Painting station moved

So been a couple of weeks since my last post. Was on vacation last week and flew out to Santa Cruz, CA. Also spent a couple of days in San Francisco and meet up with my little sister. We went to a Jason Mraz concert and hung out. My wife and sis are huge fans of Jason Mraz. I would be lying if I said I hated it. He's a pretty damn good singer imo. Good entertainment.

Anyways back home and ready to start up painting again but distractions always get in the way. First off I had to move my entire center of operation from a spare room to the basement. This includes my painting station and computer. All so that my son can use the spare room as his new toy room.

So that being said I ran into a small problem. The desk I was using used to be able to hold all my paints, two day light lamps, and handful of models and other misc. junk.  Now with my new painting area I have about half the space. With all my paints I end up having a space that is around 6 x 8 inches. Not enough room. So I decided that I need to make some sort of paint rack to hold all my paints.

The next few posts will be dedicated to paint station set up. I will add some pictures of the before and after as well as the process of building my paint racks. I will even try to add the mistakes that I'm sure to run into making the racks.

That's it for now so keep an eye out for the progress make.

Quick update of NOVA models

Just up late finalizing and touching up the models that I'm painting for NOVA. Check it out...

Still need to do a bit more but will be ready to ship out tomorrow afternoon. Hope the person who wins this army enjoys it cause I put alot love into it :)

Also throwing in this customized box that I built to hold dice or ruler or anything. Had fun building it as well.

Project: Redemption of the Fallen Charity Army 2013

Well for those of you that don't know, I was honored to be part of yet another charity army this year.

This year's theme was Dark Angels called 'Redemption of the Fallen'. The army is being raffled off at this year's NOVA. And I was lucky enough to paint Azrael and a Librarian for the army. Azrael is incredibly fun to paint and I have even tried painting the green armor in SENMM (sky earth non-metallic metal) look. I don't know if it's good or not but I tried lol. The model is almost done as I just need to go in for last minute free hand work and finish up the banner.

As for the librarian...what can I say about finecast? It is horrible to work with!  There were bubbles around what felt like every corner or angle on the model. Plus the staff broke off and I had to pin it. Either way it's getting painted and hopefully my prep work will pay off. The model is being painted just your normal typical colors. No crazy SENMM or anything. I forgot to take pics to post up but I will post both models before being shipped.

But for now enjoy the Azraek WIP...

Painting Power Weapons

So a couple of days ago someone asked me if I could do a tutorial on how I do my blue power weapons. Well I guess it could be any color but I tend to do blue because it "pops" to the viewers eye very easily. Plus the fact that blue is easier to paint and blend together.

Here are the steps that I used:

Primed.

Base coated Enchanted Blue.

First highlight and shadow. Highlight: Base color + Teclis Blue. Shadow: Base Color + Regal Blue.

(Sorry I missed a step here) Highlight: Teclis Blue + Ice Blue. Shadow: Regal Blue + Abaddon Black (ran out of Midnight Blue but sometimes I find it easier to do this step with the paints used rather than using Midnight Blue).

Highlight: Ice Blue + a hint of Skull White. Shadow: Regal Blue + Abaddon Black (a bit more black in this stage than last to make it slightly darker)

Highlight: Skull White just on the edges. Shadow: Abaddon Black for creating darkest area. 

Before the Skull White edge highlight I sometimes like to go over the entire area with a very diluted Regal Blue/Black mix to unify the piece leaving no hard edges, but soft transitions between the stages. Afterwards I do the final stage shadow and highlight.

Hope you guys enjoy and happy painting!

Starting from the beginning

So having posted for the first time a few weeks ago, after what seems like ages,  I'm all fired up the post new content. So I figured the best way would be to start from the beginning... with priming.

