Pruning and so on...

Okay, hello to the inmates of the Asylum old and (surprisingly) new. Obviously it's been a vast while since I posted on here and this isn't really a post of much content but it is not without purpose...

Looking back at this blog I'm rather proud of it and while it's no longer my mad rambling diary, stream of consciousness and general rant of opinion, I always thought it'd be nice to leave it here and now can probably consider it a body of work regarding the many years of my career prior to my heading off to a certain Citadel...

I popped my head in and found the Asylum still gets a notable amount of daily visitors and that, I feel, justifies it staying put. Plus I like to delve back in and read posts once in a while. Spyglass Asylum was often a place for me to blurt out my thoughts in a way that would externalise them and give me better perspective upon my own opinions. It's often surprising just how much the process of writing things down can make you realise that your actual thoughts on a subject weren't quite what you thought you thought (damn you brain!).

Of course a few years later a number of those thoughts have mutated into other thoughts and my view on the miniatures has evolved a certain amount. Still, looking back I think I mostly agree with the things I wrote.

So, in the mind of considering this a body of work, I thought I'd pop in, prune a few of the random posts so the remaining content was all minis stuff. And thus it now is.

So, signing off for now. Hope people will continue to enjoy delving into this little asylum (peeling wallpaper and all).

Keep up the craziness guys, I'll get back to making plastic stuff for your future amusement ;)

Concerning why and the hobby drive...

Welcome to a philosophical tangent. Here you will find a total lack of actually useful information but perhaps something thought provoking, generally strange or just plain weird. It's rather like the Twilight Zone or it's successor The Scary Door...

It began with a post on the WAMP forum that asked what do we do with our painted miniatures. There's a general thing on there about display cabinets and the like as one would expect. The thread is below...

WAMP thread

It wasn't a new thought for me but it brought it fresh into my mind and I started to type a response but then I started to think that my actual answer was going to be rather atypical and perhaps a good subject for a blogpost. And here we are... after my self-psychoanalysis.

So, what's the big answer to what I do with my painted miniatures? Um... nothing. I have almost no interest in them at all. That's right, I don't have a display cabinet full of my figures. My Golden Demon winners are in several locations with my not giving much thought to them and the demon trophies are sitting in a box at my parent's place 300 odd miles away. I have a couple of painted demon winners in my flat, the Cadian Commissar and the Empire Greatsword but they're stuffed into a Citadel figure case along with some old paints and a partially assembled plastic Chaos Sorcerer.

So, the question is posed, what has happened to all the minis I've painted over the... err... decades (man I feel old)? Well, they tend to get stuffed into boxes and just hang around until they invariably get damaged and they often ended up thrown away. I've sold some over the years but honestly not that many. I just don't get attached to my figures. Hell, that's something of a general thing for me. I don't get attached to things very much at all. That old question 'what one item would you rescue if your house was burning down?' I'd probably answer with 'item? screw that I'm getting outside where I wont burn to death trying to rescue the toaster'. It's worth noting that I live alone with no pets so those 'dodge the question' answers don't really apply. If it came down to it I might rescue my laptop if it wasn't going to be a bother simply so I don't have to go through the motions of reinstalling software.

I don't have collections of action figures and geeky paraphernalia. I do have a G1 Optimus Prime but am not really that attached to it. I could always replace it if needs be. I periodically get rid of things usually in vast quantities as I dislike owning large amounts of stuff. Before I left Cornwall, I basically had an open house where I invited friends over to basically take whatever they wanted in huge quantities. Cue many looks of horror from said friends who never really understood my lack of a hoarding instinct. An unusual trait in a geek of course. Cars were filled up with my possessions and driven away. Good riddance for the most part. I took a crapload more to charity shops. I left Cornwall with a bare minimum of stuff. Everything I moved with fitted into the back of my brother in law's car. And no regrets of anything left behind...

So, I have no attachments to my minis and no wish to display them or the trophies I have won. I don't really game either. This does lead to a strange place. Given that my general drives are that I can't be bothered to spend my time doing things with no real gain to them, why the hell do I bother painting minis? On the face of it it seems insane. I don't find it incredibly relaxing as many people do and have little interest in the final product. So, what's the drive?

Process! The science of the hobby.

Yes friends, I am interested in what's possible and how it is achieved. I spend my hobby time theorising how to paint and seeing how well my ideas work. I have a particular fascination with the idea of maximum quality for minimum time spent. A lot of the time I don't even paint the mini beyond trying a technique out on a part of it. Once I know whether it works of not I often lose interest.

I like the idea of painting an army and spend a great deal of time working out plans, ideas and techniques to achieve them. I often buy some of the figures but I do wonder what would happen to said army should I actually finish it. In a box somewhere? Probably.

So, my hobby is a rather bonkers one and a rather atypical one. Only interested in the science? Is that mad, well probably but as a great man once said...

Back off man, I'm a scientist!

Blanche on a larger canvas...

A little while back John was in the studio with his latest painting project, the new Forgeworld Cursed Ettin and I was suitably impressed and intrigued. This was something rather different from John: a monstrous figure. Okay, possibly a poor choice of words as John is rather gifted at making monstrous out of even human sized figures but this was on a much larger scale and on a figure with a rather different sculpting style...

