper, in which I also got some great cats, that I'm planning on painting up for Snow Leopards. The big wolf is actually a werewolf miniature from Ral Partha, that I got more than 15 years ago, but didn't paint until now. He's pretty cool and I'm happy that I can find some of these really old lead lumps in my stash and still find a use for them!

These two are Barbarian Orc Archers from Harlequin/Icon miniatures. I seriously love these sculpts, as they are simple and old school, but still very characterful. They don't have tons of detail, but enough to not be boring.

I put this picture up, to show the difference between a basecoat and a single wash of Quickshade Ink from The Army Painter. It's marvellous to see how the wash finds the correct places to land, something I never managed to achieve with Games Workshop's washes. I really can't stress enough, how awesome these inks are; easy to work with, yet awesomely effective!


Lastly is a picture of my next target; the archer for my warband:

He is missing any real armour, but the rules give archers leather armour, as standard, and I think that can be well represented by the animal fur, he is wearing. The inside of the fur is just the rough leather skin of whatever creature he got the fur from.





That's all for this week! I hope you enjoyed this little read and will follow this painting trip with me, as I (hopefully) progress as a painter and writer.

Two in one week???

And so I am at it again!

Not only am I posting two entries in this blog in the same week, I have also finished two miniatures this week! And that is not something that happens often. My usual modus operandi is to start painting three or seven or twenty(well, that was only once) miniatures at the same time and then branch of a bit. Paint the basecolours on all of them, then start shading a few of them and then probably start a new batch, going back to a single miniature, starting all over again on a new one and then start building some terrain... You can see where this is going!

But right now I am working rather focused on my Frostgrave warband: I had to paint up five miniatures, to have a working band, the rest of them were already good to go on the shelf. Barbarian(you saw it in the last post), Wizard, Apprentice, Archer and Warhound. I had some of the paint on the barbarian, so he was my first choice. I had to wait for the three soldiers to come in the mail, so while I waited I converted a Gamezone Chaos Hound, by cutting of his' spikes and plugging out his' sores with greenstuff. Then when the minis arrived(from Black Tree Designs) I started basing them and basecolouring them all, so they would all be ready for the paint, as soon as the last mini was finished.

The Wizard; what type is he?

So, tuesday I finished the barbarian. Wednesday morning I started on the wizard. And today he was finished!
I keep having doubts about the bases: I paint them for frostgrave, which should warrant frosty or snowy bases, but I kind of feel that it would be better, if I keep the bases a bit more generic. So the bases might look a bit too hot for Frostgrave, but it is a distinct choice, not lazyness or indifference.
I can't figure out which type of wizard he should be. I like the idea of Chronomancer, but the imagery on this guy doesn't really give any pointers. Many people seem to think that Orcs should be witches(shamans), but I don't truck with that kind of racial prejudice! I think he will end up being either a Chronomancer or an Elementalist, spewing out lightning bolts, left and right.

My Warhound: isn't he a cutie?

Next up is my Warhound! He looks like this so far, but he has only got basecolours and a single wash for shades, so he's not that interesting yet...
I want him to appear as if he has brown fur on most of the body, but then with green bristles down the back. Actually, I think this mini looks more like a mutated lion, than  a hound, but he is an orc dog, so that's not really a problem. I'm really looking forwards to seing the end result! The musculature is great(Duh! It's from Gamezone!), but I really haven't had that much experience with this level of detail before. We will just have to see!

Treasures for the Frozen City!

While waiting for washes and other things to dry, I off course couldn't help myself, so here's a few treasure markers for the game. They are quick and easy to make and the paintjob will be really fast and simple.


 My wife saw my work room and said I should put this picture in the blog, too. It's just the left side of my working table, with all its' clutter. I am currently at one stage or another in planing, preppeing or painting all of these miniatures, so I will probably be finished soon. In 2096!

How many companies can you spot?

Well, that's all I have for now! I am back at work tomorrow, so there will probably not be the same progress for next weekend, but I will find something to write about anyway. I hope I'm not too wordy, but if I am, that will most likely go away over time. I tend to do go on and on...

Have a great week!

It's been a while...

... It sure has!

When I started this blog many, many years ago, I thought I would be putting down my thoughts about everything every week or at least once per month. As it turns out, I've not even made one post for every year, I've had it. I'll try harder! And I will try keeping this blog about my miniatures, instead of about(as the title says) random thoughts I feel like writing about.

SO!

I've begun painting with a goal. Instead of mostly painting arbitrary miniatures that I thought looked cool, I've started painting up for a Frostgrave warband. What compels me to go for this system is the relatively few miniatures I need to have, to be able to field a complete warband. At a maximum of ten miniatures pr. player, it's pretty easy, even for me, to paint all of them.

So, after buying the rulebook and reading it through a couple of times, I got started. I started building a bunch of terrain for this specific game; it's just ruins, so it was pretty straight-forward.
Here are some of the ruins. It's just expanded styrofoam, covered in spachel. It couldn't be much simpler!

These are a little bit smaller, but the general principle is the same. The well water is just paint covered over with gloss varnish and the green floor tiles are simply bits of old cereal box.

This is a Wizards Tower, for a scenario from the core rulebook. Again; spachel and styofoam is your friend!
The doors here a giving me a bit of a headache; the circumference of the tower is very small, so I have to round the lintels, which is kind of difficult to do with my usual tecnique of cutting up popsicle sticks and coffee stirrers. But I'll figure it out in the end!

And this is my warband. From the top we have Archer(unfinished), Apprentice(unfinished), Wizard(unfinished), Knight, Man-at-arms, Warhound(unfinished), Thug, Barbarian, Thug. I'm doing the entire warband out of old school models. I just love the style of these old boys and recently I just can't get enough of them!

Lastly is a close-up of my barbarian. This is an Ogre Champion from the late Harlequin miniatures. I fits so perfectly with these old orcs, that one would think, he's just their older brother.

That'll be all for this time. I hope the next post will be less wordy and more picturey, but we'll see about that. And hopefully it won't be five years more, before the next post is up!

Thanks for reading!