Hobby Time: Painting Aspect Markers

Prologue:

A couple of months ago I wrote up a review for the Broken Egg Games Aspect Markers (Which you can read here if you are so inclined, and you can purchase these tokens here if you want to follow along at home), and included a photo at the end with my personal set of painted ones.

I got a LOT of questions regarding how I had done them, but since I was leaving for the ATC the next morning, I just said that I would be writing up a "how to" guide shortly and left it at that.

To my shame, I completely forgot, and so I am writing this up to rectify that. To all of my readers who messaged or commented asking for the guide, I am sorry this took so long. Hopefully it was worth the wait!

I am using exclusively P3 paints and inks for this project, with one exception which will be noted when it comes up.

Body:

Step 1:

Don't bother priming these. Apply a layer of red ink to the recesses of the tokens.

Step 2:

Apply a thin layer of Sulfur Yellow to every raised area. Once it is completely dry, check for opacity - you may need a second layer.

 Step 3:

Blend Morrow White into the tip of each "flame" and also to various points on the letters. I used two brush blending for this.

Already you can see the beginnings of fire-like effects after just one highlight.

Step 4:

Apply a thin glaze of Citadel Troll Slayer Orange to the farthest edges from the Morrow White. I recommend a couple of thin glazes accompanied by some blending for best results.

(A Glaze is a very thin paint, similar to a wash but not as wet - apply it in thin layers and blend the edge with a clean, wet brush to achieve this look)

Step 5:

Use Khador Red Base in a very thin glaze or two over about half of the area where Troll Slayer Orange went.

You may also find it necessary to blend some of the Sulfur Yellow back in if you got a little too enthusiastic with the shade colors.

Just like that, you're done!

Mind:

Step 1:

Again, don't bother priming these! The fifth one at the top is an example of a finished marker.

Apply a Blue Ink to the recesses of each token.

Step 2:

Apply thin layers of Arcane Blue to the raised areas until you have a nice, opaque coat. Should take about two goes.

Let the paint dry completely between each layer.

Again, the top right one is a finished token.

Step 3:

Blend Morrow White into the tips, just like with the Body tokens. The smoother your blend the better.

This should also be used to highlight the letters of "Mind".

Step 4:

Take a glaze of Cygnar Blue Base and apply it to the areas farthest from the White, and also on the letters.

I believe it took two thin glazes to get the saturation to where I was happy with it for these ones.

Spirit:

Step 1:

Don't prime them, and apply a Green Ink to the sunken areas. The far right token is a finished one for comparison.

Step 2:

Apply a couple of thin coats of Wurm Green to the raised areas. Again, you want a nice opaque coat, so apply multiple, thin layers, and let them dry between each one.

Step 3:

Blend Morrow White into the tips, as you did for the other two aspects. At the same time, add highlights to the letters with the white paint.

Step 4:

Take Gnarls Green and apply a few layers of thin glaze to the far edges of the "flames" and also to the letters of "Spirit" to make the words pop.

I recommend finishing these off with a Matte spray varnish to protect the paint.

Here are a couple of group shots - I spent far, far too long staring at these under the lamp before snapping out of the trance. The colors are just so pretty!

These techniques can be used on all kinds of wooden tokens, and are quite enjoyable too! It's nice to spend 10-15 minutes on something and have it be done rather than spending hours and hours on a model.

The added color really makes them pop on the table, and also makes them easier to pick out of my tokens bin.

Hopefully this was useful - sorry it took so long to get made!

Thanks for reading :)

Hobby Time: Patience, Practice, and Time

I had the unique opportunity today to paint up a model that I had previously painted, quite a few years ago.

This is perhaps not quite a unique event in itself, as I have cycled through every faction except Mercs at least twice now, but what made this experience special was 1) I painted this model four years ago, at the dawn of my Warmachine career and 2) I had good pictures of it.

That model was Mohsar, the Desertwalker, and I first painted him in the Summer of 2013 (Click to Enbiggen).

I picked up Mohsar again a few weeks ago, as he was the last Circle warlock that I did not own, but after assembling him, I dropped him into some battlefoam and let him sit there. 

With the Celestial Fulcrum CID happening right now, I was already thinking pretty hard about taking him out and painting him up so I could play with him, and then Dan had to go and win Kingdom Con with him, so out of the foam he came and onto the painting desk, leap frogging a commission and Kaya 2. 

I spent probably 8 hours on him, which I feel is about double the time I spent on the last one, but I also know a lot more now, and with knowledge comes the need to use it. 

I think we can all agree that this one looks a lot better (although he still needs basing, I know). Sure there are things I'd like to be getting better at (glow effects, the frustration!), but it is very gratifying to see progress between then and now.  

I was originally going to critique the two pieces and talk about what specifically makes the second one a better model than the first, but instead I think I'd just like to address a couple of specific things I have learned in the last four years.

By no means do I intend for this to be a preachy article, nor do I claim to have excessive authority on the subject. I am still learning, still struggling to be better, and always looking to improve.

