Snow effects…
Having decided to move on to some Chaos Knights, I decided to peruse the collection painted so far to try to remember how I was painting them (I never have been smart enough to write the steps down).
I was quite disappointed when I cast my eye over my Khorne Warriors and the solitary Knight that I had started last nearly a year ago. The painting, by the standards I am currently painting to was rubbish. Lots of flat and uninviting colors, and the bases looked quite shabby. With my current crop of Guardsmen and random mini’s I have been utilizing layering and edge highlights as well as glazes and proper shading.
I had originally modeled all of my WoC bases as dark grey with clumps of dry grass and the odd snow effect using GW modeling snow. At the time I thought it was great, but since then I have entered the blogging world and been introduced to many and varied techniques. Also, over the weekend I had managed to have a look in at one of the GW lads current project involving a winter themed Wood Elf force. He was completely covering the bases in many layers of snow effect, with only very small clumps of dead grass showing through. It looked realistic and good. Mine on the other hand looked contrived.
So, I says to myself. What should I do, start over from scratch, strip what your not happy with, or look for a quicker less torturous solution.
I chose the second option. My Warhounds and Nurgle Warriors and both my painted character models are in decent shape (being the period of early highlighting experiments) although the bases looked shite. My Khorne Warriors can be salvaged by a few selective highlights and a rejigged base.
I thought back to all the snow tutorials I have read, and settled on the following method.
I took my standard PVA (white wood glue), added a splash of water, and liberally mixed in some snow effect until I had a runny gloppy paste which would flow off a brush, but had some stiffness to it.
I pulled a few test models of the shelf and slopped it on and left it to dry. Here are the results with some comparison shots for good measure:
One of the Khorne bases showing a lot of bare area and a thin scabby looking layer of snow effect compared to the new Nurgle bases with their thick covering and the warriors looking like they are crunching through the soft snow.
And same again for a Warhound showing a before and after.
And my WIP Knight – I should have waited to finish the model before doing the base but I got a bit carried away with my endeavors – I even ended up slopping some onto my Inquisitor Rex Trench Works base and to my mind it helps it Pop – the consistency of the dried snow when placed strategically makes it look quite convincing.
The Knight is at the base coat plus wash stage after I ended up going over a lot of the old paint in frustration at how crap it looked. Happier now and looking to do a more dirty/gritty job – still won’t be ‘red Khorne’, but it also won’t be a ‘salmon pink’ Khorne that it was looking like previously.
On other news, I got in another game of Necro at Vet’s night on Tuesday (only one more to go before the campaign finishes and we switch over to Fantasy). It was a 3 way bash with a 4th gang of Orks no less being used as the prize (the Orks used their 40K stats and if pinned got straight back up at the end of the turn). If you took an Ork out you got double experience, and if you contacted the body, you could drag it at half movement, and if you held it at the end of the game, you got an extra 10 credits after accounting for your gangs output from selling the corpse to a Xenos scientist. I bottled one of the guys in turn 3, and then slugged it out with Necro regular Dodd for another 4 turns with him eventually getting the upper hand, and allowing me to slink off with no more damage caused in return for all of the corpses (I had held 3 of the 5 by that stage). And he sold me back one of my Gangers which he had captured. I had amassed some quite good stats on my Gangers and I was at the point that if I pushed my luck much further I was going to have all of my expensive, souped up Gangers killed off, losing all their various skills.
I talked with Adam about my Empire issues, and he suggested I try some test models using a red and blue scheme (as opposed to a yellow and blue) as I really didn’t want to paint yellow anymore. When I get a spare 5 minutes here and there between working on my WoC I will demo up a tester and take it in with my yellow tester for comparison and see what the lads think.
I also finished off the new Shadow King book in the Time of Legends series and was quite disappointed. All the other books have been quite good, but this one seemed like the target audience had been lowered to a much younger group. It read quite poorly, and I’m not sure I can point out why. I didn’t feel that way about the original – Malekith – so can only presume Gav Thorpe (the author of both books) has changed something in the way he writes.
I am currently reading Sons of Dorn, an Imperial Fist novel by newcomer Chris Roberson (his claim to fame in the 40K-verse is the Dawn of War 2 book – can’t really comment as I haven’t read it) which isn’t bad, but feels like a bit of a ripoff of the old, classic Space Marine by Ian Watson – same three stereotypical initiates who learn brotherhood through a baptism of fire – same supporting characters (as in the exact same), and all the primary characters fit the same mould as Watsons (ie a rich kid with a French name, a tech/savvy kid, and a barbarian kid). The story diverged by Watsons in the second half but still…
And finally my computer is down and the techo has no idea whats wrong with it. I am updating using my 8 year old laptop which is seriously lacking in all respects but I am still happy to have it. Have you ever thought what we would do if we had no computers. I was in a bit of a frenzy until the missus pulled this out of a drawer.
I am back at work so hobby time has fallen away, and I don’t see me getting much joy over the weekend as now all the house stuff needs to be crammed into 2 days rather than spread over the week like I have been recently, and the missus has become quite used to me being a bit of a Mr Housewife and is hinting she would like me to take over more of the house duties – lame.
That’s it for tonight. Have fun all and good gaming to all.
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