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Wight on!

He's a very nice looking piece. At first the bright blue is a little startling, but after the initial read the cooler tones in the armor become apparent. The multiple views are really nice on this one because the transition in the cloak from the darker, decayed side to the bright blue is a great touch.

Paradigm you continue to blow me away with your ability to put such character in models. The weathered armour is beautiful, your style hits that grim-dark theme so perfectly and the ethereal cloak is a perfect contrast for the model. You leave me in awe once again.

Outstanding work Paradigm! I love the way the dynamic blues of the cloak compliment the darker reds of the liche. Wonderful work!

Love that Lich/Wight King dude your painting style suits him down to the ground (and 6 feet under it!).

Great stuff Para. Realy liking the fire wizard. The old worn red cloak came out sweet. Joan of Arc is refreshing. Really nice take. The darker more grim and battle tried palette looks so much better on her than the usual bright and blingy style CB go with which I not a fan of at all. Great job. My fav at the mo is the King. He looks fantastic The armour and front of the cloak came out beautfully. Toip work fella

Making the cloak look more ghostly at the end is a great idea, like it is going from fabric to ethereal. I think this model really suits your style too, nothing like a weathered Death model.

Thanks folks!

I do love the contrasts there. Excellent.

Covenant is coming along and finally getting assembled. God bless JB Weld!!!!
Might actually finish on time!!!

Ermmm... I think this was meant to go in the challenge thread perhaps? Love that base though!

Cheers for the bump though, I do have some updates to the blog coming soon-ish!

Fethdammit!!!!! Sorry Para. Stupid Jan ><

Wow Para great work, You've really changed up your style for this one.

Well played!

Apologies to all for the lack of updates, I'm hitting dissertation crunch time at the moment so while I am painting, things are slow. Should have some stuff soon though.

Hey, I'm glad you've got your priorities straight. School comes first and all that. Looking forward to when you do have some free time, as it's always a pleasure to see your work.

Well here we go then! Finally got time to take some decent pics today!

First off, my entry for the challenge (at the moment).. Don't expect to achieve anything given that some people are entering basically whole armies but at least it's another month entered... I do still quite like the model, though I'm not yet sure I've 'cracked' good looking Ultramarines yet. Definitely a step in the right direction over my last efforts, which were way too dark blue and lacked definition.



And over on the fantasy side of things, a few Skeletons from Shadespire. First off, the Warden, a model I knew I had to have right back when GW previewed Shadespire back in March. Hopefully I've done him justice with this paintjob!


And what's an evil skeleton king without equally skeletony minions?


That's all for now, thanks for looking and any thoughts welcome!

I think you've got the skeleton just right. I love the blend on his cloak, its like it goes all ghost like towards the end! Great work.

Cheers! That was definitely the vibe I was going for, I wanted the same fade that I used on the Wight King; where that went from a worn, ragged cloak to the strong colour of the ghostly effect, this one goes from a deep, rich colour to a faded, tattered remnant.

The idea behind this is that the Wight's power is in Death, so the magical part of his cloak is the main focus, whereas the Warden was a King in life but just a servant now, so his power is fading away with time. Though that's possibly overthinking it, as I also just like the effect and it's fun to paint!

Looking good old fruit. With that cape work you should so some sort of Bat man...

Well, I'd love to... If only KM would let me buy the AWESOME one they just released without having to pay double the cost for shipping!

Bitter, me? Nah! Still going to be getting some JL Dark stuff once I have a bit more cash (I just treated myself to a replica lightsaber for Christmas so hobby budget is non-existent at the moment), I've just been waiting for a Flashpoint Batman for aaaages and when they finally release one, it's prohibitively hard to get hold of. Hopefully they'll release a non-limited/direct version somewhere down the line, or at least something that can be easily converted into one with the addition of some pistols and holsters.

I've been waiting for the Warden from Shadespire to pop up here you've done a kickass job!

Lovely work on the sergeant.

Blimey, it's been a while! A month sans update! Still, I put brush to mini for the first time in ages, and got some results that I'm fairly pleased with.

First off, a World Eaters Assault Marine. Nothing fancy, just a nice basic model to get me back into the swing of things. One thing I'm particularly pleased with is the metalwork, getting the more subdued brassy look rather than plain gold. The lighting/pose is not kind to the heat on the JP here, it's lost all the depth that is there on the actual mini.



And the main event, though possibly not in its final form, a quick diorama of some Blood Angels being heroic. I'm kind of limited in my bits box right now so it's not the most exciting setup, but I think the composition works at least fairly well. Weirdly, I feel the wounded, kneeling Tactical Marine actually comes across far better than the more dynamic and ornate model behind him, though I'm not sure how to redress that.