The Cursed Ettin model is a figure sculpted by the enormously talented Edgar Skomorowski who slaves away in the Warhammer Forge section of Forgeworld. He tends towards a more sculptural style than the very graphic rendering employed by the sculptors in the Design Studio. The Ettin has an incredible level of texture in it's skin, rather like an Elephant's, which John saw as rather a challenge. His normal painting style is to paint texture on rather as he would in 2d and he uses paint rather thicker than most mini painters. Both of these factors needed weighing up in painting the Ettin.

The skin started with a basecoat of mostly white with a little orange and snakebite leather added. John followed this with a wash of nut brown ink to pick up the incredible textural detail. The skin was then re-highlighted adding yet more white to build the contrast and then more shading painted into the recesses with the ink mixed with a little black. Then repeated extra shadows with a mix of orange and black ink moving towards orange dominated washes. John leaves the top off his orange ink so it thickens, becoming redder with time. He notes that he doesn't have any red colours of any description. An interesting aside given the rich reds in his work but it reinforces that sometimes getting the effect you want doesn't come via the obvious route and that John has decades of experience to draw upon to achieve the effects he desires in either 2d or 3d.

The bionic eye is a ball bearing with no colour added and he added black washes to the eye sockets. John tends to leave the eyes allowing the sculpture to define them and isn't a fan of the goggle eyed look.

A fairly limited palette of materials and a lot of Snakebite Leather used. For me this one is all about the rendering of the flesh and it's vibrancy speaks for itself. Like all of John's work, it's a vivid slap around the face which demands an opinion. And here's the whole beast...

The Asylum has 200 inmates...

... well, minus Neil who escaped to terrorises us all with his own blog... see the last post. So, 200 followers. I'm rather surprised if I'm honest. All going rather well. Not sure I have much content for this post though I can tell you I've got another John Blanche piece to put up very soon (and it's uncharacteristically big). So, I think I shall open the floor to all 200 of you. Upon this anniversary of sorts I'd like to take the chance, once again, to ask what you'd like to see in future? So, don't be shy, there's at least 200 of you...

The inmate...

Spyglass Asylum has, or rather had, an inmate. Now you must understand that Spyglass is not your average asylum and it's denizens should not be assumed so either. We specialise in the uniquely obsessional, the not-so-borderline lunatics and curious insanities. And then, on the end of the line, is The Mad Converter...

The Mad Converter is unusual even amongst the inmates, or 'hobbyists' as we prefer to call them. There was an assumption in the early days that he perhaps didn't quite 'get' the hobby, neither concerned with gaming or even painting. There was only the conversion. A terrible obsession with modifying figures, spending countless hours upon them before casting them aside unpainted. We once spent an entire decade watching him converting figure after figure after figure without as much as a lick of paint amongst them.

Eventually we managed to persuade him to actually paint a few of them and he begrudgingly did so before flying off on a tangent of more converting madness. An extended leg here, a reposed arm there, a completely rebuilt figure around the corner. The occasional overheard mutterings about powdered Artemis or about how 'he'd show that damned bald-headed, crooked grinned head doctor a thing or two'.

The collection of converted figures grew, and grew, and grew. Always behind the closed doors of his dank little cell. The odd painted figure amongst their plastic, metal and putty brethren.

Then came the incident...

Just a few short weeks past we opened the door of his cell to deliver his morning gruel only to find the place cleaned out. The mad converter was gone, the figures were gone, his tools were gone. There was simply a note...

'I've heard that there's this wonderful thing called the internet and you can do this thing called blogging'.

Not good, not good at all. He's out there somewhere in the wilds now. He calls himself Neil and the most terrible thing has happened. He has internet access and is blogging his insanity to the masses. CALL THE INQUISITION!!!

For the purposes of your understanding, and perhaps your morbid curiosity, I offer you the link below to the beginnings of The Mad Converter's blog. I can only imagine the horrors you will see as the floodgates open...

MASTER-CRAFTED

More deadly art of Blanchitsu...

Always a great day when I get to share some new figures from the desk of Mr John Blanche as we can all bask in the craziness of it all. Crazed Inquisitors, Preachers and other such mad characters. However, it's not always about the uber character types. John is obviously well known for such figures but for every Inquisitor there should be mad henchmen and beyond the henchmen there are grunts. Today I'd like to share John working at the basic soldier end of the spectrum. Of course John being John, there's more to them than just 'bloke with gun'...









The figs have all the trademark warmth and texture of John's work. No cutting corners based on their level of importance in background terms, just the underlying feeling that these guys are characters to and not just faceless drones to be mown down by withering enemy firepower...

The cut down lasguns are a particular favourite part of these figures. Gives a massively different feel to the weapons with minimal changes and this is an idea I'm sure I'll shamelessly steal at some point.

My favourite of the two is the guy with the mask (from an Empire Flagellant I believe) and the shield on his shoulder. There's just something of a total character to him despite only minimal conversion (plus I'm a sucker for that John Blanche vicious red (orange paint and red ink. Must try it sometime).

