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.

Advertisement

Holding Miniatures up to a Torchlight

Alright, so when approaching this miniature I assumed a few things.
1. The skirt would be the hardest to paint/shade etc.
2. The fan and umbrella would be fairly simple.

So, even though it would appear I was correct on point 1, I was GROSSLY underestimating that whole umbrella/fan deal. I have literally spent my last 3 painting sessions with Painting Sage, just on these two items.

He seems to think it’s because now I’m stressing about them and over thinking the whole thing that caused this but still. They have turned out, pretty sub-par.

I’m not even sure this is a fan I’m holding anymore, El. What on earth is this colour scheme??

I think I’m going to step away, and leave them both and work on the bows/details before I come back to them. They’re honestly doing my head in!!

This is a little bit of a back track, but here is a nice shot Painting Sage took of my mini for me!! As promised.

Paint me like one of your french girls.

Onto slightly different news, so if anyone remembers a very generous lovely friend of mine gave me his collection of Warhammer 40K miniatures to paint?

After all of my chattering on about minis, and paints, and games and awesomeness – he sends me this photo with the captions of “LOOK WHAT YOU MADE ME DO”

Hello little Dragon. Very pleased to meet you!
*Disclaimer note: Not painted by me.

Yaaaay! More friends to talk miniatures to, and paint with! Yayayayay.

Now, the title of my blog was because between painting, work, life etc I have also been busy playing Torchlight II.
I got this in the recent steam sale for about $6 and have to admit – WELL WORTH THAT MONEY.

What’choo doin just floating mid air grinning at me, ey?

I would almost describe this game as Diabloesque. But it’s quite a bit faster paced in regards to Action/Quests and levels.

Dun dun DUUUUUUN.

I would honestly recommend this game to anyone that enjoyed either D2 or D3, or Path of Exile. All great games in my opinion.

Check out my SAHWEET face gear and pet spider. Because I’m a baller.

Well lovies! Talk again soon! Hopefully I will have some Halloween themed basing to you show you next time!

Sincerely, El

Interviewing and Alephs!

Ok, let’s start with the Internet.

Gaming-guy.com ever so flatteringly asked if I was willing to do an interview for his page about my miniature painting!! Eeee!
The conversation may have deviated at time from gaming topics to cheeseburger dreams, but I felt thoroughly spoiled that anyone liked my little corner of the internet enough to post about it!

So head on over if you’d like to read the interview – but be warned – there is an ever large picture of my ugly mug smiling at you with caffeine obsessed eyes. Hehe.

So finished up my last Asura for my Aleph Infinity guys!

I’m going back through all 6 of them to give them touch-ups, fix highlighting etc at the moment, but otherwise – they’re now all done!!

This girl need some more dimension to her hair, and another pass of white on her back inner thigh but otherwise – finished!!

Painting Sage thinks he might have some cool bases to go on these guys so hoping to paint those up as well. My only trepidation is that these guys are very fragile so I’m SURE I’m going to break someone getting them off their current base. Wish me luck!!

Sincerely,
Ellie

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.

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.

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.

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