So the first thing a lot of you would do when your prepare a model would be to grab the black primer or the white primer. Some of you would use grey primer. In my opinion black primer creates an overall dark model and dreary looking model. Whereas white primer creates a much more lighter and color vibrant model. Grey primer is neutral so it could portray both vibrate and dark and dreary models. This of course doesn't mean that you can't create a lighter and vibrant looking model using black primer or vice versa. This is just my opinion.

Reasonings this is based on (again my own opinion):
1. Black primer tends to absorb the light.
2. White primer tends to reflect the light.
3. Grey primer tends to be balanced because it neither absorbs or reflects the light.

Now let's talk about the different ways of priming. The most common way of priming would be to use primer from an aerosol can or primer could be applied using an airbrush. I guess an airbrush would be the most controllable as you can prime the model exactly where you would like. But for some strange reason I prefer using the aerosol can instead. Maybe it's because I just started with it and am just used to using it. I do however use an airbrush once in awhile but not often. Anyway, depending on how you want the final look of the model will determine what color primer you use to prime the model.

I tend to use only pure black primer for tabletop gaming models. This is because I'm not too worried about spending countless hours on shading and highlighting. If I miss a couple of areas with the shading steps, the black primer tends to cover up the shading since it is dark. Also just like mentioned above the black primer will absorb the light through the painted layers can create an overall dark miniature. I rarely use pure white primer but there is the occasion that I will paint miniatures that will not have very dark shading. (No dark browns or blacks but just a darker shade color of the base paint used). But since I'm not a huge gamer and I don't paint a lot of miniatures to create armies and I tend to just paint models for showcase, i use a combination of both black and white primer.

The reasoning for using a combination of both the black and white primer instead of pure grey is this..... I need the primers to do both absorbing and reflecting at the same time. By only using grey primer,  the overall color with be balanced and I would have to use alot of steps to create those darks and lights. This means more highlighting and shadowing with white and black paint mixed into whatever color you are using. But rather than do that I let natural light do the work for me. Since the paints we use tend to dry translucent, we are able to see the lays below. Well if WE can see the difference than so can the light hitting the object. And based on the theory of what light does when it hits dark and light.... you see where I'm going with this.

So as I mentioned I use both black and white primer. What I do first is prime the model using black primer. Mostly from the bottom of a miniature where all the shadows would be, but you can prime the entire model if you like. Next I use the white primer and hold the miniature roughly 12 inches away from the nozzle and spray very gently. Don't go too heavy on the white primer, just a light dusting will do. This will create both your light and dark areas, but plus as a bonus, will create the grey area in between where the black and white primers blend together. In my opinion this method allows you to get the advantages of all three without penalty of using only one primer. Please see the attached image.

Please comment and let me know what you guys think and if you disagree also please comment as to why you disagree. There is no wrong and right way but what works for us as individuals. Give my method a try and see if you like it. I know I do :)

Thanks for taking the time to read this post and happy painting!

Been ages since last post!

It's been ages since my last post!  Truly I'm not a great blogger. It's tough to find the motivation to post up on my blog when there isn't enough material I can get done due to lack of time and motivation to paint things. I even took a break from painting and set aside all my tools and brushes for what feels like ages.

But this past weekend I went to Games Day 2013 and I hung out with John Steining from 40K Hobby blog. Talking with John over the weekend and discussing the many opportunities of painting really cool models got me really excited. We even started discussing about a small bet on entering some minis for next year's golden demon competition.

Having said that I decided that I'm going to try really hard to show my progress throughout the next upcoming year with different painting styles that I will experiment with. My biggest fear is losing that motivation to continue to paint and post on my blog to share with you all. But I will try my hardest to post at least one post every other week just as a start.

I hope that through my journey for the next year that you guys will keep me motivated and get on my case if I don't post.

With all the above mentioned I would like to inform you guys about a recent project that I've been involved in which includes painting some minis for the Redemption of the Fallen charity army project. This army is being painted by a handful of painters around the US and will be raffled off at this years Nova. Currently I'm working on the Dark Angels chapter master Azrael. I will post up some work in progress pics as soon as I get some pictures.