Thanks to John again for sharing his wonderful work. There's more to come but that'll have to wait a little while.

Hang on... what the???

Okay, this isn't even minis related. A good number of you will know the Tears of Envy blog which often touches on minis stuff but also contains, well, everything else you can ever imagine (and frequently what you can't). The lady herself often posts music and videos on there from all over. I thinks to myself, there's an idea I can borrow, steal or whatever...

So, what's this one about. Well, I have something of an obsession with movie trailers. I love the distilled movie experience offered and tend to grab hold of music tracks via said trailers. Today's is a piece that I dearly love from the trailers to the last Star Trek movie (wonderful examples of the trailer art). The track is called Freedom Fighters by Two Steps from Hell. Rousing, dramatic stuff...

2011 done! So then, 2012...

2011 was somewhat the year of the Asylum for me. I actually set up in the last days of 2010 in a fit of spontaneity while trying to deal with a very difficult Christmas period (2010 was not a good Christmas for my family) but I consider it something of a new year launch really. I created this blog for a number of reasons, one of which was as a way to externalise my thoughts on minis and gain some perspective as I'd been a bit 'sculptor's block' for a while. All worked out very well on that front and I spent the first few months of 2011 secretly working on a new start for Spyglass Miniatures. It wasn't to be a radical departure but just to get what I wanted straight in my head. Plans involved working with other sculptors and artists too. I came up with some interesting stuff that will obviously not see the light of day now (don't worry, it never got to the point of finished minis) as 2011 had something else in store for me...

So, the GW juggernaut came knocking at my door with questions of whether I might like an actual paying job with crazy things like holidays and so on? Hmm, says Steve. So, I pack my bags and leave Cornwall for the slightly grim alternative of Nottingham (but with a salary and a nice place to work).

The second half of 2011 was mostly about getting used to a 9-5 schedule and discovering that I'm really not used to having proper time off. It did, however, mean that I was a lot more prolific and have been churning out minis at a fair rate that I can neither show anyone nor tell anyone about. You'll see the fruits of my labour eventually but it still feels like a long way off...

2011 was also a year where my hobby mutated. I got very into the idea of painting in quicker ways and making extensive use of washes. I'm learning all the time with this new way and am enjoying it much more than my older meticulous style. Works nicely as I was never able to achieve the level of quality that I wished (seriously, scouring the Eavy Metal cabinets in the studio is a humbling experience).

2011 also saw my first ever placing in the Open at Golden Demon. Picking up my third place behind Mike and Martin was something of a highlight and it was cool to play with my new quick painting techniques on the grander canvas of my Corpse Cart.

So, 2011 is behind me and 2012 has arrived on my doorstep. I'm starting the year with an earache but hopefully that wont be around for too long and things will move forward.

I have all kinds of hobby plans for this year that I will be sharing via this blog. I have one major plan that will be talking about in the coming months but I'm not quite ready yet. I've been somewhat inspired by Migsula's posts about the dream workspace for modelling and painting on his blog Legion of Plastic. Now I'm not planning to do this but what I'm interested in is certainly sharing in the philosophy of doing something with a different approach. But we'll get back to that...

I'm also planning to paint a few small armies now that I'm starting to get the hang of this quick painting lark and have recently started an Eldar force that I'll be sharing before long. This is my first proper foray into army painting for a long while and I plan to follow up with an army for fantasy battle as fantasy is a little more my thing and I think I've chosen which to go for and an interesting theme to go with it.

And I'll try to come up with some random insights into sculpting stuff too.

Thank you to all the readers here for helping make Spyglass Asylum something that I'm immensely proud of. When it comes to the future of this place I have plans within plans within plans...

So, 2012! Going to be interesting. Ahead, groove factor 5. Yeah!

Art of femme...

It has been quite a time since I talked about sculpting in any kind of detail but decided that I had something I'd like to talk about. So, today's topic is sculpting women. This will be more about the broad nature of doing so rather than an instructional piece.

I've been a pro sculptor for just over twelve years now and have specialised in sculpting women for most of that time. It's generally what I bring to the table and, during my freelance years it was by far the lion's share of what I was asked to sculpt, mainly because there really aren't that many sculptors out there who can convincingly sculpt women and those guys tend to be very busy people. The best out there, in my opinion would be Kev White and Juan Diaz. Both incredibly adept at rendering the female form. I consider myself to be pretty good too but those two I feel are the masters within our industry.

So, what's the best advice I can give in approaching a female sculpt? Well, first up I have to draw a bit of a line in the sand. I'm talking about sculpting women in 28mm and thereabouts and it'll be far from reality. In the real world, femininity is a complicated affair without a whole lot of rules. Like most in life, what works works and what doesn't probably does for someone else. But, in 28mm it's much easier to have harder rules. I have a rule that I put above all others for female minis and, in my opinion, it's where many sculptors fall down and miss the mark...

... femininity is in the hips!

