A very BIG SIGH!!!!

Hi All

Well the cold turkey didn't go so well for me!  Seeing all the great models and people painting them got me pining too much for the act of painting models once again!

Well I have decided to start up my painting once again but this time to limit it down to around 30 mins to 1 hour only after doing at least 2 hours of work on my PhD!  However I do like to keep Sunday's free of 'work' due to the 10 commandments, and so started to paint one of my chosen Crimson Slaughter chaos warriors (already did 2 cultists last night).

But something has happened to make me cry like a little baby....my f***ing head nozzle of my Iwata CMC+ has started to kick up a big fuss with something called skipping.  I cannot find a big enough un-smily face to put on this page at the moment.

As you may remember I had to replace one of these tiny highly expensive pieces of metal a while ago due to one snapping at the thread.  Over £40 later got the new thing in and started to use it - so far sooooo good!

However, tonight the airbrush started skipping which is an intermittent pulsing of the airflow through the brush.  Not too bad I thought as this has happened before but after a quick clean to remove the offending piece of dried up paint, everything is ok....until now.  I have cleaned the airbrush more times than you can shake a stick at.  I have disassembled and reassembled the airbrush far too many times for comfort trying to find the problem.  After doing a quick lubrication test on the thread, air is leaking and causing the skip.

I would love to swear huge amounts of nasty words on this page but I won't.  I have just had to order what is known as a Fluid Head System which are all the parts which do the magic for the airbrush. £131 later and I'm not happy.

My advice....do NOT remove the head fluid nozzle ever!!!!  Not unless you have a stupid amount of paint stuck in it.

This Painting Abstinence is Hard!

Hi All

Release of the Dark Vengence box set, models screaming for paint, YouTube videos a plenty of people nicely painting models etc.!  Wow this not painting thing for a year is HHHAAAAAARRRRRDDDDDD!!!

Aaaaahhhhhhhhhhhh!  I know I must stay strong but I feel like I'm going through cold turkey or something!!!! I made the decision not to paint any models and to concentrate nearly all efforts on my PhD - makes perfect sense when you consider the final year of three years worth of work will help an awful lot to progress in the wider world (not to mention being a Dr!!), but the lure of the model and paint pot and GW staff can be awful!

Anyways I thought I would share this one with you and let you know that I am still here on the blog and still doing videos for my YouTube channel.

Catch you later and have fun painting - think of me and try not to laugh!!!

Cheers

Some more photos!

Hi All

Well I am stuck at home today as the money situation thanks to HBOS screwing up their computer systems has meant that I cannot obtain money from my bank accounts and fill the fuel tank!  So I though I would put a few piccies up on the latest models done!  I am trying to smash out my Dreadfleet models as soon as I can so I can start playing the game!
So here are some pictures of what has been done!

Cheers
Andy

Work in Progress

Hi All
Just a quick post (really must do some more) on various projects I have on the go.  One aspect of my painting which I do endeavour to change is that I see a model or need a certain unit - build it then get roughly 70% through the paint job.  Then another model or project comes along and I start that one also!  Then another and so on, you get the picture!

I do apologise for the photos.  My friend says that I really should get a light box to help with lighting and removing distracting backgrounds.  I will get the lightbox asap!
So here are some photos of various models.

High Elves

Here are some high elves from the Blood Island box.  I managed to get my hands on two sets of the high elf models and will paint to sell them later on.  On these, I undercoated black (due to the level of armour) then airbrushed Vallejo model air gun metallizer (the only time I would ever put a 'z' where an 's' should really go!), then top spray gun and then finished off with a relatively heavy drybrushing of model air silver.

The cloth is layered with three blues from the vallejo model colour range - dark to light.  Faces are quite difficult because of the face guards and helmets.  Vallejo rosy flesh.

