Snosserousses!

That may well be a made up word, but who cares!  The fact is, I was lucky to receive two "Snosserousses" for Christmas and one of them comes from......

Forged Monkey produce a fantastic Rhino bust and the quality is amazing. I took a couple of shots to show the bagged model, then some close-ups of the model as it is straight out of the bag.

This fella is going to be awesome to paint, so without further ado, I'm off to give him a wash :)  Watch this space for an update (very soon I hope!)

T x

Avelonian bust

This is the bust as it stands now. He needs a little "je ne sais quoi" so I am going to head over to The Basement and see if any of those talented buggers can point me in the right direction! Obviously he needs a plinth and I really want to do something with the helmet that originally came with the model., maybe present it on the plinth...

Fairy Dust(ed)

Well, its taken much longer than I wanted it too, but my Fairy Wears Boots piece is finally done. Big smiles and big relief.  However......this fairy tale isn't quite over. I managed to break her wings (which are extremely delicate by the way) whilst packing her up for Grey Matter.  A few choice words were muttered and I'm now going to glue them on with a two part epoxy glue rather than the 'super' variety.

Anyway, whilst I get that task done, here are some pictures, complete with wings intact :D

More WIPS - painting one bust and sculpting another!

So, next up are a couple more WIPs - the Avelonian bust is heading rapidly to completion (although I keep looking at it wanting to add some kind of freehand), and a Pirate Orc Bust a 'Jolly Bodger' so to speak...

The Avelonian:

The Pirate Orc has been sculpted in my usual 50:50 mix of Super Sculpey firm and regular and has a ball-bearing eye. I used a different technique to stop the sculpey from separating from the armature this time though, and it made a massive difference - I added a procreate core to the armature and before it had cured I started adding the bulk of the sculpey. Then I left it to dry before continuing the sculpt.

This is it now, after the first bake (as you can see, thos one is more GW in style than the last Bonner-esque one):

Avelonian Recruit bust - a new WIP

Made a few changes to the blog recently, most notably the image 'slider' at the top of the home page, and the removal of 'jump breaks' to show the whole post on the home page. I hope you like them, and that there isnt too much 'guff' at the top of the page before you get to the posts! The sliding images will link to the most relevant/important blog posts like recently complete minis or major WIPs.

Model-wise, I have started the Avelonian Recruit bust by Alkemy. Its really nice to try something in a different scale - from the top of his head to the bottom edge of his chest he is almost exactly 40mm tall. A good size for a bust to paint for fun, and this guy seems almost to be painting himself.

I have added some more colour to him tonight, but only some green and a little more leather-work on the strap that is on the left side of his chest (as you look at it). As it stands right now, the green needs darkening, but it makes him look almost like a character from Robin Hood...!

Casting for the first time...

Time to take the next step in the hobby... I have sculpted an Orc bust that I want to cast, and this week, the casting materials arrived! I ordered it from Sylmasta as they sell complete kits with rubber, resin, release agent etc (and they were also giving away some clear epoxy glue). 

Vadim one last time

Actually, scrap that last post, I have fiddled a bit with him and tried to get some better photos.

Gave him a wolf's head tattoo and a crude but very subtle (less so in real life) wolf design on the metal scales on his back.

Vadim, Hasslefree Orc - Finito? (Nope!)

I think I'm at the end of another project, and had that strange feeling towards the end that I just wanted to get it done. Not entirely sure thats a positive thing, but there you go... I now have a completed Vadim, the Hasslefree Orc.

Part of me still feels he needs some tattoos or warpaint, but I cant decide on a theme or even where to put it... unless anyone has any great ideas, I think I will leave him as is!

Besides, is a model ever truly finished...?

Quick Orc update

Got a bit more done on the orc this week... he is getting close to completion now, but he needs some kind of fine detail. I am thinking of tattoos or warpaint, but I cant decide which!

On to the pics:

The WAMP Orc

As I mentioned in my previous post, I did some work on the Orc I am hoping to enter into the WAMP competition. He's looking a little rough atm, but he's getting there slowly...

I had a bit of a crisis once I started painting the metallics. His flesh was too light for the dark, worn metals I had gone for (a blackened steel and bronze) so I have tried to deepen the tone of the flesh, but keeping it fairly desaturated and not loose the brightness of the highlights.

Took a lot of faffing, but here are some pics:

Zenithal priming?

I dont know if this will come across so well in these photos, but here are pics of my orc after the zenithal priming.

You can just about see the transitions from grey to white where I have blasted white down from an angle

Straight on to the next project...

Well, I have been thinking about the model I want to do for the WAMP Hasslefree competition, and I have come to the conclusion that what I really want to do is something fantasy (after my recent sci-fi endeavour). With it being HF, you're pretty well spoilt for choice but I have had my eye on one of their earlier models for quite some time. It is Vadim the orc

He is now prepped, attached to the base and primed. I have gone for a 'zenithal priming' technique for the first time where I have primed grey and then primed white from about a 60 degree angle all round the model. This should give me a good idea for positioning of shadows and highlights but also allow the high spots to be naturally brighter as they have a white undercoat.

I am thinking 'real metallics', lots of leather and dark, oily metals... but only time will tell!