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Nev: I considered counting multiples for vehicles and the like, but it kinda felt like cheating for some reason? Probably the definition of "cavalry/monster" given a lot of the stuff I was doing is kinda technically ogre sized and often I was using kinda random basing sizes. The doubling just kinda happened, and wasn't that bad considering I was starting from 18 when I started counting. There's guys on here doing like, 400 a year, so it was kinda doable another year or two, but yeah, not for me and not with enjoying it.

Been off the last week, so got more than usual done, if much less than I'd have liked to with the time. Finally got back on the rats and Basti (with the usual boob spoiler):

Highlighted the skin some, though I used a mixed paint, and the white didn't mix in well, so its not really noticeable, even beyond the blur. Reds also got started--needs another layer of red, maybe some spot whites on the skin, and then a few washes and cleanups. Should probably highlight the blues as well, not as sure there what to do though.



Rats likewise just need another red layer up, and then the washes and some edge highlights.

Did a little more with the scupting:


Alas, I forgot that the right arm was already a bit short, so that right fist blockout will probably need to get sanded off or worked in somehow. blade was made of a little jagged chunk of polystyrene off-cut from I don't know what that was laying on my desk, and then filed to shape. A bit short, but I kinda like it. Also decided the head will have to be totally redone--eyes on the front, not the side on hounds--but if I do more of these after this one, I can probably use it for that. Why I was sculpting it separate anyways.

And then probably what will be my entry for the challenge this month (if I don't throw them over for some 15mm parthians to start a L'art de Guerre force):


Bronze Age Miniatures Viking sheildmaidens, to start off a new SAGA Norse warband as two points of hearthguard. Going to try going for a orangy natural dye style yellow and a fairly bright green, not sure I've got the right purple to balance that though, and there'll have to be some browns and tans for weapon hafts and hair. Right now they're eye grabbing, but a bit action-figure I think--I was trying for "bright colors because we can afford dyes to style on y'all and show how rich we are." May also try playing around with NMM, but not sure I'll have the patience and focus for that.

Hey, if a dreadnought counts as five models for the purposes of contesting an objective, it oughta count as five models for the purposes of your painting log!

Love seeing the historical stuff, and the Basti with polearms look fierce. Maybe give the bronze a wash or similar? Might help add a bit of depth.

Musculature on that sculpt is turning out nicely mate, well done.

Rats and Basti both look great in their groups - I agree that a wash might help on their metallics - in fact with the rats i think you could probably chuck the whole model into a bath of black/brown wash and it'd come out looking spot on!

I like the start of the new viking girls too - I think the purple looks fine as is, but maybe if you want to avoid the "Hulk" contrast you could push it either to the red or blue side and see if you like it better that way.

Congrats on a killer year - 150+ models is a great haul and I love the variety in this blog. Looking forward to more in 2021!

Nice work on the dogs. I suspect they'll be useful in any number of games.

Great work Vejut. I really like the orcs and the two warrior ladies, I wasn't convinced on troll girl's armour colour early on but it really came out great in the end. And I'm looking forward to seeing those scaven IG finished. The sculpt is looking great so far. What game are you hoping to use it for? You've convinced me that separate heads are the way to go when sculpting. I've done a couple like that now and am appreciating the posing help it affords.
My cat is pestering me to feed her so I better go do that.
All the best for 2021.

Thank you all for the positive comments, it is very appreciated to feel people are enjoying my stuff. theCrowe, as much as I'm ever likely to play with any of them, I was figuring it'd end up in a Badgers and Burrows or something similar force. Honestly, it was mostly just be wanting to try my hand at sculpting something that went with my other furry fantasy things.

I did do most of my layers of washes and such this week:

Basti, washes are done, needs a heck of a lot of cleanup work, mostly in another layer on the skins, probably a blue wash or...something on the blues, and a pass of bright brass to bring the shine back on the edges of the armor and weapon. Really not feeling them, they look like trash at anything closer than this distance, but I want them off my painting stack.


Rats at least I feel like pass the arms length test, but not much more, mass is doing a lot of work there. On the other hand, do up some basing and they're done. Probably going to lazy out and just do piled sand, skipping the wire and planks.



Also got the basecoating done on the norse, on to cleanup and highlights, I think. Will have to go get some 3/4" OD washers to mount them to so as to match my Rus.

Didn't really touch the sculpt or much else this week, maybe next week. More likely will finish up the cats and rats and try to do a one-off or two.

