And the winner is....

So the votes for Wamp awards have been counted and varified, and the winners have been announced. The category I was nominated for was as follows

Best Painted Steampunk

Winner:Kitty Reimer - Morsi
2nd:Time - Fesechko
3rd: Einstein - Peter Bell

Well done to Morsi and Fesechko - lovely miniatures and very different to eachother but both really very good (variety is the spice of life). I was really surprised to see my name in that list, and I thank everyone who voted for me. 2013 was quite a year on that front, and I am pleased that some of my miniatures seem to be going down quite well with you lot ;)

The rest of the winners can be found at the following Wamp Thread: http://www.wampforum.com/VB4/showthread.php?t=16593

Congratulations to everyone who placed in the top 3 - the standard of so many of the entries was insane. And well done to Brett for running such a great competition.

Wamp award nomination!!

Wamp award nomination!!

Well, as starts to the miniature year go, this one has been pretty good. Spent some good painting time on a new commission which is shaping up to be one of my best, I have a new compressor which is looking like a fantastic investment and I am well on my way to putting together a small Imperial Fist (yellow Space Marines) 40K army.

The cherry on the top of this positive start is that it turns out that I have been nominated for the best Steampunk paintjob in the 2013 Wamp Awards! What is Wamp? Wamp is a large community of hobbyists on a forum run by Brett 'Darklord' Johnson. They are a great, and pasisonate community who hold frequent online painting competitions which are always heavily subscribed and really well supported by the industry, with oodles of prizes up for grabs.

The Wamp Awards are a peer nominated set of awards rather than a painting competition much like the BAFTAs with a number of different categories and then voted on by the community. It is my favourite Ork bust Einstein which has been shortlisted - thank you to all who thought of me/him for this category :D

The rest of the shortlist is as follows:
Best Painted steampunk (this is a link to the category with all the images and the voting)

Kitty Reimer - Morsi
Einstein - Peter Bell
Time - Fesechko
Al Capone - Fabrizio Russo
Tallulah Belle - Javier González

More details of the other categories etc can be found here: Wamp Awards

Don't forget to go over to Wamp and have a look at all the categories and vote for whatever takes your fancy - lots of eye candy to be had!

Congratulations to all who were nominated!

So, the competition is stiff, and there are some BIG names in my category, but whatever happens, I am really chuffed to be included alongside these people!

Einstein does seem to get about a bit ;)

Radagast the Brown

My other entry for GDUK this year was the Radagast which I showed as a WIP a few months ago. I was really pleased with the way he was turning out so decided to really try to create an interesting way of displaying the miniature.

With the competition in mind, I knew I had to keep him on his 25mm round 'appropriate gaming base' so I decided to put a lot of time and effort into his plinth. In theory the plinth is not part of judging the painting, but (in my opinion) it will most definitely help catch the judges eye - then I just had to hope that my painting would hold up to more intense scrutiny.

Being Radagast THE BROWN, there was always going to be a lot of brown - the trick was how to make that interesting. I used lots of different brown triads by Reaper and added the same shade colour (Coal Black by P3) and the same final highlight (Vallejo Ivory) to try and harmonize the various colours. The big point of interest for me in a model is always the face so with the 'lack' of colour in the rest of the model I wanted to make the face alive with colour (without being unrealistic) so I used a lot of Coal Black (which is really a very dark turquoise) and P3 Sanguine Base (a dark, desaturated red) to give him a bit of life.

The other POI I decided to go for was some freehand on his outer coat. Looking at stills from the movie his coat is almost like a tapestry with lots of patterns all over it so I went for a series of swirls and leaves and spirals to give a similar feel to it.

I think that's enough of a description and its time to show some photos...

And now for some closer shots of the man himself...

So... whaddayathink?

