My 2013 GenCon Miniature Painting Competition Entries

This month has been a blur; late nights working on projects getting them ready for GenCon, and then an eight hour trip to Indianapolis and the hobby gaming nirvanna that followed.  It was awesome, and I can proudly say that my GenCon virginity is no more.  Four straight days of games and hobby, and more miniatures than my wallet could possibly handle (Dark Sword took almost $100 from me at their booth).

I took a few offerings for the painting competition too, sadly I didn't place, but it was still rewarding to have given it a shot and I want to share some of the pics with you.  Let's take a look!

This was one of my single mini entries, a Pathfinder Legionnaire with a Max Mini Black Lotus Tribe shield, and a custom made arch and base.  All told I put in about forty hours creating and painting this piece and it was a first serious attempt at non-metallic metal (I don't often do NMM for commissions as it takes a long time to create the effect and is therefore pricey).  

I dropped the stock shield that came with the model for this fantastic Max Mini Greco-Roman one.  The details on the shield are perfect for NMM and offer a lot of reflection areas and places of shadow.  In hindsight, I should have pushed the highlights higher.

Army Painter's poison ivy made great climbing ivy for the arch which was fabbed out of four pieces of 1mm plasticard, cut, glued, and filed to shape.

After looking at the top models in the category, I feel that the base is the weakest part of this model and would have benefited from more color variation and could have done more to make the model pop.  Another aspect of the winning models was total light source shading, correct shadows and shading from top to bottom which don't rely on natural light and shadow.  Forty hours of work isn't going to cut it in single mini, time to plan on eighty plus for next time!

I entered two models into single mini (GenCon allows two per person per category) and this is my second offering.  It's a Freeblades Bladesister, again utilizing NMM on metal portions.

I topped out at twenty hours on this piece and primarily wanted to use it for more practice (I knew it would be a long shot to place!).

The base is cut plasticard filed to a spiral stone pattern.  I did run out of time on this one and couldn't fit in the designs and braidwork on the back of her coat I wanted to include.  I had planned to do the three stacked horses of her hometown Karadel and some knots and trim running down its length.

These horrors were a revisitation of a squad I completed two years ago.  I wanted to update their paint jobs and create a movement tray that tied the group together.  The tray was created and painted in two days and the horrors were touched up on the third day.  Three days to create a squad entry!  Madness!

An initial layer of Apoxie Sculpt was sculpted on top of a Gale Force 9 movement tray to rough up the smooth surface and add variation.  A 1:1 mix of Apoxie Sculpt and green stuff was used to make waves and ripples and pure green stuff was the basis for all bubbles, eyes, teeth, and horns.

My favorite thing about demons is all the "gribblies," the nasty eyes and teeth popping out of nowhere.  My absolute favorite is the elder horror (light pink in the foreground), his base, and the accompanying eyes and teeth on the movement tray.

This demon has manifested three eyes, a mouth, and some tentacles!  One eye has a tri-pupil and another has two!

Two entries were revisitations of past projects, and Kairos was the second.  You might remember him from last November, when I showed off his completed model.  Kairos was essentially me throwing my hat into the large mini ring while sticking to a strict time budget, I only had time to update the edge of his base with dark red...  

I like this Kairos model, but he was definitely outclassed by the dedicated competition pieces entered into his category.  So much more needs to be done to bring him up to speed: detail on his nails and horns, shading on the fish, better detail on the book, updates on his highlights...  I wish I had had the time to do it all, but it was still fun seeing him in the case and crossing my fingers for judging.

The painting competition was just one part of my trip to GenCon and I had loads of fun perusing the vendor hall and playing games day and night.  It was humbling and an honor to have my pieces judged alongside the other entries and I have a lot of respect for those who entered and especially for those who placed, great job guys!

It's time to get back commission work and turn out some minis for my clients, I have some super cool owl bears I'm working on now that I'm excited to share with you next week!

Until next time, good gaming and happy hobbying!

Hobby Showcase: Horrors of Tzeentch

Last week saw me modeling and painting vigorously, in order to get ready for a team tournament at my local hobby store.  My brother and I teamed up, him taking 750pts of storm shield/thunder hammer wielding Dark Angels Deathwing terminators and me taking another 750pts of Tzeentch demons.  Full interactions were allowed amongst team members (as long as the specific letter of the rule in each codex allowed them).  There were hordes of ork boyz benefiting from 5+ force field saves as well as apothecary granted 'feel no pain' rolls, and there were tyranids bursting forth from dark eldar webway portals aplenty.  For our part, my brother and my gimmick interaction was 2+/3++ terminators re-rolling saves from the presence of Kairos Fateweaver.  The day was close fought and we ended up walking away with a 2nd place finish, just 4 points behind the leaders.

