Ugleb’s Gotham City Gallery

Unlike the Electrocutioner’s disaster in blue, I’m quite happy with the green glow here.  I don’t think I did not go overboard on the first coat and built it up with several lighter glaze layers.

I have been sitting on this one for awhile and decided it was overdue to get done.  I don’t really paint large areas of white all that often, so this was an interesting challenge.  Darkening the folds of his lab coat wthout making it look dirty took a bit of fiddling, I found it was better to shade using greys rather than black washes for that reason.

Ok so I kinda screwed this one up, but I’m calling it done.  I was doing ok until I went to glaze highlight some electric blue glow from the Electrocutioners shock gloves.  I went far too heavy with it! Things got a bit ‘chalky’ and I overwhelmed everything with far too much bright blue.  After some salvage efforts to tone it back down I ended up here and decided to call time and move on.

Ah well, tabltop quality and all that, chalk it up to learning!

The latest addition to the painted collection is Hush, a slightly obscure villain unless you read Batman comics I guess.  He is from a major storyline back in the 90’s which is a good read should you be so inclined.  This is one of Knight Models’ discontinued metal sculpts but I have always liked him.

I secretly hope it will be re-released in resin for 2nd edition with an updated character card, although at this point he will probably get re-sculpted at some point.

Excuse the over exposure of the pic, I had a lot of trouble getting this one to look right because I suck at photography.

I have also been working on a bit of extra scvatter terrain, these are the TTCombat Back Alley accessory sets mounted on pieces of balsa wood.

I have also been working on a bit of extra scvatter terrain, these are the TTCombat Back Alley accessory sets mounted on pieces of balsa wood.

Going from a model that has been waiting two years for some paint, to one I had to get done ASAP.  When this one went up for pre-order I showed the pic to my wife and she told me I should get it right then and there, it really is a cool sculpt.

This is the 80th Anniversary edition of The Batman and so I’m willing to overlook the 60mm base and brow furrowingly delicate bats that may make transporting it to tournaments a scary prospect.  It will look great in my cabinet regardless!

Kicking off 2019 I have decided to make an effort to finish up the stuff I have been putting off and to reduce my pile of shame a bit.  When it comes to BMG, first up on that list was the last model from the Suicide Squad 2 player starter box that I just never got around to – Killer Croc.

The ‘Squad half of the set recently got a resin re-release and tweaked stat cards for 2nd edition which have made the scaly sewer king a more viable option to see some table usage as well, so the time was right to finally cross him off the to-do list.

Feels good.

Well this one was fun to paint!  It is a fairly simple sculpt but probably one of my favourites in KM’s range.  It really captures the character for me with that bushy beard and kinda crazy eyes.  And of course, the Kryptonite arrow!

I have again tried my hand with some OSL and I’m quite pleased with how it has come out.  I have another tournament coming up soon and will likely be giving old Oly a run out.

I have made a start on the Frank Miller version of Oliver Queen as the old mad bastard Green Arrow. You might notice he only has the one arm, which is because he refused to cease his vigilante activities even after the US Government sent Superman after him. Can’t fire a bow with only one arm, right?

I am going for something similar to the comic look with simple muted greys/greens/browns. And I will try my hand at OSL again with that Kryptonite arrow.

Two more down!  First up we have my Diablo with attempts at Object Source Lighting!  I am guilty of not attempting lighting effects much in my painting and could probably stand to think more about lighting direction in my compositions.  And other such fancy terms.

As Diablo is conjuring a pillar of flame in his hand I have tried to lighten his sleeve, jeans and the stones on the base to depict the light source.  I darkened his jeans on the back and left side as I figure that is where the deeper shadows would fall.  Next time I think I should try to push the effect further with a greater contrast, but I’m reasonably happy with this as a first attempt.

I have also included some slightly better shots of the finished Enchantress.  While Diablo has stuck close to the movie colour scheme (honestly I was suffering a lack of inspiration that would work well with OSL), I did more of my own thing on Enchantress with dark blue hair and metallic gun metal blue/bronze for her outfit.

