Lets Talk About Bases!

So, it's time for a couple of bases!
I love making bases. It's really fun, to spatter various items around, with a lot of glue and just see what you can get out of it. I try to make my bases varied, both in height, type and general style, which gives me alot of possibilities for going creative. I like nature bases the most, but I do not frown upon some brickwork or the such...

Hare a couple of simple ones:

 These are 40mm round lipped bases. The two of them are made from pieces of cork bark and sand, while the third is just made from sand(brown part) and fine gravel(grey/green part). With a little care, you can get some really fine results from such simple means.


The next batch is 30mm bases, for a couple of wood elf dryads.

They are a bit more advanced than the rock bases above; build from pieces of copper cable, split, twisted and bend to resemble some skinny trees. The bottom end of the tree was bent at a right angle and glued onto the base and afterwards the sand was applied, so that there are two layers of glue holding the tree in place.


Notching up a step, these bases are both 30mm and 40mm.

 The Smaller one is just a standard base painted with P3 Coal Black and drybrushes i places with VMC Foam Green, covered in VMC crackle medium and finished off with some Army Painter modelling snow.
The other two are made by cutting out the bottom of the base, gluing a piece of blister pack underneath and filling the hole with water effect(I forget which brand I used) Lastly, a thick layer of VMC Crackle Medium was added and topped off again with tAP Modelling snow. THe one on the far left had some blue glaze applied, but that turned out badw, so I will not try that again...


Lastly we go indoors again:

 Back when Games Workshop made useful things, they did a Gothic Scenery pack, in which you could find this gargoyle nad pillar. The floor is just 0,7mm plastic card, fitted to the base in a regular pattern. Now I just hope that the miniature going on this base will not drown in the crass colours...



Enjoy! And I make a lot more bases than I have miniatures for, so if you need some homemade bases, throw me a message and I'll see what I can find...

Orcs Galore!

Here we go again!

Lat time I posted, I had just finished up a commisioned Skaven Standard Bearer. As he was drying, I had to fill a void, in which I painted two orc crossbowmen. Now, A while ago, I posted a picture of a whole bunch of ancient Citadel orcs, that I had bought from a guy in California. These are the first three of that bunch:

The two crossbowmen have very similar stances; so much so, that it is pretty obvious that one was sculpted and the differences between the two were just build on top of the original. 

On the more civilized looking fellow, I added a fur vest; before he was just bare chested. Combined with his' legs being painted as if wearing pants, the two minis all of a sudden becomes very different!
The vest is just a bunch of greenstuff, pitted and shaped with the tip of a retractable pencil. It's such a simple way to do conversion, yet it works so well! At least, I am quite happy with the result.
The other guy is more of a barbarian looking fellow, only clad in loincloth and footwear. He has a lot of character, I think, for such a simple mini and this is one of the reasons I so like these old guys.

Now, the crossbows are some plastic ones I found in the bits box. One of them (with the hooded orc) is from a Mordheim sprue, and the other one is a cut down version of a rather larger crossbow, that I'm not sure of how I got my hansds on. But it works, so who am I to complain!

The last guy in the top pic is a rather more burly fellow, with a quite brutal appearance, who I finished up a while ago. I enjoyed painting him a lot; The variety of clothing, the whole outlaw feel to the mini is just outstanding! He really looks as if he just stole all of his' equipment from a bunch of other people.

Those are the first three finished ones from the California lot, I received and here is a warning of what is to come. Off course, one of these is not an old guy, but he fits well, so he will be part of this group. I'm off course referring to the Diehard Miniatures Orc, on the front right.

 

Thanks for reading and keep on happy painting. I hope to write to you all agian soon...

Commisioning!

Okay, so my idea of publishing once a month went south really fast. At my new job, it seems that the busy periods are VERY busy and the quiet periods are very quiet, so it's alot of up-and-down, stress-wise. However, this means that I, all of a sudden, was working an average of 65 hours pr. week, for three weeks, which left very little time for painting and writing. But then I just have to adapt to that, in here as well, and maybe posting a few extras, when I actually do have the time...

Enough of that!

I took on a commision, some weeks back, from a local guy, who loves his Skaven. He just got his' dream job and celebrated that by buying an old Standard Bearer, that he had been wanting for some time and getting someone else to paint it, since he doesn't think too much of his' own painting abilities. 

I saw his' work and he definitely has the skill, but perhaps not the patience, for what he wanted with this one. But he gave it to me and gave me free reigns. So I took it and ran. Above you can see the original miniature. I chose to paint it as two parts, since the banner would be giving me some difficult angles and the fit was so close, that I could easily glue it on afterwards, without ruining anything.

After the first painting session, he looked like this:

I opted out of the NMM, that I initially started, since I wanted to do some black areas, which I tend to find hard. When having to paint both black and metal, I think it is too easy to just get the two areas jumbled together, and I thought that this one would look better with true metals. Besides that would fit better with the commisioners army.

After another session he was looking much better, although hardly finished:

Here you can see what I wanted to do with the blacks. I tried playing around a bit with varying greens; the armour, the skirt and the banner pole and I actually think it went quite well. You can easily see the difference in material, that I went for, and the monochromity that I feared for was held at bay. The skin is pretty much my standard way of doing caucasian skin tones, only with a bit of extra red and purple on the tail...

So after six weeks of waiting, the commisioner can finally pick it up. I am writing this, as I am waiting for him to come, so I didn't get his' reaction yet.
But here is a collage of the finished model, with banner, base and everything showing. I just hope my friend will like it(although he did see the WIP pictures, so I think he will):

 

Again, I'm sorry forthe delay in posting, but that's how it goes. I hope you enjoyed this fellow and I will try to get a few more posts up, in a short time, to compensate for the delay. I have an almost finished Cthulu temple, that just needs a touch-up, and some orcs that are very far in the working, so perhaps there will be an easter egg on monday, or so. But I'm not promising anything!

Have a nice springtime and feel free to comment and critisize!