Journeyman Painting Log 10

The first redhead I've painted in too long.  

Normally I'd have some sort of "I'm surprised at how much I painted today" thing to kick this post off, but considering how fast I've been cranking the models out it's not a surprise anymore.  Quality is definitely slipping, as I'll cover when relevant below, but it's hard to argue with the pace.  The Eliminators are a fine case study of how my painting is going now.  My big problem with the pair is in the scheme, and the torso in particular.  There's too much green together, though to be fair there are leather belts that don't show up well in the picture.  Black or grey pants, like on the Assassins, would have broken up the green expanse.  The good news here is that the plan has always been to add another unit or two, up to whatever the FA is, so I'll have different schemes already in mind when I finally pull the trigger.

Journeyman Painting Log 9

Taste my green ice cream!  

Four whole days since the last painting update?  Looks like I'm slacking off.  Today I finished up Zerkova and eVlad.  One is a terror on the tabletop and the other has the face of a horse.  I'll leave it up to you to decide which is which.  Looking at the picture on the left as I'm writing, there's little I like about the Zerkova model.  The pose is confused with the running and the ice cream, the sword is too thin (and therefore bends easily), the running-induced crouch plus all the swirling cloaks means much of the body is obscured.  Maybe it was the particular cast I got, but the detail seemed shallower than usual.  Then there's the face, which we won't mention again.  In retrospect I should have made the trim on the cloak a little darker, like the other Greylords, so it doesn't blend in as much.  She's also a bit googly-eyed, though that does seem appropriate when considered with all the context.

Journeyman Painting Log 8

Ladies first.

Lazy or efficient?  That's the dilemma I have with my painting over the last week or two.  On the one hand I'm cranking out finished minis at a record pace while maintaining a reasonable quality of work.  On the other hand I feel like I'm cheating by leaning on washes as much as I am instead of my usual, laborious process of too many layers.  This is a non-issue, beyond what I'm making of it, as the models look as good as, if not better than, what I've been doing and in far less time.  It's a bit dirtier and not as sharp as, say, the marines I do, but the time investment is in hours instead of days.  That seems like a good trade.  Of course the day that I'm truly satisfied with anything I do is the day we all get splattered by a gigantic comet/Godzilla/Cthulhu, so it's in everyone's best interests that I keep finding nits to pick.

Journeyman Painting Log 7

Two shot magic sniper is tasty.  

More quick work at the painting table today.  Employing the new double wash approach from last time I knocked out Kell Bailoch and Harlan Versh today.  Both feature the same sort of gigantic coat that Reinholdt wears (Kell is little more than the coat). so I made good time with minimal exertion while still painting to a reasonable standard.  Kell's sculpt gets knocked for being tiny like the Black 13th, but I haven't heard any complaints about how ugly it is.  90% of the model is coat and the face is disappointing.  I didn't want to do the coat in 5th Border Legion green since he's a mercenary so I did the pants in green instead.  Hindsight tells me I should have done the hat in green because it will thrust itself forward, unlike the pants which hide in the all-consuming coat.  The stock of the gun would be better with some wood grain too, but I'm happy with the result overall.

Journeyman Painting Log 6

An unpainted Reinholdt circa December 2011.

I'll get to the actual painting in a minute.  Quite a while ago I upped the storage for my little blog here, shelling out actual money for your virtual entertainment.  I've always thought that if I dug into the Picasa album that serves as the image host for Blogger and cleared out all the pics I uploaded but decided against, multiple copies when the upload went wonky (which happens far too often), and resized all the old pictures I could probably fit everything in the standard amount of storage.  Just now I've been digging around in that Picasa album looking for pictures of my recently painted models.  I don't think I'll be clearing the underbrush any time soon.  The amount of pictures up there is staggering.  Considering how many are for battle reports, and therefore are identical except for small details, the huge amount of work I was expecting looks like it'll be less the size of the moon and more the size of the universe.  None of this matters to you the reader, but sometimes it's nice to see behind the curtain.  On with the show.

Journeyman Painting Log 5

Ready to stab some folks in the face.

The final leg took longer than expected, as usual, but the Kayazy are now finished.  Once I abandoned the idea of having them simultaneously stand out from and conform with the rest of the army things progressed at a pleasing rate.  There were a couple painting sessions between now and the last update, but somehow they didn't seem significant enough to warrant a post or didn't fit in with an existing post (read: battle report).  It's appropriate for assassins that they should be slinking along in the shadows, their progress unnoticed, then spring forth prepared to do violence.

Journeyman 2013 Battle Report: Terror!

Different terror, but worth your time.

