Blood Bowl... In Pink!

Here's a couple of teams for your perusal...

Let me know what you think!

Who Loves Babylon 5?

Alright then, who likes Babylon 5?

[sigh]  Fine then!  Who's seen Babylon 5?

Well, I love it, so I don't care what you think!

Anyway, what on earth has that got to do with Blood Bowl, I hear you ask?

A very good question, I reply.  I shall tell you...

I've finished painting the Human Blood Bowl team, and if I do say so myself, I think they look awesome.

I was wondering what kind of markings to put on the team and was having a look through some of my old transfers, thinking about their black armour and found -

Well, remember the Psi-Corps?  And Mister Bester?  And his personal Star Fury squadron?

Well, I give you...

THE BLACK OMEGAS!

Oh alright, they're upside-down Ultramarines logos, but they work pretty damned well, I reckon!

Now just for those pesky Orcs...

Never Feed Them After Midnight.

I recently commented on a friend's blog that I always make it a point never to do the final touch-up phase of my miniatures last thing at night -  I'm tired, I'm rushing, I'm desperate to get them finished.

If I don't leave them and come back fresh the next morning, I can guarantee that I'll miss something important, only to notice it once the varnish has settled.

At the moment, I'm rueing this rather honourable commitment as I'm so close to finishing the Human Blood Bowl team:

Even now, I've already edged the bases with Goblin Green (the first of two thin coats, at least), so I just need to check them over thoroughly and add the transfers - numbers on the bases, and the team logo on their chests.

Team logo, I hear you ask, what team logo?

Well, I'm going to - ah, but that would be telling!  I'll leave you all guessing for another night - but let's just say, there is going to be a definite nod and a wink to Babylon 5...

Hopefully, by the time you read my next post, they'll be finished!

What A Difference A Day (Or Two...) Makes

Well, I promised pictures of the reds when they were finished, and although I managed to finished them yesterday, I never managed to get time to post them - sorry!

Still, they're done now, and so is the skin on the Human team.  In the end, I didn't do any of the Orc reds and for that, I'm very glad.

It all started very well, with a nice basecoat of Mechrite Red, followed by a 1:1 mix of that and Blazing Orange.  Nice.  Then a pure Blazing Orange highlight.  Lovely.  After that, a good ol' 1:1 mix of Blazing Orange and Vomit Brown.  Beautiful.  Then, I discovered the wonders of highlighting red with pure Vomit Brown.  Perfect.

After that came the wash of Asurman Blue.  Disaster!!!

It was all my fault - the guide said to paint it into all of the creases, but I thought 'I wonder what it would look like all over?'  Big mistake.  I thought it might turn it a rich purple colour, but it did not - it turned it to mud!

Never mind, you live and learn.

So, I then spent another almost-day doing the reds again pretty much from scratch, but this time giving them a couple of thin washes of Baal Red at the end to enrich the colour.  And I think it all went pretty well.

Nothing too exciting to report on the skin, it all went according to the plan:

1. Tallarn Flesh basecoat.
2. Two Ogryn Flesh washes.
3. Re-apply the Tallarn Flesh, avoiding the recesses.
4. After that, I applied a Dwarf Flesh mid-tone, followed by...
5. A highlight using a 1:1 mix of Dwarf Flesh and Bleached Bone.
6. After that, just a simple Extreme highlight of Bleached Bone.

And here are the results so far:

As you can see, I've also just glued on the gravel to their bases, so tonight, if it's dry, it'll be a case of painting the bases and then revisiting the black armour to smooth things out, touch up any slips and give it a nice sharp highlight.

As for the team markings... Well, I have a very interesting plan for those...

Colour Scheme: Pass.

Although I haven't quite finished the golds yet - in fact this morning I have only just added a mid-tone of Shining Gold - the Human team is definitely taking shape... And I think the colour scheme looks awesome!

All I need to do on the gold decoration now is add a highlight of Burnished Gold, followed by an extreme highlight of Mithril Silver (this method for painting gold, by the way, was stolen from an 'Eavy Metal Masterclass on Space Hulk's Sergeant Lorenzo, painted by one of my favourite artists, Anja Wettergren).