For some better photos, check out Putty & Paint - http://www.puttyandpaint.com/projects/2946

(I think something may have changed on blogger and it seems to be butchering the quality of my photos)

I do have some other news about Radagast, and that is he helped me scoop my first Golden Demon!! I managed to win a gold in the Lord of the rings category!! Wooooooooooooohoooooooooo!!!!! Its been a long time and something I've wanted for absolutely ages... I am stoked!

Salamander complete!

I managed to finish the Salamander I've been working on in prime time for entering him into the Golden Demon competition at this years Games Day UK! (accidental?*)

I managed to get a finalist pin for him in what proved to be a really tricky category - it seemed like there were more entries in 40K single Figure as there are at many other painting competitions in total! I must admit, I was pleased with a finalist pin in this category as the quality was also very high.

I wanted to try and create a tiny 40mm vignette with this piece and hope that it tells a story to the viewer like a larger diorama might.

I have posted this guy up on CoolMiniOrNot and Putty & Paint if you are interested in voting :)
http://www.puttyandpaint.com/projects/2945 (oddly I think these might be better pictures, although I am not sure why... maybe blogger has compressed these ones?)
http://www.coolminiornot.com/342264

On to the pictures...

*Nope!

Hasslefree Sculpting Comp... Complete!

I didn't post my finished sculpt for the contest?? doh!

This post has been sat here unpublished and unloved for quite some time, but I did get my entry finished, although it is quite plain compared to some of the entries...

It was definitely weird using greenstuff again after quite a long time, I forgot quite how much like chewing gum it is to work with! It wasn't all bad though - the stickiness was certainly a useful property and something I have used since this model when sculpting extra fur onto a wolf.

Completed pics of the other entries start on about page 10 of the thread on the Forum of Doom.

EDIT: Completed pics of ALL the entries are now up on the Hasslefree Miniatures Facebook

Anyhow, here is my entry: Chianti 'Hanibelle' Lector

Chianti Lector AKA Hannibelle

Hasslefree Miniatures are running a sculpting competition at the moment (until the end of September) where you start off with their armature and create a miniature of your own. The prizes are pretty good with HF credit for the winners and copies of their miniature for all who enter.

More details can be found here.

I have decided to give it a go in the 'modern' section with a female homage to Hannibal Lector, who I've imaginatively named 'Hannibelle', but Tracy thinks the name Chianti might be better... Other than a couple of busts I've worked on over the last year or so, I don't really do a lot of sculpting in general and especially not using greenstuff/Duro, so I am a little apprehensive posting these images... But I thought I aught to show them anyhow!

Here are a couple of WIP shots:

A custom Dust Mech

Toosh and I are the two members of the group you're likely to meet at the Bodgers stand at shows at the moment due to various family commitments by the other members. We do, however have a quiet member who spends most of his hobby time preparing armies for wargaming. We shall call him 'Dave'*. This is quite a different discipline when compared to the display style pieces we normally work on and I really wanted to share that with you.

Dave has developed a very distinctive style since moving from display painting to wargaming with an eye for eyecatching colour schemes and a bold painting style which really pop from the tabletop... He's also DAMN quick!

Sharro and other WIPs shot

Sharro is nearly complete now (yay!), but these photos have shown me a few areas which need a little more work (namely the left side of the face as we look at it and a few other things like her shoes). I have kept the orange and white scheme (it makes a change for me not to reinvent the model half way through with this project...!).

I have also just realised her hand in the air is supposed to be a glove - I thought it was just a poor cast. Might have to do something about that... and the forearm on the other hand is covered by an arm band too... And her eye-brows look huuuuuge in the pics - I thing some of that is the shadow from her brow, but it is something which needs to be fixed!

Decals and the start of the weathering

A quick update!

Decals have now been added to the base... just a few to add a little interest, but not too many to be overwhelming. I have also started to add some rust spots, oil stains etc and been adding very thin washes of colour to subtly change some of the tones. Next will be to finalise where everything should be positioned and drill some holes for the pins *gulp*

Easy like Sunday Morning

Nothing like a Commodores quote to start off a blog post, but I wanted to share the most recent changes to the McVey diorama I am working on. Been painting some incidental details for the piece and slowly pulling the rest of the base together.

