War Dog WIP #1

I know I've posted this before, but can't find it now. 

The title of this post is a little misleading.  This is my third crack at the War Dog now, so while this is the first WIP pic I'm presenting (I think), I've been "painting" this model for a couple years now.  The big problem has been my inspiration.  Sir No Longer Appearing In This Blog (NGF if you're good with acronyms) has a English bulldog with a unique coloring, a penchant for rubbing her ass all over everyone she meets, and a vicious stink emanating from all orifices.  She's adorable once you make peace with her many shortcomings.  Since the War Dog looks a lot like her (despite the model being male) I committed to painting the model to match the dog.

This was a mistake.

Still not satisfied.

The unique coloring has been harder to replicate than I expected.  On the real dog the spots are on the skin with the fur over them, which makes them look light unless you start digging through the fur.  My initial attempts to do this with paint revolved around doing dark spots and then washing/glazing them with white to dull them down some.  This approach dulled all the shading I had established while doing nothing for the spots, the classic nut punch/teeth kick combo.  With my third attempt I've decided to skip the washing and glazing and just make the spots themselves lighter, which has worked out better but still doesn't match the original.  I've made my peace with that though and in the name of getting this model painted have decided to forge ahead anyway, and so the fur is finished.  Also finished are the interior of the mouth and the claws.  After studying my reference material again just now I see I need to go back to the snout and add some pink to the color transitions, in the same vein as the purple in my Legion scheme, as well as around the eyes and inside the ears.  The pads on the feet don't like right either, but I'll have to check the original since I don't have any pictures of the bottoms of her paws.  Despite feeling like I've been constantly lowering my painting standards, I'm willing to accept a lower bar than usual to get this model finished.  It features in nearly all my Khador lists, it's tiny, and I've had it forever, so it needs to be done.  This shouldn't be a hard goal to accomplish, and hopefully I'll get it done over the next day or two.

In other painting news, I finished the base on the Marauder and added the 5th Border Legion icon to the cortex hatch.  I fully intend to go and snow up said base, along with Vlad's, but am likely to sack out on the couch with NHL Tonight on and fall asleep.  Such is life.

On the getting things painted front, I've been considering the NOVA Open over the past couple days.  It's the closest psuedo-big tournament, though it looks to be well short of Templecon (which I think is the closest big tournament), and despite having played in a grand total of two (2) small tournaments thus far, I'm looking to see how I fare in a larger setting.  Aside from registration fees and whether or not to book a hotel room less than an hour from home, there are two big hurdles for me to leap.  First is that one of the tournaments is a team tournament, so I'd need to find two other folks to carry me enter with.  Considering the number of players at the FLGS, combined with my intention to attend other local tournaments in the DMV, this doesn't figure to be too bad.  Second is that the other tournament is Hardcore, which means fully painted.  This actually isn't much of a hurdle as I'm creeping up on 50% complete on my Khador and can probably field a fully painted 50 point list right now, a list which would feature plenty of things likely to appear in a 50 point Hardcore list.  There's a third tournament at the NOVA Open, but it'll be populated by the winners of the two previously mentioned tournaments, so there isn't much considering to be done about it.  Of course there's the whole con experience as well, which I've done for hockey but not for gaming, so building in time to wander the halls, meet folks, and see the sights is a good idea as well.  With five months between now and then I have plenty of time to mull things over.