WIP Updates

 Decide to do a quick  WIP update on a few projects. Here we go!

Knightmare Games Bugbear

Started a color test on this guy to see how a yellow/orange would look.  Overall I like it and will break out the others to get started on them.  If memory serves me correctly these are the work of the great Goblinmaster Kevin Adams.  I'll have to send Sergio some shots for his Facebook page.  

Apex shading

 

Initial color blocking.  

After some highlights and washes

Done except for the base.

Direhard bounty hunters

Wrapping up the details on these guys and have just a few more touch ups then I'll call them done.  

Not real happy with the left shoulder guard, wanted the golden eagle look from JD but I'm not so sure it really works.  Will have to decide on a base look for them, maybe just a dirt/soil look or a Martian red look.

Carwars/Dark Future/Gaslands

Primed up another car to work on when I get bored with everything else.  That is it for now.

Attention Pt 2

 A follow up to the last post.  I'm calling these finished.  I might clean up some of the details but I'm happy with them.  Not my best paint job but not the worst either.  As for the Reaper Bones product, these are the original white product that they first debuted and the detail is ok.  Clearly not as sharp as metal in some cases but not horrible either.  That is partially the reason that I'm calling them done, I don't know that I have the skill to improve on the areas where the detail isn't good.  With that said, for the price I can live with the minor detail issues.  I was looking at a new blister of the Black Bones product and it looks to hold detail better.  I'll have to give them a try soon.

A few individual shots

 

 

 

 

I originally gave the Illyrian's a purple color but wasn't happy with the results.  I then found that an old pot of Warlock Purple (more on the fuchsia spectrum) that was actually still good.  Used the new jig saw mixer and some of the Army Painter stainless steel mixing balls to reinvigorate it.  Put a little on one of them and was much happier with the look and converted both over to that color.  I need to work on the pluggers eye above.  On Keith's website he shows them painted similar to a human eye, I might go something alien looking for the iris.  I'll post a pic once I decide.

 Yes that's an old one.

But not as old as this one!

This is the first group/project that I have wrapped up in awhile.  I will shift focus to the Diehard bounty hunters and try to get them wrapped up over the next few weeks.

The Greatest Miniature Hack Ever!

Well the intro says it all.  I stumbled upon what I consider probably the greatest hack for the miniature painting hobby of all time.  It is truly pure genius!  for quite awhile I have been racking my brain to come up with a way to mix hobby paints.  I tend to paint in mad fury for a couple of days to a couple of weeks and then suddenly lose interest or get tangled up with real life responsibilities.  That means my paints sometimes sit for weeks on end between uses.  As you can guess I tend to have some serious settling issues when they sit idle that long.  I have tried a variety of avenues.  I played around with my kids Erector Set and an electric motor.  I tried to craft something out of their Lego's.  I tried a few other approaches with absolutely no success.  Being the frugal miniature painter and gamer I just couldn't bring myself to buy one from Micromark at $65, I mean how many miniatures could you buy for that!  So I just resorted to shaking them manually until my elbow hurt.  That was until this weekend.

I'm not exactly sure what site I was on but as I'm browsing through photos of other peoples miniature projects I stumbled onto a photo that just floored me.  What was it you ask?  Well lets answer that with a riddle.  What do you get when you cross a bar clamp with a jigsaw?  This!

Shake Well?  Damn right I will!

I saw a photo of a similar contraption and was floored by its simplicity, versatility and effectiveness.  So much so that I had to run out the next day and get the necessary supplies.  I already had a jigsaw, in fact I have two so there wasn't any cost to me for that part.  It does look like you can get one for as little as $25.99 on Amazon and possibly less at places like Harbor Freight, at a home improvement store.  Our Menard's had one for $18, looks like Walmart has one for that price as well.  You might also be able to pick one up at a garage sale for less. All those options are way less than $65 and you get a dual purpose tool out of it.

Next up is a bar clamp.  I picked up this set at Menard's for a whopping $4.99, $4.55 if I send in the rebate!  A very nice set with 2 bar clamps and a variety of clips.  I went with a 4"-5" bar clamp.  I was concerned that anything larger might no fit into the chuck of the jigsaw and why spend more than you need to.  This one fit in nicely with the chuck and I was done.  That was it, nothing more.  I did go ahead and remove the base/foot off the bottom of the saw just to give me more room to open the clamp jaws up.  

