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Happy Monday Gentlemen.

I figure today's as good a day as any to get the ball rolling on my WIP and Project thread. Especially considering the wealth of 'work' I have ahead of me.

Now, before I continue, Consider me a novice painter. I haven't painted in a good five years, and even at 15, I wasn't particularly good (I lacked the patience). These days, I've come to realize that I want to be a 3D artist, most likely as a modeler and sculptor. In addition to that, I have plans for some Graphic Design projects this summer that will satiate my needs in that respect. The kicker to all of this is that I am colorblind. I've never had a retinal exam, however, I do know that I am Deuteranopic, meaning that I am lack or have weak medium-length receptor cones. Of course, hearing this and knowing I want to be an artist kinda put me in a mood briefly, however, I say to hell with that nonsense, I'm going to do it anyway, consequences be damned.

SO: Onward to this hobby bidness.

I haven't been able to get a full count on exactly what I have, as we have accumulated an obscene amount of figures over the years. The figures that I'll be focusing on are as follows:

Skaven Army - I just picked up an Ikit Claw and a Doomwheel. Will post pictures when I get home this evening.

Empire
Steam Tank - Strip, Rebuild, repaint. This is that old metal one, and I noticed that some of the pieces don't fit as they should have, which is why I was so frustrated with it when I got it years ago. Green stuff will be a friend of mine through this for sure.
14 Handgunners - Strip and Repaint
10 Knights - Strip and Repaint
15ish Spearmen - Strip and Repaint
15ish Swordsmen - Strip and repaint
Assorted Siege engines that need to be stripped, repainted, and rebuilt in some cases.

Dark Elves [These were my younger brother's, however, as a physic's major in a different city, he has little use for his figurines aside from the occassional game. He's been kind enough to hand them off to me for the painting]/ I haven't had the opportunity to go through and take inventory of these guys, but there's a Dragon, a hydra, some kind of Wyrven thing, and some dudes riding lizards among the troops.


Chaos Space Marines
20 odd space marines that need to be stripped and repainted. These will most likely be converted after they're stripped into Iron Warriors (bits for that are forthcoming)
Daemon Prince - Gotta strip this bad lad as well. Conversion into a more IW-ey theme is also planned.
Sorceror - Stripped, waiting to be painted
Obliterator - Stripped, but on inspection, he is missing all of his arm guns. Conversion is required.
Defiler - Needs to be stripped and repainted.
Chaos Dreadnought - One of the metal puppies. Needs to be stripped, repainted and magnetized.
Possessed Chaos Space Marines - Stripped, need to be converted for more IW-ey theme. I've been thinking about picking up Pit slaves and ganking their arms for PCSMs.
Chaos Predator - Strip and Repaint
Chaos Land Raider - Strip, Repaint, and convert with bits for IW.
Kharn the Betrayer - Strip and Repaint.


Space Marines
About 30 Space Marines to be stripped and repainted. I still haven't a bloody clue what chapter I want.
Ancient Whirlwind - Strip and repaint. No Idea how I'm going to handle this one.

About 5 Terminators - Stripand Repaint
Couple of Landspeeders - Strip and repaint. Repairs, too, probably.
About 6 Attack Bikes - Strip and repaint. Repairs on the ones with Sidecars will most likely be neccessary.
Tigris - Strip and repaint. He gives me a headache looking at him as he looks now.



I haven't even counted the Lord of the Rings people I have. Hundreds. Also note that those lists up there are just from what I remember, I can guarantee you that I forgot some. I'd say I've got a pretty good bank of men to just get going on, wouldn't you?

The thing with colorblindness is, and I may have a difficult time explaining this, is that I can see colours. However, how they look to me is different. Some Purples may look different because I can't register the reds, so they come out more blue to me. That being said, I want all of you to attack my colours vigorously. You have my every permission and my request that you tear my use of colour apart. I am going to need some very harsh criticism to identify my use of colour early and hopefully save my actual career. Seriously. Flame on my colours. You're doing me a favor when you do.

Come on with a Colorblind, scrubcake-of-a-painter and we'll see how I fare. Cheers, Fellas.

