My name is Lemmy, and I'm a plastic addict. Hi Lemmy... I picked up the small AoS starter set out of curiosity last summer, and after having a positive experience, a close friend of mine convinced me to give Seraphon a go. My partner and I had recently adopted a leopard gecko, so it felt like a good starting point. I loved the skink models whilst not knowing their history (I was at one point into 40k as a kid back during 4th edition but never paid WHFB much heed), and decided to dive in with a start collecting box. That has since amassed into a decently sized skink force. Unlike my first dive into miniature painting 18 years ago, I try to give it my best when painting. I consume a lot of painting tutorials, take notes on color recipes, and practice techniques with each new troop. I feel attached to my lizards and want to do them justice. They're not great, but I do notice that I'm slowly improving. I welcome everyone's C&C on stuff posted in here. As stated in my intro, I have been lurking here for some time, reading the tutorials and checking army lists for inspiration for my next purchases. I decided after reaching this point that it's time to register and share my journey via this blog and talk with others about the hobby. Maybe this blog will inspire other lurkers to do the same. No pictures yet! I'll post some within the week of my battleforce and a WIP of my Chameleons. In the meantime, here's a picture of our gecko, Lemon.
Fantastic! Looking fowards to seeing your work! Love the gecko! Give him a scratch under the chin from me.
I've moved most of the skink force to a drawer to better organize them. The paint scheme for the most part has been yellow skin with orange scales, taking some inspiration from tangerine leopard gecko morphs. I wanted to try to mimic Lemon but I felt like going from white to pastel yellow wasn't enough of a contrast (also shading white seemed difficult!). Early on I tried painting black dots on their tails and faces, but it didn't turn out good because of my shaky hands so I scrapped the idea. I chose baby blue eyes and purple feathers as complimentary accents. My partner is a game artist and understands color theory so she's helped immensely when choosing colors. Plus the eyes have a bit of an ethereal look to them. For the most part I've done undercoats in wraithbone and applied a yellow and orange contrast paint over the model as a combined basecoat and shade step to save some time. Then I pick out the rest of the details, shade them, and sometimes go in for a final drybrush highlight. Then they get a good coat of satin varnish so that I can game with them (which has yet to happen!). Here's a standard skink troop: Nothing special about them. I like the recipe I have (which has been refined over the past couple of months) and it turns out well when batch painting. I think this one was painted back in October. Here's a priest, where I experimented with some proper heavy metal layering, and applying gloss effects to the orb: Overall it worked pretty well! This was my first time working with resin, and I didn't realize I could fix the bent parts by putting it under hot water and bending it back in. I was definitely unimpressed when I was cleaning the model but it turned out alright in the end. This dude was painted back in November? Next up, a saurus guard. I wanted to see how the scheme works on the bigger siblings and it also seems to fit well. But my god these were a drag to power through. It took me around 6 weeks to get the 15 lot painted. I did subassembly paint the shield and the rest of them in order to get the hard to reach details. This one was finished in January. The first unit which has a differing scheme are the chameleons I've been painting. I decided to go with an orange and black scheme. They're so cute but GW needs to fix the moulds. There was so much bubbling, flash was everywhere, and they were covering up details that were too difficult to remove. Either not enough was removed or too much was removed. I bought two blister packs, each from a different store, and both were completely f*cked up. I'll power through these next 9 and not buy any more or see if I can get some of the metal versions second hand if I want to extend the forces. In this one, I was experimenting adding some cork rocks to the bases, which turned out okay. I need to smooth them out by applying some modeling clay on the sides and surround it with texture paste (which I just received a couple days ago so I'll try it out during my basing experiments next week). I'm pretty unhappy with the bases till now so I'll be stepping it up with the next batch. I'll update with the chameleon progress sometime soon. There's a long weekend coming up so I should hopefully be able to finish them by next Tuesday, granted my arthritis doesn't flare up too badly.
Thank you all! I paint slow in order to minimize the mistakes I make. Definitely have a lot to learn still, especially when it comes to basing and scenery. In the meantime I've finished my Chameleons. Time to start playing around with making some bases so I can get started on Lord Kroak's base.
