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Why "Fire and Train Wrecks" you ask?

Well....because what you see here will be so horrible and yet you can't take you're eyes off of it!
I'm not a painter and you probably won't find masterpieces here. If you want gorgeous mini's check out someone like We7's work: LINK. I would love have skill like that someday.

Simply put I want a place where I can put my work online and keep track of the growth of my skill, not have to make new threads every time, and not court thread necromancy. Comments, tips and feedback are an added bonus.

I started painting mini's in October of 2013 trying to get a 500 point DA Army painted to a low end tabletop standard. I have some WIP on other threads but I decided to let those pages die quietly and just showcase some of the more important snaps here.

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In The Beginning


And Then There Was Light

Pimp My Ride

Being Fruitful and Multiplying


Current WIP:
2nd Rhino: primed, preshaded, base coated, blocked the black details
HQ DV Librarian: Primed. Hope to be base coated tonight!

Yeesh that's a huge amount of improvement in very little time might be something in these youtube vids all the kids are going on about. Brave decision to acquire an air brush so fast as well.

Jesus F. Christ, that's a ridiculous amount of improvement in such a short time. I won't find masterpieces here? By the looks of it, next month I'll probably see a Golden Deamon worthy miniature here.

As promised, I've got my second tactical squad 95% done and I felt comfortable getting some glamor shots. They just need the squad number decals applied. If I'm feeling frisky I'll gloss the models and apply a nice dark Oil Wash. I've never done an oil wash before but I think it would help makes some deeper shadows.
Also, now that I have some Slo-Dri I will have an easier time with the fine details such as the edge highlights on the weapons, masks, etc which I may...have...been lazy with on a few models.
Oh and I have a pin vise on my "to buy" lists. So please forgive the undrilled/unpainted barrels.

Three of my squad models were highlighted using very thin base coat over white primer, letting the transparency do the work. Can you guess which models?
The rest of the squad was primed black, then zenithal highlighted with a light grey from about 60-70% above the models. Only problem is the base coat went on darker than I expected and I lost a lot of the effect. It's very subtle now and can really only be seen from underneath the models...
I also chose to wash my purity seals with Sepia, which is too subtle for pictures. Easy fix though.

This is also my first use of a smaller light box I built tonight. The first box I made was huge and I didn't get enough light to the mini's. This one does a much better job. The background contrasts nicely as well although it's suppose to be a "black" poster board it came out more grey. Hmm. Also the photo exposure was a little high and as a result some of my gradients were washed out on the robes, purity seals, etc.

















Work In Progress
**Currently doing some freehand iconography to on Squad 2's Rhino transport, it will match the 1st Squad's. I'm not a fan of freehand work...I don't think I'll be doing it again anytime soon. Still debating if I want to add some scratch marks and weathering powders.
**HQ - Librarian is still sitting patiently on my desk, primed in his white glory, just waiting for me to write down my process on how I want to tackle him.

Second Squad Rhino is done (for the most part).

I caught myself getting into a rush at various points in the painting process. At first I thought I would just utilize decals for the iconography and then realized it would still be a big box of...green. So, I resigned myself to the fact I would do the same freehand work as I did on my first rhino. I should have done different art. I couldn't recreate the same level of detail as the first and because I had done the same design I tried to rush and quality wasn't as good.

Still, I managed to get the overall design to a point where I was satisfied.

In this go, I tried to exaggerate the edge highlights, I really wanted the edges to pop. What I did not do, was attempt to put any text on the front "scrollwork." I lack the fine detail paint pen and my handwriting is worse than my 5 year old. Trust me, blank is way better than the alternative.

Lastly, this model was pre-shaded. But, like most of my other attempts at "effects," the end result is very subtle. In fact, one side got hit a bit too hard with the base coat and pretty much took out most of the effect.

As far as the adornments, this model came pre-assembled as it was gifted to me by another Dakka member with the smoke launchers mounted near the cupolas (driver/passenger hatches) and caused a mounting problem for the weapon and hatch parts. So I removed them for now. I can always attach them later. Lastly, I don't have the storm bolter bits so I'm using the missile launcher as counts as. Oh, and pin vise has been ordered.







Huh, after looking at the pictures a bit more, I think I need to go over the decals to help hide the outlines. Shouldn't take too long.

Work In Progress
Librarian - Working on the cloak. Trying to use the airbrush but I'm pretty sure I'm botching the overall effect. I think I'll take a few days off from painting, get my attention to detail back before I do something stupid and have to strip the model down.