There's a tendency amongst many sculptors to approach sculpting a woman in the same way as a man but to keep the figure skinnier and give it boobs. Frankly, you should be able to sculpt a flat chested female figure and still have it look female or you aren't getting it right and the breasts wont make it right. This often compounds by the sculptor making the breasts larger in an attempt to make the figure more feminine and it just gets comical or grotesque. No, the breasts aren't the point (err... so to speak), it's hips and bums where you'll make a female figure. I often surprise other sculptors when I tell them that I start my sculpture with the bum (male or female). I always sculpt torso first and the bum is the first putty to go on.

At an armature level, keep the hips wide and don't be scared to put a little meat on the thighs upon bulking out.

Keep a smooth but deep curve at the small of the back, it accentuates the bum and gives an elegant quality to the profile of the figure.

Flat belly? Not so fast. Just as you deepen the curve of the back you should let there be a gentle curve to the belly.

So then, I said not to use the breasts as a way to make the figure feminine but obviously they need to be sculpted right as well. The biggest mistake made other than oversizing in an attempt to make the figure more female would be in their positioning on the torso. They're lower than expected. I see many figures where the breasts emanate from the collar bone. Make sure there is a significant gap between the collar bone and the top of the breast.

And so to faces. Almost a topic in itself but I will do the quick version here. As with body shapes there is an idealisation that is generally required at this scale. It's very easy to sculpt an accurate version of a beautiful real woman and have it look rather masculine at 28mm. The nuances tend to get lost and the femininity with it.

Pointy chin! Keep the chin narrow. Woman can have quite wide jaws and still be very feminine but at this scale it's tough to make it work.

Narrow mouth and keep it low on the face. A wide mouth is very difficult to pull off on a female mini so keep it narrow. I tend towards a full but quite narrow lower lip and not so much sculpting the upper lip as tilting the gap of the mouth upwards around 45 degrees and shaping the edge.

Keep the eyes nicely defined and probably avoid lower eyelids (not a hard rule but usually better without).

When it comes to nasolabial folds on a female face I either avoid or try to keep them subtle.

Above all when you are sculpting women everything seems to be elegant curves that run into one another whether it be the body or the face.

Remember, you can often get away with anatomical murder when sculpting a bloke but it's easy to get a female figure wrong (I'm not going to pretend that I've never got it wrong).

Haven't sculpted my traditional birthday mini this year... hmm... wonder what it should be?

Bountiful Basing Buffoonery from Blanche and Buddle...

Okay, about time for another blog post I feel (okay, overdue I'll admit).

When John gave me notes on his painting for my last post he also talked a little about basing. I decided his thoughts would be more appropriate for their own post though I'm also going to touch a little on my own basing technique...

First up, basing thoughts from Mr Blanchitsu himself. Fundamentally John sees his figures as gaming pieces, despite the level of work, and thus he doesn't like to go overboard on his bases. He doesn't like them too elaborate or too high and refers to it as a frame for the mini and also remarking that he dislikes the big guilded frames often found surrounding paintings in galleries. He finds them disrespectful to the artist. Frames should not be noticed, they are not in competition with the artist just as the base should not be in competition with the figure. Consider the figure moving through a grim futuristic landscape, not stuck to 10 tons of wreckage every step.





As well as regular sand, John also uses Bicarbonate of Soda as basing material which is a lot finer. Looking at his figures it gives just enough texture to pick up the paintbrush strokes without building things up too much. The different grades of sand work nicely to break up the groundwork. Though at pains to not go too nuts over his bases I'm sure John doesn't want them to be dull. A little interest on the base goes a long way... be it a skull or some discarded remnant of tech.

I rather like painting bases on my own figures though I have a slightly unusual take on things. Painting the base is my first step in painting rather than the usual last one. I find if I paint the base last it can become a bit of an afterthought and so I like to 'set the scene' right at the start. The only real part I don't do is add static grass (or tufts) as I like to varnish figures and it's easier to add this stuff afterwards. But whether an army figure or a grand Golden Demon entry, base is almost always first.

Now, I really need to get basing on my latest painting project, I'm well behind schedule...

The noble art of Blanchitsu... and the new black...

If anyone has picked up the latest White Dwarf they may just find a little article called Blanchitsu where Mr John Blanche of art fame introduces some of my work along with that of Julian Bayliss. Well, in a sort of reverse I shall now talk a little about one of John's own pieces...



As you may already have read I plan to talk a lot about the new, or perhaps resurgence of, dirty painting techniques and my own probable struggle in achieving this. John's work is perhaps the perfect place to start as the modern miniature painting hobby pretty much started with him. I don't want to delve into that too much as I touched on it in my last post and want to make this one about one of John's recent figures.

John was kind enough to send me a number of notes on the figure. The base figure for this conversion and paintjob is one of the new plastic single figures that GW have released. In this case it is Brian Nelson's Wraith; a beautiful figure in it's own right. John was attracted to it's sense of movement and the large plain surfaces that create a blank canvas for the painter, a quality that I love in figures. He admits that there is not a huge potential for conversion without compromising the inherent simplicity of the sculpt but I think he's managed it anyway, certainly when you take a conversion as the idea of changing a figure's concept over simply physical alteration.