Wow. a pretty ambitious (and certainly huge) task you've set yourself here. Good luck with it all, I look forward to seeing your progress!

Good luck with your career too, I'm pleased you're not letting anything hold you back.
I'm not going to be criticising your colours however, personally I'm hoping for it to be as wacky as possible.

Good luck man, I look forward to your work.

Just Dave wrote:Wow. a pretty ambitious (and certainly huge) task you've set yourself here. Good luck with it all, I look forward to seeing your progress!

Good luck with your career too, I'm pleased you're not letting anything hold you back.
I'm not going to be criticising your colours however, personally I'm hoping for it to be as wacky as possible.

Good luck man, I look forward to your work.

Dude. I don't think you understand. I need the criticism. My shades and hues are different than those everyone else sees, so what might look perfect to me may look weird and disjointed to others, so I NEED that kind of criticism. It is paramount to saving my career.

As an artist you're going to need to specialize in what you train to be.

Ideally, aiming to work as a concept artist would be perfect, or as an animator.

There are loads of artistic jobs that don't require colour at all, even as a freelancer you can collaborate with others to make sure your colours are good.

Anyway, good luck with the models, I'll give you some good criticism on them.

Ok, so here's my Doomwheel. Very obviously a WIP. This is the first thing I've painted in 5 years, and, consequently, one of my first attempts at edge highlighting and rust. Of course, Rust's got red in it, so while it might look pretty decent to me, I haven't a clue what it looks like to others. Thoughts, comments criticisms?

Ok, so I just got back in from priming the rest of the doomwheel.

What happens but a Gust of wind while my back is turned. Pieces fly EVERYWHERE. Into dirt. And Leaves.

Happily, after about an hour, I found them all. Will post more pictures this evening as I make more progress.

Ok, quick WIP shot of the Doomwheel. Still needs some touchup work and the rest of the pieces, but I daresay it's coming along nicely.

Also, I apologize for the poopiness of the photos, I don't have a digital camera with a MP count anywhere near as close to the one on my phone.

Wow. That's looking really good; the colours are really 'realistic' to me. I look forward to seeing the finished article!

I will point out that I'm not a skilled painter in the slightest, so other than anything obviously bad most of my feedback will consist of 'looks great'. Which it does btw.

Keep up the good work. As one colorblind painter to another I know how often you can question what you have done and how it looks to others, so don't get discouraged. A trick you may be able to use is look for an elaborate color wheel yOu can print out and have someone match color wheel to paint and label the wheel. I know this won't help you see the colors better but it'll give you a good frame of reference. Best of luck, hope to see more soon.

doomwheel looking great so far.i like the dirtied metals.

Doomwheel's looking pretty good, and don't let the whole colour blindness thing get in your way. One of the best art teachers I've had was colour blind.

Haven't had much time to work on the doomwheel of late, I'm going to try and finish it tonight (definately not basing tonight). However, rather than paint the old wheel last night, I had a good friend of mine Come over. Long story short, I talked her into trying her hand at painting miniatures. She's never done it before, so I grabbed an old LotR guy for her to paint (primed and ready!). She got through the cloak, paints and boots last night, basecoating all three. Brush technique 101 for her. I'm no expert, so I'll post the WIPs here for you to scope out. These updates will be few and far between, really whenever she's got a couple hours to burn while I have the same. I'll relay any comments, suggestions and criticisms back to her!

I'll check back later with more on the Doomwheel, for now, here's Laura's progress on her first mini ever!

Working Hard


Front


Back




Automatically Appended Next Post:
Ok, progress is going well. Doing some touch up on the insides, playing with Rust effects, and trying to figure out how I'm going to do the banner.




Thoughts?

Whoa, that looks great. Keep it up man. I can really see that you've got fantastic attention to detail and your technique is pro.

I'm not exactly sure how to write it all out, but I think after a few posts and seeing what is constructive in replies I'll be able to get a better idea. So, excuse any faux pas segments of this post.

You're touching up the insides? Sweet, the support things on the outside (like ... the radius support that holds the wheel axle and dozer blade in place) has an excellently vibrant orange rust to it. The colour of the orange really brings out the rust. Looks great. I can see a little bit of that orange rust in the inner gear teeth of the wheel, but not on the outer gear teeth. I'm pretty sure you're all good for that, you just haven't applied the orange rust to the outer teeth.

