Tag: painting

When You Are Moving Your Weekends Look Like This

Paint Floorboards

I don’t have a post here this Monday because I spent the majority of my weekend cleaning, painting, and/or packing. D and I are moving out of our place in Northern California at the end of the month and heading down to cooler pastures, more beach-like pastures in the San Diego area. With a move in the works much of my free time is being taken up by the task of insuring that we get our security deposit back when we leave this place. This weekend, with the help of D’s mom, we cleaned all the floorboards and walls, took down all the paintings and posters, patched the walls, and then painted over the patches and any scuffs on them. All this work took place to the background sounds of the disposal or packing up of items.

Packing up just unpacked for the first time wedding gifts…

Moving gives you an opportunity to reevaluate all your possessions. “Do I really need this juicer?” “Do I need all these books/CDs/DVDs?” “Will I ever wear this shirt again?” When these items are sitting on your shelves or hanging in your closet it is easy enough to say “yes,” it doesn’t cost you anything.  It’s a different story though when ever item you own has to be packed away. I find myself saying “no” a lot in this situation. The move has given me the opportunity to reevaluate what my possessions mean to me and what amount of stuff I want in my life.

In this situation we’ve found our local thrift store, Craigslist, and Freecycle very helpful… Hopefully, back to normalcy on Wednesday.

One more shot of beautiful me

 

 

Painting Legion of Everblight: The very beginning

My workspace

As I’ve written about before I have quite a few tabletop war game miniatures. I’ve also mentioned how I needed a plan, motivation, or some sort of painting group in order to get through all the models I have lying in boxes and cases. Ask the Universe and it gives back they say… Not too long ago two of my friends, independent of each other, started holding group painting sessions! I used one of those opportunities to finish my Battlefleet Gothic Necron fleet and just today I went to another one to start painting my Horde Legion of Everblight models. I’ve been putting off painting these models for well, years now, because they’re mostly flesh and flesh is notoriously difficult to paint. Give me armor any day and I’ll happily slap the paint around. It’s very difficult to mess up painting leather or metal. Flesh though? That’s hard and I was scared. Scared because I don’t know how to paint it and scared because the pros who do make it look so good.

Six hours of work

Thankfully my friend is not only an experienced painter but well versed in various flesh painting techniques. I spent six hours today at a table next to him as he guided me through how to add paint flesh that looked vibrant and had depth. Basically, it all comes down to lots of layering and selective use of washes. I added the base layer and two additional layers to all four of them and then concentrated on a single model for the rest of the time in order to learn as much technique as possible; so that in the future I could complete the rest of the models at home. The final model, which took the lion share of time, has nine layers of paint, four washes and used a total of seven different colors in various blends on it. Oh, and it still isn’t complete! The mouth, including teeth, all still needs to be painted, washed, and highlighted. I’m hoping I get faster as I go along.

Base coat, and two layers of paint. You can see the beginnings of the shading here
Five+ layers of paint, includes highlights and two washes.
All done except for the mouth!
From the other side

Once the mouth is painted the only thing left to do would be to paint and flock (fake rocks and grass) the models base and I’ll be done. This wasn’t easy to do and I’m not completely happy with the results my progress throughout the day really improved. I’m hoping by the time I get to the really big models I’ll have the technique down and can turn out a really great looking model. Of course, if I do I’ll tell you about it here.

Prepare for Combat! A Necron Fleet Approaches

NECRONS!
These should be on a backdrop of stars but I suck at photoshop

Only last week I was bemoaning the fact that I had massively invested in a hobby that I seemed unable to participate in anymore. Turns out, making public my own deficiencies was exactly what I needed to get motivated and do something about it! I’ve put three of the unconstructed kits on Ebay, and have finished painting my Necron fleet for Battlefleet Gothic. That leaves me with only… Okay, still a lot going on there but it is a start.

TOMB SHIP!
Bad things "live" here

Serendipity played a role in me painting over the weekend. The same time my post last week went a friend of mine was setting up a painting party! I RSVPed and I spent four or five hours yesterday finishing up the Necron fleet, as well as painting my figurine for our D&D campaign. Now that it is complete I just need to carve out some time to make a gaming mat (black felt with white paint speckled across it) and find someone with another fleet to roll some dice against!

NECRONS!
Some Dirges, a few Jackals, a dash of Scythes and Shrouds

Old Stuff: Necron Command

Pictures and thoughts on Necron HQ units

With the bill load at work hitting maximum this week and next I don’t have the time I’d like to write up a few of the things that are on the back burner…  I don’t even have time to get out of the office and record the goings on around the Capitol.  I’ll be going in this weekend in order to have everything I have to turn in done and ready for session Monday morning.

Since I’m not able to create content right now, please enjoy some additional older content.  My Necron HQ units…  I have two Necron Lords one with a Staff of Light and another with A War Scythe.  I also have both of the special characters for the Necron Army:  The Deceiver and the NightBringer.  I never use these two because my opponent either complain or just sink everything into killing them which makes for a boring game…  I’ve found that the most useful HQ unit in a Necron army (with a standard point value of 1500) is a Lord with Resurrection Orb and Veil of Darkness.  This set-up allows you to zap a squad around the table taking pot shots at units, the orb lets them stick around longer than they usually would.  if you’re going to use the Veil to get close combat units to the enemy closer, it might be worth it to pay the extra 10 points and get a Warscythe, though the staff of light is just as good (with one extra attack) if you’re just fighting troops.  Besides I’ve never been able to make Necron close combat units pay off…

Oh, look at that... the green bit is coming out...
Oh, look at that... the green bit is coming out...

If your opponent does let you use either of the C’tan units they can be a lot of fun.  The Nightbringer can chew through entire units, I’ve used him to take out an entire Tau army actually!  The Deceiver is a more subtle unit and using him successfully depends on how well you can exploit his special abilities…  I’ve head people talk about doing it but never seen him used in such a manner successfully… I’d have to dig up the rulebook to be more clear on this… and it’s in the other room… If you’ve had great success running either of them, I’d love to hear how you go about doing it.  The next Necron post will have my army list with it, so you can get an idea of how I play them.

Anyway enjoy the pictures!  New content coming next week…  The first post in this series is here.

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