Your Skinks in particular are awesome! I love the yellows, looks like they'd stand out beautifully on the tabletop.
Was able to get this guy finished in time to complete my goal for March! The OSL effect didn't seem to work as well as the previous attempt. I had to go back in with a glaze of white in the recess to get the glow effect to shine properly. I also painted them in subassemblies. Before painting I drilled and pinned the contact points, and at the end I glued the limbs together. I've never done this before and it wasn't as easy as I was expecting it to be! The gaps were filled in with green stuff, and once it was dry I simply painted over the green stuff to blend it in with the rest of the already painted model. This worked alright and I'll probably do it again like that in the future. I might consider matt varnishing the parts where my fingers touch beforehand as I stripped some of the gold paint off while gluing it all together. (I always use a satin varnish at the very end too). Unfortunately I was too excited to get it done so there's no WIP pictures. I was also able to get 24 skinks zenithal primed in yesterday's gorgeous weather, and I also finished assembling the direchasm warband to play today with my coworker on our day off (we took corona tests this morning which were negative). Hoping I can find the time to finish assembling and cleaning Kroak this weekend too. I want to get him and the troglodon finished this month as my monthly goals. Then I can go back to batch painting battleline units again.
First bump of the month! Been hacking away at 24 skinks after work, trying to find the right balance of speed and quality. Here they are: It worked out alright, and definitely better and maybe slightly faster than the first 40 I've painted, estimating at around 80-90 minutes per mini. The biggest timesink was layering up the yellow skin but I think it paid off. I did a zenithal prime, which doesn't really work too well with the yellow contrast paint, but base coating with the contrast paint is fast as heck. Here's what they look like after their base coats applied: As you can see the yellow is quite splotchy. One could leave it here, but I wasn't a fan of the splotchyness. It only needed two coats to cover, and I did each one with a lighter shade of yellow. Here's a close-up of a finished skink: Anyhoo, glad to be done with my battleline for the time being. My backlog has really swelled in the past couple of weeks with two carnosaurs, the celestial stampede, flesh hounds for salamander conversion, and a pack terradons. I'll hopefully be done with it all by summer's end. But first: Lord Kroak (I also might need a new larger detail brush. My size 2 DaVinci brush doesn't hold a very pointy tip anymore after 5 months of abuse. I just got a W&N Series 7 size 2/0 to replace my crappy size 0 brush and it worked wonders painting in the eyes. Thinking about giving their larger brushes a try, though Raphael brushes seem to be what all the cool youtubers are using... Open to hear what other people's recommendations are!)
Lord Kroak almost done! Just need to varnish him when the weather is better and glue on the tusks afterwards. Very relieved with how he turned out, as he was a Christmas present from my partner and I wanted to do the model justice. I'll not glue him to the chair nor the mask to his head. Thought about magnetizing, but I'd have to drill into the fancy looking leaves on the chair. He does have a rod up his butt (literally) to pin him to a small hole I made in the chair so that he doesn't fall off when gaming. I also tried out some proper glazing on the tusks and bones for the first time, and the Vallejo glaze medium is SO GOOD. I was using about a 1:1 ratio of paint to medium. I followed the horn recipe that's here on Lustria Online. I should have taken more pics. Maybe I will once I varnish and finish the assembly. The forecast is rain for the next 10 days so I will simply catch up on my build backlog, as I have nothing to paint now! Feels good to be caught up now. I also ended up getting some Raphael 8404 brushes. Totally worth the money. They keep an insanely sharp point and the brush holds a great amount of paint. I'd recommend a size 0 for detail and layering work if I were to get one (I got sizes 0-2). Sorry I've been so quiet. My partner and I have been flat-hunting which has been quite a stressful ordeal. Will try to catch up and see what other people have been painting too.
Brilliant paint job! (Good luck with the flat hunting, I know it's not a great time for it... so fingers crossed for you and your partner)
I have been waiting for the new Lord Kroak model since it was announced, but having seen your paint job I'm tempted to find one of these online. Well done!
Very nice painted model, love the pinning. Does the mask just stay clean on his face? Good luck with the flat-hunting and a good feeling that you are caught up on painting I don't know what that is like, lol Grrr, Imrahil
It can! There seems to be enough friction to keep it on his face when moving the model around the table. I didn't want to commit to having the mask glued.
Also, yikes! Almost a whole month went by. Good news is: we found a new home! We have an overlap of two months so there's not much stress to move quickly. In-between apartment viewings and work I was able to paint a carnosaur. For this project I experimented a bit with pigments. It was a bit difficult controlling the amount I applied using an old brush. After some heavy dabbing it seems to have done the trick. I've also got a troglodon I've been working on in the meantime. His name's Barney. His paint job is done, but I need to get him glued back to his base which has been a bit of a pain. For his base I experimented with some water effects. I applied AK Wet Effects on the bloat toad and the puddle, and once it was dried I poured in some scale75 soilworks water mixed with a drop or two of agrax earthshade. It's taken two applications, and I think a third might be needed. It's pretty cool though! Also, Lemon says hi!
The pond effect on the base looks great. Awwww.... Lemon looks awesome! (what about using his/her color scheme for your Lizardmen?)
He was originally going to be the basis of the color scheme, but I realized his pastel yellow and white colors would be too difficult to paint as a beginner (plus painting the black spots was difficult). Then I wanted to paint them as tangerine morph leopard geckos, but realized that there wasn't enough contrast in that. So I took Lemon's yellow and the orange from tangerines and came up with what I've been using to date!