Moving out

Well, after five years years of studying and living in Kraków (very nice city in the southern part of Poland) I'm moving back to my home town. I figured I'd take this opportunity to show my workspace. I didn't have too much space here so I needed to keep everything well organised. That's why I made these shelves for paints. The allowed me to use the space available well and also made everything more convenient as I had easy access to everything. I'll need to think about something similar in my new place.



Also, I've painted the first of the solos for my Cryx army - Pistol wraith.



I have nothing but respect for people from Privateer Press who design and create these awesome models. The sculpt is great and full of unique character. I didn't like this version initially but when I started working on it, I could really appreciate the quality of the model. The other version is also great. In fact, I'm expecting it to arrive any day now as I've made an order a couple of days ago.



I tried to make it look old and weathered. The bone elements were painted with a bit more contrastive highlights. I thought that it may make them look more ancient. I also try to keep a more or less unified color scheme for the army. So grey and silver were obvious choices for me here. I try to have some green elements on each of the minis from this army. I also thought that this would add a more ghostly and ethereal look to the mini.



So that it for this update. Now I will work on the first unit for the army. I'll probably start by painting a single model to check the color scheme. Anyway, expect an update soon.

Cheers,
Viruk

Back in black

After a couple of weeks with exam session I finally have long awaited holidays. Now with all creative powers I can dive back into hobby.

First project that needs finishing is the commission work I took upon myself in May, mentioned in my previous post, Black Numenorean Warriors, Morgul Knights, Mouth of Sauron and last but not least, Witch-King.

Yesterday I finished BNW, MoS and W-K, leaving Knights for next week after I move back home.

As you can see I tried experimenting a bit with MIG pigments. For starters simple dust test, but some time this month I'll try with both wet and dry mud. Bases are not yet finished, they will be given some dead grass once the Morgul Knights will be finished.

Starter finished, time to begin

So, I've finished painting Denny. Really great model. My only complaint would be that it's rather difficult to remove the mould lines from the blades on her back. They are so soft that I ended up breaking one of them and needed to make some repairs.



I tried a slightly different color scheme here as I wanted her to stand out among the rest of the army. So, the metallics are brighter with a slightly different approach to weathering. It's very bright today so she's probably a bit brighter in the picture than in real life. I think that I should try to print a darker background too.



Well, there it is, minis from the Cryx battlegroup set. Happy family on a sunny summer day, ready to plunder, destroy, kill and torture :) Overall, I'm quite happy with how they turned out. I wanted a more or less cohesive color scheme and I tried to find a method that would allow me to paint them quickly without losing much on the quality. All in all it took me about a week (I had quite a few things on my mind, plus I usually paint in the evening or at night). They should look nice "on the table".



I haven't yet had a chance to play WARMACHINE but at the end of the week I'm moving out from Kraków (where I've spent the last 5 years) back to my hometown. My brother has been playing WM for a while now so I will finally get to play it too. He's got a quickly growing Protectorate force, most of it unpainted so far. I challenged him to paint at least the starter before I move in so I'll see whether he's been successful soon.

I want to start expanding my slowly growing Cryx force and today I will make an order and buy a few more minis. I want to take it easy and get the feel for playing this army, begin adding solos/units/jacks in a consistent and carefully thought out way. My main criterion for choosing minis is whether I like them or not. And since Cryx has a lot of great models, I'm spoilt for choice. Now I plan to paint the first solo for my army. I should be able to do it by the end of the week, so stay tuned :)

Cheers,
Viruk

Master of Arts

That's right, finally. After five long year of studies I defended my thesis and as of today, I am officially Master of Arts. It feels a bit weird right now, I guess the realisation that I no longer need to do something somewhere for someone has not yet come. It was a long, sometimes bumpy road but in the end I feel happy about the whole experience, in particular the last two years were enjoyable. Now I have other more and much more important things to deal with ;)



While preparing for the defence, I was chilling out painting Slayer foe my Cryx army. It took me more or less two evenings. Again, I was striving for a decent table top quality as the mini will be used for gaming.

This is the first time I've tried the OSL technique (on the eyes). Overall, I'm quite pleased with the result, though in the pictures they seem a bit brighter than in real life.



I'm going to order the Forces of Warmachine: Cryx book soon and then I'll decide what to buy next. I'll probably start with building a small force around Deneghra as she seems to be a pretty versatile caster, probably a good choice at the beginning.



