Wednesday, December 30, 2015

My first Age of Sigmar unit

Well, not quite because I haven't built the Stormcast Liberator Primes. Still, for someone who hasn't painted Warhammer in 15 years, this is a good effort, I think.

Here we are - all Six lined up.


I am going to do some of the Mighty Lord of Khorne (Korghos Khul) warriors. These are basically red rather then the blue of the Liberators so it will give me a different view.

In the meantime, I am trying to finish the T-45 Goshawk before I go to Clacton next week. I have now masked off the orange and have given it a new coat of white. I think that I have missed masking a bit of orange but I can sort that. If this works OK when I take the masking tape off (a big if!) then I just have to paint the anti-glare panel in black and then will be able to start decalling.



Tuesday, December 29, 2015

Moving on to pastures old!

Moving on means that I am starting making the Testors (née Italeri) T-45 Goshawk to make a US Navy trainer pair next to the Buckeye. I know that this kit is based on a pre-production prototype and isn't fully in agreement with the versions in service. However, it is the only T-45 kit available so it will have to do.There is an article in an old Fine Scale Modeler that describes how to update it but I can't find a copy of that.

The kit has gone together very nicely up to now. I had to use a bit of filler on a wing join and on one of the nacelles but they were minor problms. The biggest issue is that I am back to using the Modelmaster International Orange Enamel. I don't like enamels. I haven't used them for years and I can't get used to the fact that they don't dry very quickly.The orange here was tacky for 30 hours or so.

This is where I am with it.



As you can see, the orange has gone on OK but in both pictures you can see that the masking tape has taken off some of the white. This is in spite of the whte being a AK Interactive primer and having a coating of Johnson's Klear on top!

The final image shows just how I didn't mask enough so I now have a lot of overspray to deal with. Fortunately, the white primer will not only go on well but will dry quickly!



Now to the 'pastures old'. I have been looking for something a little different to do this year. Valerie bought me the 'Age of Sigmar' starter set from Games Workshop. 




I have spent a few hours watching a video on painting the figure sets in the box. I spent a lot of time considering what to do about paints as Games Workshop have their own range. Going through the videos, it seemed that I would need 51 different paints/washes etc. Pricing this up resulted in a total cost of £137.70! I sent a Facebook message to the local GW shop manager and asked what he thought. His response was that I should use the recommended paints. This didn'tseem like a reasonable response. In my shop, I would have tried to find a compromise that might have reduced the cost. I then reviewed what I had (as I have a good stock of paints left over from SBX) and found that, at full retail, I had over £500.00 worth of paint. I decided to go with my own paints except for getting a set of the special extra opaque Game colours. I ordered these on Boxing Day (Staturday) and they were delivered on the Sunday. You can't beat Amazon for service.

Anyway, off I went and had a go at the first 6, know as Stormcast Liberators. Here they are about halfway through the process.



 

The figures are only 45mm high but are extremely well moulded.The detail is very sharp and easy to follow with a brush. I have gathered together a special set of brushes including a couple of nice flat ones. Again, these all came from my ex-SBX stuff. The painting consists of a three layer process. Taking the gold as an example, you paint the gold; apply a wash of a flesh coloured wash; re-apply the gold on the highlights. The gold that I am using is one of a set of three Dark Star golds that I bought at the Wivenhoe show. More soon.



Wednesday, December 16, 2015

A step back

When we had the shop, we did some business with Historex as I felt that it would be good to have a stock of figures. We did get a couple of customers that bought into the idea but it wasn't very popular and eventually we sold off most of the stock to EBay. However, I kept back a few thing that I thought I might like to do. One of these was a Pili Pili Flatz figurine.

Pili Pili Flatz are resin cast representations of famous paintings.They are produced as a slightly 3D representation of a flat painting. This one is based on the painting by Roger Van Der Weyden (1400 - 1464) that is called "Portrait of a Lady". Here is the box (well packet) art.



As you can see, it has some complications. The headdress is semi-transparent so her hair and shoulders can be seen behind the cloth. This is what tempted me towards the item and I felt that this would be a good project for the airbrush. I did it this way but then had to hand adjust the effect anyway. That's a bit too soon to be discussing the final item. I started this model about 5 years ago and got so far but then put it aside when we closed the shop and it then got forgotten. Later, on clearing out my models, etc. I found it again and, miraculously, it still had the box art with it. I pulled it out saying that I would get on with it but never did. Some two and a half years later I have finally decided to complete it.

It needed her face to be finished and some final touching up. In the event, I over painted almost everything as I found that her hair band was it the wrong place and her fingers weren't painted correctly. It was a fun project but shouldn't have taken quite so long. I was able to finish it because I now have a very nice LED lit magnifying glass which has helped with painting the eyes and the eye surrounds.

Firstly, I thought that I would show you what being a "flat" means so here is a side shot of the figure.


As you can see, it has very little depth. The item is 83mm high and 60mm wide so it is a reasonable size. Anyway, here is the finished item. It looks better from a distance - grin.


It is painted with a combination of Vallejo Model Colour and - for the flesh - LifeColour Flesh Paint set.