Hey mate, everything looking good! Norsemen are really coming together.

Sounds like you are being pretty harsh on yourself on your cat people and your rat people but they both look pretty good to me. What are you unhappy with in particular?

I think that some basing will help both of them out and are where you can get stuck in to creating cohesion and contrast with very little effort. e.g. to my eye the martian red colour on the rats' bases atm washes out their armour a bit. I would be tempted to sand those bases up and paint it a dark grey colour w a lighter drybrush to help the red and brass stand out.

For the basti, I like the desert theme going on and think the colour works, but maybe a few scattered skulls/cacti/tufts/ruins would help differentiate them a bit. Unless uniformity of the endless dunes is what you are going for, of course!

I completely understand the feeling of just wanting things done! And at the end of the day if you cut a few corners on a tabletop model most people will be none the wiser, and all three units are easily passable as that already!

BTW - holy dooly working on three whole units at once is a commitment and a half in and of itself; kudos are deserved for that feat alone!

Look forward to whatever you come up with - I am sure they will all turn out great!

Tzurk-- I just feel the job is rather ragged, with a lot of tidemarks and stray paint, and every time I go in to clean it up, the paintbrush seems to tag something else.

That said, cats are done:


And the army as it stands:

Two more archer units, and some assorted hero, crew, and chariots to go

And the rats are done:


Probably need to build and paint one more batch, for some Vox units, an additional grenadier, and some other odds and ends, but that'll be a ways in the future, I'm sick of seeing them right now.
On to the viking ladies, or possibly just throwing paint at something.

Congratulations on finishing a unit. That's one of the best feelings in the world.

Did you give them all names?

Thanks Josh. Only the rats got named I'm afraid. I probably should name the cats even more than the rats, given WarGods is more of a narrative game, but they feel a bit more of an army to take seriously, and coming up with as many rat names as I have has been strongly helped by being able to make most of them jokes (even if I probably won't remember the joke in a few days...) I don't think I could come up with enough decent sounding egyptian names.

That hobby desk is a beautiful sight. I've been in hobby exile working out of a couple of IKEA shelf baskets since our kids needed the bedrooms. I'm like a wee hobby refugee shedding a tear at a postcard from his homeland.

I'm sure dakka could come up with plenty of comedy Egyptian names for your cats. You could paint them under the bases so as not to ruin the look of your nice sensible army.

I'll kick things off with an offering. How about TutankhaMog? Maybe find a larger base for that one, it's a bit long.

Nice Space Rats. And it is strange how much difference painting the base rims black makes! It makes the models themselves lighter and brighter, without making them look washed out. I know they weren't finished in the first photo, but it is still interesting.

They look good in the photos. I know you did not enjoy it, but they are done. Hopefully the last batch will be less trying for you.

Congrats on finishing the blob of rats, they are looking very cool together. I can't paint more than five models of a squad at once, so I envy that you were able to get through this big squad.

theCrowe--Thanks for the compliment on the desk. Its one I've hauled from house to house so far since I was a teen, I just kinda wish I took better care of it, getting a little ragged. On the cat names, I just really don't have the bandwidth right now for it, there'll be plenty of time later if I decide to.

Fifty-- Thanks! I kinda just default to black because its easy, covers well, and kinda acts as a border for the rest.

Viterbi--Thanks, glad they at least work at arms length. To be fair, I've been painting them since September, and I'm feeling pretty burnt on them, so groups of 5 probably would have been the better idea both in speed and enthusiasm terms!

In relation to that burnout, been kinda just slinging paint at random things so far, mostly older stuff. I did do the eyes on the norse. Thinking next step is armor shading, since I'm going to be washing with black and it likes escaping the lines and I'd rather only clean up once:


Kinda not feeling them much though, probably because its yet another string of mass painting, so touched up this reaper Lizardman's basecoat--need to figure out how to do that yellow scales, so I can start doing up my lizardman bloodbowl team while keeping my old Lizardman army scheme. Thinking maybe a sculfurous brown or similar orange-brown wash:



Also sanded down the errant hand on the sculpt, now just need to re-sculpt the new one and figure out what I'm doing with that head.


and finally, got on a bit of a tear, and actually took a bear I'd had sitting on my desk since september 2018 from the lightly shaded base-coat he'd been wearing to done:


We'll see how it goes this week. Got some tank stuff 3D printing, kinda want to attack that lizard, but really need to get at least one of the sheildmaidens done.