So, there you have it, another addition to my slowly but steadily growing Cryx force. Now I'm going to paint Denny. A Pistol Wraith is next in line and this will be followed by a unit of... stay tuned to see ;)

Chicken run!

I've been pretty busy recently but somehow I managed to paint the bonejacks (Two Deathrippers and one Defiler, commonly referred to as 'chickens'). I've never painted WM minis before so it was a refreshing experience. The quality of the sculpt is amazing and the level of detail is quite impressive. Needless to say, painting them was fun.



Since these are the first minis for my Cryx army I wanted to set some kind of color scheme. The minis will be used for gaming so I aimed for a quick paintjob that would give a nice effect, i.e. solid tabletop quality. Overall, it took me two evenings to paint them. I went for a dark look with bright green and some weathering. I also used two different methods for painting the bones. I tried to go for an old, worn out look (after all these parts are supposed to come from skulls and fangs of some kind of beasts).



I also decided to add some brighter colors to the bases. These bonejacks are painted using rather dark colors so I thought that some contrast here will be a good idea.

Now, time to paint the first bigger 'jack - Slayer. I'll probably post a pic of this one in about a week. Until then, take care.
Cheers,
Viruk

p.s. since it's going to be my first contribution to the Iron Agenda Blogging Network, I'd like to say hi to all the members of this community. Definitely worth checking out for all WM fans - http://blog.ironagenda.com/

The Cryx of the matter

So, finally - I've started working on my next big project. The Lotr Dwarf project is non-existent as I sold all of these. I simply got bored painting too many similar minis with the same color scheme. I switched to WARMACHINE and Cryx. It's an interesting army, combining elements of necromancy (zombie- and skeleton-like units) with technology (yup, that's 'jacks). As usually, my choice is mainly motivated by the minis and in case of this army (and generally most of the WM minis), they are fantastic.


Here's a picture of the Cryx starter box. Nice cover art and really good packaging. Inside the box there are two plastic blister-like smaller boxes. Sweet, that makes sense and the box can be easily converted into a container for painted minis.

I've put them together and here's how they look like at the moment.



The sculpts are quite unusual. My feeling is that an element of parody is incorporated into the game. Thus, the smaller jacks (known as bonejacks in this army_ are often called chickens and the big one resembles a beetle. Still, I think they look really nice and look forward to painting them. Especially the model of caster - Deneghra, the eve of detail and overall quality of the sculpt is simply great (only the fact that these blades on her back are made from a very soft metal makes it quite difficult to clean from mould lines as they bend, twist and break too easily).

I'll begin working on them next week, starting with chickens. I want to work on a color scheme that would be used throughout the whole army. I'll use mainly black, gold, and silver but I'm also thinking about adding some purples (I really enjoy working with these), especially on clothes.

Cheers,
Viruk

Daemonized

The Daemon Prince is finished. I had lots of fun painting this one. I like it when minis have some kind of background story to them. This one for example was a Chaos Marine who was rewarded by his gods with supernatural strength and size. Not to mention all of the mutations. I guess he got more than he had bargained for.
Normally this minis is without wings. I added them since the commissioner had asked for a winged version.

I really enjoyed working on this one - there are some large, flat surfaces on the armor as well as lots of details (all these horns, chains and trophies attached to the body). I went for a rather dark color scheme, at the same time making the details much brighter. I think that this kind of mixture of overall dark look with brighter details creates a pretty decent final effect. Anyway, here's how it looks like.

I'm still trying to figure out the best settings for my camera, so the pics are not as good as I would have expected. Next time I will try to use different backgrounds.

Also, you may check it out at CMON.
Cheers,
Viruk

It can't rain all the time

I'm still trying to figure out the best settings for the camera. The weather isn't helping too - it's still raining. Nothing new, it's been like that for the last couple of weeks. I took out my lightbox and tried putting the minis inside while using my lamp but the results were still far from satisfactory. I probably need to meddle more with the setting more. I'll do that when I have more time. As for today, this is (more or less) how the two ogryns I've been working on look like.



I've also done some work on the Daemon Prince. The commissioner wanted a winged version and I was happy to proceed with the conversion. I bought additional wings and after pinning them used some green stuff to blend them in. I think that he looks much better now, definitely more demonic.





I also gave him a larger base as it was hard to fit him on a standard 40 mm one. I added some details there and at this point I'm quite happy with the results. I guess I'll have to put some paint on it now.