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 Camkierhi wrote:
Thunder cats!

Yes indeed. Totally unintentional and it wasn't until I'd built it that the design struck me.

He needs a fat cat sidekick then.

That Tau with the Pike is looking great!

Theophony wrote:He needs a fat cat sidekick then.

I think even as a child I found Snarf annoying.

shasolenzabi wrote:That Tau with the Pike is looking great!

Thanks Shas.

The Ethereal is not yet up on ebay, real life delays etc... I'll let you know when he is.

I'm now moving into some new projects that will hopefully prove interesting to you (at the very least), and profitable to me.

"You don't know if you don't try" is the mantra that I'm working on for these projects; maybe they will be turn out to be better money making activities than painting models, not that I plan on stopping this, just that I'm hoping to branch out into newer and hopefully uncharted territories. Maybe they will come to nothing...

The first of these projects is a painting.
"You've been painting things all along" I hear you scream.

Ah, but this is not a painted model, this is a painting; a 2D painting... in scale.
1:12th scale, to be exact (although with a 2D rectangle it can work for many scales without issue).
Why that scale? That's the scale often used for doll houses, and the people that make doll houses seem to have money to burn (I once saw a 1:12 scale squirrel on ebay for well north of £50 if memory serves correct. It was nice, but a single scale squirrel for lots of cash... shows promise).

You may remember the painting and easel that I showed a while ago, that was the proof of concept.


The initial bud of the idea came from when I painting my Predator tank (over in my army blog). For that I wanted a piece of tank-art to commemorate H. R. Giger, and during practice for the piece of art I eventually used I painted a picture on a piece of card.
Having done that and then adding a frame to it from pieces of card, I had a thought of maybe selling similar paintings to people who might want paintings, and hence the doll house scale.
*possibly NSFW due to being a bit suggestive*


I made two original frame types for paintings, and while I was casting the hut kits I used excess silicone and resin to make copies of the frames. Some of these need some tidying up (lots of bubbles form when you're squeezing and scraping together excess resin), but they are quicker than scratch-building a frame each time.

These have sat to one side for quite a while and now it's time to test the waters and see if they'll sell.
Now, I can't see a great overlap in the doll house and Giger fan groups, so I'll need to choose "safer" subjects...

This left me stuck for a while (and hence the latest gap in contact), but I've finished the first painting; titled "Fiery Sunset" for reasons that will become apparent.
As I wanted these paintings to be "real" artworks, used and collected (fingers crossed) as such, I've gone the extra mile to add a string to hang them by and a certification on the back.



Edit: Ah it appears that picture is not wargaming enough for DDakka, I'll use FB instead.
Edit (again): After a conversation with the gallery Mod, the photos are allowed in the gallery again:



I have another painting to do next, and then something (possibly) even more interesting...

Very cool...

I think Van Gogh started the same way. Great job on the Geiger

Thanks Gits' and Theo'.

It appears that a scale painting is not wargaming enough for DDakka (it would be nice to be informed if a photo is removed), so I'm using FB to host them instead.
However, they are in enormo-vision. If anyone has an idea of how to scale photos from a link such as from FB, let me know.

I use Imgur for everything, and only upload finished stuff, some of it, to the gallery here. Anyway, please complain about the deletion in the Nuts&Bolts section. You have a valid case here. At the least get the Administration to agree to notify people of deletions from their gallery.

I'm curious, what did you use for a canvas. The frame is wood?

Don't get it, I posted pictures a while ago of paintings I did for one of my models, and they never got deleted! This could easily be hung in a building for just about any game system barring maybe fantasy. I would buy this for maybe infinity scenery setting.

Fantastic work. I get a vaguely 80's vibe off it.

I know how you are going for original art, but don't knock the appeal of a knock off, obviously watch the old copyright bit. But something that looks vaguely like a Picaso or Monet would have great appeal to many. The pics I did where for my self, but I had one or two similar to classics in there, and they come off well in scale.

