Alright, I admit, I love some pretty strange minis. I mean, Grace is Gone is definitely on my top ten list.
So, naturally, I like to share these odd treasures with you all when I find them. Scibor Monstrous Miniatures have given us a number of wonderful holiday dwarf miniatures, such as the Easter Bunny, the Pumpkin Slayer for Halloween, and the strange Statue of Love for Valantine’s day.
So, it was inevitable that we were sometime going to see a Christmas dwarf soon. Well, here he is:
You’ve got to love the look on Santa’s face there. Although I am surprised Santa survived at all.
One of the projects that I did a while ago was to convert a pair of cake toppers into apocalyptic figures (one was a zombie, and the other was a survivor in a gas mask).
This time, my client wanted a bride and groom fighting off the zombie horde (the clothing in this diorama matches theirs).
So, here they are:
Each time I do one of these, I have to think “Man, I wish I had this idea back when I was planning my own wedding. My wife would have loved it.”
Petey was sculpted by Drew Olds and inspired by Schlock Mercenary by Howard Tayler. He’s available hand painted or with a patina finish, or as a plain pewter mini if you’d like to paint him yourself.
Based on Schlock Mercenary by Howard Tayler, www.schlockmercenary.com. Sculpted by Melissa Mayhew. Schlock Mercenary Copyright Howard Tayler 2000-2009 and used by permission of Howard Tayler.
Ok, the miniatures gaming world has two fairly important bits of news.
1- Privateer Press have just had a big update to their FAQ and Errata documents. Privateer Press have consistently been very good with updating their rules set as new problems arise, and so most likely the problems you might have had will be covered in their new document.
2- Mantic Games has found a new way to push their recently released Kings of War rules set forward. Only this time, it isn’t a PDF document, it is a free set of rules with any order of any kind from their store. It doesn’t even have to be miniatures, you may have simply bought
Mantic Games has been supplying us with some pretty nice plastic kits for about a year, and it looks as though they’re still growing. Their miniatures are all very compatible with Warhammer Fantasty Battle, but with their own rules set, the possibilities have just opened up.
White can be a tricky color to paint. You need to be careful not to make your whites too light as once you are using pure white paint, there’s absolutely no way to highlight it any further. Because of this, it is important to remember that white colors are defined by their shadows. Don’t be afraid to use pure white on large sections of the mini, so long as you leave darker colors in the shadows to define the shape.
My go-to method for most colors is to start out dark and work my way up, so that’s where we can start this. Remember to leave your earlier layers showing so that your shapes are properly defined.
There are a lot of varied looks your white can take, and it mostly depends on what color you use for your shading layers. Let’s start out with the warm whites that are used on studio Deathwing and Protectorate of Menoth troops.
If you want a warm white, you might want to start out with a medium to light beige color (like P3 Rucksack Tan or a mix of Citadel Snakebite Leather and Bleached Bone). With this method, you may want to mix your base color with a light bone color before you finally reach white. Ultimately, you can achieve something like this:
If you want to achieve a cooler white color, the method is the same, only with different colors. Start out with a medium to light gray color. If you want a very cold result, you can work this up through a very light blue (like P3 Frostbite, or Citadel’s Space Wolves Gray). If you want a less cool look, you can mix your white paint into the base gray and work it directly up to pure white.
Again, remember that your ultimate white layer is covering quite a bit of the white area.
It is best to start practicing white with miniatures where it doesn’t matter if they end up looking light beige or light gray, because the easiest mistake to make is to have too much shading or to make the shading too dark.
Now, after some practice, if you can get the blending down pat, you eventually can start to play with colors that are almost white, but not quite. It is great for doing white on white free hand. And you can try shading with different colors to see what you can do.
Here is my Madrak Ironhide with red, blue and pink shaded white for skin, and a cool white tartan with a white tartan pattern:
If you’ve heard the buzz over at Cool Mini or Not, you’ll know that they’ve just announced that they’ll be sponsoring the Crystal Brush painting competition at Adepticon 2011.
Of course, it hasn’t happened yet, but that doesn’t mean we don’t know that it will be crazy competitive. The prize support is the unheard of sum of 10,000 to the grand prize winner, dwarfing pretty much every similar competition.
Maybe the guys over at Coolmini are trying to replace the Golden Daemon as the world’s premier competition, as I am very certain that a sum like that will attract the attention of many brilliant painters, and since the competition isn’t manufacturer exclusive it won’t scare away the painters who are affiliated with a company (like Eric John of Wyrd, or Matt DePietro of Privateer Press).
Coolmini has some co-sponsors for this deal, and pretty original looking trophy. All in all, the competition is going to be rough. I can’t wait to see what the competition turns out.
Just a little while ago, I got to paint up the Avatar of Menoth for a commission. And this is one of the most interesting warjacks in Warmachine.
The mini is designed to be a walking cathedral- with ornate organ pipes replacing its smoke stacks. He has as much runic work as the Nightmare, and even some call for minor light sourcing. Altogether is a pretty impressive little piece.
Of course, he comes from the Apotheosis era of Warmachine. The minis from that book represent a great leap in the quality of Privateer Press’ minis. However, it also represents the apex of Privateer Press assembly difficulty, and this warjacks is far more difficult to put together than almost anything that came after it.
Welcome to Garden Ninja Studios, the source for your miniature painting and sculpting needs. We are currently accepting commissions. Please check out our forum and gallery and email us about your project. Watch here for photos of our recent studio projects, links to painting tutorials and other cool stuff.
