WHQ Minotaur #2

Well here is another quick 2 PP.  A while back I picked up a box of WHQ monsters when I spotted it in an old FLGS (two headed dragon) it was both cheap and good value because the bat/spider figs are tough to find alternatives for.

I had packaged off the minotaur along with another fig to Dave at mini painting 4 free.  Unfortunately real life got in the way so after a period of time I just requested he send them back no matter what state they were in. He did mostly finish another figure but this guy just had a coat of black primer.

minotaur #2

I decided he would be easy to finish before year end, especially if I used a mostly wash/stain approach to his skin & fur.  I picked red & purple as colours to add because the other minotaur I have (came painted) has green & blue. I used a washer to make his base as with all my other WHQ monsters.  They are cheap and easy to do with some simple card to make broken up flagstones and a touch of flock.

I wasn't originally planning on it, but getting this guy finished prompted me to pull out the two remaining spear armed goblins I needed to finish to get up to the required 6 and I also started converting and painting the bats from the box.  If I keep several projects going I think I will have a better chance of hitting my year end target.

Spire Brat Pack: current status = 7 of ?

After receiving the latest Spire Brat (harlequin) back from G.N.O.M.E. over at Spaaaaccee Shaaarrrkkks! he suggested it was probably time for a group photo.  So here we go, straight from my display cabinet, on some of my sweet necromunda terrain.

love how unique they all are!!

From left to right, top to bottom;

1. painted by arabianknight @ wee blokes
2. painted by hakomike @ constantly risking obscurity
3. painted by paintbrushturkey @ bartertown
4. painted by bobbo.is.me @ mini painting for free
5. painted by axt @ merry mayhem news
6. painted by gnome @ spaaaaccee shaaarrrkkks!
7. painted by abraxis @ merry mayhem news

I know there is one outstanding with paul @ the man cave, and another with mik @ miks' minis.

Huge thank you to everyone - I hope to get a big necromunda campaign running sometime around this summer and want to get these guys a piece of the action!!

Minis painted by others and for others...

Following up on posting the pics of the prize from the second GWpertinent contest, now that Dave @ mini painting for free has completed Lead Painters League season five, that means he had a moment to snap a couple pics of a mini I painted for him earlier this year.  Silly me forgot to take any pics before I packed her up for shipment so I haven't had anything to show you guys.  The request was for a fire aspect so she needed to have lots of red, though I didn't want to just simply paint her armour red.

the dragonblooded - on her own

There are a couple techniques I tried out on this mini for the first time, I wanted to try a wash + drybrush technique to make the armour look fire-y without actually being all red - and am quite pleased with how it turned out.  It was basically just a golden yellow colour with a heavy red wash, which I then drybrushed the same golden yellow over.  Where the wash is in the crevasses is more red, with a orange tinge leading up to the drybrush which was very light to bring the yellow back. 

The second is her red hair, since the armour didn't have a lot of actual red and since anything with a fire aspect always seems to have red eyes and red hair I thought it would do a good job of reinforcing the fire aspect.  I drybrushed a coppery colour over the base red, and then used a couple coats of baal red wash to tinge it red again. I don't feel the pics do it justice as I was really impressed with how "ginger" it looked - maybe Dave can comment to this effect?

here she is taking on some frog-men

I tracked my progress on painting some figs for him last year over at Weekly Minis. I figure not everyone has seen everything I've painted that I posted there so why not throw a few extra pics into this post.  Here's the first mini I painted for Dave - I can't remember the sculpt but I remember saying "hell send me a cowboy" and he did! You can see the original Weekly Minis post here. I tried to keep it very simple, using only devlan mud as the wash to try and unify the tones. I also used my bleached bone/gryphonne sepia sand technique for his base.

never painted a cowboy before!