I think you could well be on to something with the idea, good luck.

Red Harvest wrote:I use Imgur for everything, and only upload finished stuff, some of it, to the gallery here. Anyway, please complain about the deletion in the Nuts&Bolts section. You have a valid case here. At the least get the Administration to agree to notify people of deletions from their gallery.

K. Will do.

I'm curious, what did you use for a canvas. The frame is wood?

Ah Ha, got you there. The frame and canvas are a one piece resin cast; hence on the back saying Enamel paint on polyurethane. The original being made of a piece of plasticard and some sprue (what else?).

I used a little spare silicone to make a one piece, open top mould while I was moulding other things, and then any extra resin from when I was casting I dumped into the mould; free material / save on wastage.

And being a single piece of plastic they are quite sturdy.

Camkierhi wrote:Don't get it, I posted pictures a while ago of paintings I did for one of my models, and they never got deleted! This could easily be hung in a building for just about any game system barring maybe fantasy. I would buy this for maybe infinity scenery setting.

It is also odd that the other painting I have shown there on the easel has been allowed in the gallery. I'll ask for clarification as Red' said.

Fantastic work. I get a vaguely 80's vibe off it.

I know how you are going for original art, but don't knock the appeal of a knock off, obviously watch the old copyright bit. But something that looks vaguely like a Picaso or Monet would have great appeal to many. The pics I did where for my self, but I had one or two similar to classics in there, and they come off well in scale.

I think you could well be on to something with the idea, good luck.

Well, I am from the '80s; maybe it's that coming through.

I may well experiment with differing styles, but no direct copies. If you want a Picaso painting in scale, just print one off. The extra effort to copy something accurately (and I would have to be accurate) would make the time involved too great to make this an earner. But certainly, I'll be doing some Picaso-like, etc. paintings in time.

Thanks.

Maybe if you hang it from a tank?

I was just thinking the Giger style was not too fitting for a doll house right bero reading your comment on it, it'd certainly be a unique doll-house!

Paintings look good, and idea sounds good too, hope there's a market for those.

From the 80's...well, it does have a Miami Vice sort of vibe to it...

I chimed in on the Nuts&Bolts thread. Show of solidarity and all that. Perhaps others could as well. Hint. Hint.

Next up painting of Elvis on black velvet?

Painting is excellent. Perfect for Dolls' Playboy mansion

I agree about the insane money there. A friend(Mabrothrax)'s mother builds custom houses for around £3000 a time. They are amazing scale models, but still.

Painting miniatures used to mean just this... And just think how much money you will save on canvas acreage and paint quantities over doing full size ones.

Hope some rich dolls house maniac becomes your patron and starts a dolls gallery!

Littletower wrote:Maybe if you hang it from a tank?

Yeah, using a wargaming miniature "for scale purposes" is the best way to guarantee the photo's acceptance in the gallery. I've used this technique in the past. Just didn't consider it an issue this time around.

However, Good news everybody!
After a conversation with the gallery mod, the painting is allowed back into the gallery for everyone's convenience etc...
Thanks to those that fought my corner (although KK was/is very reasonable anyway).

I was just thinking the Giger style was not too fitting for a doll house right bero reading your comment on it, it'd certainly be a unique doll-house!

Paintings look good, and idea sounds good too, hope there's a market for those.

I would love to find someone out there that does love both doll houses and Giger.
What I really need to do is find somewhere that the doll house crowd hang out (as we of the wargaming models have DDakka)... research is needed.

Thanks LT.

Red Harvest:

Solidarity Brother.

Elvis on black velvet? If someone wants a painting of Elvis, I'll give it a go. But likenesses (and faces) are hard. Maybe when I've got my 2D eye in again (I used to be pretty good in 2D, but not done much for a long time).

Thanks 'Graven.

weetyskemian44 wrote:Painting miniatures used to mean just this... And just think how much money you will save on canvas acreage and paint quantities over doing full size ones.

