A Little Experiment

I had the best of intentions of finishing the bomber last night, but only just diddled around with the airbrush, making a miniscule amount of progress.  This is mostly due to the fact that the air brush became clogged twice when I was mixing the paint/thinner directly in the cup; I won't be doing that any more...

At any rate, the little bit that I did was on the rocky growths on the troll's skin.  I realized after the fact that the pictures that I took were dumpy, but I'm stuck with them for now.  The good news is that I will be closing out this model in the next session and rolling directly into the full-bloods (Axer and Impaler). Anyway, here's where we are...

Troll!

Getting close on the bomber now, and made time to get the bases done for the full-bloods.  I'm pretty excited now to get the army field-able after watching a bunch of Hordes battle reports.  Take a gander and critique:

In need of attention...

So obviously the metallic stuff needs further attention and some more orange rust in the deeper, less used portions of the model, the wood needs highlighting and cleanup, and the leather straps and loincloth will get highlighted.  The rocky growths are going to be given a gradient and the the flames will be given an OSL treatment.  It sounds like a lot, but the OSL and loincloth will be done via airbrush, so should take around 10 minutes for a pretty respectable effect.  I'm not entirely sure how I'm going to do the rocks, but I like the brown contrast to the blue so far, so I'll work it out.  

Full-bloods and the bomber's base

Kinda psyched about having these guys on bases and ready for primer since it'll give me further reason to make use of my new batch mixed airbrush thinner (50% water, 40% drying retarder, 10% flow aid) with the same VGC colors I used on the bomber; it's very exciting! 

Lots o' Hordes

In the above pic you can see how a normal sized humanoid model sizes up to the various models I've got propped on the bases around them.  A word about the bases:  I've taken to using plumber's crack repair putty to make my bases.  This gives me a few things that green stuff doesn't:  Faster hardening time, a more grainy texture, and a denser, heavier base.  I am thus far quite pleased with the results, but only time (and some paint, damnit!) will tell.  Soon, I promise...

Troll Update and A Little Catch-Up

I spent some time making further progress on my bomber last night, so I figured I'd post some pictures from before I did anything last night so that the next update, hopefully coming tomorrow, shows substantial, appreciable progress. 

No Flash

Flash!

 I'm going to also open a little window into the other project that's been back-burner'd for a long time.  I'm hoping to figure out a decent way to airbrush fur and kinda finish out this model so that I can tempt my wife into helping me build up a werewolf army for her...

No Flash

Flash

Scattered!

As usual, I'm all over the place with the modeling aspect of the hobby. In talking to my wife one night, she expressed an interest in werewolves (thanks MonsterQuest!). This led me to start talking about how I should make some progress on my basically untouched Circle models. Of course, I dread building models, so I reached out and got a soft tease about how there were only 8 or 9 models to build. I already have the feral warpwolf well along in the painting, so I buckled down and started building. These will be getting some love when I get time to settle down with the airbrush again. Also, having snap-fittes the skinwalkers, I'm excited to try the army again!

Kaya and 2 Argus

Back(ward) to it!

So I bit the bullet and rolled back my work on the bomber, starting again from a VGC Turquoise base.  I failed to take a picture of that, stage, but working from my previous ending point, basing it with Turquoise, and moving foward, the images below show where I currently am. 

I wasn't able to hit the very high, highlights, since my airbrush is BADLY in need of a very thorough cleaning and even getting the coat of Underbelly Blue on became an exercise in FURY management (mine; I FRENZIED) as shown in the thickness of the coat on his belly. 

Still, after a good soaking in cleaner, my airbrush will make short work of the white high points, and I think I'll approach the pigments only after spraying a coat of varnish so that I can just wash off any crappiness that results from bad or uneven pigmentation application.  I went back to, on this attempt, using a mix of water AND alcohol to thin the paint for airbrush application, and tried setting my air pressure very low and using "full" air application (finger all the way down on air trigger).  Before the airbrush became unusable, I was VERY pleased by this technique's very thin application layers and I'll be using it on all subsequent models.

Backward, not forward!

So I've done some thought exercises and determined that I didn't really need, or want, a Mauler in my future trollbloods list, what with the undeniable utility (beatdown) that Mulg brings to the table in a Doomshaper list.  With that having been said, I went ahead and rebuilt the mauler as a bomber; I'm pretty excited at the satisfyingly savage look to the model. I knew that I would be getting into Trollbloods more, so I went ahead and ordered some VGC paints to use in the airbrush and I'm glad I did.

VGC Turquoise, VGC Electric Blue, P3 Underbelly Blue, VGC Dead White

 

 

Bombs!

I went and captured some screens as I layered on the various shades of blue.  What I will warn you of right off the bat is the fact that the colors I chose will ultimately end up with a very washed out blue look to the skin, but I think it'll pan out once the shading is done.

 

 

Turquoise

Electric Blue

Underbelly Blue

Dead White

At this point, I tried something new that may or may not have shot this attempt all to hell.  Using Reaper Auburn Shadow, I tried blocking in some shadow areas.  There were several things conspiring here, including exhaustion (1:00AM at that point), task fatigue, and a clogging needle.  At any rate, the resultant coats were much thicker and darker than I had intended, which was disappointing. 

Auburn Shadow

At this point in the process, the colors I got a bit disgusted, which was a shame; the entire process up to that point had been very enjoyable.  Despite the misgivings and red flags raised in my head, I went ahead and added the first layers of artist chalk shading.  I was at first pleased until I realized how occluded the skin tones had become.  Observe:

It's not at all a lost cause, since the pastels will come off with just water, but I think the block shadowing beneath the pigments may be too broad not to warrant a re-paint.  If nothing else, the one take-home here is that the purple pigment over the auburn looks great in small areas for shadowing and "enlivening" the cool colors of the troll, giving it a look of reddish-purple.  I'll try to "save" the paintjob tonight, but I'm leaning toward a re-do, incorporating the things I learned today and trying to leave just a bit more of the lower level coats showing as I move up through the layers in order to leave the model looking more blue than it currently does.  I'm encouraged, if not totally satisfied.

Belaboring this...

I don't intend to be, but that's the way it is with life in the big city (or real far from it, as is my case).  I have the most heartfelt of intentions of getting this model moved along tonight, but I did at least try the oil-based wash technique and am liking the versatility of that method.  I really should move this blog from "look what I can do!" (I truly hate that character, but it's about right with some blogs out there -- maybe including mine) to a "look what YOU can do (like this)!"

Anyway, I've got this current couple views of the mauler and am liking what I see it going.  As you'll notice, I've included "dirty" yellow images as well as ultra washed out versions, all with the intent of obfuscating the true "glory" of the model until it's too late to go back.  In all honesty though, kindly weigh in, down in the comments, on whether you think the highest areas of the model warrant a very light highlight toward white.  I'm on the fence, so let me know.