The second fig I painted was an anarchist for a RPG campaign Dave had going on. There's also a post with more pics about him over at Weekly Minis.  I didn't want him to look too evil, so I used some neutral greens and browns for his clothing - but I had to give him a black cloak.  There is more info on how I painted him over at Weekly Minis.

the anarchist

Finally if you missed out on the posts of minis that Dave painted for me, you can find the Genestealer Patriarch @mini painting for free & an Eldar Harlequin @mini painting for free which are both WIP.  There is a post with finished pics @mini painting for free as well as @GWpertinent.

Mini Painting 4 Free = free painted models for me!

Several months ago I found a blog with an interesting concept, Mini Painting for Free.  Basically, our protagonist (Dave) is offering to paint a mini or two for you for free in an attempt to keep himself from buying more figs he won't get around to painting.  As you may or may not have noticed I've decided to farm out some painting projects (see my space hulk genestealers, or my dark elf blood bowl team) instead of letting it sit there forever.

Dave and I ended up doing a swap of models to paint, as I'd hit a bit of a wall in terms of motivation to paint.  I've been tracking my progress painting them on Weekly Minis (a cowboy and a cloak & dagger type "antagonist") but wanted to post up something about Dave's awesome work and pimp his blog a bit.

I sent Dave a couple very OOP 40K models, the old running genestealer patriarch and a harlequin.  I wanted to send him the harlequin since I wanna have a bunch of different people paint them up so they all look really different (going to use them as a spire brat gang in necromunda) and then base them the same to tie them all together, and just threw the patriarch for fun since I knew it would be a long time before I ever took a brush to him.  If you read the history on Dave's blog you'll see he was excited about the harly, but the patriarch inspired him.  The colour scheme Dave used on the harlequin is very cool and definitely will be unique I'm sure.  I like his pictures better so I'm just going to repost them here.

Genestealer Patriarch

Harlequin

Week 27: Tristan - Antagonist "aka the bad guy"

Another long hiatus between posts.  Life hasn't been too crazy I just seem to lack motivation.  I've finally finished up Dave's second model (from mini painting for free)

Sorry for the quality of the photos, just took these quickly with my phone.  When I get a chance I'll stitch these last four together to give a 360 degree look.

I used my tested and true method for black which is very light gray drybrush highlight followed by several layers of badab black wash. I missed a tiny piece of flash on his cloak so I painted it green to look like a caterpillar or bug. Other than that I stuck to neutral'ish colours since he's not necessarily uber evil. Though I did paint dark arched eyebrows to make him look sinister.

Week 18: Tristan - Cowboy

Well hopefully this gets me back on track. My last post was more than 5 weeks ago just before a local blood bowl tournament when I finished up (nearly) the rest of my orc blood bowl team. While that gave me some motivation to finish them up, it sadly didn't live long. As soon as I got my dark elf blood bowl team back from my friend Thomas all painted, it let me off the hook in terms of getting a team ready for the next tournament. I had hoped this would mean I would jump back into painting for the fun of it, but it didn't really work out that way.....

Until - I found Dave's "Mini Painting for Free" blog. The premise here is that Dave was struggling with motivation, so he decided to paint other people's mini's for free, in the hopes that it would at least curtail his own spending on models that would sit on the shelf. It hasn't stopped his spending 100%, but it does seem to be working fairly well. I decided I was going to send Dave a couple figs of mine to paint, but I also thought I would give a go at painting one or two of his figs, to try and spark my own motivation.

It has worked to a degree, first of all the motivation is definitely there to paint when you owe it to someone else (just ask Thomas ;-) ) and secondly while I haven't started painting batches of guys yet - I have started painting some more of my individual figs. I decided to focus on getting Dave's done since I'm off to Jamaica tomorrow and have yet to send him mine. This way that week won't be in vain - Dave will get one of his figs back and mine will go along for the ride so he can begin painting them. Without further ado...


I distinctly remember telling Dave when we were figuring out the swap that I didn't care what figs he sent "hell send me a cowboy if you like" since I hoped a change might do me some good, and sure enough a cowboy was in the package he sent. I will be sending him an old genestealer patriarch and one of my harlequins (I've decided to get various people to paint up my few harly's so they all should have their own "touch" - if any of you guys are interested, let me know!)