1) Use good brushes and paints. 

I think I was still using Acrylic Canvas Paints for part of that first Mohsar, and it shows. The paint is gloppier, it's not smooth, and it looks messy. I was also using Hobby Lobby brushes, and that, while it probably doesn't show quite as stark, is also a problem. 

I highly recommend getting proper miniature painting paints, whether they be Vallejo, P3, or Citadel, or any of the other brands out there. These paints are designed with higher pigment levels in mind, and are much more suitable for painting detailed models than any other type of paint. 

A good paint brush ( I recommend Windsor and Newton Series 7 sizes 1 and 2 ) will last six to eight months depending on usage, and then spend another year or two as a very serviceable blending brush. 

An inferior brush will only last a few weeks of steady painting, and many will lose their point after just a few days. 

To those of you that say you cannot afford a nicer brush, I offer this argument. I buy one Windsor and Newton Size 1 and 2 every six months or so, for a total of $40 plus shipping per six month period, or about $90 a year.  

Were I to buy a new $5 Hobby Lobby brush whenever they ceased to be useful, I'd be getting a new one every week. About $5 a week, say 40 weeks of painting a year or so, and that's $200 a year. 

Quality tools are always worth the investment. 

2) Copy other people's work. 

I've been dabbling with the game Infinity by Corvus Belli, and their studio painter is a genius, absolutely phenomenal at Non-Metallic Metals and painting super fine detail. 

As I work through my models, I've been doing my best to copy him, and I've noticed that I am getting better as I do. Here is my attempt at a studio scheme Umbra Samaritan:

And here is the actual Studio Model:

Mine is definitely not as smooth, not as polished, and not even in the same league, but it's getting closer than I was beforehand and it is extremely gratifying to see myself improve. 

Ask people how they do things. Ask them to show you. Look at people who are better than you and try and copy what they are doing. Every great artist and musician builds their abilities on the backs of other people, don't limit yourself to what you can come up with on your own. 

3) Paint a lot, and paint lots of different things. 

I love, love, love painting cloth. It's my favorite thing to paint. I like trying to get the highlights in the right place, I enjoy how shadows play in it, I just love painting cloth. 

I hate painting metal, and I've had to force myself to learn how to do it over the last few years in order to keep the metallic parts of my models from looking like total and utter garbage compared to the rest of them. 

Paint models from lots of armies, paint models from lots of games. Try new techniques and practice them. Don't try them once, fail, and give up. Try it again, and again, and again. Give it 30 tries and then look back at your first one. There will definitely be improvement. 

I guess the long and short of this is here - don't get discouraged if you feel like you're not moving forward, because you probably are. It was quite a shock to look back at that 2013 Mohsar, because I hadn't thought I had really improved all that much since then. Keep at it :)

Hobby Time: Woldwrath is done!

Prologue:

You know that fully painted goal that seems so insanely far out of reach? That idea that seeing only really pretty models on your side of the table would really add something to the game?

Yeah I've only experienced that once or twice before the last few weeks.

As part of my push for the 2017 ATC, I forced myself to paint through both of my lists. That had some incredibly cool parts like Loki:

It also had some super sucky parts, like the entire 21 man unit of Gatorman Bokur and Shamblers:

But somehow I did it, and it was one of the things I was most proud of when I finally got there and played, every game had fully painted and based models on my half of the table.

When I got back, I decided that it was time to buy in completely, and I committed to playing fully painted in all of my games (with some small exceptions for practicing for major events). Astute readers of my blog have probably noticed that my post ATC Baldur 2 list was fully painted (if not based, those happen in batches because I hate doing them), and it was incredibly fulfilling.

Unfortunately, this means that certain really silly lists like Tanith with two units of Reeves probably won't be making an appearance for a while.

Today, I finished my Woldwrath, and I felt like sharing more than a couple of pictures.

The Story:

Four years ago, right as I became a PressGanger, I was playing Circle, and like most cool kids, I wanted a Woldwrath. (In seriousness, he was pretty mediocre back then).

So I got one, and then he sat, unassembled for a very long time since I wanted to convert him to look like his concept art.

Isn't that awesome??? Someday, when I get my second one, I'm going to legitimately putty over all of his runes and carve the big ones in, and completely resculpt his head.

But I digress.

I spent a lot of time converting other models before I eventually worked up the courage to build him.

And then, 2 weeks later, I sold him and most of my other Circle to get into another faction.

Three and a half years later, I was assembling my third go round of Circle armies, and I realized that I really wanted a Woldwrath. I ordered one off eBay, but then it fell through since the guy had double sold it.

And then my friend who had bought all of my Circle off me, who also happened to be my Press Gang mentor and an excellent modeler/painter, told me that he still had the original one as part of a Bradigus theme list, and he would happily sell it to me if I bought the whole list.

How could I say no?

Six months later now (geeze), I am finally done with this monstrosity of a paint job. He's not perfect. There's lots of little details here and there that I could (and maybe will) go back over someday. But he's painted, he looks mean, and he's ready to pound some stuff into the ground.

