Happy New Year!

Hello hello! I trust everyone’s holidays and beginning of 2016 is so far going well!

I ended up ringing in the new year this year at a the home of the Painting Sage with some friends, bevvies and boardgames.

Sir, I do challenge theeee!
Disclaimer: I have never watched the TV show for this boardgame. I have no idea what they say when they fight. Aaarg?

While I am not a Spartacus fan, I would actually highly recommend this boardgame – it was a good couple of hours of fun – and I won every arena fight I was dropped into.

Thank you thank you. You may call me the dice master.

Now I realise that in my last post I had only just started painting my green dressed girl buuuut, the ladies are done!!

Soon to be seen* on a Victoria’s Secret runway near you.
*skin grafts not included.

So I ended up not only doing each dress a different colour, but each girls un-dead skin tone a different colour.
Now that I’d done it, I kind of wished I’d just picked 1 skin tone and done them all the same. They don’t really look like a team like this, but ah well; I suppose we live and we learn ey?

I struggle to get ANY photos of Sybelle, because of her darker scheme, and her hunched over pose she has proven to be the worlds more giant pain. I sent a picture of her to a friend that asked how she was going – looked like a dark blob with hooker heels.
Great stuff Sybelle.

I ended up priming up a couple of Reaper Bones minis as well to try to practice painting with.

I am unsure if I have discussed this on my blog before – but it’s time to come clean and tell the truth.

I. Am. The SLOWEST. Painter. You. Will. Ever. Meet.

Legit – in the same amount of time that it takes my friends to paint 2 full miniatures I’m sitting back and like ‘Phew, glad that left arm is done!’. It’s extraordinary…

So I gave my self a time limit of 3 hours per mini. In 1.5 hours, I had skin:

Yaaaaarg! *cough-ehem* No but really, can I have purple chain mail? Pretty please? Can I? Can I? Can I?

I was so incredibly unhappy with this, that I stopped the project and he is now soaking in a tub of paint stripper.
Siiiiigh.
One day, I’ll get there I swear.

Why hello there, madame. Mighty fine to meet you. Have you ever considered, immortality?

I have started my Seamus! I am unsure why I went the extremely self punishing route of STRIPED pants, given that I now have to reproduce these on this Copy-Cat killer. . . but we persevere.

Thanks for tuning again! Catch you all again on the side upon which is revealed whence one rotates a coin mid-air. Otherwise known, as a flip side.

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Boardgames and Baseing

Hello friends!!!

Ok, I have a lot of pictures today, so bare with me.

My progress on putting together the base etc for my Halloween girl got slighting put on hold due to a miss-hap with some matte varnish. Now, I was very unhappy with the colours coming through on her umbrella and fan so Painting Sage suggested we seal her off before I continue to work away.

I have to say, I LOVED the sprays effect on my minis colours!! She actually looked better blended and even a little brighter maybe? Either way, she has these big crevasses in her hair (as mentioned before when I was talking about painting said hair) which undoubtedly trapped some of the spray.

This is something I have most definitely dealt with before with my own ‘paint on’ matte varnish and so I got to glossing her to pull it back.

She has now lost the effect of ‘grey’ that you see above, I just don’t have a snap of it yet!! But she has recovered well, and is sitting in the ICU waiting for completion!

Moving onto her base!

So, my plan was to have her standing at her “front door” waiting for ‘Trick or Treaters” to give them candy.

My biggest problem with this door, is that is has a far more…um…clean and simple paint job compared to her, so they might end up clashing when it’s all put together….we shall see.

For her and her door, Painting Sage had this awesome base he had made in a box and goes ‘Is this maybe what you were thinking??’. EEEEeeee, Perfect!!

So I got to priming and painting it up!

The stones have been drybrushed to give effect. I point that out, because this is one technique I don’t ever seem to understand. So this time, I had Sage show me step by step how it’s done.
I can’t believe……this entire time…..I’ve been trying to do it COMPLETELY WRONG. Ahhh well. Hahaha.

The rest of her base is slowly coming together, in the form of SCULPEY!

Oh how I love Sculpey III. You brilliant little bake putty you.
More photos soon when it’s assembled!

In other news, Sage and I had a bit of a boardgame run through after some touching up of minis was completed and we did a test run of a game he had been given as a gift/favor.

It was actually pretty fun! Albeit, I don’t think I fully understand some of the rules.

These little guys look like they are a calling out for amaaaazing paint jobs, yes yes?

So I played the green team.

Sage part way through goes ‘Oh hey, why did you choose those guys?’ and I was caught a little off guard.
When I thought about it, I realised I tend to do that, without thinking, in a lot of ‘first time play’ or ‘starter set choosing’. If I see either “beasts” or “green” as part of one of the factions or options – I will always choose those.
So at the end of the day, I chose green because of the colour, not because of what those characters could do, nor the characters themselves. Hahaha.

