Ebay Adventures

I definitely spend more time than money on ebay (thankfully I don't win everything I bid on) and most of my small amount of purchases over the years are impulsive, ie a bargain or just something that I vaguely want to have in my collection. Sometimes this is a model that i once owned and then sold many years ago, or more often a miniature that I coveted from my youth. Often this is a model I saw in the pages of White Dwarf from an 'Eavy Metal article or painted for Golden Demon or of course showcased in the Realm of Chaos books or Warhammer Armies book.

I've never spent a good chunk of money in one go, until last week.... There are two miniatures which I have never owned and which I have always wanted, so I stopped making any small purchases and saved some money up to splash out on these two miniatures, both of which I knew from watching ebay would not go for a bargain (although one went for a lot less than I was expecting.

Here they are safely delivered and unpacked:

Yes the Marauder Giant and the Great Spined Dragon!! Both were won in auctions during the same week, oh how my nerves were frayed during those last few countdown minutes on ebay, would someone snipe me? No!

So the Marauder giant is missing his sword, but that does not bother me a great deal. He cost me £21 and I feel 15 again! I'm planning a paintscheme in homage to Paul Robins 1991 Golden Demon winning entry with the ripped leggings:

The Great Spined Dragon seems in pristine condition (I can't help but worry that it's a recast, but it seems not my untrained eye) and is a model that I have been pining for for some time. He cost me £57 which I think is a bargain (the missus wouldn't) and I get the impression the seller was disappointed with the final total as he did not respond to any of my communication... Anyway I plan to do a slightly less plague like, but still slightly "tatty" version of the model below (sans the rider).

I doubt either paintjob will happen in the near future as they join a quite lengthy paint queue, but for now I'm just so happy to have both models in my collection, at last.

Oldhammer Legacy Warband - Elven Archer

Over on the Oldhammer forum there's an excellent idea to create a warband with painted miniatures from it's members; any miniature or race goes and it will be united through the use of an olive colour scheme.

http://forum.oldhammer.org.uk/viewtopic.php?f=29&t=2460

A randomly chosen contributor will then win the warband and completely unify the warband through basing techniques. Hopefully the winner will be able to bring it to next year's BOYL at the Foundry...

So here's my contribution, an old elf that was languishing in my bitzbox. I wanted to go for a dark elf look (this blog is the Lost and the Very Damned after all), so I used a pale purple skin tone. As you can see from the top picture the sculpt between the notched arrow and arm is quite rough, ideally there should be a gap, so I've had to make do there:

But overall I'm happy with the colour scheme and the level of painting. Cheers for looking!

More Mantic Zombies

Just a quick post today. I really love these Mantic zombies; they're so easy to put together and convert, if you so desire and the level of detail on the sculpts make them fun to paint too. So here's another 9 to add to the group:

I shall take some individual photographs to show the level of detail, and the way I painted them, on my next Zombie installment as I approach what is suspicously looking like a completed unit of models..... I may have to even make a movement tray!

How I base my models - a step by step guide

Hi all,

A few people have asked me how I base my Nurgle models so I thought I'd share my method with you all; here's an example:

Originally I thought I would only paint a few miniatures with this basing technique, but my miniature addiction has taken hold and of course now I'm on the long and insane journey of working towards an army... and obviously this is quite a protracted and involved basing technique (it looks great but I wish I had kept it simpler now!)

So here are the tools and equipment you will need:

They are:

• Sand
• PVA glue
• Brown paint
• Army painter swamp tufts
• Three shades of green foliage (these are from woodland scenics, but I cannot remember the names of them)
• Birch seeds
• Selection of mosses from your garden which are great for the final touches

Here's my step by step test model - step forward (slowly) a converted marauder dwarf acting as a nurgle dwarf beserker. You can see that I have already added sand and brown paint to the base:

(to speed this process up, I now skip this step as the base will be entirely covered with foliage and therefore the sand and broen paint won't be seen).

Step1 - apply the darkest green first using PVA glue, being careful not to get any on the models feet (I remember reading this in one of my first White Dwarfs). You may need to squash down the clumps with the end of a paintbrush.:

Step 2-  when dry apply a thin layer of pva mixed with a touch of scorched brown (this darkens the colour of the foliage making it less fake) - it also ensures the first layer is squished and stuck before the next, lighter layer is added:

Step 3 - repeat this step through the to the lightest shade of green, adding slightly less and if possible slightly finer amounts of the foliage so the lower layers can be seen through:

Step 4 - using a drop of pva and a pair of tweezers apply the details of bits of moss, leaves, tufts etc:

And there you go! Sometimes I mix this up with a swamp like base as can be seen on the troll I posted the other day and some of my other miniatures.

 Hopefully this may help a few people,  please give it a try and show me your attempts or come back to me with any improvements you can share.

Retinue Table; A troll

Hi all; a bit of a hiatus on the blog over the past few weeks (and a short post today), as I have been relaxing on holiday in Crete and obviously had little desire or opportunity to do anything hobby related. In fact I barely had access to the internet for the fortnight which meant I got to spend much more uninterrupted time with my wife and kids; which was a struggle at first! My return has left me with a lot of blogs to read and catch up on and I've looked at my pile of unpainted miniatures in a refreshed light only to find it even more daunting.... However I'm up for the challenge even though time will be precious again with the school term starting today (a tedious Inset day).

So just prior to my holiday I did manage to paint this old troll for my retinue table challenge (and for my scenario at the BOYL weekend). I've painted the skin in my usual pale pastelle pallette but wanted to set myself a challenge for the fur. I completed some research on the internet into different animal furs and decided to go for a tiger pattern:

The first thing I learnt was that the sides of the fur are very pale, almost up to white and the second thing I struggled with was the painting of the black line pattern accurately onto a sculpt that is heavily textured - I ended up using a precise dilution of paint that flowed well without running down the model.

 I've also gone for a swampy base by sanding the texture off of the 40mm base to make it smooth; raising the model up onto several layers of cork; created bubbles by adding some cut in half balls of silicone gel that you find in small packets with your newly purchased trainers and then applying a range of green paints followed finally by several coats of gloss varnish over the swamp areas.

The vegetation base (and on top of the rock he is holding) is my usual technique that I will show a step by step of in a future post. Hope you like it!