Too true, Weety, too true.

Hope some rich dolls house maniac becomes your patron and starts a dolls gallery!

Fingers crossed.

No update as yet, the next painting has been pushed to one side by a present project that is proving to be quite a challenge. Once I have some progress on that I'll share with you all.

In other news: The Tau Ethereal from earlier is now up on Ebay: Tau Ethereal
Should you or someone you know want a unique Ethereal for their army (or shelf), have a look.

And while I'm at it; I still have plenty of my casts available if anyone wants some boxes, bathrooms or huts (including the built and painted example).

That tiny painting is amazing. Both are. I am completely impressed. I need to go make a classy hive tyrant for this.

Thanks Comrade. Here's one of my art-dealer 'nids to show off another painting for your hive tyrant.

This painting is entitled "Through the Trees". Having done a mostly red painting last time, I decided to do a mostly green painting this time. I had a look about for mostly green pictures and found a photo of sunlight through some trees; so used that for inspiration.

Notice that this painting uses a different frame from the previous one; this being "framed" compared to the earlier "frameless" painting.
I thought some variety would be nice, and some picture lend themselves to one or the other.

also note my cunning plan that will allow this to be allowed in the DDakka gallery with no ambiguity.


Also also... I mentioned that the above painting was pushed aside so that I could work on a different project as a present. Now that you have seen that I finished the painting you would assume that I finished the other project... you would be wrong; while waiting for putty and/or glue to dry on the other project, I worked on the painting.

So, what is this project? Why haven't I shown any wip shots? and why has it needed so much putty work? Will Dr H stop putting questions in his reader's mouths?

The main problem with this project is that I've been making it up as I go along and didn't really know where it was going or if anything was going to work, so rather than string you along with me going backwards and forwards I decided to wait and see what became of it. This would allow me to show you a logical progression and not random musings and dead ends.

Inspired by the recent Easter holiday (or as I call it, happy chocolate day), the recipient expressed a desire for a Faberge-like egg.
Challenge accepted, I had to find a way to produce an egg shape, and then how to decorate the surface of said egg. Not as simple as it may seem at first.

The easiest way to get an egg shape would be just to mould and cast a real egg. But I had visions of breaking the egg or some other issue and wanted to see just how hard it would be to make one from scratch. Probably should have just moulded an egg really...

I took a hollow plastic sphere and installed 6 pegs (paper clips) to give a depth reference for the round and pointy ends.
Then covered the whole thing with foil to bulk out the shape.
Then covered that with tissue / PVA to hold it all together.
Then covered that with milliput.
Sanded smooth and to the desired shape.

I then made a mould of half of that egg with plasticine. As it turns out, even with lubrication it's tricky to remove something from a plasticine mould without affecting the mould. I then cast some half eggs in dental plaster. Then when I poured the second halves, I placed the first half on top of the wet plaster to create a whole egg (did this twice to give me two practice eggs in addition to the original).
These were originally intended for practice of the following steps so that I had at least one perfect egg to produce the final result.
These were cleaned up and sanded smooth.
One of them turned out perfect and, in the end, has become the product (leaving me with the original and a practice egg - now spare material).

Once I had the shape I needed a base or stand so that it would stand up by itself (what with eggs not being known to stay in one place without support).
On the practice egg, I tried a ring-like structure that I tidied up with some putty. However, I didn't like how this turned out as it mostly obliterated the curved shape of the egg at that end, I wanted a more delicate solution.

This led to installing some pieces of paperclip into the egg that would serve to guide and strengthen plastic rods that were to become the basis of the stand.
A bit of fiddling was required, but this is how it transpired:


The flat parts of that were drilled with a variety of bits to create a pattern.
The extensions that were added are made of squares with the holes drilled into them BEFORE being cut in half on the diagonal. The halves were then glued on each side of another piece of plasticard and the results trimmed and tidied.
A triangle of plasticard was then drilled etc. before being glued on to create the final stand.

