To Infinity and Beyond!

Sooooo…I couldn’t come up with a better title. That’s all I’ve got.

After some more painting sessions with le Painting Sage , I have nearly finished my Infinity Aleph crew!
My plan is that when I have all 6 of them done, to go back through them one by one and do a line of final touch ups – as I’ve noticed through posting photos there are some glaring errors that need correcting.

What’s that? SORRY CAN YOU SPEAK UP? Wait! Let me cup my ear to hear you.

Why she’s holding her head like that constantly baffles me. I look at her arm and think, ‘are you struggling to hear?’ ‘are you itching something?’ ‘DO YOU EVEN HAVE EARS!?’.

I also just realised how bad the above picture is. Better one coming soon…..

I stuffed up the white ‘shading’ technique that Painting Sage was showing me – you can see a better rendition of it on his own work, and ended up having to try to hide it by re-painting a lot her white. *siiiiiiiiiiigh*

We also had a ‘test run’ game. This was less of a game than it was more ‘scenarios’ of ‘Ok, so if he was here, and I was here – I could shoot this weapon and roll 3 dice to try to roll below 14’ etc etc. So far I quite like how this game plays.
It seems….closer to the feel of what a real fight might play like than say, Warmachine. But in that being said – I don’t really understand how to play either of them to be making any judgments hahaha.

My little bat-bots ready for their fight.

Painting Sage has added some other items to his print and play Infinity terrain. It looked so cool with the little figures on it! Kind of made my imagination go into over-drive imagining large mechanical foot steps shaking the surrounding shipping containers as my bots slowly moved towards the enemy.

Other than Infinity, as you know I have been painting up Madelyn from Warmachine. I have been picking her up and doing little bits here and there to touch her up.
I wasn’t happy with how the paint ‘water stained’ under her bum, so I tried to blend it back a bit to hide it and re-highlighted the grey. Now it looks very 2 dimensional – ugh, more stuff to fix.

Sorry for the bad photo quality, I’m half asleep – it’s 1am – and I spent all of no time trying to focus/light this picture.

In addition to touch ups, I thought ‘Hey, I see people paint eyes on this mini all the time cause they’re pretty easy to access, why not give it a try?’

Worst. Idea. Ever.
Never painting eyes again. I ended up painting back over the pupils and left them white, but even then she looks….creepy.

Good night everyone!

Sincerely, El.

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WARNING: This post may contain miniatures and food.

It’s been a few days since my last post – and finally work has slowed down enough for me to do some stealthy typing.

So, now that I have 5/6 Infinity miniatures relatively finished:

I went ahead and got started on the final 6th!! Yipee!

Hello everyone. It’s good to meet you. Despite what you may have heard – I’m not actually naked. I’m wearing a Lycra white body suit.

She is proving a tad more….er…troublesome than the others purely because part way through painting her, I suddenly realised she had a piece of flash stuck to the bridge of her nose. Had to try to get it off without:
1. Giving her a complete nasoectomy
2. Completely destroying the surrounding paint

I’ve actually been finding the Infinity miniatures extremely challenging. Partly because of their size, partly because of their details, and partly because of their colour schemes. Faaar too stressful for my overly anxious, shakes like a guinea-pig in a thunder storm self.

While not working on my Infinity guys, I’ve been trying to speed paint up Madelyn Corbeau for a ‘learn to free hand’ thread happening over on the Wyrd forums in a few days.

So I have her at this point (a lot of touch ups and fixing needed!) and my plan is to do the Cygnar swan on the back of her coat.

But I’m not sure how I’m going to do it, as I’m not too fond of just dumping a big area of gold on her, but I also have no idea how to NMM – like at all. So, we shall see I suppose!!

My only other news, is my father did a family dinner the other night of home-made pizza making and movies.

It’s ok to be jealous of my amazing pizza.

Sincerely,
Ellison

Battle for Sophia Oct 2013

Ok everyone! I would like to begin this post by advising that I am not connected to this event in anyway – merely that I have been reading about it and thought it deserved a spot on my blog.

So, the Battle for Sophia is an Oxfordshire-based wargaming club are set to play the popular tabletop game; Warhammer Fantasy, in an endurance marathon for 48 hours in a bid to raise donations for Sophia – a young Witney resident with Spastic Diplegia, a form of Cerebral Palsy, who is in need of a crucial operation and months of post op physio.

The event, dubbed ‘The Battle for Sophia’ will take place Friday 25 to Sunday 27 October, at the club’s headquarters in Carterton.

Sophia having her photo taken for the local news paper

The tabletop game will play continuously for 48 hours with players taking shifts, and will be broadcast live over the web for supporters to see the action progressing. The game will be played on a massive 12’ by 4’ table, will use more than 50 terrain pieces and over 2000 miniatures, many of which have been beautifully hand-painted.

