Mountain King...Complete!

So, enough of this dicking around with WIP pics! Time to post some final shots of this monster.

In addition to completing this guy I also managed to get a game in with him against my friend Scott. I personally played it very poorly, making mistakes left right and center, especially with positioning and planning for the next turn. It was a miracle that I won the game (no seriously, the dice gods intervened...watching Scott roll snakes eyes 3 times and then 3 x 1's for a boosted attack in the last two turns when trying to make assassination attempts was painful). That being said the MK was AWESOME lol. He managed to kill 3 or 4 beasts and came one hit box away from killing his caster with his deadly roar, good times! Going to have to do a small re-shuffle to the list to make it more my play style, otherwise it was great!

Mountain King WIP...Head and Base

Just a quick update here with a WIP pic of his head and a shot of him fully assembled standing on his base (with his Axer friend photobombing him for good measure). I took more care with the head then the rest of the fig because the face is always a major focal point on any model. I followed the same steps as I normally do, just was a bit tighter on the high-lighting and shading. Also I decided to paint his eyes a glowing yellow instead of doing the standard white with a pupil.

He is finally really taking shape as the only things left to complete are painting his base and painting the 20 or so chains and 5 whelps that go on his body. Can't WAIT to get him finished so I can start using him in game lol!

Next Up: The finished Mountain King! MUHAHAHA!

Mountain King WIP...Torso Pt 2

Just a quick update. The stone work is pretty much done. I mostly dry brushed the darkest brown colours, then went back over with some dark brown wash into the recesses and then did up all the edge high lighting. I also did the initial work on the rusted metal for the chains and his collar.

I completed the upper body and attached it to the legs. Now just the head, building the base and then painting all the small details like the chains and extra whelps. Sadly due to how shitty Privateer Press' instructions are I think the hardest part is just going to figuring out where everything goes lol. Here are some super blurry pics of the model put together.

Next Up: More work on the Mountain King. He WILL be completed by the end of this weekend, even if it kills me.

Mountain King WIP...Torso Pt 1

So, now that the legs are finished its time to start on the majority of this model, and that is his upper body. There are 4 major pieces that are put together to make his upper body and that is the torso, his arms and the giant rock formation on his back. All 3 pieces (arms, rocks) took a significant amount of work to get into place including filing down joints and a huge amount of green stuff.

So, naturally a piece this large has to be broken down into a bunch of stages for painting. The primary stage is his skin as it will be about 5-6 levels of high lighting plus another level of shading. The first two layers were done by doing a heavy dry brush over a dark blue with the largest brush I had. Then after that I went through and did a bunch of purple washing in the recesses to add some depth and shading (pics below).

After this stage I started building up layers by painting on all the details by hand eventually adding Elf Flesh to get a warmer look to the final level of high lighting.

Next Up: The second half of the upper body of this guy. Then the head and base. After that its just details (little whelps and chains) then finished! Cant Wait!

Wraithknight WIP...

So, I actually started working on this guy before I started the Mountain King, but naturally got derailed with the big tubby bastard. I am going to bounce between the two though as I really like both kits.

The big focus on the Wraithknight is to update my Eldar's paint scheme to something that matches where I am today as I started this army around 10-12 years ago. All the paints I used to paint the army no longer exist and the original style of the army is 100% outdated. So the first main change is almost no more inks. My original scheme I inked everything with the old GW inks mixing them with future floor wax which was a way to knock the grey down to make it look more black and do ultra dark shading on the white. With the Wraithknight I am just going to start everything at a darker colour then highlight my way up then do a bit of "clean up" shading here and there to get the clean lines and proper contrast.

I have only been working on the left leg just to nail down the new painting style before I move onto the rest of the model. So far I am really happy with the results and I think it will look really good once it's clean up and finished. The white is working way better then I was inking it even though its not finished as it needs the last layer of pure white.  One thing you will notice is that there is no definition on "gems" on the feet. The reason for that is I am just speeding up that part of the painting process as I am just going to paint them black anyways so there is no point shading them. Another thing you will notice is that there is a slight departure from how I was doing the Wraithlord in regards to all the gems, i.e. I painted ALL of them lol. The reason for that is I have seen pics of completed Wraithknights where the painter in question has actually painted all possible gems on this model red and the overall effect is that he looks like he has chicken pox or something. So, with that in mind I am going to be way more selective on how I paint mine as I want them to give some visual interest being some of the only things that arent black or white.

Mountain King WIP #1

Well, you have probably all read how Calgary (where I live) had a massive flood last month which actually resulted in me being off work for 11 days. So, in that time I was able to get a bunch of work done on some different projects.

Naturally after picking up the Mountain King there is no way I was NOT going to work on him so everything else got pushed to the side. After spending roughly 5-6 hours building the chap it was time to start painting. I decided to keep him separated into pieces because he was just WAY too big to paint up in one shot without an Air Brush. So, I sectioned him off into his Legs, Torso (with arms), his head and then all the extra chains and whelps hanging off him that didnt need to be green stuffed into place.

I decided I was going to paint this guy from the ground up so I started on his legs. Like the other beasts with this army I started with a heavy dry brush of 50/50 mix of mid blue with dark blue and then did a dry brush of straight mid blue just to get the primary colour base. After that I did a shading pass adding in purple ink in all the recesses, especially around all the rock formations and in and around the joints. Once that was complete I started painting the high lights on working my way up with lighter layers ending with a 50/50 mix my lightest blue and elf flesh. Here is what his legs looked like after I finished all the blue.

After I completed the blue I painted everything that wasn't blue, black, just to really separate things and clean it up. After that its just a matter of hammering out the small details and bam! done!

Next Up: The MKs upper body!

Something Gargantuan Comes This Way...

After drooling over the Mountain King since his release I FINALLY managed to pick this guy up. This model is the #1 thing that got me into Warmachine. I have always loved his form, size, pretty much everything about him. It's also very interesting after picking up the Wraithknight to get a kit that is pretty much the same size and scale, but from another company and being able to see the contrast between the two models and the two companies different approaches the used to create their massive minis.

Janissa Stonetide...Complete!

Around the same time as I finished the Earthborn Dire Troll I also completed my first "solo" for my Trollbloods Army and that's Janissa Stonetide. I did some slightly different stuff with her. I decided to try shading her using complimentary colours (ie the opposite colour). So, for the Red Cape I used green to shade it. It feels a lot more vibrant this way then just using  black which is what I would normally do.

Next Up: A couple of big projects including an Eldar update!

Earthborn Dire Troll...Complete!

I have been painting up a storm the last week and have now finally managed to get to my computer to update some pics. The first thing I finished was the last beast for my Trollblood force, my Earthborn Dire Troll. This model weighs a metric tonne lol.

Next Up: More Trollblood updates as well as some updates on the Wraithknight progress.