All Your Base are Belong to Us

It has been a long while I know. My life has been crazy with work and family issues. I have continued to paint when I can and I finally have the photography set up ready to go again. I have a pile of pictures available and I hope to update regularly for the next few weeks.

Now on to what you are really here to see. The competed Project Scythe. Mostly this is just basing. There are a few touch ups you may notice, and its sealed now so there is subtle shift is tone/sheen. I always coat at least once with Testor's  gloss coat for durability and then hit is will Testor's Dull coat to take the shine off.

One Painted Model

This is shaping up to be the next to last post for Project Scythe. Here is our monster, completely painted, but not yet based. I am already at work on the larger quark rocks for the base. In short order this should be ready to be sealed.

Back in Black

This doesn't look like much. After all the work I did its just one more layer of paint. The strange thing is though that getting the black on the plates of the this model is the most time consuming step. With the extreme contrast any mistake is obvious. Worse the plates have all kinds of nooks and cranny's and missing any of them leaves a bright spot in the middle of a sea of black. Still he is looking good not. Shading is all that's left.

Scythean Skin!

OK so in all the time I have been away I have put very little time in to project Scythe as I have been waiting to be able to get pictures. That means it will be moving up to the front burner as I am going to want the Scythean for some upcoming games.

Below you can see the big fellow with the rough skin. This is achieved with a series of washes each wash gets darker but also get thinned down more with water and glaze medium. The first wash is golden yellow, followed by bubonic brown and then a mix of bubonic brown and graveyard earth. All paints in this sequence are Citadel.  During this process I am not too concerned with neatness. Everything that is left is gong to be getting much darker coloration. I will also go back and clear up any areas where the wash pooled too much or otherwise doesn't look right.

Project Scythe Now With Paint!!!

After all that work to get this built things are finally moving along quickly. You can see the model was primed white. I also have my first coat of paint down. I do the yellow skin color of my warbeasts in an unusual fashion. This coat, Citadel Sunburst Yellow watered down to not quite a wash, is actually the highest of the highlights. I will be adding a series of progressively darker, and thinner washes, then I will go back and touch up the highlighted areas. 

A lot of people will tell you never to prime white because you have to go back and all the shadows between sections. However, since the plates on this model will be so dark anyway I find the white primer saves me a great deal of time trying to cover black primer with yellow. The darker paint on the other parts of the model also mean I can do the skin with a series of washes and not worry to much about how neat I am as I will neither be hiding detail not putting down a hard to cover color. 

Project Scythe Putty

I have the putty work done on the Scythean. You can see where I filled in the gaps and smoothed the seems. I did this for pretty much every piece. I use Games Workshop's green stuff, and Vallejo plastic putty for this.

The putty looks rough, but it actually been blended against the model so that it feels smooth. I use a combination of things to do this including a modeling knife and a few odd tools I have lying around. Sometimes I even bend a paper clip if I need a specific curve in a hard to reach area.

Next up for Project Scythe is can of primer...

Project Scythe Assembled

So finally the first look at our monster all in one piece. Building this things was a significant project. There is a pin in every single part, and two more holding it to the base for a total of 17 in all. After I snapped off three drill bits in my Dremel (Alway wear your safety glasses) most of them were drilled by hand too. 

Now its time to fill the gaps and hopefully soon prime this beast. 

Project Scythe continues

OK, so that was a lot of mold lines.

Project Scythe continues an is now in the building phase. Most of the time in this part is spent pinning things. I use a pin vice and paper clips to add a pin to each part to help it stay together.

The tricky part is making sure that your pins line up straight. You can see the same leg here with the pin in it as it fits into the lower body. To get this right I pretty much always start my holes by hand with the pin vice. Once I am sure that I have a good start I finish the job quickly with my Dremel. 

For big models like this I like to put a pin in every join. However, our Scythean here poses a unique problem because the upper body is hollow. There is plenty of area for glue, and I might have left it the way it was but I decided to use putty and put one in anyway. Here are the two halves of the upper body with the pin in them. 

The putty has to dry overnight, but it makes me feel better about the join. Here you can see the complete upper body with the long pin that will hold it on to the lower body. There are lots of things to attach to that upper body and I wanted to make sure it was staying put. Nothing ruins a good paint job like breaking a model in half. 

Thats a lot of boring pictures with no paint in them. Still I will be able pick this monster up off the board and plop it down next to its victim confident that it will not fall apart. 

Project Scythe has a ways to go before it gets to a point were I can prime and paint it. Next post I am going to break things up a bit and do something with some actual painting. I am working on the launch post for Project 60, I have plenty of Project Archive pictures ready to go and I have a unit approaching completeness. 

Project Scythe

Project Scythe is a detailed step by step tour through the process of getting a complex model ready for Combat. I am going to be working on Privateer Press's Scythean. A model that will eventually tower over its 50mm base. Today however we are starting at the very beginning, laying out all 16 parts. I've loose fit them all and made sure they are all there.

The next step is to hunt down all the mold line on the model and get rid of them. These can be subtle especially before painting, but leaving them is the sort of rookie mistake I made on the goblin on speed. Here you can see the Scythean's head resting on the hobby knife and needle file it has a date with. Its hard to get mold line to photograph well, so I have highlighted it in red.

The next part of this project is to remove all of the mold lines carefully with the knife and files. Be careful not to cut yourself or wreck detail on the model. Also be careful not to miss any, it can be a real paint to have to fix them later. Generally when you find one its a good idea to follow it all the way around the part. Though Privateer likes to hide them so even this can be tricky, the line here largely disappears between its teeth before reemerging on the chin.

The Beginning and the Middle...

Welcome to my blog. Part of the idea behind this blog is to show the process or painting miniatures, not just the final results. This post also launches Project Archive which will be a photo log of my miniatures. Keeping both of those themes in one post is a little challenging.

I figured the best place to start was at the beginning. The plastic goblin below was the first miniature that I ever painted. I didn't understand too much about shading or highlighting at the time, so it is pretty crude. However, it has earned a special place in my collection for being first and for being lovingly called the goblin on speed by my S.O. 

Now to show the progress the most recent miniatures I finished.  I have made since the next picture is the Blighted Swordsmen Abbot and Champion from Privateer Press' Hordes line. These were done fairly quickly as I work through a backlog of unpainted miniatures.