 Citadel Old-Check (Yes i know its a P3 paint but same type of pot!)

 Citadel New-Check

 Army Painter/Vallejo-Check

Craft Paint-Check

Does it work?

Older Citadel Metallic (white liquid is the separated acrylic medium)  

Post 30 sec in the mixer.

I'd have to say yes it is a resounding success!
 

To be honest this saw is the lower quality of the two I own so I don't imagine it will every get used as a saw again.  I can fit any of the hobby paints in it with no problem.  I was worried about the dropper bottles having very little surface on their tops, if it becomes an issue I can always rig up something to help hold it in place.  I had to share this, it was just too good to keep to myself.  Good luck and enjoy.

Wow What a year 2020

 

WOW what a year 2020 turned out to be! I have neglected this blog terribly, just too busy and wound up about the whole COVID to be able to get into the hobby.  With a new year I thought I would try to get back into the saddle with some WIP.

My son got me the incredible Reaper Bones Cthulhu Model for my birthday over the summer.  I’ve been eyeing this for a very long time but was never able to pull the trigger.  It was a very thoughtful gift and I feel like I need to do it justice and get it painted up!   

 Right now I’m working through the mold lines, not as easy as lead (or is it Led?) to clean up but working my way through it.  The head is the worst with some mold lines on the facial tentacles, difficult to get into some of the spaces.

One tentacle is off a bit will probably have to green stuff it.  I might try some of the GWS liquid green stuff to see if it is easier to use to correct the molding issue.

 Another WIP of my SciFi range.  These are Diehard miniatures from one of their Kickstarter campaigns.  A group of bounty hunters that I’m actually painting up in a Judge Dredd color scheme.  I think they are coming along nicely.

 That is all for now but more to come as I get my groove back!

Hello, my name is...........

Hello my name is Warlord Kcam, and I'm an addict.  Lead addict that is.  I simply cannot help myself, I have to buy more lead miniatures, I need to buy more miniatures.  Yes, sure I'll get them painted someday.  Soon, I promise!

Does that sound like you if your reading this?  I was motivated to share my addiction after doing some work this weekend.  As I mentioned in the previous post, I decided to put together my Knightmare Games Feral Goblins unit to paint up for Orctober.  I totally missed that target date but that is now water under the bridge.  I received the new additional troops along with some Bugbears.  I really don't have a plan for the larger fellows, I just thought that they were cool.  To get the unit ready I dug out the box with all the Knightmare figures to get the original Greenskin Wars Kickstarter goblins out as well.  I was surprised how heavy it was.  Then I became embarrassed at how many unpainted miniatures I had to dig through to find the other Feral Goblins.  Wow, at the rate I'm painting it will take me at least a year just to get all of Diego's stuff done.

That doesn't doesn't include all the lead that is sitting in these tubs!

 Or these drawers!

Or the boxes in the storage area!

Good lord, I'm not sure that I'll ever have enough time to get them done.

Surely I'm not the only one who does this right?   Does anyone else have this collecting addiction?  As I started this confession I began to think about this and clearly I was destined for this from an early age.  My mom recently sold my childhood home and I helped her pack things up including much of the residue of my childhood.  By the way, I'm still pissed off I didn't find my original 1st edition Deities and Demigods as we started to clean out the house.
 

As I packed things up or unpacked things at my home I realized that my drive to collect started very early with things like rubber eraser animals, Lego's, comics, and various collecting cards.  Darn my nerdyness, I of course collected everything but athletic cards which is where the big money is at!  Well it was never a matter of collecting as an investment just for enjoyment.

Clearly I have what must be some genetic per-disposition to collecting, thankfully I have been able to keep it in check for the most part.  I occasionally catch the show American Pickers, for those unaware it is about a coupe of antique/re-sale guys that travel around the US "picking" other peoples junk and collections for hidden treasures or items that they can resell.  I always used to get a chuckle when they found something and made an offer on it and the person replies "No I just don't think I can let that go" mind you they say this while standing in a room, or house, or even a barn that is filled with 100's of other items just like the one they just cannot do without.  Please note that I said "used to chuckle", after digging though all the stuff that I have around the hobby room I realized that I might just be one of those "people" who is so obsessed with their stuff they simply cannot let it go!  Please share if you have any of the same issues!

Back to the green tide.