My spate of painting added five new horrors to the ranks of my Tzeentch demon army.  As I discussed in an earlier post, horrors live a life-cycle with a dazzling array of colors at each stage.  This squad is no exception as there is one newborn blue, a pale horror ancient and horrors at life-stages in between.

With his prominent horns and pale pink skin, this horror is an "ancient."  Once suitably long-lived, horrors' pink skin bleaches until nearly alabaster.  An ancient horror is only one step from ascension to the rank of herald and a further boon of intelligence and power from his master Tzeentch.

Modeling and painting warp bases is incredibly fun.  With each new base I try to push my boundaries (and possibly sanity) by creating new and even more chaotic bases.

I wanted to paint the horror ancient's mouth blue to suggest that though he is close to attaining greater power, he is also at once flirting with a fall to regression and a new start as a blue horror.

I love this model.  The horror as a raving lunatic is never more apparent than in this one's manic demeanor.  I chose to paint the flame in the horror's hand light green to create a stark contrast against the dark blue of his flesh.

This is by far my favorite painted horror to date.  Between the writhing warp on his base and his angsty, closed fish gesticulations, this horror truly epitomizes the often awkward and frantic transition from adolescence to maturity.

The horror's skin transitions from purple to magenta, and then finally to pale pink at the top of the model.

Purple freckles litter the haunches and flank of this horror, suggesting the horror's hurried transition from young purple to adult pink.

I painted this purple horror in deep shades with accentuating highlights of light purple.  The sharp contrast between light and dark creates a striking look and helps contrasting details like his tongue and eyes to stand out.

Once again, freckles appear on a horror.  This time, however, the freckles are in reverse, pale pink radiating from the model's face and down its back and tentacles.

All the horrors painted to date, along with the Changeling.  Kairos Fateweaver is on my painting desk now, so stay tuned to see him when he's finished!

Hobby Showcase: Pink Horrors

First things first, I'd like to announce the final two winners of the Lab's December Fan Appreciation Month:  War Tales and Marshmallow Scallops (aka Stew Reed)!  War Tales runs the blog A Bunch of Tactical Whatevers as is doing a pretty bang up job over there, I highly recommend checking out his site.  Stew is a local hobbyist and has been wargaming for some years now.  He has a sizeable Salamanders marine army and is currently working on a fledgling Tyranids army.  Both War Tales and Stew will be receiving a free Midwest Monster Lab t-shirt for their prize, congratulations to both!

Now, on to the models.  I have been working diligently on an all Tzeentch demons army and am proud to finally post pictures of the first complete models.  You may remember having seen some of these guys make appearances in earlier posts in varying degrees of completion as they've been a featured in terrain building and painting tutorials alike.

The Changeling was a must take for my army, the ability to disrupt enemy shooting aside, his model was simply too cool to pass up.  Though I stayed true to the core aspects of the codex paint scheme, I wanted to utilize a few key aesthetic aspects that would really make him pop.  The fade from bright blue at the top of the model to dark blue at the bottom, makes the dark depths of his cowl a focal point, drawing the eye and making his identity more ominous.  Another touch was the transition flames in his left hands.  I chose to paint the flames moving from a lime green to light blue to show off the Changeling's magical prowess and add an aura of otherworldliness to the model.  The lighting effects emanating from the flames were my first attempt at that technique and was a really fun learning experience.

All the models for my demon army will fit into the display board that I detailed in October and November's posts, and as such, have bases that fit into where they will be placed on the display.  The squad featured in this post all are standing on the trail of warp energy that is flowing from the temporal rift.  I decided that I wanted to make the warp energy really chaotic.  To represent this I green stuffed tentacles, waves, and undulations into each of the bases along with bitz from various chaos kits (chaos spawn, demon prince, and chaos lord kits).  Another feature of the warp energy are screaming souls, shifting color patterns, and swirling eddies.  It's a tall order to represent something as esoteric as warp energy, but a rewarding prospect all the same.

One of the coolest aspects of the army's cohort of pink horrors is that there are horrors at the varying life stages of that demonic species.  A "newborn" pink horror is actually known as a blue horror, and is, well, blue!

As a blue horror matures, it's skin color gradually begins to take on a shade approaching its final hue.  Here a horror is no longer the newborn shade of blue, but transitioning to the rich purple of "childhood."

As a horror reaches adolescence his color begins to more closely resemble a fully matured member of his species.  The skin color of an adolescent is darker than pure pink, more of a magenta.