I feel kind of let down that there aren't any burning, wrecked trains in this thread, but your painting skills have definitely improved tremendously. I used to play Dark Angels way back in the day, before I saw the light and switched to Orks. I really like your plasma cannon. And the rhino looks great. More train wrecking.

 Warboss_Waaazag wrote:
I feel kind of let down that there aren't any burning, wrecked trains in this thread, but your painting skills have definitely improved tremendously. I used to play Dark Angels way back in the day, before I saw the light and switched to Orks. I really like your plasma cannon. And the rhino looks great. More train wrecking.

If misleading thread names gets me more views and pottential feedback/suggestions, then I'm good with that.
I probably will revise the name of the thread at some point. I'm running out of character space for "Update:" descriptions.

Seriously though, thanks for the complements, it's much appreciated and helps me not look at my own art like it's pure and utter crud.

Random musing: I'm on the DA train because most of the models I have are from the DV sets and I do enjoy how the army plays. I do plan to start a Xenos army in the near future. I like shootie armies so Nids and Orc's are probably out for me. Maybe some Necrons or Tau (fluffy Tau, not tourney Tau).

25+ hours and I finished up my Librarian!

I know he's not perfect, I made some technical errors in my process (put down a wash when I really should have waited. The level of detail on the model was crazy and he isn't even one of the more decked out mini's! Makes me think I'd give serious thought to having any future HQ models commissioned. I must have varnished this guy 50 times just so I could hit the "reset" button and fix any major mess-ups.

This was also my first attempt at using cork base (and pinning of the model) I like how it turned out and NO, I'm not modeling for advantage!
I think if I could do anything more to the base it would be a grass tuft or two.

Working on the face was not fun. I could not get the shadows and highlights to look right and I flat give up on doing eyes until I can find some Kolinsky Sable 2/0 or 3/0 brushes. The face ended up pretty flat overall but I'm not sure the focal point of the mini should be the face anyway.

There was ALOT of bone/cream/white on this mini...mostly by my own choice, and I struggle with those colors due to their transparency and covering (or lack thereof) ability. I need to keep working with the range to get comfortable with them so I'll keep pushing myself to not shy away when the opportunity presents itself.

Anyway:



Not sure how all the heights got mismatched....I'll have to checked my photo editing software settings.

This guy wrapped up my 500 point army. Very pumped about this. Spent the evening making a fun and campy showcase video, I snuck it into my own showcase forum thread

Next models on the board to do: DeathWing Squad!
Paints for the squad are on order be a few weeks before I'll be able to start on it.

I also want to start fleshing out some terrain for our game table. I have my eye on either the Urban Walls from GW or the Ruined Gothic Building from Pegasus Hobbies as a starting point.

Quick Update here:

My playgroup and I had our second game day last weekend (the 26th). So In prep, because my 500 point army was completed I was able to devote some time to making the table a bit more interesting. I picked up some supplies at the local hardware and general stores (on the cheap too).

First up was an attempt at an impact crater. I didn't feel like shelling out $10+ for a few plastic craters when I could make them myself. I used an old CD as the base, which, in retrospect looks odd on the game table and I will be integrating it with a fiberboard base soon. Crazy what you can do with a bit of Spakle, a plastic sippy cup (to make the indent) and some sand from my sons' sandbox. I think a bit of black scortch marks would really add to the realism.



We had 3 more pieces of terrain on the table in addition to the crater, I don't have pictures yet but I'll get them up today if possible..
* Small chemical pump house
* rock plateau with access ramp
* GW Manufactorum (assembled but not finished painting)

The pump house and Rock Plateau was created by one of our gamers that just started with us.
In fact, he also finished up his HQ unit, a Space Wolves: Wolf Lord on Thunderwolf Mount.
He wanted some glamor shots of the Lord so I used my lightbox settup to get him some great shots. However, he did some an outstanding job on the model I just had to showcase it here for others to see!





FYI he models for the look and we don't care about WYSIWYG.
Not gonna lie, it looks better than my Libby and it's such an awesome model.

Lastly, this is my next project for the table: a teaser.

I've been lazy the last two weeks. The weather has also become...more agreeable than it has been so I've been doing yard work in the evening and it's killing my energy to paint.

