The Lost and the Very Damned: January 2020

Monday 27 January 2020

Bob Naismith: A diorama

I've completed a little diorama, which is in fact a homage to Bob Naismith's Citadel sculpts. To the right is the familiar and imposing figure of Thrud and to the left is a dynamically posed fighter from the same period of time in GW's history; both painted using a verdaccio under-painting technique.

The always excellent Jean-Baptiste over at Leadplague has set a few "Oldhammer" sculptor based challenges recently and my two miniatures are for the #Naismithery version, presented here on a small scratch-built dioramic base.

Positioned like this, the two characters appear to show that Thrud's fighter friend is battling adversaries who are climbing the stairs whilst our hero considers how to open the door:

Whilst here, he us being attacked by the fighter, perhaps out of frustration!

Either way to the two wonderful sculpts and poses were a delight to paint (even with a few interesting muscular anomalies) and will possibly be the start of a Brabarian warband for Mordheim or the like.. Here's a few close-ups of the Fighter;

And for completeness, Thrud:

Oh and I took a few photos of my scratch-build for the small dioramic base, using just insulation foam, a few bitz from the box, a couple of cocktail sticks and a mold of a door I had previously bought many years ago:

Thanks for looking!

Monday 20 January 2020

Thrud (and painting in verdaccio)

The iconic Citadel Thrud, long admired by me and one of those miniatures that I was always keen to get and paint, even though he was much more expensive than I would have liked. When I had the lump of lead in my hand, I contemplated my approach to painting him; I felt he deserved a slightly different approach to my usual style and process, partly because it is Thrud and also because there are such large areas of skin to paint. I searched for some other examples of painted Thruds and found some to be way too smooth, almost disguising and flattening the sculpt, or some that were too sinewy and textured, mkaing the anatomy look a little too awkward. So I aimed for something in between.

It also struck me as an opportunity to experiment; I remember from my Art History degree a technique used by Renaissance and pre-Raphaelite painters where they would under-paint the skin tones with a green hue, known as "verdaccio", which would help create the illusion of veins beneath the skin and to cool down some of the warmer skin tones.

Here's the finished model which I'm very happy with:

My image research led me to an example of verdaccio as seen on Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel ceiling painting:

And here is the processes in getting there using this green under-painting:

Over a white primer I washed in a diluted Athonian Camoshade (a little washing up liquid added to help it flow). A second darker wash was added to the recesses/shadows.

Once dry a subsequent wash of Darkoath flesh was applied

I then started building up my layers of highlights using very dilute applications of Elf flesh with increasing amounts of white. This helped blend some of the warm reds into cold greens.

This creates quite a washed out effect (although the lighting here hasn't helped)

So I glazed with both warm flesh tones over the highlights and cold green for the shadows

Final highlights were then applied very sparingly.

I think the experiment was quite successful although I probably hid too much of the green under-painting with my layers. It's definitely a technique I would like to explore further and I have a Marauder Giant that has been primed years ago that may be the ideal candidate. For now I am currently painting a second Bob Naismith miniature as a companion for this Thrud and I've already made a little scenic base for them both. More on this next time.

Wednesday 15 January 2020

Gaslands!

It was only a matter of time before I started a new project and that may as well be at the beginning of the year. Cheetor's excellent blog introduced me to the game Gaslands! and I particularly liked how he had used the contents of the Hot Wheels advent calendar as a starting point for a load of 1:65 car converting craziness.

So I'm in. Up to my neck. I love converting and kit-bashing and trash-bashing so this is right up my desolate, post-apocalyptic highway. First of all I've already got a couple of 1:43 cars that would work for the game on a larger-than-Hotwheels-scale, namely my Fighting Fantasy Freeway Fighter and Helsreach Arrabella projects:

And for Christmas I received a 1:35 Tamiya half-track:

Which I've built:

And which is now in the process of getting a sci-fi/apocalyptic makeover. This will join the two previous vehicles to make my 28mm Gaslands team.

Of course I'm not stopping there. I found a bunch of my son's Hotwheels cars and I've started building another team in 1:65 scale, using some 40k bits and the excellent Implements of Carnage from NorthStar Figures. My first two cars:

Primed:

And undercoated in rust colours:

Oh and it won't stop there, here's the other cars I've collected to transform into post-apocalyptic Gaslands machines (you may notice a familiar looking orange car there...):

I shall keep you posted....

Friday 10 January 2020

My hobby review of 2019

I had initially thought that 2019 had been something of a barren year, hobby wise, so I was quite surprised when I looked back through my blog from the past year and discovered that I had actually produced a fair bit and quite the variety too:

I was clearly driven by the many competitions that are hosted in various places and I had a penchant for scenery (which is no surprise to me, I thoroughly enjoy scratch-building) and quite a few larger, ongoing projects were completed, including a Dwarf warband and an entire regiment of Ruglud's Armoured Orcs!

The variety included lots of trash-bashing, a bit of kit building, some Scalextric restorations, sci-fi to fantasy and conversions, pre-built models and lots and lots of painting;