This horror is getting quite near to full maturity.  As you can see on one side of his body it is still the adolescent magenta, while the other is pink.  If he's lucky he'll grow to look like..

THIS!  Here is a fully matured pink horror who has rightly deserved the name.  A hallmark of his maturity is not only his pale pink skin, but the prominent protrusion of two horns.  This is the epitome of what every horror wants to be, but all good things must come to an end, and the cycle begins again.

For whatever reason:  death, reproduction or otherwise, a pink horror will produce more blue horrors by sloughing off their old skin.  Previous Games Workshop fiction and game play represented the death of one pink horror with the production of two less substantial blue horrors (though those rules have been done away with, the fiction still remains in the Demon's codex and rule book). 

I still have plenty of horrors to paint, along with:  flamers, soul grinders, and even Kairos Fateweaver himself, so stay tuned for more demons!

Wet Palette Workshop: Pink Horrors

Back in August I did a piece on how to make your own wet palette. In that post I focused on the principles of using a wet palette and some of it simple concepts. Switching from dry painting to wet blending is a huge step forward for anyone's hobby, but it also comes with its own list of complications as well as benefits.

In this post I'll take you through a step-by-step of how to take a model (in this case a pink horror) from prime coat to the table. I'll also address some of the bumps-in-the-road you may encounter from using this technique and little tips to help you paint smarter.

To get started let's go over our checklist: painting mat (in my case an exacto cutting board), wet palette, mixing brush (to blend paints on palette, I use an old standard dry brush), basing brush, fine detail brush, paints, water, towel/napkin, good lighting source (I prefer a fluorescent desk lamp for a bright, clean, white light), and a cup of your favorite caffeinated beverage (mine's green tea with lemon).

Begin by cleaning your model of extra flash or mold lines (I miss them sometimes in my excitement to get painting) and apply a primer coat. For many projects that are flesh or lighter colors I choose white primer to keep the colors bright. When it comes to large scale models with lots of recesses, shadowing or armor plating I prefer black. In this case we'll use white for the pink horror.

This particular pink horror is going to have two primary base colors, magenta and pink. Using a wet palette will allow us to seamlessly blend the two colors together to give the effect that the horror is shifting color. If you are uncomfortable painting two side-by-side bases apply the following steps, but with only one base.

To achieve the magenta base we make a 1:1 blend of Warlock Purple and Bleached Bone. To do this pour out a drop of paint from your pot that is about the size of the tip of a pencil eraser. Pour the warlock and bone onto the wet palette side by side, take your mixing brush and gently swirl the two colors together. Take care not to push too hard as you may rupture the waxed paper palette surface if you do. Also, mix the paints together and spread them onto the palette so that a thin layer of paint covers the palette's surface, too much paint in one area won't benefit from the palette's wet property.

For the second base, mix a 1:1:1 blend of warlock, bone, and Elf Flesh. Apply both bases in thin even coats, completely covering the primer coat. Because we're using a wet palette the paints should apply smoothly, without clumps. If you paints are too watery, clean your brush, dip it back into the paletted paint and gently wipe it on your cleaning surface to remove excess moisture. If this problem persists, leave your palette exposed for a few minutes, this should dry the paints slightly.

You may be thinking that that is a lot of instruction just to put a couple of base coats on a model. It is, but the main focus of this post is to not only show how to wet blend, wash, and base, but to also talk about the thought processes and the philosophy of the techniques. By doing so you should gain perspective and not just replicate the process, but understand how it really works. You can get a "1,2,3 guide" anywhere, we'll strive to go a little deeper than that. Let's continue.

With the body base coats complete, let's move on to detail base coats. At this stage you want to base anything that could run a risk of smudging its paint onto further higher coats on the body of the mini as you continue painting. The flame is a good example of this, and so is the inside of the mouth and tongue. Paint anything now that is in deep recess (mouth) or contains a broad surface (flame).

To do the inside of the mouth mix a tiny amount of Chaos Black to the edge of you magenta mixture. For the tongue, a straight warlock base should do nicely.

To give the flame a fire effect we'll base it with its lightest shade first, then add darker shades to the raised portions (this gives the effect of intense heat/energy at the flame source and diminishing heat as it radiates out). Base the flame Scorpion Green.

With the primary bases done, its time to add recess shadowing and depth. For the lighter pink side apply a Gryphonne Sepia wash into the skin folds, grooves, and areas between appendages. You don't need to cover the whole model, just the recesses.

For the darker, magenta side mix a 1:1 of warlock and sepia and paint it in as the previous wash. The wash mixture may need a tiny amount of water added to bring it to wash consistency, use moderation in this case.