The support holding the Skaven looks like it was once painted yellow (in universe) and the paint has mostly chipped off (in universe again). Looks like the middle metal rim on the wheel has had the same yellow treatment (from the first photo of the Doomwheel). It looks great, it looks like it was genuinely painted a sickly yellow and has since degraded to a rusty jalopy after crushing millions of enemies.

Just trying to work it out. If you can't see the reds as well, then the yellow chips you've done on the above might look the same as the orange rust? Ouch. As someone who frequently mixes up a shade, paints a tiny bit and then gives up for the night only to spend an hour or so trying to get the same shade of colour the following night (who am I kidding, the following week I try another attempt) I am at the least very impressed with your conviction. If this is the case, and I'm just extrapolating here, maybe mix up a reasonably big batch of the shades beforehand and put them into containers? I ended up mixing a big batch of my Tan basecoat after realising that I'd never be able to reproduce the same mix of fours colours. Film Canisters, not that there are a lot of film canisters around anymore. Or the little shampoo and conditioner containers you get from motels. I wish I used more vanilla essence and food dye in baking, those containers would be pretty mint.

Oh, the red shading on the wire in the last pic is a bit blocky. It might just be the camera, but if I'm being absolutely brutal with ... If I saw the that red wire without the range of red in it that I can see, it would look great. So, if I saw it with your eyes, I wouldn't be able to see the blocky-ness? Is that what happens?

Once again man, keep it up. I've always wondered about colours and the perception of colours so I'm certainly interested in your work (EDIT: and interested in how other people reading the thread perceive colours).

Looking at the photos again this morning, I can sorta see what you're talking about with the reds. Still trying to figure out a decent way to paint the wires and shade them smoothly.

I didn't get around to finishing it (surprise surprise) last night, but I made some pretty good progress after I posted these. If I get more done tonight I shall post moar! Once this bad lad is finished it's all Ikit Claw.

Another Update:

Hey all, back with moar pictures. Detailing continues on the Doomwheel. Some minor touchup work will continue for another couple weeks while I wait for my next paycheck (picking up that skaven heraldry book) before getting to work on the banner.




NOT pictured are the 3 skaven from my new Stormvermin that I've built. I'll post pictures of the unit once they're done. In the works as well is a unit of dwarf thunderers (although I think they were called handgunners when we purchased them, I'm talking about the metal ones), and I'm rebuilding a Dark Elf beastmaster on a Manticore.

Also, Here's a picture of my 'battlestation' as it were.

Not much done on the painting end of things, I'm getting through building some stormvermin first. Ikit's been kind of a pain for me. I'm working on getting my glazing technique down and in the process, Ikit's armor's not looking so hot, so I'm going to strip and repaint him. May prime some sprues up and work on blending techniques before conquering such an important piece in the army. BUT, in the meantime, the stormvermin are coming along swimmingly. Their bodies have plenty of seams that I'll need to go over with GS once the unit's built and glued.


Suffice it to say that they are a pain in the ass. While I love the ball joints for their arms, getting both arms in there and lining them up with the hands on the halberds is nothing short of a trial of patience and calm. I can only get through a handful before they get super frustrating. To aid myself in building, I've started pinning all of my models. I put a nail into a small but heavy piece of wood, hammered a cork on top of it, and jammed a paperclip into the top of that. Just drill into the feet of the little buggers, push them onto the paperclip, wham bam, stands up on it's own leaving me two hands to fiddle with their cursed arms.


Also, Mad props to my Droid X. This thing handles macro photography rather well, and it takes them at a native 300dpi. Wew!

Oh man, been a minute. I let one of my websites expire that was hosting some images, which is why it looks like they're broken. Give me some time and I'll repost them somewhere a little more permanent.

The Old Man reclaimed his workshop for the summer and was using it as an impromptou greenhouse and nursery. Suffice it to say it got messy, quick. So now that it's harvest season and he's more busy making Summer Salads and Jalepeno poppers, I had the chance to clean the studio again.

However, I do come bearing new images!