Nice selection of stuff. It's Vejut's hobby buffet. The shield maidens are great little minis. They remind me of old 90s marauder minis but they have nicer faces. Maybe if you pick just 3 and get them finished off you'll see what the final look is and either be inspired to see the rest to done or make some changes on the rest before they go too much further.

Also, I just painted 2 plastic Skaven Storm vermin and WoOF! They're not nice minis to paint! How many rats have you painted now? My respect for the endurance of that achievement just grew massively.

theCrowe--thanks for the compliment. I dunno, the only part I found annoying about the Stormvermin was the underskirt area, and to a large extent the lighter colors I was using and the bases meant I mostly contented myself with minimal "yeah, there's probably paint there" work. Most of the ones I've done have admittedly actually been plague monks who have their robes filled in, only maybe 20 or 30 have been actual stormvermin. What part was getting you? I suspect I may have kinda slid by on the fact I was mass painting them mostly.

On the sheildmaidens, I am splitting off four to try to get done, but thats probably just not happening--housework occured and took longer than planned, so they're currently sitting here:


Was trying to shade the armor and then wash down to make a no-metallics chain armor effect (not sure it'd really be NMM, but something in that vein), but sadly what looked promising wet didn't come out once it dried. Also finding a lot of missed spots, so they'll be a while.

That said, sat down yesterday and did my first Battletech mini in a good while:
Morning:


Evening:



Midnight:


Being goofy, patterned the color scheme off dad's Kioti or Kubota (can never remember which) tractor. Apparently, the tractor factory is VERY serious about parking enforcement. May put that one in for the challenge instead of the sheildmaidens.

Nice work on the Urbanmech. A wonderfully ridiculous (or is it ridiculously wonderful) design. I can see why it's such a popular mech.

I like a good model robot. Nice bright Martian reds. Congrats on getting the bear out of your backlog, always a happy feeling!

Saw your werewolves make the front page! That's pretty cool.

Lovely work on the mech, bright orange is always a winner and good job on the base, love the greenage (is that a word?) behind his feet.

Always nice to see some Battletech on Dakka. That Urbie is giving me pumpkin vibes. Makes me want to march my big bully Atlas right over there and smoosh it flat!

Really like the black framing of the blue cockpit glass. Super scheme all round.

Love the battletech mech! Lovely colours and neat reflections on the windows/screens. The base is nicely done as well.

The bear looks great too, some really nice depth on the fur - very natural!

The variety of your projects on the go always impresses me. The shieldmaidens will get there, and the bloodbowl lizard is off to a good start.

It might seem an odd thing to comment on but I also love that your painting area looks like a painting area! It looks like comfortable organised chaos back there and I can imagine it must be fun to sit down and pick up a few different projects and just look them over before deciding what to paint.

Keep it up!

Well, got the norse ladies done:

JoshInJapan: Thanks! The ol' UrbanKeg is a fun little trashcan, isn't it?

Don Qui Hotep: Thank you! trying more for orange, but I'll take red. Not sure why the Werewolves got on the front page, but still nice.

Viterbi: thanks! I'd probably call it "greenery", but I suppose greenage works! Its literally just green painted sand on top of a 28mm scale brick, but works nicely as a planter, doesn't it?

theCrowe: Isn't that what you're supposed to do with an Atlas to an Urbanmech? Thank you!

Moved a few things to the done pile:
Kept on the BattleTech vibe, did up a Hellbringer as a break from batch painting:




Kinda feel like I need to work on getting smoother, narrower edge highlights there, and probably should have done another pass with some thinned down German Camo Bright Green or that mixed with some Lime Green to blend things a bit better.

Also got the Norse Ladies done, or at least four of them, enough to submit for the challenge:

Not sure about my decision to stitch them together like that--clicking through shows their full ugly detail, but medium embed is cramped and shows basically nothing, while full size is framebreaking. I have the raw files and can go back to singles, but its not like there's much to miss. Other four are a bit stalled, but may keep working on them over the next week.

Threw some more paint at this lizardman--kinda like the scales, probably will be how I do my lizards moving forward--sculferous brown, gold or sun yellow, wash of mid brown, moon yellow highlight.


Also tossed a little green stuff at the sculpt:


Looking like its heading more for sheepdog than my sister's dog, and that fist is still wrong (too big this time...), probably have to take the file to it again. Need to figure out a better way of getting a thin detail layer on him for the fur too.