And here are some links to further information:

http://innsmouthgamingclub.wordpress.com/

http://www.warseer.com/forums/showthread.php?380215-48-hour-Warhammer-Game-Battle-for-Sophia

http://www.sophiassteppingstones.co.uk/

Painting, Painting, So much painting…

Ok, let me begin this post with many thanks to everyone who has been helping me with painting the horse and sending encouragement/empathetic messages. It has…improved. I wouldn’t say it was great but it has improved.

I think I’m going to shelf horsey as he is for the time being, and take another crack at one down the track when I have more of any idea of what I’m doing.

Big top arrow: Awful ‘blob’ looking effect on the saddle due to my inability to sand back greenstuff correctly.
Small lower arrow: Indicating the weird sawdust like gunk still stuck to the surface that I didn’t managed to clean off all together.

That’ll do, horsey. That’ll do.

I’ve also been working on my Infinity crew!

I beg your pardon. I was wondering if you wouldn’t mind ever so much – giving me some type of nice blending and highlights? Much appreciated.

Sorry about the poor photo quality – I realised I had forgotten to upload any images of this girl to my photobucket, so I emailed the picture from my phone – it seems to have compressed it somewhat.

Either way, I completely botched the shading on her legs and skirt. Her arse looks all badonka-donk-donk, but the front…yea, I think I de-evolved while painting her.
Painting Sage attempted to rescue the front of her skirt for me – but by that stage, I think I’d reached a point of diminishing returns.

Oh, nice surprise this morning was my order from Table Top Empires came today!!
I am going through the Australian based online miniatures stores and putting in small orders just to see what they’re like.
These guys weren’t quite as fast at shipping as Defiant Gaming but only slower by a day or so – so I still rate them.

I received 2 dummy Reaper miniatures just to use as painting practice. So at some point, I will be working on these two little ladies:

Other than this, not much to report for this evening.

Say hi to your mothers for me.

Sincerely, Ellie.

Paintball, Painting and WTF did I just play?

Let’s begin this story with the fact that I participated in Paintball this weekend.
Now, as much as I can hear you doing a fist pump and a ‘Hells yeaaa’ this was more of a revolutionary awakening for myself to absolutely know – I will not survive the Zombie apocalypse.
Honestly speaking when the virus ridden cannibals start roaming the streets – I’ll already be one of them, don’t worry about coming to save me.

Now for a small update on painting!!

So I’ve been experimenting with paper to see if there’s anything comparable to the P3 parchment paper to use to put my paints on. Here’s how I went:

• Standard Paper = No. It dissolves easily.
• Baking Paper = No. The wax being placed either up OR down creates a water repellent barrier that doesn’t allow the paint to remain wet.
• Tracing Paper = Maybe. I’ve had a limited amount of success with tracing paper keeping paint wet for about 24 hours. But not much longer.
• Tradesman Paper = Maybe. This is actually paper made of a type of stone. It’s oil and water proof, but this actually made it PAINT proof, meaning that if the paint was thick enough, it just sat around on the top with the water keeping liquid for about 48 hours. Not bad but not great.

TRADEY PAPER. FOR THE TOUGH MAN… Or for the 5 foot nothing woman trying to paint tiny people.

The tracing paper on the left, and the Tradesman paper on the right after 24 hours.

So, using my ‘temporary’ wet palette, I got to trying to fix horsey.
I did this by adding an orange/brown type colour to the original brown and re-going over the highlights and then toning them back again with flesh wash. I think it’s a bit of an improvement but not great.

You still haven’t fixed my saddle woman. I mean seriously, who rides a saddle without stirrups?

I also used black wash to give him a slightly darker tone on his hocks. I was going to do him full bay colour and black them out, but I figured – he’s obviously no REAL breed of horse anyways, so we shall cheat! MWAHAHAHA.

—-

In PC gaming news, I have gotten addicted to the Mighty Quest for Epic Loots.

So the point of this game is to build a castle, and other people can attack it. If they beat you castle they get a % of your loots (gold and gems) – if you attack them back you get a % of theirs.

How anyone travels from castle to castle is currently a mystery. Pegasus ponies maybe??

My castle in all it’s glory. AAAAANNND can be beaten in about a half a minute. Sorry gems, it was nice while it lasted.

The idea is that people get more and more creative with how they set up traps and monsters and try to catch you out. So far mines a pretty straight forward Walk in > Beat obvious frog guys > Take my shit.

There’s just a heart warming feeling knowing the loots you scored were actually another players. MWAHAHA.

Other than this – I also got Anna some time back if anyone remembers? But I hadn’t actually played it.

Regret.
So much regret.