As you can see, it’s bascially a map of ‘Thieves roam the city breaking into chests and stabbing each other’. You have these big ‘Story’ cards that you use to adjust the objectives of different games (i.e. Obtain a scroll and keys to break into the treasury).

The other thing we did was a small came of X-Wing!

I was super hesitant about this game, a game comprised of totally ‘vehicle’ type characters didn’t really appeal to me. And just space battles? Yea whatever.

I actually quite liked it!! Although, my X-Wing ship had the turning circle of my Toyota Camry and ended up spending half it’s time trying to even keep someone in RANGE of it’s phasers let alone be on the offensive.

Well, that is all for today happy people! We shall see each other again soon.

~ El.

A colour scheme from hell…

As promised! A new mini!

Now, please keep in mind that this miniature is:
1. Only half done
and
2. Was intended to be ‘themed’ for Wyrd’s Halloween painting contest Rotten Harvest.

The colour scheme currently looks a bit tragic, but I’m really hoping that with her equally themed BASE attached, it will all make sense in the end.

The beginning…

She was originally primed (air gun sprayed) with an all dark yellow and then a light yellow to have a go at the whole pre-shading concept. So far I’m liking how this works.

The glowing eyes were step by step explained to me by beloved Painting Sage. I think I might con him into doing a tutorial. Not only for my future reference, but a few people have asked me how it was done, and I’d like to be able to link to the source of the wisdom.

From there, she progressed to getting her colours in. Can anyone guess what I’m trying to accomplish with those horrid colours? hahaha.
Well, even if not, all will be revealed eventually!

Highlighting the orange actually blew my mind, because it started as red, and from there ALL I could see was red – I was convinced it was not looking like orange. Painting Sage had to tell me it was time to put the brush down before I had an aneurysm.

Last session I worked on her, she got her hair. This is the first time I’ve attempted a proper ‘brunette’, and her hair has a lot of ‘layers’ making it easier to highlight than most so I’m really hoping it comes out in the photos.

Painting Sage was actually out snapping some nice shots of his own miniatures and took her with him to get me a good photo – and I forgot to upload it to be available while blogging away at work – so I shall add that in the next post!!

Hahaha, I’m hoping she’s going to look a bit more…um…acceptable when she’s shown with her full fancy themed base. That or she’s forever going to be staring at me with her creeper eyes from the back of my shame shelf.

Talk soon!
~ The Ellinator.

The Mass Effect of Pneumonia

Hello my lovelies!! *BEWARE OF MASS EFFECT 2 SPOILERS*

As you may have noticed, I dropped off the face off the planet for a week or so.

So, I was in a friends wedding (which was all hectic on it’s own preparing for) but, as luck would have it the next day I was sick. Since then, I have mostly been moping around in bed feeling sorry for myself with Pneumonia and the relative goodness of a chest infection. Uuuuurgh.

Literally, stuck in bed for a number of days with not too much energy. So, how did I keep myself amused? With the Halloween STEAM sale of course.

Ehem. Maybe I should not be left to my own devices sometimes.

As a side note, I have no idea what Painkiller is, nor do I remember selecting it – but hey, there is it.

So I started playing Mass Effect 2. This is a game my cousin has been insisting I try as it is (in her words) “omfgrjuih34r5jkfhri34 epicz”.

Hmmm…it’s not too bad.

It’s not a bad game, and it has a relatively interesting story. You start as this chick (I’m playing as Femshep) that she’s proverbially brought back from the dead to do the bidding of some group that no body apparently likes.

Fast-forward a bit and my mission is to recruit a bunch of people in to my ‘crew’.

This chick. HAH, she’s basically my own personal hooker with a gun.

Dudes name is Archangel. Why though is actually beyond me as once you see his face, it’s not heaven you assumed he dropped from.

And Jack. She’s all hardcore and dangerous and wearing like….ropes to cover her nips.
I suppose living a few months in a stasis tube doesn’t leave for a lot of time to go clothes shopping.

So I head off on these missions in this nightclub, and of course what is the first thing a player should do when presented with digital strippers? Spend all the gold on a lap dance.

If I’d seen this kids face first, I might have kept my money.

And Jacks all…

…You’re doing it wrong.

As much as I am enjoying this game, I must admit the cut-scenes are a bit excessive. Even for me. I feel more like I’m watching a movie that I occasionally participate in, than I am participating in a story with occasional movie.

Other than this, I have been working little bits on WHAT WAS my Rotten Harvest competition entry – but due to getting sick never got her completed in time.

Photos of her next!!

Look forward to catching up on everyones posts! 🙂

~ Sincerely, El