After I've finished the golds, I'll be painting the sashes and belts in the same red as the Boss Plate from Wazzdakka (which you may have seen if you've read any of my previous posts) to add a spot colour to the team.  It may or may not work, bearing in mind how well the colours hold each other together at the moment.  Still, it's worth the risk and as with anything, I can always paint over it if it doesn't look good...

At the same time, to appease my disgruntled Orc team, who are feeling a bit neglected, I'll be painting their armour in the same red.  Obviously (yawn) I'll keep you up to date on how it all pans out.

Anyway, for now, the work so far:

Oh, and yes, he is still hanging in there - in fact, from the looks of it, he thinks he'd be quite a good Catcher:

If only someone would tell him he's in the wrong universe...

Black, White and Gold

Plodding along nicely, tonight!

I haven't really had too much time to paint today (Happy Birthday, Mum!!), but I've managed to get half way through the golds on the Human team by basecoating them with a 1:1 mix of Scorched Brown and Shining Gold, and then applying a 1:1 wash of Badab Black and Scorched Brown:

But wait a second!  What's all this then...?

There seems to be a Space Wolf in the team!

Well, I thought that as the gold was the next thing to paint on my 'test' Marine, I might as well do it at the same time.

Hopefully, I should have finished all of these chaps in the next three or four days, but I'm sure that will all change!

Back To Black

Hello and sorry it's been a couple of days.  Lots and lots of stuff going on, much of it Hobby-related, much of it lack-of-sleep related.

Anyway, where were we...?

Oh yes, painting the black armour!

Well, thinking about what I said in the last post, about it being difficult to judge blacks when they're against a black undercoat, I've decided to leave finishing off those sections until the majority of the rest of the models are painted.  Hopefully that way, I'll be able to do a much more accurate job of judging the contrast.

With that in mind, I've begun painting the trousers and gloves of the Human team a nice, sandy kind of off-white.  This was done using the same method that I used for the teeth and bone, etc. on my recent Space Orks project:

A Bestial Brown basecoat followed by
Snakebite Leather and then
a 1:1 mix of Snakebite Leather and Bleached Bone with
a highlight of pure Bleached Bone finally followed by
an extreme highlight of Skull White.

Just to smooth things over a little, after all of those stages, I've added a thinned Gryphonne Sepia wash and then tonight I hope to re-touch the highlights with Skull White.

With a bit of luck, I'll have some pictures for you later, but until then, happy painting!

The Canis Helix

Ah... In these unassuming grey containers lies the very life-blood of the Space Wolves Chapter...

You know what, I can't make this exciting.  Truth be told, mixing paint is only marginally less dull than watching it dry, but now the job is done and my Great Howling's armour mixes are ready to go.

The funny thing is though, when I put these paints away tonight, I discovered to my amusement that I was carrying them with the care and awe-struck wonder of - I don't know - an embryo from Jurassic Park or something!

Anyway, no excuse for not starting my Space Marines now...

Well, apart from the Blood Bowl teams:

The black armour is all but done on them, but the more I look at them, the more I think they'll benefit from one final hard-edged highlight of Space Wolves Grey.  This idea is quite a depressing one because, as the highlight has to be so neat, it is going to take a tremendous amount of time to apply to twenty-four miniatures.  In fact, I would imagine it'll take at least all of my painting time tomorrow, if not half of the weekend as well.

I shouldn't mind, but while I'm painting the black, it's difficult to see much progress when it's sitting next to a black undercoat.  I just can't wait to get some proper colour on them.

But then I always said that the first and most important thing to painting miniatures well is patience...

Grey Gold!

Hurrah!!  I was beginning to give up hope!  But luckily, Games Workshop Colchester didn't let me down!

Space Wolves Grey paint is in such short supply at the moment that it's been removed from the GW website (although I'm not sure why they don't just list it as 'Out Of Stock'...) so imagine my surprise when I walked into the store and found they'd had a delivery of it!

Even the manager seemed very proud - telling me with enthusiasm that it had only just come in and he'd managed to get eight pots.

I bought three of them.

Now, before you call me mad and accuse me of some sort of end-of-the-world panic buying, I must point out that two of them are going to be used to mix up a large batch of my armour mixes for my Space Wolves, and the other is going to top up my ever-dwindling supply.

Saying that, I was tempted to buy another could 'just in case', but managed to stop myself!!