Welcome to Anna. Where the best part of the game is the font the title shows in.

So it’s a horror puzzle game. Where the puzzles are actually ridiculous. After 10 minutes of kicking around in this pretty outdoors area I had to google what I was supposed to be doing.
Would you believe I was meant to go find a branch, use to to move rocks in the river, fill up my canteen and catch a glass shard – and then just HAPPEN to work out that I need to set this glass shard on fire using a pinecone while sitting in the groove of a stone eye.
Like…what the actual fuck?

We’re trying to look dark and ominous. Instead we’re just giving you a headache with the overdone music and shitty lighting.

You fumble around in the water mill for a while finding random objects, like this prize winning message on a handkerchief.

I’m pretty sure I follow the 14 year old girl that wrote this on Tumblr.

I ended up giving up the game after I illuminated some magical bridge over a puddle and got to enjoy the ‘horrific’ image of a stick figure hugging kids in the water.

The scariest part of this entire ordeal was the art work for the kids. Really? REALLY? We allowed someone to publish that nightmare?

Neeeeedless to say, I won’t be finishing this game. I have plenty of better ways to spend an hour. Like you know, sniffing paint.

Well, that’s all for this evening folks.
I have a tendency to waffle – my apologies.

Night all!!

Little Update..You could even call it a ‘Miniature’ one.

AAAAAAAAAHAHAHA.

My wit. Sometimes I even surprise myself with my on-the-fly puns.

*cough*

Aaaannny how. Just a small update today!
Headed over to the Painting Sage‘s laboratory (also known as his painting table in the back room) and got to continuing painting my Infinity miniatures.
(You can hear HIS regaling tail of this evening here: Sagey-ness links )

You can leave me here. It’s comfy on this fluffy paint splotched mess.

I know this is a bit of a stupid photo, but because he leans so far over – resting him on this back, propped up by paintbrush wiping tissues was the easiest way to grab a quick shot.
I still need to clean up a number of bits on him – but he is now relatively done!! WOOHOO.

4/6 Infinity Miniatures completed!!

So I got a start laying down base colours on this girly.

El, please remind your readers that the camera adds 10lbs. Thanks so much.

I have started making highlights on her skin. Even though she is a much more lifelike skin tone than the previous guy, I’m actually finding her harder to highlight because bringing the colour up a stage without it just being WHITE is proving a little difficult.
But we persevere!!

Well, that’s all I have time for. Time to sleep so I can awake early and get shot at by people with paint filled rifles.

Painting Horses is too hard. I quit.

I suppose I should probably start with the reason for the title of my post.

So, as I posted last time – I ended up starting actually painting one of the Warhammer 40k horses I was given and I was busy blocking in base colours.
I had tutorials a-plenty and proceeded onwards.

It. Was. Awful.

This is with just the Devlin Mud wash to start. Not too bad so far…

….until I attempted to highlight ANYTHING.

What have you done to me!? I look like I have patches of leprosy!!

EDIT: I’ve just noticed that this photo doesn’t really show up the horrendous highlighting. Trust me, it looks WAY WORSE in person.
EDIT 2: Here is a better picture of the highlighting. I turned my flash right up to try to get ever individual stroke to reflect so it shows how I was actually painting it.

Uuugh. I tried a million different things to try to correct this obvious, patchy, chalky looking highlight but I was totally lost.
I have realised than before I started painting miniatures I always thought the ones with heaps of little bits all over them would be REALLY hard, and the mostly smooth ones (like this) would be simple. At least if there were ‘bits’ I could highlight an edge – instead of what I’ve done here which is randomly dragging lighter coloured paints across a once pretty pony.

Might have to take it around to Painting Sage and see what he thinks about how to fix it. *sigh*

Well, I also got a start on one of the 3 remaining Infinity miniatures, the hacker.

L is for LOSER! Also legos, lemons and ‘let’s be friends’.

I have absolutely been dreading the highlighting of the black on these minis. And as much as I don’t really have the hang of it, highlighting with this blue colour is much nicer than I imagined highlighting black would be.

He looks really blotchy unfortunately but I’m hoping as the white get’s shaded and I start finishing him up I can clean that up a little. Hmm.

Well! I think time for sleep. Gah – sleep is so overrated.

Goodnight friends!
~ Ellie.

My Next Challenge: Try to not break anything

It appears that I have, as of late, developed an inability to hold anything….or at least, inability to hold Infinity miniatures for any prolonged amount of time. *sigh*

Do not fear! We have come with the power of tinyness.

So I got them to around this stage (which for me is – yea pretty much done) and then what did I do? I dropped one, bent it’s whole shoulder guard/wing thing in and chipped off all the paint! (Many sounds were made, tears were shed, regrets were had).
Painting Sage attempted to rescue my work for me by quickly placing a lacquer type varnish over it that saved a lot of my paint job and returned it to me.