Painting for this year's Journeyman league has been underway for about a month now, but this week dice joined brushes and the battles began.  Since I'm still easing back into Khador, and Warmahordes in general, so the Journeyman league is a good opportunity to paint some of the many stragglers and get back in the Khadoran groove.  At the FLGS Thursday night (Warmahordes night) I heard the call for a Journeyman game, and with the need for practice in the back of my mind I snapped up the gauntlet.  Scant moments later I realized what I had gotten myself into, namely a game with Chris (pg_verlos) and his notoriously hot dice.  It would really be more accurate to say he has a notoriously hot dice rolling hand as his powers function regardless of what dice he's using.  When you add in that he's a very good player you know that you're facing a tough fight when you see him across the table.

Journeyman Painting Log...4?

Hammered by the ugly stick.  

Let's just call this #4 since there have been a couple updates and no numbers.  I put in a bit of work on the Kayazy yesterday and got the flesh done.  Having spent even more time with the models now I stand by my "not as bad as their reputation" assessment from last time, with one notable exception on the left.  I have three of this pose which is unfortunate as it's by far the worst of the bunch.  The face looks like it started off decent only to have the mold warp a couple times before casting my particular batch of minis.  It's a lot like this picture of Eddie Izzard, minus the beard.  The gaping mouth, the strong but dislocated jaw, the sneer or impending sneeze, it really is an uncanny likeness.  I also picked a direction on the pants: grey with black boots.  This is a cop out as it just mimics the studio scheme and doesn't really stand out from the rest of the army or convey the whole flashy gangster thing, but it does stick to my established palette.  More importantly it takes out the barrier to progress I had put up.  While grey pants may not be the best option as a color they are the best option in that I can stop thinking about which color to pick and get on with the painting.  I had wanted to get some more painting in today before heading to Hockey in July, but the Warmachine Tactics Kickstarter took longer to go live than I'd hoped.  Once it was up there was far more content than I expected though, so I guess it all evens out.  Between the little ginger Swan and Darth Warcaster it's getting harder and harder to say no to Cygnar...

ETL Done, Journeyman Begun

All done.  Except for static grass, varnish, squad markings...

After a bit of a forced painting march my ETL vow is complete.  I stalled out for a while in the second half, but I rallied with a month and change to go which is a much better showing than I had for the LPC.  My finish wasn't especially strong on this squad.  I missed models multiple times while going along the assembly line, though I did mostly go back to finish the models off, and the overall quality of the squad isn't quite as high as the Dark Vengeance squad, but it's still fine quality and well above a tabletop standard (as defined by my Legion on the high end and my Axis on the very low borderline).  I'd like to put in a second vow but will wait and see how far beat down I am by the Journeyman painting grind before committing.

Painting Delay Over

After far too long of a delay I got back to painting today.  Some good progress on the Dark Angels, but not quite at the finish line.  The reds are finished, while the bone/white/flesh bits and rocks on bases need a final highlight (and wash where appropriate). Silvers need finishing off and non-silvers have yet to begin.  Leathers are also starting from scratch, and then there's whatever details have slipped through the cracks.  Despite a relatively long list of things to do the squad is almost finished and should be off my painting list after the next painting session, which will be this weekend.  My ETL vow will be finished with the squad, which will free me up to dive into Journeyman painting.  Or to tack on another vow that I may already have (almost) ready to go.  Or both if I'm feeling particularly saucy.

Kayazy.  And Gormann.  And brush cleaner.  And Legion bits.

Speaking of the Journeyman league, games start on Monday with a Highlander tournament next Saturday.  With the IFP still waiting for a second strip and reassembly I'll be starting with the Kayazy Assassins.  The models aren't anything special but they've been primed for far too long. Plus I'll have to paint them if I want to use them in Journeyman games (which I do).  Conquest is still the big item on the list but considering that I haven't done anything past washing the pieces it's going to take a special effort.  I say this with the Journeyman league not yet officially begun, staring down six weeks and change of time to get it assembled, painted, and on the table, but I'm being realistic about my chances.  I've never assembled anything like a colossal before and want to do it right.  These two factors combined mean an extended construction period to come.  Painting the monster will be no small task once I've built it.  All of this will have to slot in between frantically painting other things (like full units of infantry), not to mention life in general.  Is this a workable task?  Absolutely.  Is it an automatic success?  Not at all.  I've had a lot of fun with Conquest while proxying it a couple months ago and it's a large factor in my return to the Motherland for the Journeyman this year so there's plenty of drive to get it done, but nearly a year of inertia takes some pushing to overcome.