Some OldHammer Reiksguard

In addition to my lonely wizard, I started painting a unit of Imperial 'Reiksguard'.  Well, mostly... they are a mix of foot knights and fighters from the marauder era, which will represent my Reiksguard.  Its a good excuse to paint them up, and I like the way the unit is coming together.  Oh yes, I also tossed in a WK dwarf for good measure.  Why not?

So far, I have painted up 15 of the guys, though the shields are not yet done for them all.  Here is the whole group:

For these figures, like the wizard, I am using a grey primer followed by a white zenith prime, and then using inks and diluted paint for most of the paintjob.  The inks are very fast, and give a nice result.  Though I have been going over the highest areas with some opaque paint for my final highlight, and I like how it turned out.  Here are a few closeups:

These were the first five painted.  Second group:

And finally, the third group:

It is turning out to be a wonderfully characterful unit, and the prolific armour makes these guys dead easy to paint up quickly.  Mostly basic block colours for these guys - less time, and it still looks good in a group.  Only five more to paint and my unit of twenty is finished.

Small Diversion

I recently got distracted from the painting of my Dux Britanniarum.  I assure you, I have some Saxons finished, they just aren't photographed yet :)

One of the online forums I frequent, warhammer-empire.com, runs an annual miniature exchange.  I participated this year for the third time in a row.  For my recipient this year, I decided to paint up not one, but two miniatures to match his army theme of purple and  yellow.  I decided he needed a nice, stately captain - well suited by an old Empire Reiksguard foot knight captain!  To accompany him, none other than a stalwart halfilng would do!  It was a great opportunity to paint another lovely White Knight miniature, as well as some classic Empire goodness.  Onto some pictures!

The duo:

And some closeups of the Captain:

 

Finally, some closeups of his tiny compatriot:

I had lots of fun painting these guys, so I hope you enjoy them!  They are on their way across the ocean to their new home, here is to hoping they make it there safely.

Here come the little folk!

"What are you doing?"

 "Tomatoes, sausages, and nice, crispy bacon!"

Hobbit references aside, I am now pleased to share with you all a secret project which I had worked on this summer!

White Knight, with his wonderful range of landsknecht gobins, gave in to popular demand to see a separate set of halfling heads sulpted by Kev Adams to fit on the goblin bodies.  In my conversations with him, I was able to trick/beg/barter a set of mastercastings of the aforementioned halfling heads to paint up so he could show the world some painted examples.

Upon receiving them in the mail, I was delighted to find the 12 crisp heads, with great details and expressions.  The pick of the crop to me (and WK will agree) were the bare headed halfings, who simply oozed with character.

I set about assembling the 6 heads that most appealed to me, and slapped on some paint.  Here are the final results!

First up are 2 of the bare heads and a nice feathered cap.  The strapping chap in the middle is my favourite of all 12 heads.  Nice bushy eyebrows and a full face.  I found the sculpt somewhat resembled my late grandfather, so in his honour the middle halfling with the halberd has been named Tom.  I don't normally name my miniatures, so that's a pretty big honour :)

Next up were some more heads, a couple with handguns and another halberd.  I made a slight slip up with the guy on the right - adding a blue wash to add some colour around the eyes ended badly.  My wife said it looked like he got a black eye, so I decided that was a better story than taking time to fix it.  So the halfling on the right got into it last night with a surly (and quite drunk) dwarfen merchant at the hogshead tavern.  Today he showed up for duty with a nice shiner and his pride mostly intact!

These guys were lots of fun to paint up!  The details pick out nicely, and they don't overwhelm the models.  I find models with tons of little details can be somewhat cumbersome to paint, even if they give good results.  To me, these little guys are both fun and rewarding to paint, and nicely fill a gap in the miniature market.  I hope to finish off a few GW halflings soon so you can compare the size and scale of each.

Enjoy!

Some worthy sea dogs!

Between working and enjoying the summer weather, I have been able to put a few more strokes of paint to lead lately!  Namely, I have been trying to finish some crew for my Nipponese Junk.

First up, we have the captain.  Haru of the Shugyosha Sueshiju (my meagre attempt at a Japanese name using an online translator).  Its an old preslotta citadel oriental hero.  Also, my first model using a gradient background (wooo!).  I got the gradients for free online, here.

The base was sculpted into a woodgrain effect with greenstuff.  At the time I had no other ideas on making a decking base, so that is what I came up with.  Not my greatest result, but functional enough.

Next up I finished two Cathayan crewmen, using wargames foundry chinese pirates.  Pretty nice models, though the hands are a little big...

 

I have a couple more of the chinese pirates to add, and then there are some nice old citadel samurai awaiting my loving attention.  Though my attention has been on a different project as of late.  A secret one.  Intrigued?  Well don't worry, the project is not that *big* ;)

Also, a special thanks to the Kev Adams Challenge for posting a link to my blog and highlighting some of the WK goblins I have painted!  I hope there are many more to come!

Thats all for now!

Let there be light!

So, a good friend of mine sent me a link about a DIY lightbox.  You can read about it here: Link

After selecting a suitable target, I went to town last night and came up with my new masterful contraption!

Coincidentally, I just finished an old 4th edition empire master gunner, so I figured he would be an ideal test subject.  I would say it still needs some tweaking, namely I think I need a brighter light source, or a few more light sources, but I am well on my way!

To compare the quality of light, here is our ever-famous Gob de Leon with the new light tent:

and here he is with the old use of just light bulbs:

Personally, I think its an improvement!

While I had the camera out, I also snapped a few shots of this conversion I did a while back.  Its an old Grandmaster of the knights of the white wolf, with a converted horse head and a scenic base (I sculpted the cobblestones in greenstuff):

Hope you like 'em!

WK minis - new batch arrives!

Yesterday was a great day.  I came home from work to find two neat packages waiting for me.  What was inside?  Well nothing other than the load of White Knight landsknecht dwarfs and goblins that I have been waiting to order for several months!  As usual, the sculpting and castings are great - mold lines are fairly small, and the detail is crisp.  I haven't had a chance to pore over everything, but there was one little guy that caught my eye.

I had to paint him up, so I assembled and primed him yesterday, and spent a little while tonight and got him painted up!  I am still trying to figure out the best way to photograph minis in my new workspace, so the photos are not as good as I would like - but at least you can see the little guy!  Without further ado, I present to you the first miniature that I have painted in about two months - Gob do Leon, the goblin special character from White Knight!

He was a blast to paint up - nice and simple, yet full of character.  He is mounted on a Scibor resin base.  He will go along nicely with the other goblins I have painted up.  Here are some pictures I took several months ago, after I had painted them:

I just realized I will have to change his base colour to brown from black... no big deal there... right?