As I mentioned in my 2018 recap, I have decided to get back to my roots and paint up some greenskins for 2019.  Orcs and goblins have been my first fantasy love since watching Bakshi's animated Hobbit and Lord of the Rings movies.



Diego with Knightmare games has some great miniatures out there by the greatest orc and goblin sculptor ever, Kevin "The Goblinmaster" Adams.  I have done a few of his Kicksarter campaigns and really liked the feral goblins so they were my first choice to work on.

After giving them a look while basing, it appears that they fall into 4 categories; wolf skins, boar skins, goat skins, and reptile and bat pelts.  I don't want to get overwhelmed with trying to paint too many varying styles so I made sure I had enough caps to get all the wolf skins ready for paint.  I have focused on them to keep the group manageable for the month that I am going to give myself to get them done.  I am gong to try a little different approach and go with a very strict base coat them wash then highlight process.  While this is my typical method I tend to focus on a single color/area with this technique and then move onto the next.  I often end of repairing/repainting areas that were already done but got contaminated by a wash or highlight from a nearby color or area.  This round of miniatures I aim to try the more traditional method and do them all at the same time. 

I'm also gong to start a new themed project appropriate named "Off with the Old, On with the New!"  The plan is to take some of my ancient mins and strip off my poorly skilled pre-teen paint jobs and redo them with what I hope are better paint jobs.  First up, in keeping with the greenskin theme, I picked out a troll from the old Fantasy Tribe Troll series (FTT04).

This was a very attractive model to a prepubescent boy in the late 70's with the nude captive slung over the troll's shoulder.  Not sure how I ever managed to slide that purchase past my mom, glad she really didn't pay too close attention to what I was buying!  I doubt that GWS would get away with that in today's market.  As you can see from the before picture, limited pallet, poor details and just average skin tone on the captive.  Not bad for younger me, lets see if old F@#% me can do better!  On to the painting.

The Great Painting Bust of 2018! A year in Review.

It appears that 2018 will go down as one of my weakest blogging and painting efforts in awhile.  I had these great ambitions for 2018: getting 52 blog posts in, working my way through the pile of lead sitting in my hobby space, actually gaming some, participating in Orctoer (which them became Gobvember) and Deadcember.  The list goes on, it turns out that my efforts were a bust.  I could come up with a dozen or so excuses like "the dog at all my paint" or "the bosses at work are so mean I just didn't have any time to paint" but lets be real, I was just lazy.  Or more positively spun, I just wasn't as motivated as I should or could have been.

Here is the misses.  I managed a whopping 12 posts for all of 2018, none since August.  Didn't come close to Orctober and totally missed Deadcember.  Honestly a post a week probably isn't realistic,  so I set myself up for failure.

While I lament away about what I didn't do lets change the focus to what I did accomplish.  First up was fighting off my adult ADD and focusing on collecting a full set of figures.  In this case my Champions of Khorne project.  Just getting the set purchased without blowing my entire hobby budget was an accomplishment.  The first group, the hateful 8 are close enough for me to consider them done.

A few minor details to clean up and finish.  White stuff on bases is sparkling compound to hide the slota base tab.  As with most of my projects I'll complete the bases once the rest of the crew is painted.  Here is the next group.

While I missed being able to complete a unit for Orctober I did manage to get a unit of Diego's Knightmare Games feral goblins based up, mounted on caps for the Hobby Holder painting rig and a few base coats on.  Speaking of the Hobby Holder, Kit currently has a second Kickstarter campaign going with a little less than a week left.  I would highly recommend it!

I also kicked off some Gaslands/Dark Future/Car Wars projects that I was able to wrap up.  To be honest these were lots of fun and actually pretty quick and easy to knock out.  I do need to get them a couple of coats of matte finish to protect their paint jobs.

And last but not least, 2018 did see one of my biggest hobby collecting journeys come to an end.  I finally completed my 40 year quest to collect the fist run of White Dwarf magazine.  That wonderful little magazine was one of the contributing factors that enticed me into the hobby and keep me engaged with it even though I wasn't always able to fully participate in it.  It certainly changed over the years but it was still a good read most of the time.

Goals for 2019: simple GET BUSY! I just need to make the commitment to getting more done.  I'll shoot for more regular posts, more like one every couple of weeks.  Painting wise I'll be trying to get more paint on lead with a quick goal of getting the green lads painted up by end of January. 

That is it for 2018, lets hope 2019 bears more hobby fruit!