Hobby exploits 2020 and onward

This weekend I attended said workshop in Dublin. The event was set up in Underworld Gaming store in south-western Dublin, and we had 8 attendants from Germany, Wales, Northern Ireland and Ireland (although nationality split was even more varied).

The main theme of the workshop was the method of painting preached by Marco, which in the nutshell comes down to establishing values of light and shadow on the model with only white and whatever colour primer is useful for your desired colour scheme, and then adding colours with transparent paints on top of that sketch.

The workshop spanned across two days (Saturday and Sunday), 8 hours each, although some of us started social part on Friday, supporting Dublin’s publicans heavily experienced during pandemics.

Saturday class stared with short introduction from Marco (BTW I couldn’t believe what his real-life background is, certainly it isn’t fine art). After the introduction Marco made a lecture on colour theory and contrast, and how those ideas subscribe to his painting method. The lecture was supported by reference materials Marco had printed for us. Of course everyone was free to ask questions and comment.

With theory done (ca. 2PM) we went for a quick lunch and with our stomachs full were ready to start painting. But before any paintbrush touched any mini Marco had one more challenge for us. He asked everyone to tell a story in which their models find themselves. Moreover we had to write it down with detailed description of lighting conditions, weather, ambient mood of the scene and emotions of the character for the sake of comparring it with final result.

Marco recommended colour of primer to fit each of our plans and maybe boost the effect, he also had number of similar minis with different light situations sketched on them, that helped to understand theoretical concepts better.

In our sketching of light we were limited to brush only, although Marco had his airbrush and helped out in moments of emergency. This is what I came up with around 6PM on Saturday (brush only).

You tell me what is the story behind it.

Sunday started a bit unlucky for me. I was late (thank you Dublin bus) and missed presentation on TMM, and had to ask Marco to help finish my light sketch on the back of the mini with airbrush. After that was sorted we started with colours. Everyone brought all the transparent paints and inks they could muster and that included Marco. Suffice to say we had more paints than most game stores ever saw. Marco also had his own-made mediums which pretty much turned every kind of acrylic into contrast paint. Throughout the process Marco was very responsive and kept watchful eye on our progress, helping out with conceptual and physical parts of the job (yes, my mini has touch-ups made by Marco Frisoni with his own hand)

I finished the day with this little guy:

Real quality (smoothness) would require more time and more layers of paint, but all the lights and shadows, as well as all colours are already there. I wont push him any further to keep him as illustration of my progress during the weekend.

All in all the workshop was great fun and brought improvement to my painting and certainly impacted the way I think about painting. On top of that, everyone I met there ware super nice and supportive – painting in group has its own quality to it.

After the experience I had during the weekend, I’m sure I’ll be looking to participate in many more similar events. Thank you Marco and guys.

Corvus Belli introduced new concept of REMs with Long Ya models for Yu Jing in December last year. While I appriaciate creativeness, I don’t like new design, I don’t think it works for that particular profile. Thus, I decided to substitute them with Momoyama Drones from Unit 9. They look all right ant their weapons correspond with what you would expect on Long Ya model, only thing I did was scale them down to 77% so they would fit 40 mm bases.

Painting was very basic, black and white oil over sombre grey under-paint, the yellow is my typical Yu Jing recipe.

One thing, the weird white clouds around their ‘feet’ – this is superglue I Used to attach them to the bases, it is virtually invisible IRL, but quite pronounced on the photos.

With this one I tried to be super-neat. I also used much more powerful lenses in my visor (or chick-magnet as my wife calls it).

Painted with oils (over acrylic base):

1. Yellow – oxide brown to bismuth yellow, over sun-yellow base
2. Mechanic parts – black wash, white highlights over sombre grey base.

When I started painting this one he was considered pinnacle of offensive game in whole the Infinity universe, now after the changes in fire-teams composition rules he is just powerful. Still the mini looks amazing.

Last month, like almost every last month of each quarter I focused on working on some small competition pieces. This time I had some Yu Jung on the table, so decided to do alternate pose of Cpt Qiang Gao from Defiance set and Liu Xing hacker from Invincible Army starter pack.

I was quite happy with my performance until I took the pictures seen bellow. They looked awful! Messy as hell. I use my magnifying glasses while painting, but even with them I can’t see all the spots and nasty streaks seen on the photos – it must be my eyes.

In the end I haven’t participated in any competition this quarter, at least I have two minis painted on very average level…

And the last of the CA models painted in this series. Technic doesn’t change, but since this is general Infinity model and not necessarily a Defiance one, he needed different base, as per usual that meant mass production (especially with new Morats lurking from behind a corner).

He’s part of the bunch described in previous post but project system didn’t let him in together with his pals.

Together with my Charontid I also pushed three Shasvastis. I didn’t care much about them (they are just pawns), but on top of that, when I finished and tried to attach them to final bases, something went wrong. I had to handle them much more than I’m used to, and thus scrubbed off some paint on many edges, and also on larger surfaces. I tried to repair that, but my success is questionable at best. Maybe I’ll repaint them entarily some time in the future.