I haven’t updated for a little while but have been making progress on my Bat-backlog.  Unfortunately I took less decent WIP shots than I meant to, sooo…..

Another objective is done, this time the Contraband.  This was a nice simple one with a charred brown base coat and a fairly heavy beasty brown dry brushing. I hit it with the agrax earthshade (brown) wash and highlighted with heavy brown.

The guns are simply gun metal silver, nuln oil (black) wash and plate mail silver highlights. The nails and handles of the box are again plate mail silver.

Rolling on towards a tournament in just over a week, I have started work on the 2nd edition objective sets to up my meta game.

First up we have the Wayne Tech and Medical Supplies objectives, with a little bit of high silver drybrushing for weathering.

For the Wayne Tech I layered up Ivory White and Matt White, with the black areas shading up from matt black to heavy charcoal with a big of cold grey mixed in for the lighter highlights.

The medical supplies is a heavy red base coat highlighted with pure red, with stonewall grey bandings/bag cover using an ivory white mixed highlight. A bit of strong tone is used for shading recesses. The roll of bandages is bone white highlighted up.

After a bit of a delay I have wrapped up my League of Assassins additions and got some photos together!  Yay! Progress!

I have included pics of the main colours used, the German Fieldgrey is the basecoat and Russian Uniform was the main highlight for the bulk of the crew, while leather brown was the base for the leathers on the ninjas.  The league Agents were given a Khaki base for their lighter areas and highlighted with Bonewhite.

I’ve been a bit lax with the updates but I have been slugging away at the ninjas.

I have all the base colours and some high lights done across the five league ninjas. Photographing them all half decently is proving awkward so here is a quick snap of one to show where I’m going.

Moving forwards, I am getting base colours down on the League Agents and Lady Shiva. I am going a bit lighter and brighter on these as I feel it suits the minis better.

Lady Shiva is getting a colour scheme inspired by her appearance in the New52 Deathstroke run with a green outfit over her typical blacks and reds. I may yet change course on her coat and move further away from the henchmen colour scheme.

I left things sit for a couple of days and came back to consider on my direction. On reflection I think the green is too vibrant so decided to try something more muted. I have started another test piece using military greens for a more realistic look. I feel on much firmer ground here so will be pressing ahead with these base colours for the crew.

The new basecoat in Vallejo Model Color German Fieldgrey WWII with a rough highlight of VMC Russian Uniform WWII.

When I first picked up some League of Assassins ninjas I went with the Batman Begins movie colour scheme of blue-gray all over.  That was a couple of years ago now and I have been reconsidering that decision and wondering how I could be more creative.

So in that spirit, I am colour testing!  On the left is my old movie scheme, while on the right is my new scheme.  It is a less ‘realistic’ look but I think more comic book.  Most importantly, I haven’t seen anyone else paint their League ninjas in this way so  I would have a more distinctive crew which appeals to me.

I still have a lot to do on this mini of course and may go lighter or darker in places.  I have considered picking out the belt sash in a different colour but I’m undecided as to what would look good.

Today I am finishing up the basing process on my League additions.  By the end we should have some grubby Gotham paving!

And that is the bases done for now!  With the messy part done I can now focus on the minis themselves.

The next stage will be to finish base coating a League Ninja with the new colour scheme I have in mind.  I am trying to put my own stamp on the League and move away from the default movie blue look.  Time to experiment!

This month I am tackling my League of Assassins back log and maybe looking at updating the paint scheme of some older models.

To start with though, I always paint the bases of my Batman models first as I do a lot of dry brushing that can easily overflow onto the feet and legs of the model. I am taking  WIP pics step by step to show how I do this.

My bases are lipped slotted bases that I greenstuff over and sculpt in stonework to look like an old broken paved/cobbled street you might find somewhere in old Gotham.  I started doing this before Knight Models began to supply their minis with textured bases and have persisted with it for consistency across the collection.