Finally, I think somebody asked a while back for better pictures of those greek-ish orcs with less clutter, so since I had the photo setup out:



Anyways, until next week.

Lots of solid and varied work on display. From the Bronze Age to giant robots of the future. You're quite the hobby butterfly.

Sculpt is looking good. Thin layers for surface detail is key but a thick blob where needed can do just fine if you have the support behind it to make the shaping of it manageable. That fist looks big now but once the rest of the fur etc goes on you might find it scales well enough. I'd say just wait and see on that fix. What size is he? It's a little hard to get an idea of the scale from the pic.

Nice update and cool new pics of the orc ladies, really love their shields and the armour work.

I like the variety of things you're working on. Makes me feel better about being all over the place in my own hobbying.

theCrowe: yeah, I tend to respond to "enh, not feeling this model today" by going "ok, well, what do you do feel?" to keep moving, and usually thats completely unrelated. Trying to strike the balance between "thin enough to not bulk it hugely" and "thin enough my sculpting tool doesn't just tear it open" on the dog was hard. He's about ogre sized, intentionally so I have space to mess up size and such.


Viterbi: Thanks!

DJJazzyJeff: Thanks! All over the place helps keep it from getting boring, doesn't it?

Kinda was all over the place this week, and pretty unmotivated for the first part of it.

Started prepping a few miniatures for the challenge this month. Initially was going to do a Punga Miniatures Oprichnik I ordered thinking it was a kind of Hussar, figuring they're pretty flashy...then I looked up what that was and found it was a secret police paramilitary and that just kinda took all the joy out of it. I may go back and convert him up to straighten his bendy sword and remove the broom that they modeled on the side just to make him a Hussar, but not this month, I don't think. Tried again with their Admiral model:


I dunno if its just resin being resin or what, but there was a good bit of cleanup to get him to this point, which was also the issue with the other one, and I'm still going to have to go in with that sheathe and extend the hanger straps. OK, so that was out, throw a little paint on a random model to decompress:

Already started before this month, just the staff, but enh. Whatever, on to the next try!
Which was a Greebo Games totally-not-a-Kroxigor for Blood Bowl. Actually kinda kept on him for a few days, and then a burst this weekend.

Still need to do the eyes, and uh, probably should have done the skin up more before doing layers above it, even cleanup there (and there's going to be a lot of it) is going to be un-fun but enh, progress is progress.

Also threw some more paint on the other two big lizards I've been working on slowly for several months (I will not look how long, because I suspect its actually years...):



First mostly just needs the screwups I dropped on their skin with red cleaned up, and maybe some more back and forth on the shading to smooth and push contrast, I think. Second is mostly there on basecoat, just black for the blades and some eye and mouth work.

I also did some prep work for more of my ratlings, or at least their heavy support:

I know the Vanquisher is going to be a commissar's ride, but not sure if I should paint the whole thing in black/red, or just do some turret and front corner bar markings, and leave the rest in the planned pale blue-white/red/bronze scheme that the last one used...

And then what's mostly got my attention this weekend, and whats probably going to be my challenge entry Reaper Miniatures Hellknight Signifier from their pathfinder line:



Need to figure out the base I think, and a day or two to decide if there's anything I can do to actually make it better--those white spots at the knee are light reflection, not sure if I should matte varnish and try to remove them, or put them in as actuall paint (or both!), and it could probably use some smoothing of the paint work, if I dare...

Actually finished with the hellknight:



Could probably use some smoothing on the armor, and a shot that actually gets that mask in focus. Fairly pulled back and using zoom, not quite sure why the depth of feild is so terrible.

Also threw a bit more fur at the dog scupt. I can conclusively say its not going to be my sister's lab at this point, but we're having fun sculpting fur anyways.


Also started painting the Demolisher, but only one color, so no picture yet, especially since I'm not sure the approach I'm trying to take to the white will work--thinking VGC Wolf grey, panel lined with VGC Glacier Blue or VMC Deep Sky Blue, and then VMC cold white highlighted, but not sure its going to read properly white. May need to shift to something else for the main color. Possibly start at VMC white grey? Tempted by MSP Ghost White, but not sure I have enough, or that I can get more if I run out. I think I usually pick up my reaper colors at Historicon, and none of the HMGS cons are probably happening this year...

IIRC you'll get better depth of field with a bigg Fstop. Wider aperture = bigger range of angles can get in but you trade off some sharpness at higher F stops.

Nice musculature going on that sculpt. Definitely looks like you know what you're doing.