The Trollblood Giveaway is ready

When I first opened up the commission painting page, I announced that I would giveaway a painted Trollblood starter box. Well the models have been finished and are ready to be sent off to a random winner.

Here's the models and their bases, I just have to pin them to their bases and take some pro photos and once the Facebook page reaches the golden number a random person who has helped share them out will be chosen. This photo is just from my phone, a proper camera photo with them mounted will be done once the competition rules have been met.

The starter set group with custom made snow bases.

You can find the facebook page here: The Gaming Yeti - Commission Painting. If you'd like to be part of the contest, jump on there and join in. We'll sort out postage costs if and when you turn out to be a winner.

As a side note, here's some WIP shots of my Space Wolf Grey Hunters, and Battle Brother Artemis:

Unit Shot

Wolf Guard Pack Leader with Wolf Claws

Grey Hunter with the Wolf Standard

 And here's a headless shot of Artemis with my beginning work on airbrush blending his power sword:

Some completed Dark Elf units

So these are some completed units for my Dark Elf list, I'm using these as sample display units. Painting the models is nice and easy now that I'm getting better control of the airbrush, though I still suck at mixing the right consistency when trying to use game colour or GW paints, so I tend to mix colours using just the model air range.

Which makes me thrilled that there is now a Game Air range of paints, so that's now on my to buy list for when I get some spare hobby money going.

Enough talk, time for some pictures:

Doomfire Warlocks

Basic colours with a thinned down black wash.

Dreadspears

Undercoat black, spray it all chrome/silver, then spray purple on the tops, touch on some gold details and spray with a thinned black wash. Same deal with the Darkshards below.

Darkshards

So, to finalise, as per usual, comments are welcome, and now, so are commissions.

A move into Commission Painting

So, I've decided to make an attempt at beginning a commission painting business. Just taking on small tasks for now, primarily with the concept of aiming for a tabletop standard of painting at a cheaper rate than most other painters out there.

If anyone who reads this is interested in checking it out so far, here's the Facebook page for it:

https://www.facebook.com/thegamingyetipainting

and I shall be moving this painting blog into a side part of documenting various jobs that I undertake.

To start with building a portfolio, I've been documenting the painting of my dark elves, a fine example of the standard that I would like to offer out to people. I will also soon begin document the painting of an Eldar army that I shall be doing over a long period of time as the buyer can pay for it.

Working on some new basing styles

So, I got some supplies for myself for my birthday, and I'm using them to work on some new basing techniques.

Specifically, I got some Vallejo grey pumice, some Secret Weapon highland tuft, and I still have some Secret Weapon crushed glass that I have yet to use. So the plan is to make some snowy bases, slightly raised, the first test is on my Khorne Lord for my Warriors of Chaos and on a Trollblood model as well, so I have one square and one round.

The basic assembly begins with the base, a piece of corkboard and then a thin coating of grey pumice to make the cork look more like a piece of rocky terrain, it has a fine gritty texture and is fairly easily put into where you want it. I spread it flat over the top, and then mushed it around the sides and so ends step 1 of this attempt.

And here's a pretty (yet still dull) picture of the progress thus far:

The next still will be painting them, the chaos one will get some skulls and blood, cause you know, lord of Khorne and all that, and the Trollblood base will be a reasonably standard rocky grey with some tufts and snow on the edges.

Practice at speed painting of high quality

So, I have a spare Khorne Champion model for Fantasy, I don't have a Chaos fantasy army though so I decided to use it as a test model to see if I could complete to it to a high standard in a short amount of time.

The basic process was thus:

Base coat with German Dark Yellow (it looks more green than yellow, but whatever)
Next was a layer of Hull Red, a nice deep dark red that works well for Khorne models
Then came the metallic parts using GW Mithril Silver
After that I applied a fire red to most of the open parts of armour and black to the cape
I then added the finer touches of the gold trim, the brown leather, the skin colour
And of course, the skulls were painted bone white, then slathered with sepia wash.

At that point I could've left the model, it would be fine for table top purposes, but not good enough to represent a hero of an army. So then I added some washes and highlights, put some grey on the black cloak to give it some shading effect and some sepia wash on the flesh tones.

In all, here is the final product. I'll let you be the judge, but I truly welcome some feedback on this guy.

The time was done in two sessions of approximately 1-2 hours each session.

The First Complete Khorne Warp Talon

So, not many words to this one, just a slew of pictures. As I previously mentioned I was making them with Berserker bodies and Warp Talon arms, with some bladevane things to add to the backpacks to make them look a bit more jetpack like.

Also, funnily enough, after I spent quite some time making the claws look nice and blended, I then went and added the blood effects on them which hides most of the shiny highlighting and blending heh.

The base theme, I should note, is meant to be ruined city style, this is my first attempt at it. So I have a wooden beam with some rubble and bricks splattered with some blood effects and a lot of black pigment. I'm thinking of adding in some dead grass to spruce it up a little.

Time to make some scenery

So I thought I would begin making some scenery for the future games I hope to host at home with my shiny new table. The first part was obtaining some square bits of styrofoam with some recent packaging of a toy box for my daughters. Shown below is the square box by itself and another with my hand for scale. (this is the second box hence the white spray paint on my hands which will be explained later)

 

 Shiny Square Styrofoam

 Hand for scale

After I had my square piece I knew that it would of course look somewhat foolish as a rocky outcrop being perfectly square and all that. So I had to do something about that. I know that certain materials like to melt the foam, things like superglue, but using that in quantity seemed foolish, so I tried out some white spray paint, which was rather successful. I didn't take a picture of it as I had to move fast from that point. the next picture is the cardboard box and the hole I rather hastily carved out to use as a base for the terrain.

 Queue the free promo for Kmart Australia

Next I quickly attached the square bottom part which I had not sprayed onto the cardboard with copious amounts of poly vinyl adhesive. I then quickly brushed the pva all around the base and some on top of the now very melty foam, and following that added a whole heap of sand. 

Now, here is the first lesson for myself in terrain making. 

Don't use sand in copious amounts inside the house.

I know what you might be thinking, "Well Duh!", but I was rushing this at the time and the lights outside don't work properly at the moment, a few broken bulbs to replace. So, after vacuuming the excess sand I snapped a couple of shots from both sides. Right now it looks like crap, but it's supposed to because it hasn't been painted yet.

Tomorrow I'll spray on an undercoat and a few layers and then begin to add some frosting through drybrush and maybe some ice parts using the new crackle medium I have. I think that using snow flock on a large terrain piece will be a waste of the small amount of flock that I have.

So, as per usual, I appreciate your thoughts and suggestions. I'm worried slightly about the cardboard warping as the pva dries, and I'm also not sure on the best choice of colours for a rocky outcrop of a wintery landscape. Given that I live in Queensland, what is often referred to as "The Sunshine State" where we have fire warnings that look like this. I don't really get to see wintery landscapes and have to work off pictures.