Liebster Award!

Hello all!
I really only use this blog to post pictures, fluff, and tutorials so it never occured to me that anyone would want to know what else happens.

I was recently the recipient of the "Liebster Award" from Adam Wier over on "The Bolter and Me" (www.betweenthebolterandme.blogspot.com) An awesome blog with amazing taste. As a way to introduce me to a few more people and pass the torch. As my blog is now receiving about 1k hits a week I'm thinking I should probably start to take it a little more seriously!

Each nominee is asked to state eleven truths about themselves, answer eleven questions from the blogger who nominated them and finally come up with a series of eleven questions they would like their nominees to answer.

Well without further ado here goes:


Eleven Truths:

1) I find it hard to follow my own advice sometimes. (I'm looking at you "water down your paints")

2) I have only finished painting one army in my whole painting career. Thus the switch to INQ28.

3) I recently received my Oscar for my work as a VFX artist on the film Gravity. I'm not a proud man I'm straight up gloating about this.

4) I, more often than I will admit, daydream I'm a spacemarine blasting my way through the crowds on the way to work on the London underground in the morning.

5) The reason I got back into painting again was because I was buying my flat a few years ago and the mortgage process was stressing me out so much I needed something to take my mind off it.

6) It comes as a shock to me how many people don't appear to be having fun while doing this hobby. Rule sticklers and pedants I have no time for. What we do isn't cool enough to be angry about right?!

7) I buy minitures now by impulse. Almost a muscle spasm.

8) I paint better after 1 1/2 pints of beer or two glasses of wine.

9) I have another blog www.henrysouth.blogspot.com where I put a load of my NSFW sculpture, drawings, CG, and paintings. From making prop weapons to drawing porn, you'll find it there. Not been updated for a while now.

10) I am 30.

11) I have run out of things to say.



Eleven Answers:

Eisenhorn or Ravenor?  
Eisenhorn. No. Ravenor... Eisenhorn.
 
What is your favorite aspect of the miniature hobby?
Painting.





Will dread Cthulhu rise from his sunken city of R’lyeh?
Only a matter of time.



Who is your favorite artist?
James Jean.


If you are about to embark on a long drive with nothing to think about, what musical album would you want to listen to?
Audiobooks. I'm obsessed with audiobooks.


Have you ever played the cRPG: Planescape: Torment?
Nope.

Games Workshop’s White Dwarf magazine recently switched formats and is now weekly, thoughts?
I like it! 

Is the Alpha Legion the Imperium’s doom or their salvation?
DOOOM. Also I'm looking forward to what FW will do with the primarch/s! Are we just going to get a £50 space marine!?


Benchmade or Spyderco?
Had to google these. Ummm Benchmade?

What boardgame would you most like to play this weekend?
40k!


Who is your favorite sculptor?

Simon "SpiderZero" Lee.




Eleven(10) Blogs Nominated:

The elequent and talented John Ashton. A great read with plenty of eye candy, and one of my main motivators and oldest friends.
www.heresyandheroes.wordpress.com

My favourite INQ28 blogs. so much inspiration from here.
http://eternalhunt.wordpress.com/
http://convertorum.blogspot.co.uk/
http://gardensofhecate.blogspot.co.uk/
http://spikyratpack.blogspot.co.uk/

The only place for tutorials on absolutely anything.
http://massivevoodoo.blogspot.co.uk/2009/10/tutorial-overview.html

When you need inspiration from outside the world of 40k:
http://muddycolors.blogspot.co.uk/

Whenever anyone says "why arn't their any girls doing this?". Or "who's one of the most talented painters you can think of?"
www.twistedbrushes.blogspot.co.uk/

Best darn painting tuition in the galaxy.
http://masterminis.blogspot.co.uk/

What the hells going on? And what do I look at?
www.volomir.blogspot.co.uk

(I'ts not a blog but I use this site everyday for reference at work and at home www.cgtextures.com your welcome!)


And finally the Eleven Questions for my nominees:

1) Your most satisfying moment while painting.
2) Your worst painting disaster.
3) Can you "cheat" while painting. And is it wrong if you can?
4) The one tip you would tell yourself when you started painting
5) How do you get over your painting block?
6) Pub garden or trendy winebar?
7) Which Chaos god would you sell your soul to?
8) Who do you blame for getting you into miniture painting?
9) What hobby would you be doing if you didn't do this?
10) Chocolate or jellybeans?
11) What do you listen to while painting?

Thanks for reading!
And thanks for the nomination!

Henry South.

Next level Weathering: Multi layered Tutorial.

As a VFX texture artist by trade I've always had a fascination with decay. Especially the way painted metals are damaged and corrode. Today I'll be going through the first few stages of destroying this beautiful Valkyrie!

 I would say this is about 50% towards what im going for. Ill be experimenting and blogging the progress for this. As I'm hoping for it to be the centre piece for a diorama! Possibly a garbage truck of the 41st millennium crashed into the desert to rust and decay! Fun times.

Stage 1) 
Reference! Reference! Reference! 

Cannot state how important this is. Wasn't it Caravaggio who said "If you want a thing to look like a thing look at the thing." Google images immediately gave me this when I typed in "rusty painted metal"

Bam! Exactly what I wanted. Multiple layers of paint in decay. And a little research into whats going on always helps too. When you see most industrial machinery with scratches on it usually shows up a different paint colour benith. "Well thats just where it was painted before?" NOPE! they paint them in two layers so if it becomes damaged its easily noticeable! Genius. Thats why most secondary colours are red or contrasting to the original.


Stage 2) 
 Base. 