And there you have it, I am probably the only person in the world sad enough to post a blog about nothing but paint.  With a photo.

Of three pots.

Okay, I'm going to drag myself back from the brink a little now:

The rabble above is the work so far on my Orc and Human Blood Bowl teams.  As you can tell, I've started on the blacks for both teams, letting me paint both at the same time (hard work, but very satisfying because it makes me feel like I'm ploughing through at double-speed!).

To save time, I've skipped one stage of the 'Eavy Metal Masterclass, because they were starting to look very etherial, and have drybrushed the final highlight of (wait for it...) Space Wolves Grey (!) onto the armour - and the rest of the miniatures, as you can see from the photo.  I always make it a point to try and avoid drybrushing when possible and, if it is absolutely necessary, reserve it for the first colour area so that I can be as messy around the edges as I like.

Now, to smooth it over a little, I'm going to add another thin wash of Choas Black paint.  The reason for not using Badab Black is because although much thicker and richer, making it ideal for getting a much deeper shading effect, it tends to have a shine to it as well.  Although washing with black paint is flatter, it is seeming to work quite well for these miniatures... But of course we'll have to see the finished teams before we can really pass any true judgement...

And of course, while that wash dries, I'll be mixing together my master pots for my Space Wolves' Power Armour...  GRRRRRRRrrrrrrrrrrrrr...!

(If anyone has a life to spare, I really could do with one...)

Back To Base-ics...

Well, after one of the briefest experiments since the phrase 'I wonder what would happen if...' was first uttered, I have glued the Orc and Human Blood Bowl teams to their bases.

Don't get me wrong, this method is extremely fast and efficient when it comes to getting the first couple of coats on, but the bulk of the sprues I think would make it very awkward when it comes to the fine detail work.

Even more fundamentally, it doesn't 'feel' right.  Soul-less was the first word that sprung to mind when I was trying to put my finger on the problem.

So even now, as I type this, the two teams are drying onto their bases.

In future, I will almost definitely do the same thing for the initial basecoat, but anything beyond that will be done with the players' feet firmly on the plastic ground...

And speaking of Blood Bowl, I'm mentally preparing myself (by drinking a cup of coffee and having a nice sit down) for the Green Glade Hackers' next big game tonight, against a team of Amazons.

I love playing Amazons because their Dodge skill makes them almost as tricky as my Wood Elves, so I think I'll be in for quite a challenging game.

Naturally, I'm sure a post-match report will follow soon, along with some photos of my team which, I now realise, have never featured anywhere in this blog!  The shame!!

Wish me luck!

New Day, New Project

Well, here we go again!  Something new to start.

While I'm still waiting for Games Workshop to solve the seemingly national Space Wolves Grey paint shortage, I've left my army on the back-burner and have started to paint a Human and an Orc Blood Bowl team:

Yes, you heard right.  Started to.

Why then, are they still on the sprues?

Well, let me explain...

I have recently wondered whether it would be more efficient to paint the Blood Bowl teams on their sprues, simply because it is much neater and less cluttered in my work area, and it should be easier to paint them underneath without a base getting in the way.  This will be the first time I've ever tried this, so I'll keep you all posted as to whether it's worth doing in the future.  I have, obviously left only the bottoms of their feet attached to the sprues lest I should end up spending months touching them up after clipping them off!

Again, I repeat, I've started them.

Although it's not very obvious from the pictures, I have already basecoated the many black areas of the miniatures with a 1:1 mix of Regal Blue and Chaos Black.  These will all be painted in a much darker pallette than my last set, and as I have always found black more tricky than most colours to paint well, I thought that I'd have to come out from under the bed and face my fears head-on.

With a bit of luck, disaster will not ensue.

Anyway, to help me in this up-hill task, I'm refering to part of the Daemon Prince 'Eavy Metal Masterclass in this month's White Dwarf magazine:

(Apologies for the blurred cover photo - must be emanations from the Warp...)

I'm not sure whether I'll make the etherial glow quite so pronounced, after all these are not Chaos teams I'm painting!  But I knew before I saw this article that I wanted a purple hue to the highlights, so it could well be ideal...

Tonight, I hope to start highlighting up with a Regal Blue layer, before adding a thinned wash of Badab Black to the same areas...

Wish me luck!!!