20 minutes later….I dropped the SAME MODEL. ON THE OTHER WING.

Really, to be honest. I shouldn’t be allowed to touch things in general.
Ah well….spent the rest of my time trying to fix his little attachments and got them sort of back to the state they were in.

I have also decided to ‘mark’ my Infinity army with my own symbol.

What have you done do us, girl? Put some weird M sign on my thighs? I’ll never be able to wear stockings again! Pssh

So it’s actually a bat. This is because I wear a lot of black and a number of people (including beloved Painting Sage) like to call me a varying range of ‘vampire’, ‘goth’ or ‘corpse bride’ haha whatever. Either way I often refer to myself as a bat so I went with a little bat.

Other than these guys I finally started painting one of the horses my friend gave me.

I appear to have the body shape and head of a Standardbred, and the feet of a Clydesdale..I’m a CLYDARDSDALE!!

I’m using him to attempt a different method of painting. I normally focus on one ‘area’ like skin and then finish it before moving onto the next – this time I’m going to block in all the base colours first and work my way out from there. Let’s see how it goes!!

I’d also like to note, he has developed this weird grainy film all over patches of him. I’m not sure what caused it, but it’s really hard to try to paint ‘smoothly’ over.

Oh last thing I should tell you all…I discovered the tiniest wontons in the world.

Like…seriously. It’s like eating a largish kidney bean. It’s so small my Infinity mini’s could use it as a decently sized pillow.
Fail Wonton company. Just fail.

Love from El

Work is dull and I have a PhotoBucket

I pretty much use PhotoBucket.com to host all of my images for various forums/blogs etc. So I thought the other night, why not upload a bunch of random things and use them to write a blog post if work turns out as slow as expected….glad I did. Work is dull.

So, a couple of random things…

Have been soaking and scrubbing some more of the miniatures given to my by a friend.

Raaaaawrrrr…rch…chu…bleeerg *furball*

I think this little guy is about as clean as he’s going to get.
The reason that the head looks SO clean is because it had actually never been put on!! In addition, the rider was never painted – so I just have him in a baggy waiting for his new fat raptor pet to get a coat.

Finally got the Infinity ALEPH figures together (my god, never again, so tiny) and then spray painted them with my Vallejo Off White. This was my first go a spray painting anything.
YIPES. So much more difficult than I had ever imagined. Half the time I think I was just blowing air in their general direction.

Then they were sprayed with a light coat of Sepia GW Wash.

Now to paint the detail!! Omg…paint…the detail. That detail is like under a 1µm in size. NOPE THEY JUST STAYING WHITE. *sigh* I’ll give it at go…but it won’t be pretty.

Last note, Painting Sage has been teaching some other people from work how to play Warmachine. So I headed around to watch the match and sip my cappuccino. Mmmm…delicious.

Well, that’s all for today it appears!! Love you all ~

~ El

Todays Adventures: Painting Sage gets a Blog!

Well, as it appears all of my waffling on about the awesome WordPress miniatures community has rubbed off on my Painting Sage and he’s made himself a blog!!

http://thewurmwood.wordpress.com <—click here for good times.

As much as I wanted him to entitle it ‘The Ramblings of a Painting Sage’ it appears he instead went with The Wurmwood. Haha.

In my most recent escapades….I continued painting Lylyth from Warmachine. Got a lot of practice painting shading on cloaks.

Look at the beautiful sway of my cloak. It flaps! Like a candle in the wiiiiinddd…ehem

Still need to learn a lot about blending. *sigh*
I keep huffing and becoming frustrated that they don’t come out as nice as they look in the pictures on the website. I wish patience was less of a virtue and more of ‘buy it now’ on ebay.

Painting Sage and I also purchased army’s for the miniatures table top game Infinity!

(Mine are the ALEPH on the left)

I absolutely COULD NOT believe how little these were when I opened the box.

Hello my dear. I hear you’re going to be painting me? Take care with my stilletos, they’re small enough to clip the wings of a fairy dancing on the head of a pin.

AAAAARG.
Putting these together was not only an exercise in patience, but also a grand learning experience in the art of ‘pinning’. Painting Sage had to step in a few times to assist me as I was flailing all over the place losing pieces of robots that could only be found with a metal detector.

But, eventually, I had a set of robots and little Aleph people.

Well, I might leave it there for today!
Oh one other piece of news, was my painting friend found these awesome free printable terrain maps and cargo containers! I don’t have a ‘great’ photo of it yet – but how cool does this look??

Ooooooh, cannot wait to play on this with my ultra tiny part people.

Love you all! Sincerely,
Ellie