After a long hiatus I'm back at it with a new camera, a new MacBook, and Lightroom...

Hey guys and gals! First off let me just say that my camera has been broken for quite awhile. I recently got a raise and was able to pick up a new lens and get the bad boy up and running again! That being said I’m going to try and keep this updated a lot more. I’ve had some issues with my personal life that just recently has been ironed out.  So with that… lets get to it!

My local store owner was completely stoked about the new Ogre Kingdoms book hitting the shelf and with that a whole bunch of commissions were sent my way. Most of these items are table stop standard and give me a nice place to try out new techniques and take a break from the armies that I am working on. First up on the painting table, The Fire Belly. This being my first Finecast model I was quite anxious to get to work on it. I’ve read many a review about the new technology and wanted to finally see it for myself.

So lets start with a few words about Finecast. First off its extremely light. I would venture to say lighter than plastic. It’s also extremely fragile. The model broke in 3 places while I was simply cleaning the parts. Strike one for me. That brings me to the cleaning itself. The model was full of terrible mold lines and something I’ve never seen on a plastic or metal model… rough patches. I’m not sure exactly what causes them but they basically are ripples on the surface of the resin. They make for a giant pain in the ass and can be extremely hard to see when priming. Strike 2! In the end the model glued together and stayed together fairly quickly. That is definitely a plus. The third strike for me would come when painting the model. The extremely fine edges can lead to some annoying paint problems when it comes to blending and wet brushing. All in all I was unimpressed with Finecast. The final word I will say on the topic is that this model was also designed from the ground up with Finecast technology in mind. I give it a C at best right now. I’m hoping they will have the kinks worked out by the time Necrons are released.

So with my mini finecast review out of the way… on to the miniature! First off I love the pose on this guy. Kudo’s to the sculptor. GW is definitely on top of the market in miniatures, and its ones like this that rub it in the competitions face. With such a unique pose it also proposed some challenges. Obviously most eyes would be drawn to the flame and as such I needed a good method to tackle it. I decided to go with the reverse highlighting technique I’ve outlined in my Avatar Masterclass.

One of the unique challenges I had to face was the fact that the top of the flame is smoke and the bottom extremely hot fire. With this in mind I started by laying down a foundation of Macharius Solar Orange over the entire flame. I coated the flame quite well and makes sure that no black was visible. I then began to mix Chaos Black in with the orange one dot at a time and wet brushing it until I reached black completely at the very tips of the smoke. I then took the Solar Orange against and mixed it with Iyanden Darksun and wet brushed it on the lower half of the flame. I eventually worked my way up to just Darksun and finally white mixed with Darksun at the most intense parts of the flame.  I was pretty happy with the results.

When I was told I would be working on ogres I was super excited to try out my ogre flesh that I’ve been waiting to use forever on a model. It’s a basecoat of Trollblood Highlight from P3 washed with Devlan Mud and then highlighted with Trollblood Highlight again. It worked exactly how I envisioned it and was exstatic that I could tackle so much of the model with such a simple technique.  

With the skin out of the way I focued on the gold next. I’ve aways hated painting gold and I’m still experimenting with new techniques.  Just today I ordered a ton of brass, gold, and bronze paints from P3, Vallejo Model Air, and Vallejo Game Color. I’ll be experimenting a bit in the coming weeks.

So the gold on this model I tried to keep fairly simple. I laid down two coats of shinning gold followed by a Brown Ink wash. Once the ink was dry I went back and picked out sharp edges with Shinning Gold.  Simple but effective.

For the spider bits I wanted to tie the oranges and yellows of the fire into the base of the model. I decided to go with a red. I used a based of Skorne Red from P3 and washed it with Devlan Mud. I highlighted it with Skorne Red and finished it with a touch of Macharius Solar Orange.

The Bandages on the model were based with Deneb Stone washed with Devlan Mud and highlighted with Deneb stone. Same with the tusks. All the leather work was done with Kemri Brown washed with Devlan Mud and then highlighted again with Kemri brown.

All the stone elements were done with a new technique I’ve been trying out. It’s a three part process. Start by laying a base of Charadon Granite followed by a wet brush of Adeptus Battle Grey. When that is dry give it a dry brush of Adeptus Battle Grey followed by a dry brush of  Codex Grey.

The mask was done with Adeptus Battle Grey and highlighted with Codex Grey. 

~ So there he is! All in all the model took me about 3 hours to paint. If you have any questions feel free to ask!