Last but not least it feels good to be back blogging. Thanks John for motivating me to get back into blogging.

Starting an Army: Mantis Warriors

So I've been tinkering with the idea of actually starting and playing an army again. I mentioned in my last post that I would be interested in starting up a Mantis Legion/Warriors army. 

With the new edition fairly new I figured it would be a good time for me to jump back into the gaming aspect of 40k. Having sat out all of 5th edition, it'll be like learning the whole game from scratch. But non the less, I've decided to start and painted up my first test model. 

So check out the model and let me know what you think so far. Mind you it's only a test model to get the color scheme and knowing which colors I'm going to use. The model isn't finished, but I'm sure I'll get around to finishing up the fine detail stuff sooner or later.

Mantis Legion/Warriors Sergeant with Power Fist.

Mantis Legion/Warriors Logo free-handed. Not the exact symbol, but close enough. I mean come on, I had to make it simple enough to free-hand paint all of them on all the other minis.

Just wanted to show the gradation of the shoulder pad and NMM I did on the boltgun. Will add the tactical symbol and number shortly.

So let me know what you guys think.

Games Day 2012: Part III

Fritz meeting up with us on Friday to head down to the GW Bunker

GW Bunker

Jawaballs and Fritz getting ready to play an epic battle on the ice world!

The crowd gathers before the doors open for Games Day

Jawaballs sitting and waiting like the rest of us, a mere mortal!

Jawaballs somehow finds a way to get in early!!! 

Jawaballs and his Ultramarines banner which won the banner contest (again!)

Jawaballs speed painting

Fritz speed painting

Fritz playing a game with a fan

The outcome of speed painting! Our group rocks!

Banner Contest

Costume contest

Sister of Battle, won the costume contest

DKoK costume

28oz Jawa-steak over at Gibson's after Games Day!

Oh and btw, we went gambling after dinner and I won THIS much :)  Spent about 2 hours at a blackjack table and it paid off. This paid for all of my Forgeworld LOL. 

Games Day 2012: Part II

Ok so let me explain why in my last post I wrote that Gamesday sucked for me this year. Don't get me wrong, I had a great weekend and enjoyed the events all day, there's just a few things that really stood out to me that made me feel the way I did.

First, I look forward to going to Gamesday every year. Not just the social part of it, but the experience of seeing new things and the excitement of the day itself. People walking around costumes, banners flying all over the place, screaming maniacs all over the convention, etc. But this year it was SUPER light. I mean there were a total of I think 5-6 costumes, 4 banners, and sometimes quiet enough that you could hear crickets during the convention. To me, compared to past Gamesdays, it sucked because of that, not enough extra things going on.

Second, it seemed as if almost half the convention floor was dedicated to the GW and forgeworld store. I get it, as a business they want to make money. Even in years past I believe there was only one year that I can recall that GW actually did a 20% off sale on models that they had pulled off the shelves and had overstock on. But it seemed this year that they focused on selling things and cutting corners with expenses by getting rid of some fun activities (chaos carnival, big canon, movie screens, full sized marines or orks walking around) and eye candy. Getting rid of these things also means less staff they have to pay also. But in doing so, they killed the mood of Gamesday imo. 

Third, there was no demon lounge. As you guys know by now, I love to paint to compete more than painting armies to play. Well, in the past few years, I looked forward to going to the demon lounge to talk with past demon winners to get ideas and insight on painting differently or to better improve my own painting style. No such thing this year. Hopefully they bring it back next year or maybe the demon winners will find a corner and do it on their own.

Lastly, no amazing looking displays or club tables. There was one amazing table this year from Iron Snakes (or something like that) where they had a huge battle barge where you played 40k. The table was big enough to put down a Thunderhawk and it made that model look tiny. Just jaw dropping. But that was about it. GW failed to put out any interesting display tables like years past. Those massive display tables brought tears to peoples eyes because they would tell stories within the display. And also not a lot of club tables this year. I believe that having clubs come in and bringing their own tables and helping run the events throughout the day would help elevate the outcome of Gamesday as a whole.