That was a long silence… what can I say… life, at least I finished my university course (and haven’t started new one yet).

Anyway, my typical Combined approach: black and white oils on the armour and Giraldez’s set of washes/glazes on the body (?)

After painting bunch of PanO and generally humans I’m switching back to CA, to make that switch even smoother I started with Aida Swanson from Defiance set. She has one the coolest stories in whole universe, and to illustrate her dubious allegiance I made her base by blending a normal base I have for my heroes and shasvasti base.

And finally some more shasvasti bases that I’ve printed. I painted them with oils paints, chromatic black achieved from mixing all three primary colours, it gives very fun effects while highlighted with white, because each stroke of white may pull different tone to the surface. And of course I haven’t painted all the rims yet.

Another mini that was acting as test dummy for quite some time, I thing I printed him out last year with the rest of Yakuza from Unit 9.

Anyway, I was practicing red on him, with acrylics. Base colour was scarlet red (VGC), then lights with Pure Red (AP) and finally Scarlet Fluo (VRC) – this is what gives it that reflective feel. But true power of this mix is in shadows, those were done with glazes of magenta and phtalo blue inks with a touch of black (without black shadows will be too saturated and will look like shining).

Rest of the mini was of less interest for me, so it probably looks rushed, especially since the model has very plain face.

Painting with oils has that unique quality, that completing five or six minis takes almost the same amount of time as finishing one. Therefore, evry time I paint one colour scheme, I end up with a bunch of nearly finished models. This weekend I painted all lacking parts on three minis I’d started with my Defersen. I tried to get them all into one project entry but only got blank page in return, so sorry for splitting them up into three separate entries.

As it is tradition for the year, I took part in Mayacast Masterglass competition for the quarter as well. I haven’t won that one. The theme was “meme”. I tried something different this time, as memes bring comics and cartoons to mind (for me at least). So there you have it, Kunai Solutions Ninja as meme:

Finally I won a paining competition. Q3 Bromad Academy Contest had conversion as their theme.

I converted Knight Hospitaler Medic to Father Officer de Fersen. Although he has his official mini (even two) I really hate it – it is probably my least liked mini in whole present range.

The conversion was rather simple:

1. Cut off medic’s bag on his right side and sculpt some wrinkles of the tabard instead with some greenstuff.
2. Cut off the sword and replace it with 3d-printed spitfire (Monstrous Makings on Thingiverse).
3. Cut off head/helmet and replace it with 3d printed one (from one of U9’s civilians).
4. Cut off his medikit together with his hand and replace it with 3d printed one (from different U9’s civilian).
5. Cut off his left forearm and turn it accordingly to imitate “hacking hand” – a pose characteristic for hacker minis in whole Infinity universe.
6. Add sheathed longsword of my own design to his left side (again, 3d printed).

Painting was quite fast, main bulk of the armour was painted with Phtalo Blue (green hue) and highlighted with mixture of turquoise, white and a drop of bismuth yellow. Tabard started as mixture of cadmium red and some blue (probably phtalo) and was highlighted with pure cadmium red. Shadows on all colours are accentuated with mixture of magenta and phtalo blue (with a bit of black to kill some saturation).

This is Jazz, probably the best hacker in whole Infinity game, she comes from Corregidor (the Nomad mothership, not the island on Earth). The mini is Kickstarter special from the Defiance box.

I never played any Warhammer or any GW for that matter… save for Talismanin early 90’s and some Space Hulk 3^rd edition in early 2010’s. The latter is actually only set of GW figures I have, some of them are even painted.

Anyway, from time to time I want to get some break from Infinity and paint something ‘grimdark’. Couple of weeks ago Trovorion (https://youtu.be/nlf_j8CB-3k) of YT fame (among others) did great video on the topic which inspired me to paint one of my reaper models that way, but first I wanted to check the method and that boardgame piece seemed to be best suited to become test dummy.

Oh, the mini was painted completly with acrilics and paintbrush (2 of them),  no oils, no washes. Airbrushed primer and varnish.

So there you go:

This is a misprint I held for almost two years. Finally I decided to either paint it or throw it away. See for yourselves if I made good choice,

All the decals are self-made, colours done with airbrush and blacklining with a sharpie.

I’m working on a competition piece and wanted to alter the colours of mu Military Orders to something more flashy. I used this model as a training grounds, and while contrast on this one is not the best and “blacklining” on one side is ridiculous, I like it (BTW I really like this mini design, classic).

Of course I painted wrong variant (with spitfire instead of a multirifle), but I’m really pushed away from the other one because of that dead Umbra under her heal.

Anyway, standard oil job as on the rest of my Military Orders, however, with the following minis I’ll switch back to phtalo blue as the  base colour, cobalt blue I used to use on my Hospitalers and her is doesn’t seem to be vibrant enough.