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The roses on the base looks amazing. Really perfectly spooky, s terrific idea. And it looks like you'll be executing (don't pardon the pun it's terrible) that plan to perfection. Good luck with the volume you'll need. That's a whole lot of roses.

I planned to spend today painting models but instead I did one of my Citadel woods. Nothing special, just designed to look suitable for my mini-display board and future Death board. As you can see in the woods there, I have ten Grimghast Reapers almost done. Just need their pinwashes.




But I have been slowly working away here and there on little jobs. My Knight of Shrouds now has a gravestone, with roses from the Briar Queen (I bought spares via Mortal Realms). My Spirit Guardian now has roses intertwined with the metal fence. These also came from the same Briar Queen, plus some green stuff to lead to the skull. I even sculpted thorns!



I also dug out my Viral Outbreak miniatures ready for painting.

They are extremely lovely, and like the varied base discs also. Handy.

Sweet scenery and really nice work integrating the roses on the Ghosties bases. Very on topic choice for your next project too, are they only allowed outside once per day for exercise too?

Nice working along, the ghosts and woods will go great together. And I wonder what made you get out those Viral Outbreak minis?

No progress on Viral Outbreak yet, but painted some roses...

Nice.

In the hectic madness of the battlefield, don’t forget to stop and smell the roses.

Man, that sculpting on the Rose's is excellent. The brighter and warm red roses really work as a contrasting colour to the dullness of the night haunt scheme. And referencing that scheme your medium to oxide mix is spot on, I am jealous of that.

Good job on the Citadel Wood, I think mine has been in the box unassembled for about two years !

So, I took the necessary photos for a rose tutorial lesson.

I think the photos are generally fairly self-explanatory, so I will keep my commentary notes to a minimum.

This is one of the things I am proudest of achieving. I am really happy to have developed this method for myself. Whilst many of the ideas and inspirations come from elsewhere, the method is, ultimately, my own.

In other big news, the slew of photos for this take me to over 1000 photos in my gallery!

So, here goes...


Remember to use water to stop anything sticking to your surface!

I used a bit of rod to roll this out, but a round pen would do the job

I used a sharp knife to peel my green stuff from the surface, then wrapped it carefully around the very thin (0.5mm?) plastic.

I used a sharp knife to make some petal shapes.

SLIGHTLY more green stuff for the next ball.




This is just the spare bits of green stuff from the triangles I cut out, used to give a bit of body to the rose.


I then wrapped the slightly bigger bit with triangles cut out all of the way around, and again used the knife to cut slightly o make petal shapes and tease out the tips of some petals.




I think this would be a very open rose, like a Eustacia Vye...



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However, part of me does feel that particular rose is slightly over the top, with too many petals for tabletop miniatures.

I therefore did the same thing again with about half as much greenstuff. I kept the same width of greenstuff, and flattened it out far more, but used shorter bits, each therefore wrapped around fewer times...




And I feel this would probably look better at 28mm scale.

This, perhaps, is more like a Wildfire;



Both pics from https://www.davidaustinroses.co.uk/shop-online a store who I would thoroughly recommend for their quality of service and wonderful roses.

That last one is downright beautiful.

Very nice. Thanks for taking the time to put it together.

Brilliant! (and beautiful)

Very nice tutorial there Fifty.

Cheers,

CB

Phenomenal work, you've really made it your own.

Those roses look great, useful tutorial too

Nice tutorial! I probably will never try it out, because I hate green stuff, but it's good to know, that it's there Keep up the good work!

Cool tutorial, the second one definitely looks more appropriate for the scale. You can still see the reference rose in the first one though!

Great tutorial Fifty! Where the roses on the tombstone above your sculpts??

Glad people like it.

zahnib, the roses on the tombstone come from the Thorns of the Briar Queen. Can't take the credit for those ones.

 Fifty wrote:
zahnib, the roses on the tombstone come from the Thorns of the Briar Queen. Can't take the credit for those ones.

Yours are still looking great, look forward to seeing some painted up

You might want to toss those up in the tutorial section, so they don’t get lost in your blog. Really useful and practical tutorial, should get more views and be easier to find there.

I posted it as an article, but I forgot about the tutorials section. Yeah, I'll do that, thanks.

Thanks for the tutorial!
It's always cool when you can come up with something original.

The tombstone with the roses looks really really good.

I finally forced myself to get through some of my Executioners. I had lost the love for them. I can't say I have fully got it back, as I do not love the end result here, in fact I am not even sure I much like it, but at least it is done.



As a reward, I let myself have a go at a future marine project - my Mentor Legion. Back in the early 90s (My guess is '93) I painted these guys;





I've had those photos in my albums for as long as I can remember, but not sure I ever posted them anywhere. These are the other squad of my tactical marines from my 2nd Ed Warhammer 40k box. The other squad, which I painted as Ultramarines back in the 90s, are now the Lamenters from the very first post of this blog.

Anyway, to get to the point, I've slowly acquired a fairly substantial group of these, and now plan to paint up a demi-company, with scout support, and probably terminator support too...




But of course, I don' have time to do a good job of this, so I'll be doing it with contrast paints...

I tested out how I'll go about it...

When I just used Apothecary White, he looks to grey


Using Basilicanum Grey in the crevices helped, but not enough...


So for the final method, I'll do the white first, so I can give a thorough drybrushing with White Scar.


It still looks far from perfect, but it is much better in real life.

And yes, I think I'll probably base them all with flock and Goblin Green rims.

I like the Executioners, but if you're not feeling it you're not feeling it. Kudos for pushing through and finishing them though.

Space Crusade Scouts for the win!

Yeah, not sure that white is the best colour for quick painting...

Bolter-huggers, ho! And Space Crusade Scouts, to boot. Lovely retro goodness.

Those old school space mariens are great! Would be a shame to rush the paint job on them

Hurrah! Mentor Legion are the BEST legion as long as it's classic Owls.

Owls for sure.


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I took the time to rebase one of my sets of Viral Outbreak miniatures, and I am delighted that I did. Whilst they still don't exactly match the scale of my Aflterlife minis, they are bloody close, and easily close enough to use in games of Afterlife.

Makes me want to get back to painting and playing some Afterlife.

I have posted in News and Rumours about this, but want to mention it here too, as I consider P&M Blogs to be my main home on Dakka.

I started an auction on behalf of John Blanche to raise cash for the NHS. He will sketch a personalised 40k-style portrait for the winner... https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/174259718281?_trksid=p2471758.m4704

It is already up to £1020 after less than 12 hours!

I have to say, I was confident that it would reach many hundreds, and thought it might top a thousand in the last frantic sniping rush, but to be at £1020 already, I can't believe how awesome that is!

Here are the pictures that inspired me to ask him if he would do something like it...