Well, I'm sure I can go on and on, but enough of me ranting. Onto the good stuff....I'll post up in another topic right after this one. 

Games Day 2012 Weekend

Well it has come and it has gone...the one weekend that we all have anticipated and looked forward to. What can I say about Games Day this year...it was so-so. Alright fine, it kind of sucked (I'll explain later)! But before I get into all that about the actual convention, let me start from the beginning.

Pre Games Day (Friday):
I headed down to Chicago with my friend Jawaballs. He picked me up to leave for the airport at 5am on Friday morning. We got on the plane for the ride down and two things that we'll remember. 1) there was a smoking hot chick sitting pretty much right next to us. All we could think about was Slaanesh and it's wonders....Jawa almost converted from a loyalist to the thoughts and wonders that could be if he just took one step closer to her LOL!  2) One other girl on the flight was a first round 'American Idol' contest that got the golden ticket and moved onto the next round. Thought that was pretty awesome. Jawaballs even got a picture with her.

So we landed super early and couldn't check in to our hotel as it was only like 9am and the hotel check in was like 2 or 3pm. So Jawaballs and I walked around a bit and grabbed some breakfast and came back to the hotel. Luckily we ran into a different person working the front desk and they got us in early...SCORE!  Once we got into the room, we had to wait up on our other buddy, Fritz. During this time, Jawa and I came up with an army list for myself and the new army I'm planning on doing. As some of you may know, I've been out of this blogging thing for a while now and to kick start things and to motivate me, I plan on doing an army and keeping you all updated. Who knows, I might even try to go to Adepticon and compete :)  (big maybe) Anyways, for those of you that know, Jawa is planning on doing his next marine chapter as the Lamenters. So I decided I will pick an army from the same war and decided to do....(big drumroll).... MANTIS WARRIORS!!! So be on the lookout on my blog to see updates.

Later that evening we met up with Fritz (who drove with his wife this year) and headed down to the Chicago bunker. My first impression of the place kind of made me gag to be honest. When I think bunker, I think of a place where no other store can match. Many many amazing looking tables, showcases full of gorgeous painted armies, posters hanging on the walls, maybe even a golden throne or something. Maybe it was just my imagination running wild as to what it could have been, but the actual bunker looked kind of cheap. By that I mean it was no more impressive than a local non-GW hobby shop back where I live. Either way we came, we played, we left.

During our stay at the bunker, Jawa and Fritz got into a game as nobody else seemed to be available. Everyone was playing 3v3 or 1v1. So Fritz and Jawa got into a pretty epic game. The game seemed very one sided in the beginning with Jawa seeming like he was going to steam roll over Fritz's eldar army. I walked out to Best Buy to pick up a memory card for my camera and when I got back, pretty much all of Jawa's units were destroyed. WTF?! All I could think about was 'What happened here in the last 10 minutes while I was gone?' Either way, they had a great epic battle.

We headed over to a tavern across the street for some food since we were all starving. I ended up getting a full rack of baby back ribs and OMG, they were freakin' awesome. Most definitely will go back if we are in the area. Not to mention that all the waitresses were smokin' hot. Three thumbs up.

On our way back to the hotel, we got off the exit to some toll booths. There were no freakin' toll booths with people. Only their I-Pass lanes and coin lanes. WTF....there were no signs whatsoever about coins only....and no booths with people available! The three of us scrambled to find change and we didn't have any! What the hell are we suppose to do now LOL. So Fritz gets out and starts flagging people down to get change. Funniest thing I've seen in a long time. I suppose Jawa will get the video up soon for all to see one of these days, but something we will never forget.

Enough for this entry, I'll post up pictures and another entry soon with the events of Saturday: Games Day 2012!