Rather interestingly, John is not making a hard statement on what the figure actually is. Possibly a psyker, either loyalist or renegade as part of a warband. An interesting point that unties him from worrying exactly how the figure should look and leaving room for expression. It also exemplifies the blurred line of good and evil in 40K. Personally it immediately makes me think of all the mad stuff that you get in the backgrounds of 40K art that is often hard to pin down on exactly what it is and what purpose it serves. Newcomers to the hobby may take the idea of servo skulls for granted but John was drawing them in the backgrounds of pics for years before they were nailed down to a specific thing. The question 'what are all those flying skulls about?' was a common question for GW creatives for many years.



John describes his technique as fast and dirty, trying to avoid over shading or artificially smoothing things out, going for what he calls a dark, earthy and entropic realism. It's a very painterly approach and often cites Rembrant as an inspiration. Of course a quick and dirty style doesn't literally mean quick. John does take his time using washes over a neat basecoat and then adding white for highlights. He remarks about the deliberately anarchic stitching on the back of the robe where he picked away with a scalpel in the glue seam before the glue completely set as if it was coming loose. A small detail that adds to the texture of the piece both physically and also in it's concept.



It's worth taking a close look at the pics, at all the little details and the texture of the piece. It's not at all easy to take a canvas this smooth and infuse it with such a raw and earthy look. I find this kind of work endlessly fascinating due to my rather more scientific approach to painting. I know from experience that just 'painting rough' does not get the results. Painting messy is easy, painting dirty but good is a whole different ball game in a different park, played by aliens...

Just in case you are wondering...

Brian Nelson Wraith
Cables from Cadian Command
Cut down Marine Bolter with nozzle from Cadian Lasgun
Head from Corpse Cart corpse
Plus bits from Grey Knight Sprue

There is, John says, amongst newcomers to the hobby to assume there is a magic solution to painting or some answer that can be told and suddenly you can paint. Alas, and I can confirm, it doesn't really work like that. It takes practice and experience. Hand eye brain learning as he puts it. Your hands and instincts might get there before your brain gets it. That's not to say that advice is useless, just that it takes more than an instruction guide to paint minis, especially if you want to forge your own path. And forging your own path is the new black!

A new power is rising...

Saruman had it right. We can always trust Saruman...

Today I'm going to be retreading some ground but it feels appropriate as this post is somewhat the start of a new direction for this blog. Well... at least for the time being.

I've talked a little in the past about the mini painting hobby still being rather young. The modern hobby that we enjoy pretty much had it's infancy in the seventies as pioneers started to think about 25mm figures as worth modelling and painting to more than a utilitarian standard, then onwards to a childhood in the 80s and 90s where the industry and it's hobbyists became very excitable and madness ensued (Chaos Toilets anyone?) but as that went on this child began to grow and figured out what worked. There came solid techniques, tried and tested and product formats that endured. This was where the modern painting hobby became what it is today. Then came the teenage years. The 2000s and pretty much up until now...

The teenage minis industry, rather like a person went a bit stroppy in it's way, metaphorically shouting 'you don't understand me' and desperately trying to rebel against what had come before. This was both good and bad. In it's rebellion the industry pushed the boundaries to work out what was possible and figure out what was 'cool'. There were a lot of boutique companies (and larger companies that acted similarly such as Rackham). There now existed a new cutting edge for minis. They were flamboyant and hyper detailed and there existed a new way of painting them that you were pretty much expected to aspire to. Perfect blends, subtle colouring, NMM (and it's flashy cousin SENMM). And often hundreds of hours on single figures brought forth from a new breed of 'painting celebrities'. And beautiful minis were created. However, there's a problem...

Like many of the 'rebellious teens' out there, in their rebellion they often don't realise how much they are actually conforming to something. Kind of like an emo or goth who thinks they're being really different... just like all the other millions of teenagers doing the same. Nothing especially wrong with it but there's a sense of 'you have to be different, just like me and everyone else or you're not doing it right' and the minis industry ended up in the same place. The minis became hyper detailed and the techniques incredibly intense processes. And I didn't see a lot of people talking about how much fun the ensuing figures were to achieve. I'm sure some people loved doing it but I saw a lot of people basically torturing themselves and burning out trying to do 'what they were supposed to do'.

In running Spyglass Miniatures I remember trying to do something different. My figures were simple and I always tried to have the idea that the figures didn't lend themselves to a particular colour scheme so people could quickly have fun painting them. Maybe I played the detail down to far sometimes but one thing I noticed over all the years I did this was that it was very difficult to sell them in the face of a screaming teenage industry going on about how such a thing wasn't 'right'. The other end of things, however, was that when people did buy them, I noticed that they often actually got painted and then I'd see the commentary on the paintjob saying how much fun it was to paint. Even if I was broke, it made me smile. I once sculpted a caricature zombie, 40mm tall, called Zzzz. One of my worst sellers. I think about 30 exist in the world. I think I've seen about twenty different painted ones. That's an incredible percentage to actually be painted. When people took a risk and tried something a little simpler they blatantly enjoyed it.