The egg was then detailed with 3 strips of plasticard, glued on from legs to top.
Around the middle some beads were used for some "gems". The central ones are cut in half (as they had a handy hole though them to help with this), the others are glued into pits drilled into the egg. These were then puttied around.


With that done, I then added some more details with putty. these were very difficult to get tidy and involved trimming, sanding, re-doing some parts, more sanding and then painting over quickly to hide the sins...


This is where it stands at the moment, more to come in the near future.

Thanks.

and no, I will not stop putting words into your mouths.

Well, this is lunacy. Continue! I approve!

Would you expect any different from myself?! Ta.

I've bling-ed up the egg with some beads and painting the raised areas in gold.

The next step is to add many fiddly, twirly bits over all the "blank" space... Freehand Hoooooooooooooooooooo...

In other news;
I came across this short article about making moulds for small parts and I thought that I should share it here for you, dear reader, if you were interested in what is involved in making moulds like those I have used to create some of the things I have shown (and sell ), or if I have inspired you to think about trying it yourself.
http://www.tested.com/art/makers/567094-molding-and-casting-tiny-prop-parts/

Until next time...

The good old swirls of beauty. That sounds like difficult free hand excited to see how that turns out, but the egg looks pretty and Dr like.

If I ever build a stately Wayne Manor, you're decorating!

Ooh, Faberge egg. There was a lady in my parent's neighborhood who used to make those.

Including a model is always a good thing to do. It shows scale. Let's see if it keeps over-worked Mods from making certain sorts of decisions

Eldar egg thingy!

cormadepanda wrote:The good old swirls of beauty. That sounds like difficult free hand excited to see how that turns out, but the egg looks pretty and Dr like.

Difficult and time-consuming, in more ways than one. Thanks Comrade.

inmygravenimage wrote:If I ever build a stately Wayne Manor, you're decorating!

Thanks.

Red Harvest wrote:Ooh, Faberge egg. There was a lady in my parent's neighborhood who used to make those.

I'm sure she did a better job than me. It's coming together, but I feel that this kind of thing is outside my expertise at the moment.

Including a model is always a good thing to do. It shows scale. Let's see if it keeps over-worked Mods from making certain sorts of decisions

It has served me well in the past...

shasolenzabi wrote:Eldar egg thingy!

I suppose it is a little Eldar-like. I've used this kind of curved spike design in much of my past artwork, so it comes naturally. The difficulty comes in not doing it the same every time...

The freehand work has taken quite some time to come together, not least just for the paint to dry between layers (and there are many layers/passes here), but I have been taking photos throughout and can now show how this kind of freehand can be built up.


Each area starts with a basic shape in one colour which is progressively broken up by following colours, adding complexity.
Boundaries are tidied up (again and again in some cases) and the final design emerges from the original "child's drawing".
The close-up photos don't really do it justice, as it (is meant to) looks better in real life, at arms distance... with a squint, in a dark room... You get the idea.

The gold wasn't quite "lively" enough for me on this so I added some yellow to the gold paint for a basecoat, a quick wash of dark brown at the edges, and then went over that with a thin layer of the straight gold (to give it back some of the metallic sparkle), and then highlights with a gold/silver mix.

Now to add some more freehand to the larger gold areas, paint the gems and then some final touches before a gloss finish.

All done. Gems, final touches, some interference purple on the non-metal areas, and glossed.

Here it is together with a scale shot (I don't know if anyone out there realised the size of this egg, or naturally assumed that is was "egg-sized", which it is roughly).


Now I have one more painting to do and then the long-promised excitingly different project can start...

Great free hand work and looks pretty spectacular. Excellent gift.

I'm going to call you "Dr. Faberge" from now on.

The freehand gemwork is excellent indeed.

Egg thing came out great!

Swweet work Dr.H - egg looks gorgeous