Should have something more soon, come January I want to branch out into some different stuff that I've overlooked for far too long, starting with some stuff from Anvil Industry's Regiments line. But with any luck, I'll produce something more before then, and if nothing else my Year in Review post will be going up here shortly, though it's not going to be a great one as 2017, especially the latter half, has been annoyingly slow for me hobby-wise.

Thanks for looking, any thoughts welcome!

I love those Blood Angels! I don't think it's a problem that the wounded guy comes across better really. It kind of makes the point that the other guy is protecting him. Actually the wounded one makes me think of Carl Weathers' character in Predator when he gets his arm blown off. The way he's missing a hand and holding a bolter in the other one evokes that scene a little bit.

Really nice Paradigm!

Also kinda amazing you're doing all this whilst working on your dissertation. Are you sleeping?! hah

Good to have you back, really amusing what your idea of simple is, that world eater is excellent!

Thanks folks!

@Guildenstern: 2 more weeks and I'm shot of the dissertation for good! Then I can actually get in some proper painting!

@Graven: The WE is deceptively simple. Basically 3 colours on the armour and the weathering does the rest. The fiddliest part was the face, the rest was fairly basic in terms of technique so it made a good scheme to just get back in practice.

Going to try and paint a couple more minis in the next 24 hours, as being 2 models off a 2:1 Painted:Bought ratio for the year would really bug me!

So very nice...

2017 was a year that most definitely happened. So let's take a look back at it!

General observations: 2017 was an odd one for me hobby-wise. In terms of numbers:
- 55 Models bought (down from 189 last year)
- 109 Models Painted (down from 309)
- Blog Growth 11 pages (down from 46! Oh well, only got myself to blame there for not updating anywhere near as much! )

So yeah, a fairly slow year compared to 2016. I put that down to uni work really ramping up and if I'm being totally honest, a bit of hobby-neglect, more often than not I defaulted to video games rather than painting in my limited free time.... Not going to judge myself too harshly there as I've always been of a mind not to force myself to paint when I don't feel like it as the quality suffers.

The fact I also didn't get in any games of anything last year is probably also a factor, it means the motivation to paint stuff for the tabletop was gone and thus there were no army-size projects to speak of. Similarly, I managed to avoid any 'big box' purchases (mainly due to lack of funds, but also because of the aforementioned lack of inspiration for large projects) which does mean pretty much everything I bought in 2017 did get painted.

Quality-wise, I think the main thing that's changed is my approach to picking models to paint; doing a few mini-dioramas/vignettes has helped there. In general, I find it hard to paint something now unless I have a specific tone or theme in mind for the piece, which has admittedly ended up with a few not-quite-right projects just being abandoned. I do want to pick up the pace this year, but I'm not convinced it'll happen as Real Life gets ever more demanding.

In terms of actual painting quality, I'm not sure I've made any huge leaps forward unfortunately, there's some gradual progress but not anything overly noticable; stuff painted early last year and stuff from the end sits side by side without much noticeable difference. This year, quality is the real aim, I have my style now and I really want to push it a bit further over the next few months. We'll see how that goes, as I think I said the same last year!

Anyway, enough rambling, interlude for some pics. For all the above shortcomings, I have produced some of my favourite pieces this year, so here's a few.




And this chap gets to be outside the Spoiler tags as he's hands down my favourite mini of the year. One of the best character models GW came out with in aaaages.



And to wrap up, a look back at the goals I set myself in 2017:

1- Achieve a 2:1 ratio of painted to bought stuff, and ideally hit 300 minis again
2- As mentioned, experiment more with different ranges styles and approaches, generally be a bit more adventurous in my hobby (last year was still a good 60% Space Marines of some flavour or another)
3- Hopefully get some more games in! 2016 was very dry on that front.

So...
1- So close to the first part (would've done it if my laptop hadn't committed suicide on New Year's eve and I had to sort that out), way off the latter but that was unrealistic in hindsight.
2- ish... Still mainly marines, especially in that highlight reel, but I at least tried some different stuff with the Otherworld minis, the Tau, the undead stuff. Must Try Harder this year though.
3- Epic Fail. On the flip side, I finally got an RPG campaign going with a few friends, and that's something I wanted to do for a long time.


Not going to set any 2018 goals yet beyond just keeping on and not letting my painting hit a dead stop. Might add in a few once my dissertation is done and I have time to think!

All in all, not a great year for my hobbying, but still want to say a big thank you to anyone following along, your encouragement and advice definitely keep me going! Cheers for sticking round even when I haven't posted anything in weeks and all that. Happy new year, folks!

Good job on the Shadespire mini! Love that cloak.

Surely shadespire can scratch the gaming itch? I'm told its 40-60 min games. With a super low model count, dare I say you can even persuade non-warhammer fans to give it a shot...

Wonderful work on that mini Para. Just the right feel to it in my opinion.