Well, this weekend took a turn for the unfortunate. I thought 'Hey, I'll clean up a little bit, make it nice in here while I work'

Got the place clean and spiffy. Sit down, pull the Stormvermin out and go to put one of the...
wait, where's the other half of this body?
WHERE'S THE OTHER HALF OF THIS BODY?!

So yeah. I now have a regiment of 19.5 Stormvermin. Guess It's going to be an ebay kinda week hunting for the pieces.

BONUS POINTS: Cat was being friendly, making her way towards her box that she sleeps in, and she steps on the edge of my beautiful bitz box and sends it catapulting across the room, lands upside down, and spills hundreds of SM, CSM, Tau and Kroot pieces all over the nasty carpeted floor. Smoked a cig and spent the next half hour on my hands and knees picking the little bastards up. I was too irritated to even think about sorting them out again.

Don't have pictures for it yet, but I did spend some time working on the base of the Doomwheel. This was my first successful application of a Glue/Water mix and sand. Feelin' damn proud of myself. I'm still gestating what to throw on the base for accents, but I'll deal with that sometime this week. Will post photos when I can.

Well Well! Been a nice couple of days for me. Still haven't found that stormvermin body piece that I lost, but I'll end up ordering that on the interbuts or something.

I was able to accomplish my first successful basing project! I've always had, at least in my younger years, a disdain for this process. The sand never seemed to stick right, and I was baffled [read:impatient] with the process. Some White Glue mixed with Water and viola! I have a sandy base that looks EXACTLY like I wanted it to. Also, plaster rock. Being that this was my first time painting this kind of texture, I took some liberties with the process to get a feel for it. I undercoated with Mechrite Red, then a few drybrushed coats of tausept ochre to make it look 'sandier'. After that, a healthy Devlin Mud Wash over all of it. I'm thinking about a couple of REALLY light (both in colour and application) grey drybrush passes and that'll be the final texture. There's a few photos of the DW chillin' on the base for placeholding while I figure out what to adorn the rest of it with. Probably some static grass and turf, maybe some lichen or something.

My Stormvermin are essentially built, though I do need to give them all their shields. I finally took the time to space them properly on their bases and actually glue them down (I was right sick of bumping one and scattering them all).
Now, I do have a choice here. Do I prime now, or paint sand on their bases and then prime? I'm thinking the latter, but if you think otherwise, let me know why! In preperation of painting, I had some old dwarf handgunners laying around that I was warming up on, experimenting with different pipleines and how the wash affects the colours. The one you'll see I painted rather quickly, as it was mostly a test surface for the wash. Some very sloppy highlights on his gloves, and the stitching in his coat, but I did find the right amount of Wash to use to get the 'flow into the recesses' effect that I was looking for (meaning, a fair bit of wash that I thought would have been 'too much'). I was going to throw a photo of the little beastie here, but it's far too dark. Apologies, mentlegens.

I've also been giving a lot of thought as to my goal for the army. I picked up my first pieces mostly because I was bored, and just wanted to paint something, and Skaven were always too cool and lacking numbers in my stores. I've put together a very rough army list, that I'm calling 'phase 1'. The ultimate goal, however, is 5000 points of Skaven-y goodness. I want those horde pictures to looks truly mighty (also will give me the ability to tune any smaller point armies on a whim). Today, I'm heading up to my FLGS and gettin' the Skaven Battalion. OH MAN MORE RATS.

Woo-freaking-hoo.

So I've been having Neck spasms lately, got prescribed muscle relaxants, not exactly conducive to painting. However, I have been working on building the Skaven Battallion that I picked up. So far, both the Rat Ogres are built as well as a regiment of Clanrats.

The big thing that I've been working on, however, is a paint shelf. Up until last night, I've been keeping all of my paints on a 2-deck lazy susan. The problem (and frustration) of that was that I had a mountain of paint and it would always take me way too long to find the paint I'm looking for. So, My father was kind enough to give me some spare lumber, and I made a shelf. I used little pieces of balsa wood and dowels to build the separators. Threw together a document in InDesign in my spare time at work with all the paints, their RGB and Hex Codes and space for a swatch, based on that wonderful list of Citadel Colour with that info.