Dire Wolves

A useful unit of wolves for my Vampire Counts army.  Base coated in rosy flesh, highlighted with elf flesh then knocked back with GW ogryn flesh wash.  Beasty Brown on the fur, highlighted with bonewhite and then knocked back with GW Devlan Mud.  Gory red highlighted with GW foundation yellow then washed with Les Bursley's APJ softbody black wash.  One slight thing I would warn people about APJ softbody black wash is that leaves a sheen on areas it is painted.  In some of the videos from Les B, you will see him wash the softbody black wash into the recesses in the armour but clear away the excess.  This wash is fantastic as it will give depth without shading the whole paint job, but unless you want a slight shine from the wash, you will need to either remove as much from surfaces as you can or paint over the shiny bits!  Usual bonewhite for the exposed bone parts!

Strigoi Ghoul King on Terrorgheist (in the colours of a zombie dragon)

 This model is fantastic and a real centre piece for my Vampire Counts army.  I bought Zacharius the Everliving on a zombie dragon, so I thought I would not bother to magnetise this model to accomodate both builds.  Gory red blended into black for the wings.  Black blended into bonewhite for the spinal bones. Gory red highlighted with drybrushing GW foundation yellow then washed with APJ softbody black wash for the body sections.  Bonewhite for the bones etc.  I wish I could remember about the Strigoi on the back :(.  I cannot remember, although I remember something green, grey with a sepia wash!

Company of Misery Chaos Lord

My 40k chaos army consists mainly of Black Legion, but I didn't want him to be the boring black with golden highlights, so I looked in the codex and found the colour scheme of the Company of Misery - a sort of black armour with blood red splattered from one side.  Bloody red base coat, the other section basecoated with black.  The face (and skin sections) is basecoat purple with white layer topcoat then washed with APJ softbody black wash with make him look rather intimadating! Cloak has a purple basecoat and blue wash made from Magic Blue with GW Lahmian medium.  I really do like the Lahmian meduim, very useful in making you own washes out of normal colours.  The metal sections are gun metal followed by the usual silver drybrush highlight and wash with GW black wash.  Blue metallic model air was used on the backpack skulls then highlighted silver.  I wanted to the banner to be human skin with a chaos icon painted in human blood (well not really human but model human blood!!!!!).  Three skin colours were used from dark to light then washes with Vallejo skin ink watered down.

Lemartes, Guardian of the Lost

I really love the Blood Angel characters and the models GW has for them.  Black undercoat, grey edging with white further edging.  The edging is thick but will be trimmed to much thinner lines soon.  Left shoulder plate, bloody red blended into blazing orange at the top.  The right shoulder skull, usual bonewhite basecoat with white highlights then knocking it back with sepia ink watered down.  I prefer his eye lenses to be red and not blue so they are in the middle of being worked on to make them look optical.

Avatars of War model High Elf Sorceress

 Very nice model from AoW, two sets of blending going on here!  The top part of the dress has two different purples whilst the bottom part of the dress have two blended blues.  You will notice the failed attempt at adequate recess washing with APJ softbody black wash.  I think I will need to remedy this with a darker blue wash made using thr GW Lahmian Meduim!

Anyways, there you have it!  Some models in various levels of completeness!
Cheers
Me!

GW Paints Old and New

Hi People
Just a little entry on the state of Games Workshop paints.

(From http://www.thehogsofwar.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/15321_sm-2nd-Edition-Citadel-Paints-History-Retro-Review.jpg?9d7bd4)

I just remember those old pots and the annoying lids!!!  Such memories!

Anyways, to move away from nostalgia I would like to give a quick post about what I have found about GW paints since coming back to the hobby.  Of course back in the day when the world was Sepia and I was knee height to a grasshopper, the GW range wasn't as extensive as it is now and the pots were different within certain respects!  However the price per pot then was £1.40 and expensive at the time - a far cry to nowadays!  But we mustn't forget the natural price increases over time as I am talking from 2nd ed 40k days till now!

However, with the advent of greater competition for paints from companies such as Vallejo and P3, GW have just released or should we say re-released a 'new' paint range.  I got the e-mail from GW today saying that some of the feedback on the 'new' paint range is just like "painting with magic" or something to that effect.  This does appear to be quite a statement, but a business would not do well if they were to release press captions such as "our paints apart from a few new things, are basically the same"!  The layer paints are re-named paints from the usual range and why re-named?  Because it helps with copyrighting the colours (info from an inside GW source), easier to keep tabs if other companies try to copy Abbadon Black or Calgar Blue rather than chaos black and ultramarine blue!

