This is lifted Straight from my blog, but i figured i'd post it up where it might get some views. Also I'm interested in hearing what people think about painting for competition. I'd really like to hear from any who've won, and of course those who just enter for the fun and hope for the best. I think competitions are a great way to put pressure on yourself to get things finished, thats my main reason for doing it.
Day1
Ok so i've just been to my local GW store's facebook page, and found theres a painting comp coming up centred around battle squads/regiments. I'm going to be entering with my warriors of chaos regiment. My Warriors army is my latest addition to my vast collection, and i'm thinking of entering the battalion/battleforce royale event using the battalion i bought to start it.
well, heres the command models from that regiment, and the 2009 gamesday champion which after painting, i couldn't help but want to build an army for. 2 years down the line its just begun to take shape.
The unit champion has the head, shield and sword from the Lord on Mantacore model, and i'll be using him as my hero in the upcoming battalion royale tournament.
The hero shows the colours i'll be using, a lot of rusted metal with a reddish brass to embellish. heres a couple more pics of him, plus his mate. The second one was made at 2009 gamesday's kit bash comp where the idea was to make a champion of chaos. saw some weird stuff produced there, mine was more subtle and traditional.
Hopefully i'll get the whole regiment painted up by the 24th...
Day2
Done a little bit on my regiment, took around 3 hours on and off, just basecoats of boltgun metal and calthan brown and I have come up with an issue: Boltgun metal seems to WANT to pool and dry in a clump no matter how much i water it down. anyone ever found anything like this?
they look a bit shiny at the moment, bare in mind this will be much dulled down by all the rust effect i'll be doing. As of now i'll be painting them as individuals rather than in a batch, I feel competition standard means I should treat them all as if i'm painting a special character. However theres 13 days til the competition and 12 warriors. I'm sure you can do the math.
Need to start thinking about how to base them too.
I had to take the standard off, partly because I wanted to be able to get in at odd angles to paint the warrior, but also because it was attached slightly crooked and looked a bit sloppy.
Weirdly, even though I'm fairly certain there's a 0% chance anyone is reading this, I'm finding having the blog is giving me a certain sense of a work ethic about this that I often lack. I'm determined to make a post every night now to show my progress and spurr me on to keep at it. Last time I painted for competition I didn't even end up entering, despite being finished and very happy with the piece. Hopefully fate won't prevent me from getting to the store this time around. The comp is also on the same day as the battalion royalle event so I'm really hoping I can have at least one full painted unit in the army for that. Hopefully the logistics won't prevent me entering both with the same unit.
Day3
Ok so i started at around lunch time and was painting on and off til about 3:30 am, here's where i got to.
I will be doing a more detailed run through of how I got to here on my blog, but for here I wanted to talk about the process as a whole.
Throughout my many years gaming modeling and painting, I have never been a consistent painter. I very rarely put down a model, look at it and am happy to say its "finished." for all of the units I've done, (and I'm ashamed to say that isn't really very many, compared to the number I own) I've always had it in the back of my mind that i'd come back and do more later. I've always put off painting some things on the grounds that i want to go back and do them later when i feel like my skills have progressed. This year however I have been painting more regularly than I ever have before, and I'm feeling that my skills are coming on in leaps and bounds. It FEELS like every mini I paint is my best work to date.
The idea that I have a deadline for this unit is kind of daunting, but at the same time its driving me to want to work harder, and I think thats going to help my ability flourish. I'd recommend to anyone who's feeling like they're an "average" painter to do something like this and really push themselves.
This mini is not fully painted yet which means i'm behind on my deadline and am going to have to work hard today to finish him, plus one more. I'm starting to wonder if devoting a day to each mini in the unit is a bit ambitious, i may need to think about doing the rank and file guys in batches.
I'm really pleased with his face, it took me longest out of everything but I think the scar tissue looks good. You can get a better look at it in my avatar pic. I decided to make him a redhead and tone down his skin from tallarn flesh, by highlighting through to denib stone via mixes of the two. The shield isn't quite done but i'm happy with the overall effect, the sword, I'm less pleased with.
Day 4
Again just lifted from the blog this time:
Started around 2pm and by 4pm thought i’d just about finished this one. I’d done what I thought were the last of the details; the teeth and eye on the sword, plus some of the older red ink in the mouth of the sword and in the symbols on the shield, (baal red just wasn’t strong enough to cover the black properly.) and all of the many rivets on the armour shield and sword. The star on his back was done in the red copper mentioned earlier as were some touch ups to the shield and pauldrons.
I then left these pictures for an hour with someone who could cast a critical eye over them and pick up on every tiny detail i could do to improve. This was incredibly helpful. I’m my own worst critic, but i’d failed to notice a couple of things. I’ll leave it to the observer to see if they can tell the difference between these pictures and the ones that follow.
I’d taken a break and had some time to reflect on how realistic it was to want to spend the same amount of time and attention on every model in the unit, answer being not realistic at all.
So I went over the rest of the unit with drybrushes of adeptus battlegrey on the fur of the cloaks and denib stone on the horns and other boney details. Then I ranked em up, cos it looks cool.
I’d read recently on Games Workshops daily blog of another method of doing rust, a stipple of vomit brown followed by a stipple of firey orange, wash of delvan mud and then scratches of silver. I applied this to one of the warriors and liked it so did the rest. Now they look like this:
A couple of them have had a wash of delvan mud. They probably all will get at least that far by the time I sleep tonight, and i might go as far as to do a stipple and scratch work of chainmail.
I’m wondering about what to do for the banner, and think I’m probably going to base them with modelling gravel and mixed kitchen herbs.
Thats all for now, if anyone has read this far THANK YOU :D and please check back for more in the next couple of days.
Day5
Been a fairly productive day, done a lot and now I don't feel so stressed about the deadline, I've done all the basic work on the armour, on all 11 of the ones left.
This included a wash on all of them of delvan mud, a little touching up of some of the brown details and adding the all important army colour, a sort of reddish copper you see on the champions shield and shoulders.
All their helmets, shields and shoulders have had a coat of this, it will very shortly (probably when i'm done writing) get a wash of delvan mud and a drybrush of a mix of tin bitz red gore and burnished gold.
Then all i have left to do is go over all of them individually and do highlights to the leather, cloaks, fur, horns, gloves, paint the weapons and add some chips and scratches on the edges of the rusted armour.
when you put it like that it seems like a lot....
Unfortunately my camera ran out of battery today and refuses to charge, so until i can get a new battery/charger I've taken a few cursory pictures with my webcam. They're not great but they'll fill a gap.
I'm also including a teaser of what will probably be the project I blog after this, which was the last thing i was taking pictures of when the camera died.
I give you Lord Virknes!
(and his faithful mount, Tiamhut)
Day6: Camera's still on the blink, I can take pictures but only with it sitting in it's usb docking station, so they look a bit like this:
Nothing's been done on these since last night as I err... got distracted by something 2 headed and scaly......
I will probably update again later tonight.
I will give a more detailed update at some point.
Long story short, i finished, i won.
http://www.dakkadakka.com/s/i/at/2011/9/166923_255744374463824_188249014546694_701751_213717280_n-24191758.jpg