I decided that I was going to go crazy with his runes, which is why he looks like he's absorbed an Alienware Keyboard - I really wanted to go for a shifting LED look, and when I started him, I did that with all of the other Wolds I've finished before him....yeah he got started a long time ago.

Here's the Wyrds for an example:

The runes took an absurd amount of time - every single one had to be done minimum three times. Two coats of white for a solid backdrop followed by a coat of the color, and usually more than one coat of color.

Once those were done, the rest of the model flew by. Without further ado, here's my Woldwrath. I hope you like him as much as I do!

Front!

Part of why he stayed unfinished for so long - I did the back first and that's the part I see when I play him

And one with his buddy Megalith!

Thanks for reading :) 

Hobby Time: Glowing Metal Tutorial

Over the last few weeks, I've been working steadily on a commission for a friend of mine, and he asked me to go all out on his Avatar of Menoth.

As a result, I've gotten to practice a lot of techniques that don't often come up when you're painting tabletop level commissions, such as True Metallic Metals, Glow Effects, and multiple multiple levels of Shading and Highlighting.

I decided to go nuts on the Avatar's Sword and make it look like a bar of superheated metal, and when I posted a picture of the first side of the blade done, I got quite a few questions about how I did it, resulting in this little tutorial. I hope it is useful!


VERY IMPORTANT: LET THE PAINT COMPLETELY DRY BETWEEN EACH COAT! FAILURE TO DO SO WILL RESULT IN SPOTTY LOOKING PAINT AND MANY FRUSTRATIONS.

Okay sorry, that one is a big deal and if you don't follow that rule, nothing that follows is going to work for you.


Step one:

Base coat the blade with a dull but very opaque yellow or tan. This is important because a very bright yellow color will take dozens of coats to cover black primer without showing the underlying black through the yellow.

For my own project, I used p3 Sulfur Yellow for the basecoat.

Take the time to put down a couple of thin layers (I think this was three layers here) to get a very smooth basecoat. Remember, you're showing trying to convey polished metal, even if it is super heated.

Step two:

Take your bright yellow, and put down a few thin layers over the entirety of the dull yellow. Again, smoothness is important here so a couple of thin coats is better than one thicker coat.

This is p3 Cygnus Yellow.

Step three:

It's time to start glazing in your oranges. The warm colors descend in brightness from yellow to orange to red, and in order to get a smooth transition you need to go through each one.

Unfortunately, getting a nice blend of warm colors is very difficult. I used GW Troll Slayer Orange for my orange tone, and I thinned it down until it was almost translucent before I started putting it on the sword.

You can barely see it on my fingernail, which is exactly where I want it to be.

Another quick note - before you put the brush to the model, make sure it's not overly saturated with liquid. If your glazes pool up, they won't look right as they dry if you shift the model even a little bit. Thin, translucent coats is what we are after here.

For this blade, I glazed the "connecting" edges of the tip of the blade, and then also where the black center bumped into the yellow, leaving the edges alone and also one side of each segment of the tip.

Here is what the blade looks like after one glaze.

You can barely tell I've done anything to the sword right? That's okay. The next few repetitions will cement in the orange color. Take care to use another brush to blend out any really obvious edges where the orange ends and the yellow begins. This is less necessary the thinner your paint is.

Here is the sword after three glazes with the Troll Slayer Orange.

Starting to look much more orange-y and much less yellow-y. You can see where I've left the different edges of the tip alone, and also that I haven't touched the cutting edges of the sword.

Time for the next step!

Step four:

Step four is very similar to Step three, except you substitute the orange with a bright red and paint in less of the surface area.

I used p3 Khador Red Base for this, and just continued putting color in the same spots as I did with the orange, just with a smaller surface area.

Here we are after one glaze:

The Red is a lot stronger of a color than the orange was, and you'll need to feather the edges where you want a smooth blend more than you will with the orange.

All it took was two layers of glaze with the red until I was happy with where it was.

Here is where a lot of beginning painters would probably call it done - it's got all the right colors, and the blending is nice and smooth.

The last step, though, is the most critical to selling this look.

Step five:

Step five requires a pure white, in my case just Vallejo Model White.

Thin it down, but not quite as much as you have the other glazes. We're going to place the white at the points where the metal would be thinnest and most hot. This is the blade edges, and in the yellow bits of the point.

This picture did not turn out quite as well as I thought it had last night, but you get the general idea - the white serves to ramp up the contrast and really make the division in colors in the tip pop.

I also used it on the edges of the blade, coming in a tiny bit where the belly of the sword widens.

If you place highlights that are too large, the effect will be spoiled. Luckily, there's a very easy fix! Take a very thin layer of the bright yellow and go over all of the white area but the extreme highlights and it will work just fine.


Conclusion:

I hope this has been helpful! Blending with the warm trio of colors is always tricky, but with patience (seriously, let the paint dry completely between each layer of glaze, highlight, basecoat, you name it) and practice, it can be stunning.