Hobby exploits 2020 and onward

And yet again project system wins.

I tried 5 or 6 times to publish more pictures, but always ended up with no success. I’m not going to try again since I have about 20 more pictures… It’s just too much useless effort.

I painted a fair number of minis in November.

In this post you can see my new PanO troops, I tiled the pictures to minimize my interaction with the project system.

Anyway, there we go:

Above are my 3 fusiliers from 2014, painted in oils.

And finally some 3d-printed robots to stand as Mulebots in PanO armies. Painted in oils, designed and sold by Unit9.

And one more painted with inks and speed paints.

Another one, this time painted entirely with inks and speed paints over zenithal underpainting.
A bit of enamel pin wash in the end.

I painted a little bit recently. Actually I finished some minis started well in spring.

Below is Shasvasti Caliban with SMG painted with oils.

Oh, he’s from Defiance.

And so I started building one. This is first building which I painted for the purpose, I’ll add some more details later (HVAC and holo-ads as CP designers intended), but a this point this back alley Night club is ready for play.

And as a somewhat connected project I started work on and individual who someday will take over the reins and lead that establishment to greatness… or not…

This is an older mini from the beginnings of N3 or tail end of N2.

Painted with oils (and a drop or two of acrylics – on hair and bags).

I moved hauses. It took me 3 months to sort out hobby space in this new place. First use of this space was finishing this lady. Unit9, 28 mm, 3d print.

This holidays I pushed my 3d printed Chimera Pathfinder a notch closer to comletion. Moslty did the engines and some glasswork.

More pictures to be found here: https://www.beastsofwar.com/project/1635297/

I finished another one of my little diorama-frames, a spaceship cargo bay this time.

More history of this project can be found here.

It is no surprise to probably anyone, that this year I had to buy two big bundles from Corvus Belli. With My Op. box delivered a couple of month ago I want to work my way through Morats before getting to Steel Phalanx. So I’m doing a bit of speed painting on them. 3 minis this week, all light specialists.

The same story as with the Vanguards, but due to project system limitations I had to create new post. The difference is that I didn’t like the model as much as the Vanguards.

EDIT: somehow after compression the pictures turned really dark, I’ll see if I can change them in any way.

EDIT 2: Better photo

These three little Morat simpletons were painted in a way presented by Marco in his videos and wider explained here in one of the posts bellow, teh one describing the workshop I had with him.

What may be considered unusual is that, even though they read as mostly black, I didn’t use pure black anywhere on these minis, save for first layer of primer.

What I used was:

• Hard elements of uniform (armour) – mixture of VGC black-green and violet inks,
• Soft elements of uniforms – mixture of Liquitex bright orange and turquoise inks,
• Dark elements of weapon – mixture of VGC black and violet inks,
• Light elements of weapon – mixture of AP blue and gravelord grey speed paints over white,
• Skin – AP red speed paint highlighted with Vallejo sunny skin tone.

Every colour was diluted with mixture of 2:1 acrylic medium and retarder for better flow, this is element that lets you avoid stains and uneven coverage.

The main problem with this bunch is underpainting – the light direction is inconsistent and lights are not pushed far enough – when you start applying colours in this method getting back to lights beyond edge highlight is rather hard.

EDIT: Additional photo.

I don’t know how many of you share my experience, but when I paint I have great fun and have so many new ideas, ways to approach the process and really enjoy it. That is until I proclaim a model finished, from that very moment I can only see flaws in my work, like no good brush stroke was achieved on a mini in question. Below is the most recent offender of my self-esteem, painted for completion with huge dose of enjoyment, now that I posted it, I can’t even look at the photos.

The competition gallery (all entries)  can be seen here: https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=531050259025032&set=pcb.531069439023114

In August I started new job which pretty much decimated my hobby time, as this project clearly shows. On the flip side it brings a bit of income which I can spend on hobby supplies with hope that I would use it some day.

This is what I found in the post today.

On the weekend of 10-11^th September, I did my second workshop with certain Marco Frisoni. This time the theme was oil painting and the event was held in the centre of Dublin in Academy Plaza Hotel. The venue was surprising but in the end worked great, we had conference room all to ourselves, big tables for 13 participants and plenty of light from Marco’s own lamps (I believe there were more daylight bulbs than painters in the room).

What was even more different from previous workshop is the fact that this time event was ‘powered’ by Big Child Creative, Spanish company producing high quality large scale (75 mm) models and busts. As you can imagine we were to paint large model, precisely this one:

The event started at 10 am on Saturday, with very quick introduction we instantly got into building our models. I guess I didn’t write it in my previous report but building and painting in larger group always has inspiring effect on me, people who 10 minutes ago were complete strangers to each other, with different backgrounds, different nationality and language spontaneously help each other, discuss ideas, share tools and paints, general ‘kumbaya’ feeling all around.

This time I don’t have too much to say (or show for that matter) regarding painting. Most participants was new to oil painting (although had great achievements in acrylics) thus Marco referred basic rules of using oils, differences between types and some brands, markings on the tubes, use of different medias and additives etc. He also presented two technics of using oil paints on the mini, and we started painting. The hotel didn’t put any limits on the amount of time we could spend in the room so we finished painting well after 8PM.

I went for complete oil technique, and at the end of the first day had this to show:

On the second day, many painters started work around 9AM, and with brief lunch-break around 2 we’d worked until late afternoon. This is where it got me:

To sum up the knowledge presented on the weekend, I guess at this point I have couple of years of experiance with oils under my belt and yet Marco managed to surprise me some with pieces of theory and skills that I didn’t realize were there to discover  (like use of pure oils – not oil paints). The topic is so vast and has such a history behind it that after those two days I want two weeks or months more!

After painting, we obviously paid a visit to a local pub and did some well-deserved whiskey tasting.

Anyway, another workshop, another great weekend and tones of inspiration for the future. Thank you Marco and the gang for the great time.

In previous entry I sowed off my Daturazi painted for contest, the other one was painted over a year ago (also can be found in this project blog). I also finished two remaining witch soldiers, so bellow you’ll find their photos and all happy family.

I had a pause from competitions I usually take part in. I returned in June with 3 minis (one of contests wanted participants to paint fire teams).

I haven’t won any prizes for quality of painting, however, I was lucky enough to get random prize from Bromad Academy guys.

So here we go:

1. Bromad Academy q2 2022 competition theme Booty – I painted Daturazi and got very nice comments from the guys:

2. Mayacast q2 2022 competition theme Fire Teams – those are old minis for ultra-heavy infantry of Morats – the Sogarats – I got shootout from both hosts with very nice comments from Tom complementing my brush-painted NMM on the blade, which in his words brought back his memories of recent visit to Louvre and renesanse paintings he’d seen there. I almost blushed.

Some long overdue projects.

First ceane Agent with spitfire, according to my spreadsheet I bought the starter for ISS (his a port of it) in September 2016, and finished last mini of that starter (save for this one) in June 2017. I was long intimidated by this dude – he is such an iconic mini, I tried to paint him several times, added some colour here and there, but never got around to finish him. Until last weekend. There you have it:

Haidao with combi rifle, again part of Invincible army starter bought in February 2020. All his friends (save for one) from the starter were painted before end of that year, 2022 allowed to move both unpainted Invincibles to painted stock.