Orctober and other random paints

Yep, its an Orc, there you go, that's Orctober covered. It's a 3D print from the same range as the Kobolds in a previous post. I mainly did it to try out the contrast paint I bought from GW to see what all the fuss is about. I've gotta say, it took a couple of coats to get any kind of green coverage that I was happy with and it still looks quite pale. Yes, you do get a shading and highlighted look, but I don't think it is any quicker. Maybe next time I'll try painting it over a colour rather than white. 

Moving on I've been jumping about projects lately, just enjoying grabbing things from the lead pile and experimenting. In a random box I found some tyranids I had rescued from a car boot sale. Every now and then you find that golden find. Somebodies child has expressed an interest in wargaming and so the parents have forked out a good chunk of change on a trip to GW and bought them a whole army, some paints and glue. A half-hearted has been made by the kid to put them together and start painting, but it's nobodies fault, the kid doesn't know what they are doing and the parents have no experience either. It all gets thrown in a box until one day in a clearout it ends up at the carboot. 

Half the fun is trying put it all back together again, stripping paint, scraping off glue, putting parts together again. Yes there are some models beyond help that end up in the bits box. Random unidentified bits of lead go in a pile to be passed on to the father in law for melting down and turning into Victorian 40mm casts. Nothing gets wasted. Except maybe the box it all comes in which is covered in horrific paintings of kittens that freak Mrs Lead out so much she refuses to allow it to stay in the house. (Seriously they weren't cute, they were just weird, with intense staring blue eyes.)

So yes, I decided to go real old school bright colour and go for a neon pink look.

Next up is a cute little adventuring mouse that a friend 3D printed for me as part of a bundle of models to say thank you for painting his viking commission. I remember as a kid watching the animated movie Secret of Nimh based on the book Mrs Frisby and the Rats of Nimh, this model would make a great Mrs Frisby. Although the tuft I have added to the base has ended up making her look like a squirrel.

Finally, to keep on the anthropomorphic theme, I have Squeepiosa the Guinea Pig from Bad Squiddo games. It's just a fun looking model so I decided to give it a go and it did not disappoint. Sometimes when you paint something, the paint just does as it is told and this was one of those occasions. For some reason the Coat D'arms red paint had just the right consistency that all I had to do was give it the gentlest of drybrushing with a GW white on top and it actually looks almost like a real watermelon.

Gaming wise it's still been a bit sparse. My youngest has been dipping his toe in the wargaming world with the first couple of issues of the bit part magazine from Games Workshop so we have been playing some random games of a version of Warhammer 40K that I can remember from the top of my head, I would say probably somewhere between version 3 and 4. No points values and pretty much equal numbers of models on the table, so his Space Marines have been slightly superior to my cultist guard. It was just fun to roll some dice.  I've been trying to teach him that it is just fun to play and winning isn't really the objective and I think we are getting somewhere with that.

I'm positively itching to get out to a wargame show, in fact seeing all the photos and videos from Partizan last weekend  definitely whet my appetite. I'm already thinking about which tube route to take across London to the Excel next month. 

Viking Commission

Well hello, long time no chat. How are you? All good? Great. Its been a while hasn't it? Let me fill you in. 

Just before lockdown I had a referral for a minor operation, nothing serious, but it needed doing. Well, with hospitals being busy and it not being life threatening, it got delayed until this year. So last month my local hospital got in touch, they could fit me in. A week of Covid test, followed by self isolation and then a day visit for the operation and I'm all fixed. This then did however mean a couple of weeks recuperation. No work I hear you cry, plenty of time for painting? Well, sadly no, I couldn't sit upright at a table at all, so no hobbying for yours truly. 

I am definitely recovered now though, so painting has resumed. My first post Op project to be finished is something I was asked to paint for someone else. Not my usual project, a slightly larger scale bust of a viking. This was again printed on an Elegoo Mars msla printer and is a pretty impressive print. The print came out in four parts, body, head, axe and pony tail. 

Previously I have been apprehensive about painting busts and larger scales, thinking I wouldn't know how to paint the larger expanses of colour without it looking dull, but actually there is enough detail in this that it isn't a problem. I mixed up techniques, drybrushing up to highlights only on the hair and beard, inking on the fur and skin. 

The larger scale is actually freeing because I can finally paint eyes without adapting the "stab and hope" technique that I adopt in 28mm scale. Instead I really enjoyed putting detail into the steely gaze and getting his pupils actually looking in a particular direction.

So there he is in all his grizzly, grim faced glory. I might look at painting something else in this scale, it makes a nice change to be able to paint details without having to squint. As the owner said, "It's amazing how much 'life' can be released from a simple lump of plastic...."

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Dwarven Blacksmith

I was lucky enough that a friend of mine with a 3D printer kindly produced the free sample from Loot Studios for me of a Dwarven Blacksmith. It comes in 32mm and 75mm scale and he generously printed both for me. I have finally got round to painting one of them. Printed on an Elegoo Mars msla printer it comes out as a nice sculpt. It printed out in four parts, base, body, one hand with hammer and finally anvil, sword and hand combined. Some of the detail is lost in the smaller print so I decided to paint the larger print.

I don't have much experience of 3D printing other than some scatter terrain crates I bought at a show a couple of years ago. Those had obvious layering in them from the print process (I suspect they were printed at a quickest rate possible) so as soon as I started drybrushing them the lines came out. I was therefore intrigued to see where printing has evolved to now. 

I must say I am very much impressed, the dwarf itself has no print lines. 

I initially finished painting the model with the sword being just plain metal, then realised that if he was working the metal it would be glowing hot. Luckily there is a wealth of videos on YouTube of people showing you how they paint glowy metal, so out came the paints again and I'm quite pleased with the result. 

Finally a bit of underlighting makes it look like the sword is the source of light and we get an awesome dramatic shot.

To think my first thought was I might paint it all grey as a statue and stick a bit of moss on it.

I think 3D printing is a really interesting new technology and has lots of great potential. I've yet to play with one myself but from what I understand it takes some work to get them to produce results. I think unless you get to the point where they are almost "plug and play" like a traditional paper printer they will never replace traditional techniques but nonetheless the technology is rapidly improving as we speak. I don't think we'll ever be buying a licence from GW to print out the latest 40k army in time for Christmas for the kids but I can see it becoming more popular.