Wanted to share new pics of my old Barbarian

I took some new photos of my Salute winning Barbarian today and I thought that as they were sooooo much better than any previous attempt at photography I'd share them.

These photos give a much better representation of colour and contrast than the other photos I took, and the depth of field on my new camera seems to handle the scene a whole lot better too. Might even have to post these on CMoN, even though I dont like posting the same miniature more than once!

Now we're getting somewhere!

The colours are really coming together now - its ended up a grey, black and yellow scheme which compliments the models rather nicely!

Take a look...

U-turn on colour choices!! (again!)

Sometimes you get to a point in a build where someone points something out and you have a bit of a 'moment' and you realise you may have gone down the wrong avenue. This was one of those moments...! It was brought to my attention that the colourful background was really competing for pride of place against the miniatures themselves, which was certainly not what I wanted.

I asked around a bit for more opinions and I came to the decision that something needed to be done. So over the weekend, I had a marathon session to flip the 'reset switch' and lay down some new base colours for the scene.

Getting the colours down

So I have really started to get some colours down on the scene itself now.

Ignore the mess, I made the schoolboy error of painting the pipework (as they were metallic) BEFORE painting the wall behind. The pipes will be totally redone :P The following photos should give you an idea of my colour scheme. I am hoping it will contrast nicely with the pinky yellow of the strain as well as the orange accents on Sharro.

The yellow stripe on the corner will be yellow and black hazard stripes, and these will feature in a number of other areas too. The red stripe will follow through all the way round the scene. I am currently thinking about using a mid grey for the door.

In other news, we have actually hit 40 followers! Thanks for your interest guys :)

A messy WIP

Layers and layers of green over a black undercoat.... why do i do it to myself? I reckon it would have been much easier with an airbrush, but ho-hum!

It's going through the 'messy' stage at the moment... Its going to have a two-toned wall with green at the bottom (nowhere near this saturated by the time I am finished) and a light coloured two-thirds at the top.

At the moment this is a neutral grey but I am more and more tempted to change it to a light khaki brown. I will weather the green in one area  to help me decide.

Studio McVey competition over at Platoon Britannica

As part of the ongoing 'Best of British' event that we are running over at Platoon Britannica, we have just announced the second painting competition in the series - the McVey McLovin'. In essence, anything by Studio McVey (Sedition Wars or Collectors Series or a mix of the two) is game, and we are pleased to announce that we have managed to get hold of the increasingly rare and now out of production Kara Black models as top prize (the original one with the big gun)!

It would be really great to see what you come up with!

The diorama sprayed black

Ok, I think I'm at a point where I can start to paint the base!

It feels like a real milestone, and I am looking forward to tackling it. I think I will do it next, even though Sharro and the revenants aren't 100% complete as I can then make sure all of the components come together cohesively.

Sharro gets a lick of paint

Good evening campers!

Started painting Sharro today... lovely little mini, and very different from the other two models I have painted for this scene. To contrast with the gribbliness of the Strain I have tried to keep this girl really clean and sharp, and also gone for orange as the accent colour rather than the blue of the boys.

A little progress

So, the weekend brought more progress on my diorama. The scene itself is pretty much done (more about that in a moment), and the two Revenants are coming along nicely. I have spent a fair bit of time on the flesh tones of the first one I painted to make it match the other one more closely, and the trousers of the second one to  match those of the first!

Strain Revenant - flesh done!

Blimey.... February already??

Flesh is done! Made a bit of a faux pas with the trouser colour, but that can be changed... I am thinking of making it blue and yellow like the first revenant I painted. The grey here seems too desaturated for the rest of the model throwing it out of balance. It almost makes it look like I just haven't painted the trousers at all...