So, the industry as something of a stroppy teenager with an attitude of 'my way or the highway' and not overly concerned with people having fun as much as pushing the boundaries of what is possible... so what next. Well, one day, not so long ago, something happened that I've been expecting for a long while. It wasn't a single event as the hobby is too large for such things but somewhere along the line I think the hobby just said to itself...

MAN, REMEMBER WHEN I WAS A KID AND I JUST HAD FUN!

And in that statement I think the industry began to grow up and I feel we are taking the first steps into adulthood.

There's a new wave out there just at the moment. Painters who are embracing different ways to do things. This always happened of course but the difference is that people are starting to sit up and take notice of this stuff. There are a bunch of blogs out there which are suddenly getting a large readership and are about messages of finding what type of painting and modelling make you happy and going with it. I hope you'll consider this blog one of them. But then there's the Spiky Rat Pack and the Legion of Plastic. Both of these places are exploring their painting and modelling in new directions. Both places are very much inspired by the works of industry legend John Blanche who has always taken an approach to his minis that didn't try to conform to what anyone expected. I think these bloggers are tapping into that sense of fun and experimentation that existed in the infancy of the hobby where John was so instrumental. Then taking these ideas and flying with them using modern techniques and tools (and a lot of plastic toy soldiers that make mad conversions a lot easier than they were back then).

I also saw a very graphic style that differed greatly from Eavy Metal and the boutique styles in Tears of Envy's blog and also via Martin Whitmore. Again, people who were having fun with something totally different and people start to react to it.

I think people are just a little fed up with a hobby that has become so much hard work and now they want to chill a bit. It doesn't mean that the boutique styles are in any way wrong, simply that we are embracing a diversity in how we approach our individual hobbies and this can only be a good thing. I know I'm playing with all kinds of new ways to do things as I've had my fill of trying to paint perfect. My challenge is to get a bit of dirty into my work.

So, I'm planning to play with more dirty painting around here and hope to show off the odd mini from John Blanche who seems to be having all kinds of fun with his figures just at the moment. In a few days I'll be back on here with a load of pics of one of his recent paintjobs and a little insight into his thought process behind such a piece. It's fascinating stuff.

I'll leave you now with links to the blogs and sites I mentioned...

Spiky Rat Pack

Legion of Plastic

Tears of Envy

Martin Whitmore

Hope this will be food for thought and I'll be back with less rambling posts in the near future. And hopefully pics of toys...

Getting the wrong thing wrong...

Been thinking a little about one of the curious sculpting phenomena that I live with as part of my process and thought I'd share. We're into sculpting theory territory here...

Okay, we've all been there. We've sculpted a part of a figure that's wrong and we can't seem to get it right no matter what. Drives you up the wall because you're sure that head is right and yet it looks wrong. Well, sometimes it's actually right and what we haven't noticed is the something else we got wrong that is making the part we thought wrong, but is actually right... err... look wrong (hey, I never said I'd make sense).

One little problem I've had in the past is that a head has seemed too big on one of those ladies in dresses that I've sculpted a million times and I've finally worked out that it's not the head at all. I'd measured it twenty times and it was right. No, the problem turned out to be the collar bone that was too high and jutting too far forward. I fixed that and the head becomes right.

So, when you're sure you've got something wrong and can't quite figure out why be sure to check the rest of your figure to see if the actual problem is elsewhere. You maybe surprised how often this is the case...

150 members... plus a 'check this out'...

Hello from 'extremely busy and somewhat knackered' world.

In the process of figuring (pun) out what to write about in the near future but have a couple of little things to say today.

Firstly Spyglass Asylum now has 150 followers. Woohoo! Must find things to talk to you all about.

But, there's something more interesting to say tonight. I just discovered that mini painting legend Jakob Rune Nielsen (JRN) has setup his own blog and it's certainly worth reading and following. There's an awesome floating fat Nurgle dude there already so pop on over and peruse...

miniatextures

Now, I need to sleep. Tomorrow I've got to sculpt [deleted by Inquisition]. I'm sure it'll all turn out great!

Corpse Cart 3: The base...

In the tradition of movies the first part was the classic (dealing with the cool conversion stuff), the second overlong, probably confusing and with the feeling that you've seen it before (oohh... Steve talks about using washes) and the third part tries to recapture the original with a new twist...

So, we're back to broad modelling stuff and so on... here's the base.

I'll start with a pic. Here's how the base looked before painting.



The details then...

There were many plans for what the base and there was a point where I wanted to use a straight gaming base (in this case a standard chariot base) but once the ox was attached the cart was too long for the base and I didn't want to make a non stadard gaming base as I may as well go to the other thought: diorama base.

The general thought was the cart rumbling along and the battlefield coming to life around it. I originally wanted a lot more raising dead and also wanted them to be zombies but I lacked ideal materials without heavy scratchbuilds so went with skellies... and it'd have to be just a few. One idea that was put to me by my good friend Neil (there you go, I mentioned you) was that the dead were rising as the cart passes so they would be more risen behind it than in front, like a wave of the dead. A good plan that with a lack of skeletons doesn't quite come off but it's there in a mild form.