Super simple. Paint your metal as metal. But throw in some interesting colours, reds, purples, and yellows go a long way towards giving a sense of realism to metals. Also with stuff like aeroplanes and tanks they are usually made from a huge variety of metals, Chrome, lead, tin, aluminium, brass. Have fun and don't spend too much time on this stage. Just go mental on it.

Stage 3)
Seal. Hairspray. Repeat.

You want the metal to be the very last layer that's seen when we get to the really fun part, so prepare it. Make sure its perfectly dry and blast it with a layer of GW purity seal. Wait for that to dry and give it a layer of hairspray. Don't skimp on the hairspray. The more expensive ones will dry quicker and wont leave a residue, which is exactly what we are after. I use L'Oreal (Because I'm worth it.)

(*Edit: The reason for using hairspray between the layers is to allow the paint to flake. Because it is a compound designed to dissolve in contact with water, by brushing water along it, it separates the paint  neatly! It's an old technique but I haven't seen it done with multiple layers before, this will only work if you let the hairspray dry completely. I cant stress this enough!)

Stage 4) 
Layers.

GW spray gun or airbrush, doesn't really matter which but a brush just wont work on this. (Maybe the primer cans might but I've never tried before. Might be too thick.) 

The idea is to lay down a thin layer of paint to sit above the dry hairspray.
Layer 1 will be our damage paint. I've chosen a turquoise to contrast nicely against the yellow of the top coat and red of the rust.

Once the blue is completely dry, spray on another layer of hairspray. Don't worry if you can already see the paint cracking, that's just the settling process. until it gets wet it wont come off. Then gently do your final layer. Again, airbrush or spraygun. Just try not to blast it off.

Leave to dry.

Stage 5)
Burn your butterflys.

This is my favourite part of the whole process. You've spent time on the base now you can see the fruits of your labour. Get an old toothbrush, wire wool, tissue, toothpick or whatever else you can use to scratch and destroy with. Dip the tool in a little water, (not too much) and gently scrape it over the surface in the direction you want to weather.

Hell yeah. That looks like what happens when something is damaged and the flakes come off! That's because we are damaging something in pretty much exactly how it would be damaged in the real life! With giant toothbrushes.

Now go too far and experiment. very worst case scenario is you scrape off all the paint and start again from stage 3! You can see which parts have been done with a little care and which parts have gone a little wrong. The nose I went mental on and I've ended up actually mixing the blue and yellow pigment, making a little green mess. the wings and tail fins however, I'm very happy with.

Stage 6)
Rust, dust, and soot.

This is a fun step too.

I use a combination of actual rust.
 (A tutorial of how to do this can be found here http://massivevoodoo.blogspot.co.uk/2010/01/tutorial-how-to-create-real-rust.html)

Oil paint.
Modelmates rust effect.
Forgeworld weathering powders.
And various GW washes and inks.

You cant go wrong. You spill a shedload of black on it? Well slap some gloss over the top and It's tar or old crude oil. Do a streak of bright red? Well it turns out that rust does that too. It'll look good as long as you have a plan and prepare your base.

 Finally pick out some edges with a brighter metallic colour, or not. 

Hope this helps!
Henry

Adventures with weathering.

Well this was just a bit of kit that was laying around and I thought I would throw all my knowledge of weathering at it. There was no colour scheme in mind. I just thought that the green would look nice against the silver and oranges. 

Powders, acids, rust, hairspray, sponging and sealants of all shapes and sizes went into this.

INQ28: Mechanicum Expedition.

                 ++Into the black.++

It takes a special type of person to explore the galaxy in the 41st millenium. Insanity, a thirst for knowledge, revenge, or conquest. There will always be those that go beyond the boundaries of the imperium for these reasons. Augustus Mycroft Byron the 3rd is not one of these people. And his traveling companions have their own agenda. 

Augustus Mycroft Byron the 3rds father was a great man. With a heritage that stretched back to the time of great crusades. Nobel, respected, and brave. Augustus inherited his fortune and his title of rogue trader. An original document containing a single droplet of the emporers blood. A true treasure. Wasted on this scoundrel. His perview and money are funding this expedition to find treasures at the boundaries of the know galaxy, the Mechanicum have other plans however. 

Sent by her Forgeworld to find lost STCs the Mother Superior is a legend amoung the higher echelon and an enigma to the rank and file. Floating gracefully through the deserted halls of her flagship she appears almost human apart from her skull mask. Surrounded by hundreds of servo-skulls she has an affinity with these servants. Getting them to do incredible things. Even to the point of bringing back a little of the previous human encombants personalities. 

The Tech-thralls of the Mechanicum do not need encoragement to march to their deaths through poisoned gasses or walls of fire. But it doesn't hurt to have a seasoned vet to do the unpredictable. The Engine Tsar is the mother superiors right hand. She doesn't speak to anyone else. Only communicating through an encrypted line. This has sparked absurd rumors of their origins. Knowing one another in a different life. Little is left of his physical form but his head. The rest is exquisitely machined parts. 

This band of zealots, fools, and enigmas are congregating in the Dalthus Sector responding to a call to arms from Forgeworld Blakken. However, their agendas could not be more disparate...

INQ28: Mechanicum Mother Superior

INQ28: Ordo Scriptorum Kill team

         ++ They know too much ++

Foldio: Taking fancy pictures!

So I just unwrapped my new toy the foldio! Amazing bit of kit for all who want to take nice pictures of their minis, I think it was mainly developed for people wanting to sell stuff on eBay but never had the right kit to show it off in the right light.

This was taken with my iPhone and the foldio and nothing else. No flash in a dark room! 

So simple. It's just a strip of LED lights in a diffuse box. So the light softens and lights your model from all directions. And it collapses into a flat pack!! 

Anyway. The models I'm working on at the moment are my INQ28 night strike team.