But I have managed to hunker down and finish up a Manufactorum for our gaming table. I started on this prior to our last game day as part of my April stretch goal. I figured I would open the box, glue together 2 or 3 panels and then slap some paint on it. Wow was I ever wrong! I had no idea that every...single...wall section was an individual part. Needless to say I've never made as much of a mess when shaving mold lines off as I did cleaning up this thing.

This was an interesting deviation from my other models in that I needed to cover a larger surface area than usual and I didn't want to use my Vallejo and citadel paints. So a quick trip to the supermarket later I had me a few $0.50 bottles of Apple Barrel acrylics. They worked great for base coating and dry brushing! I'll probably try a few other colors from their line but for right now I stuck to pewter grey and black.

I was going to prime the whole thing black as I have a can of Army Painter black primer. Unfortunately the can clogged about 5 seconds into my priming.
So I primed them with some grey Krylon I had lying around and then attempted to airbrush the black base coat on. I was having a hard time with getting the thinning ratio correct and the airbrush would clog often. Well, when my wife asked me if I couldn't just go buy a cheap can of black spray paint, I promptly <facepalmed> and spend $4 on a can of Valspar. It went on a tad thick but it cut a few hours off my base coat time.

At first I was going to leave the piece with base coat black and drybrushed with pewter grey...but I figured I'd bling it out a bit and then weather it nicely. I didn't put a whole lot of effort into the rear of the structure. Just a bit of mixed weathering pigments on the panels and grates to unify the front and back.

I plan on integrating the piece on a 2'x2' tile with an 'industrial' theme to the tile, however I want the part to be usable on it's own without the tile so I decided to not glue it down to a tile at the moment.

Enjoy.

That's a great paintjob on the Librarian, you've certainly made a lot of progress from that first mini!

 Brillow80 wrote:
25+ hours and I finished up my Librarian!

I know he's not perfect, I made some technical errors in my process (put down a wash when I really should have waited...

One thing that really speeds up the painting process (for me) is a hair-dryer!

 Brillow80 wrote:

There was ALOT of bone/cream/white on this mini...mostly by my own choice, and I struggle with those colors due to their transparency and covering (or lack thereof) ability. I need to keep working with the range to get comfortable with them so I'll keep pushing myself to not shy away when the opportunity presents itself.

Painting bone / cream / white is a special kind of difficult - unless you can airbrush like BuyPainted can...
With a brush, don't even try and get the first layer looking any good - slap it on and move on!
Do one (two at the most) layer of the light color, then drybrush (yes, old school) with Space Wolves Grey or White to get edge highlighting - it'll be OTT but don't panic!
Seal with varnish, then oil wash (usually brown) to get shadows - this also knocks down that drybrush layer and blends it.
Then go back with the original (or sometimes slightly lighter) color and carefully highlight over the still visible drybrushed areas.
Last thing is to go back into the shadows with a contrasting color - so if the dominate armour color for you is green, use a red wash into the shadows of the cream areas.

Your manufactorum looks ace too.

So I'm back again, this time with DV Deathwing Squad.
My first Elites choice models for my 750 and 1000 points list counts-as Deathwing Knights.

This was my first use of VMA and I'm not gonna lie, I'm a big fan. I did thin slightly for my Sotar 20/20 and they worked wonderfully.
I also used Secret Weapon Mini's armor wash (later in the process) and I really do like this wash compared to the GW.

Unfortunately, I made so many mistakes in the process...I should have started over a few times.

1) Zenital Shading was time consuming, not gonna do it again until I'm after something better than tabletop.
2) Used a homemade oil wash after the base coat. However it was not diluted nearly enough with mineral spirits and I put down a bath more than a pin wash. Compound that with the fact I let it dry for 12 hours which was 11.5 hours longer than I should have. Clean up was horrid and painful! Never again!
3) I'm swearing off Army Painter primers. They leave a nasty texture on the models if sprayed too far away. It made washing difficult even with a hearty covering of gloss varnish.
4) I need to cover/mask glue points better.
5) I tried out some generic hobby paints (apple barrel) and while the coverage was ok and the color range was really good, the binder is utter crud. After 24 hours drying time the paint would rub right off when touched with a wet brush. <varnish alot>
6) I spoted some sprue points on the bases that i missed on cleanup and one termi has a sprue flow point on his torso that i totally missed until i was 90% done.

All this aside the models turned out ok for tabletop.

Once i get some other models out of the way I'll be back to the DA models with the RavenWing!