The wooden base is actually a picture frame with a 5" by 7" aperture. Ideal for my purposes. I started by cutting a rectangle of plasticard to work over and added sides to the back and right side which tapered downwards towards the front and left respectively. I don't like dioramas to be too flat and this gave me a nice, uneven hill framework to build around.

I then went away and constructed the raw materials. I made the skeletons up quickly and onto a sheet of plasticard with a little groundwork around them sculpted in ProCreate. After they were finished and the putty was cured I popped them off the plasticard and glued them into position on the base.

Then comes the tree. I felt the base needed something that would aid the composition and give it some height. A twisted and gnarled dead tree seemed ideal. The immediate thought was the citadel plastic trees which had just the right look but alas, they were far too large so it'd have to be a scratchbuild. On the bright side this gave me unparalleled control over the look of the tree.

Overall, on the base I wanted a feel of motion from right to left. I remember reading in White Dwarf when the new Vampire Counts range first turned up a few years back about how they were designed to all look as though they were being blown forward from the back and I carried this through the diorama. Obviously the tree isn't getting blown but I decided that though it would curl to the right it would then twist all it's branches, to a greater or lesser extent, back to the left, creating what I hoped would be a very pleasing composition.

The tree was started with six long lengths of wire. They were bunched together and then twisted tightly at the middle point to create the trunk. A bit of brute force got the correct shape and this left me with six wires out of each end. They were then twisted into groups of two for a short distance and posed before using single strands of wire for the extremities of the branches. I did the same to make the roots. So the trunk is six wires down to three for larger branches and finally down to one for finer ones.

I then sculpted over the armature with ProCreate to create the bark. Not too much I can say about this other than to be quick and be bold. After the broad shapes were in place I added the striations and so on with a sculpting tool and finally, when the putty was mostly cured, battered the surface with the bristles of an old toothbrush to add a little texture.

Finally I added a few extra twigs by rolling out lengths of Procreate and adding them to the branches and sculpted the broken off stump out the side. With hindsight I'd have gone one stage further and added even finer twigs for a more complex look. BUt hindsight is 20:20 as they say...

The tree was pinned to the base. Easy enough as the wires extended out of the roots naturally. Then came the messy bit. I mixed up a vast quantity of Magic Sculp and packed it over the whole surface of the base and around the skellies and tree. I worked as quickly as possible fighting against the curing time as I then had to put in the textures by rolling real stones over the putty and then press in small rocks and skulls. I also pushed the cart into the putty so that it would have a good place to locate on the base and then added the hoof prints from the ox and the trail of the wheels (yes, I rolled the actual Corpse Cart wheels backwards from the point where it would sit).

So, that was the base constructed and now onto painting. For future reference, I actually painted this before the cart. I almost always paint bases before figures.

Alas there maybe a lack of detail here as it was a messy process that involved a lot of experimentation and mistakes so I couldn't accurately tell you exactly how things were painted but there are a few clues...

I painted the skeletons in the same way as and bone sections on the cart.

The groundwork was basecoated with a mix of Charadon Granite and Khemri Brown then drybrushed with Khemri Brown and Kommando Khaki to lift it a little further. The rocks from a base of a mix of Adeptus Battle Grey and Charadon Granite up to Kommando Khaki and a light drybrush of white. There were then varying washes of Devlan Mud.

The tree was basecoated with Chardon Granite and then drybrushed up by adding more and more Skull White until it was just pure Skull White. Then... four coats of Devlan Mud. This was my plan and it... sort of worked but not that greatly.

Finally I added static grass. I used the Citadel Burnt Grass (the brown one) and drybrushed it after the pva dried with Goblin Green and then up to Bleached Bone.

So, painting done on the base...



Err... yeah... except...

... it really didn't look so great. The pic there doesn't look bad but it all looked a little harsh and just a bit unimpressive. The skellies weren't very neat looking, the tree looked horribly powdery and the static grass felt a bit flat and dull.

Soooo... more work. It was then that I decided that the idea of scrubbrushing that I'd been playing with in my head might be a lifesaver (see the last blog entry for more details).

I scrubbrushed nearly everything on the base (except the static grass) with Charadon Granite to equalise things and it helped. The powdery finish on the tree was reduced, the groundwork started to look natural and it neatened up the skellies giving them a dusty, fresh from the earth, quality. I then added patches of Citadel Scorched Grass (the fibrous green one) over the original static grass and drybrushed it with bleached bone. The extra tones and height helped no end. I added glazes of Kommando Khaki onto parts of the tree to highlight subtly and clean it up a bit. Finally more patches of Devlan Mud and washes of Chaos Black on the groundwork to darken it down.

I had a base that was a little more fitting for the cart I'd spent a good while converting and was about to paint under time constraints. So, it worked out.

And that's the Corpse Cart project. Lots of fun and probably more stress than such a project should be but I got there in the end and my placing third in the Open made it all worthwhile.

My acceptance speech thanks Neil for being the sounding board and sending up the 'half a Corpse Cart' I'd left behind in Cornwall, Colin for coming to the rescue with spare Corpse Cart parts as things went horribly wrong at certain stages and Mike, Martin and Seb for general advice and nagging.

