Hi everyone,
Sorry that I forgot this thread for so long. about half a year ago we lost our first child right after birth so I basically put life on hold for 6 months, doing nothing for hobbies at all.
Now I'm slowly finding my pace again, picking up fun stuff.
I expect to be posting some new things for sure soon, but don't pin me down on it :-)
To answer some questions that were posted:
PAINTING GOLDS
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I like to paint my golds a bit more "subdued" so they are not so bling bling, My process is this:
- Models are basecoated black primer
- the
GW golds don't cover to well on black
- I paint the gold parts Calthan Brown first
- Then put on a 50/50 mix of Shining Gold with Calthan Brown (to get the less shiny gold)
- Then I dry brush or layer/edge in Shingin Gold pure. If you want a weathered look like on the forgeworld dread, try dry brushing to get a coarse look.
- Wash with Devlan Mud to get some more depth
- On the Marines armor edge lining with Shining Gold helps it give shape and "pop"
- Finally I apply a ultimate highlight of Bleached Bone (most people use Silver, but I dont like this).
- The Bleached Bone highlight helps maintain a more "subdued" look.
This should give you a rich gold, that doesn't glare like full metallic gold, while still "popping" off the model.
On the Venerable Dreadnought I used drybush, left more of the washed out base shining through, with some blue-purple accents in the shadows for a more rich look.
TERRAIN
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My terrain is made in the following way. And its actually quite easy once you now how and have the proper preparations.
the panels:
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I had my old man make 6 square panels of 3cm thick wooden beams. He milled/shaved (whats it called in english?) a bit out of the insides, so a sheet of 5
mm MDF can fit into it and level with the beams. This constructions helps to avoid the panels to "skew" and is really durable.
the hills:
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Purchase a couple of sheets of 3 to 4cm thick "blue foam" (sometimes green) Don't use the white styrofoam that gives of white balls when cutting. The blue foam or "floormate" sometimes called is more finely textured, and does not give of as much rubble when cutting.
Use a sharp knife or hot wire cutter to cut to shape. A knife can be used to "chip off" edges, which with the blue foam gives fantastic instant rock texture.
Depending on what you want, I created 2 levels of hills. Together with the panel "ground" level this gives you 3 heights.
I like to have a few hill pieces glued onto the pannels, which you can rotate and put together in different configurations. You can then further add loose hill pieces and terrain to spice things up.
I added some broken stairs to flavor things up. These where cut out of the foam, then I glued and pinned movement tray tiles onto them.
Just cut them up in pieces, drill a few holes in them, glue and nail into the foam. Paint and whoop! looks awesome and super easy.
If you want to make sure your hills line up and can be rotated to fit in different orientations, plan it beforehand.
You can not go really wild with the shapes this way, so its a bit of a trade between unique shape, and something that "fits" in all positions.
Pinning and Glueing
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A great trick to glue the foam layers together and make them durable is to put glue in between and a few chopsticks. Then press together (watch out for your hands hehe). The glue and pinning makes it rock(haha) solid.
You can do the same trick on the panel. Run some nails through the panel from the bottom. Put glue on the wooden pannel and press the foam hill onto it. Leave to dry and whoppa its good to go.
You can make the edges of hills more durable by putting a plastic or thin wooden strip along the sides. This avoids chipping. Don't make this too thick or you'll have to take it into account when putting tiles next to eachother, you still want things to line up.
In some pictures you can see I left some space for this final treatment, but not got around doing it yet.
painting terrain:
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go to your local supply store and see if they can mix you a liter of acrylic paint. You can choose from many color cards, to find a base color you like. Keep the color card for future, if you need more paint.
Then take a bigger bucket and mix the acrylic paint with gravel, sand, dirt, add some water to make it paintable again and paint the wooden panels and hills. Leave to dry, add a second layer for durability and to patch up any blank spots.
you can now drybrush and start building up the shades how you want. What I did was use a black primer to spray lightly in the shadows in hills etc. Then start drybrushing up one or two highlight colors.
If you like you can make the rocks a different color than the terrain on the floor level. Whatever your taste is!
As you can see I went for a really subdued painting scheme, with a little static grass. I don't like the green football field gaming tables, so this gives a more
raw and muddied look.
But hey, you can go desert, snow, green, be creative.
One tip I have to give is to do all tiles at once. Don't tempt yourself to finish the hills on one panel and paint it. Guarantee your other tiles will not look exactly the same, as its really hard to keep mixed paints and drybrushing consistent between different sessions. Build all the panels, glue all the hills, base coat all the tiles, drybrush layer 1 all the tiles etc. This way you are sure that your entire board looks consistent.
Only problem I have with the terrain is that the textured paint chips quite easily. You can minimize this problem by going for a finer (sand) texture instead of bigger (grit) texture.
This sticks more problematically, makes your models wobble more etc.
Here's a few terrain pieces that I made that you can scatter across the board. I've done about 10 of these different things, which makes great story like stuff to fight around.
The bigger terrain piece you can see in one of the pictures was made of tearing up a Skyshield landing pad, and doing something more interesting with it.
Hope this helps!!
Chris
3,500+ point fully painted army of Unforgiven goodness
The Black Hand
I wish I could paint like that...