The new ranges look interesting though, such as the washes or glazes but one thing that does worry rather a lot is the drybrushing mush they have made. In all fairness (and I have to agree with several other gaming/painting friends) if you are unable to drybrush or at least drybrush heavily onto models using normal paints, then you are doing something wrong.  It isn't really that hard to dip your brush into a pot of paint, dry the majority (or practically all) of the paint off onto a paper towel and then lightly brush over the model! I know for people just starting out it may seem a little weird to do this, but the techniques once obtained definitely do give lovely effects.  However the main factor of the dry range of paints in the new release which does worry is the level of fluid in these paints.  As stated they are a mush, very thick indeed and therefore due to GW not going over to dropper bottles, I fear these dry paints will dry out quicker than the others such as the glazes or the layers.  We have all had paints do this from GW and maybe other companies also, so maybe something to watch out for!  Also the marketing of the products annoys somewhat - "Revolutionise your painting".  Tamiya paints and maybe others have marketed terrain or texture paints for years, Vallejo and others have glazes, mediums and washes and have had them for years, so where is the revolution?!?!?  The dry range?

Although this does seem very much like GW bashing and I suppose it is somewhat (although I like their models - definitely NOT finecack and love their games), I feel that sometimes things like this need to be said as they are desperately attempting to hold the monopoly on the hobby gaming world.  

However tonight I made a conscious decision to get rid of all of my GW paints (maybe keep one or two) and to move solely over to Vallejo. I have the whole range of Game Colour (sorry but I will not spell it the other way as it is not English!-no disrespect to Americans and the such who spell it incorrectly ;) ) range bought on eBay for such a low price each bottle comes out at £1.43 and of course with 5ml more per bottle! 

I like the old washes from GW but they dry up so quickly, I have had trouble left, right and centre over their other paints due to coverage when applied either thick or diluted and this includes the gloopy foundation paints – I have tested all to see the effects of coverage and they are not that good in my opinion.  I also heard some chaps at my local gaming club discussing the irony of photos from the ‘Eavy Metal team displaying (in the background) other companies’ paints!!!!!

However why tonight to decide, well, I was working on the wings for my Terrorgheist and after doing a rather nice job (if I may say so myself) on the membrane skin, I had to first undercoat a light grey onto the skeletal parts to be followed by bleached bone.  I want to do this model well and therefore I am watering down the paints and adding a few layers – the bleached bone decided to pool and collect in crevices.  Added slightly more paint and tried again – coverage very poor.  Added yet more paint almost getting neat and yet again coverage poor.  The brushes I use are Series 7 W and N – some of the best brushes money can buy and although I am not a Golden Daemon winner, my skill isn’t too bad!  So being the scientist I am, I went through a process of elimination and testing to see what was going on!  Painting skill – good, brushes – excellent, went through varying thickness of paint – suspect and needed testing.  I changed the paint over to my bone white Vallejo and found that when at the same dilution at the first stage, the results were slightly better coverage – not brilliant but did not pool.  Added to the paint mixture – covered well.  So conclusion although not based solely on tonight, was that Vallejo makes superior and cheaper paints.  

I think that I am just fed up with GW and their shoddy overpriced rubbish (not their models although they are vastly overpriced). 
The glue – over priced and not good.
The static grass – very nice but way over priced.
GW PVA glue – come on give me a break! How much does this cost??!?!!?!?!?!?! I bought from WHSmiths a pot of Art Attack PVA glue which was cheaper than GW’s own and had more in it! To give you the numbers GW PVA glue 120ml for £5.10.  Art Attack PVA glue 175ml for £2.99
Then I found something even better, Wickes sells 5 yes 5 LITRES of PVA for £8!!!!! That’s more PVA than you can shake a stick at!!!!!!!!
So anyways I will stop there and climb down from my soap box!
Cheers All!