Great work on these chameleons. The basing looks good ad well. Love to see what you'll be doing with Kroak Grrr, Imrahil
I played around with some basing ideas over the past few days and I'm getting closer to something. The one on the left is a sandstone and the one on the right is a typical grey rock (following Duncan Rhode's recipe). The rocks are ripped cork, glued onto (preprimed) bases. I then coated the rocks and part of the base (liberally on the left one and a bit more reserved on the right one) with AK Terrains Dry Ground and Light Earth, with certain areas mixed with GW's Agrellan Earth. The AK Terrains stuff is AWESOME. Highly recommend. I might try out their crackle paint next as it's loads cheaper than agrellan earth. Note the left and right bases are swapped in the below pic. Both were primed with a grey primer. Recipe on the left is: -Paint everything with Zandri Dust -Paint the cracked earth parts with Steel Legion Drab, water it down and feather it on the borders to let the color blend into the Zandri Dust -Wash with Agrax Earthshade + Seraphim Sepia on the raised rock parts, Agrax Earthshade + Reikland Fleshshade on the ground bits -Drybrush everywhere Ushabti Bone -Drybrush lightly on edges and top of rocks with Screaming Skull Recipe on the right is: -Paint everything with Steel Legion Drab -Paint sides of rock with Mechanicus Standard Grey -Wash everything with Agrax Earthshade + Seraphim Sepia -Drybrush everything with Karak Stone -Drybrush everything lightly with Screaming Skull Both were rimmed with Steel Legion Drab. I definitely prefer the left, but I don't like the dark brown. I'm going to try it again without the steel legion drab part and see how it looks. Already preparing two more bases to experiment with!
The second attempt went much better. The color is more cohesive. I did some heavier drybrushing on the raised stone parts with screaming skull to give it a bit of definition over the ground. I'll be going forward with this from now on (with a tuft or two added, naturally). In the meantime, I paid my FLGS a visit now that we can shop in person again in Berlin. I wanted to buy some supplies to pin my models and pick up a different crackle paint (got the GSW stuff, first impressions are very positive). I also adopted this adorable guy in the second hand model display box. They were only given a black prime and a single layer of blue on the skin, and their base was empty. I repainted the black undercoat and gave them a zenithal highlight, which is something I haven't done before. The mid-tone was an AK Primer Spray Grey at body level, and the top zenithal spray was wraithbone. I think the weather wasn't perfect as the wraithbone was somewhat grainy. I am going to practice some OSL on their staff and have the orb glow purple before I attempt it on the standard bearer. Already have most of the base coating done! I also picked up a pre-primed space marine to practice OSL on, but I'm gonna paint him brown and ivory to mimic my planned paint scheme for Lord Kroak and have the visors glow blue. My partner walked out with her first model (a nighthaunt Tomb Banshee) and taught her how to clean, assemble, and gap fill them. She's taken over fixing up the nighthaunt side from the soul wars starterbox and she's already become obsessed with adding extra details with greenstuff. Now we just need to wait for the priming weather to return...
Nice model. I like that you're doing it together with your partner. I'm currently teaching my wife how to play 8th Edition.
She's been super supportive of it the entire time since I started last year. We dedicate time after work every day for our hobbies (she draws, and I minipaint or make music). Really thankful as I was previously in a relationship where my partner at the time was NOT supportive of any of my hobbies. Would have never been able to pick up miniature painting. Has your wife bitten the hobby bug yet?
Nice My wife is dedicated to learning it as primarily she wants me to be able to play. She's definitely not been bitten by the hobby bug just yet... She does take a little while to get into new things though, like when we try a new TV series... So I've got my fingers crossed! Either way, she's a very determined person so she will get the rules down and then (hopefully) from playing it she'll get into it.
Priest is done! They've been satin varnished too. OSL effect worked pretty well with the GSW fluoro paint, as it's translucent like the contrast paints. I prehighlighted all the areas that were meant to be reflected with thin shades of offwhite, and the center area of the orb was painted with pure white. Using the fluoro paint, I then heavily glazed the orb (one thick coat), and lightly glazed the surrounding areas (took about 3 light coats). I would have done it a bit differently by using silver for the gold highlights. Some additional angles: I tried drybrushing the feet using the base color to give a dusty look but it came out too light. Though when thinking back on it I think I used the wrong color (Karak Stone instead of Zandri Dust, hence why it was lighter than the ground... woops!) Anyhoo, learned a lot on this little guy. Will be moving on to the astrolith bearer next. Might take the weekend off from hobbying though as my wrist arthritis has flared up again.
Thanks dude! I need to figure out a way to apply the fluoro paint in a smoother way as it looks somewhat splotchy still.