Painting the Corpse Cart...

Before I jump into this post I'd like to extend thanks to izeColt from the Spiky Rat Pack Blog for the excellent front view pic of the cart that you see above. Taken with his iPhone of all things. I'm getting more and more disturbed by how well that gadget can take a pic of a mini...

Check out the Spiky's blog here . Definitely a worthwhile read if you've not already found it :)

So then, painting the Corpse Cart.

After all the conversion work I had to plan how to tackle the figure. Larger figures are not my strong point so my immediate thought is always towards sub-assemblies. Basically I wanted to break the figure down into semi-built components that I could paint separately and then assemble right at the end. This gave me several distinct and smaller projects to handle and it becomes more manageable for me. One thing I was clear on was that, at assembly time, I did not want to be gap-filling. I wanted to literally glue things into place and... done. So, I made sure all the joining areas were hidden. Here we have a photo of all the pieces after a blast of black undercoat and ready for an appointment with my paintbrush...



The first thing I tackled was the base but I want to devote another blog post to that so, assume for the time being that I've already done that. As it stands it was a more complicated process than that for reasons I'll get back to in both this post and the one for the base.

So, onwards with the paintjob. I ploughed straight into work on it with a view to a fairly 'Eavy Metal' style paintjob and quickly found my painting skills had deserted me and everything was going spectacularly poorly. After a day or two of thinking 'screw this' I kind of came back to my recent skirmishes with painting in a much quicker and dirtier style. Thoughts turned towards the idea of mixing these techniques with my classic techniques and indeed playing with new techniques to see what was possible. And thus, I ventured back into the painting process...

First up I tackled the ox. Having decided that this was the main draw of my entry it felt like a good plan to get it done with quickly and while my inspiration was high. I started by layering from Chaos Black up to Charadon Granite over the fleshy areas and painted the bone sections a dull grey working around Codex Grey and not worrying overly about absolute neatness. I then started adding a mix of Tallarn Flesh and Codex Grey to the Charadon Granite for a few sparse highlights and around the edges of the torn flesh, particularly around the gaping hole in his side. I also used these concoctions to paint the exposed guts.

Things were a bit rough at this point and so I used a technique that I'd always had running about in my head but had never tried out. I call it scrub-brushing and I used Charadon Granite for it. Basically I thinned the Charadon Granite right down to a wash level. Then I loaded an old brush, blotted most of it and then proceeded to pretty much add it with a scrubbing motion rather like drybrushing but getting it into all the shading too. This has the effect of glazing all the tones, evening out the highlights and generally smoothing things out. I got a couple of odd looks at the studio when I mentioned I'd been glazing with Foundation Paints. At this point I had a nice, appropriately dull but fairly clean looking ox. I then started to look at the idea I'd had recently for painting blood.

A while back I'd played with the idea of painting blood just using the Citadel Washes using Baal Red. It worked quite well but was too pink in tone so I'd thought a 50/50 mix of Baal Red and Gryphonne Sepia might just do the trick. So, thought I'd give it a shot on the ox. I mixed up a batch and splashed it onto the ox it patches, concentrating around the hole in his side. The washes are quite subtle so I started on layer after layer and each time it worked better and better. Can't remember how many but I think it was four or five. The transparency and subtle way it settles gave me exactly the look I was going for and the reddened section around the hole is one of my favourite parts of the whole diorama.

Onto the cart itself. The wood and metal sections were all painted quite quick and dirty as I lacked much time to spend on them but I think the style works and these areas don't naturally draw the eye anyway.

The wood was basecoated Bestial Brown and roughly highlighted by adding more and more bleached bone. Mostly this was a case of not having too much paint on the brush and using the side of it to pick up the wood grain. Like drybrushing but with slightly more wet paint. Final highlights were near pure Bleached Bone and just on the edges. I wasn't worried about neatness as long as I didn't get paint on areas already painted (the haft is attached to the already painted ox in it's sub assembly). Neatness was then taken care of by two heavy washes of Devlan Mud. This deepened and darkened everything back to a nice wood effect and I then went over again with splashes of Thraka Green wash to give some tones in the wood. Two layers again but just here and there. And the wood is done.

Metals were even simpler. Basecoat of Boltgun Metal followed by a heavy wash of Badab Black. Then I caught a few edges with Boltgun to re-highlight and splashed a few areas with Gryphonne Sepia for a suble rust effect.

The golds were interesting. I generally don't use gold paint as mentioned in previous entries. I used a mix of Boltgun Metal and Burnt Umber artist's ink as a basecoat. Then a wash of Devlan Mud over this. Finally I mixed up a wash of 50/50 Regal Blue and Dark Angels Green and washed patches of this over the gold areas to add a patina. Gave a really nice finish. These areas on the figure are still quite dull but are just enough to add a little extra colour where needed. Going for the gritty and sombre colour scheme risked a very dull result I was trying to avoid.

So, onto the Corpses...

I quickly decided that the corpses should have a uniform skintone. Not realistic especially but it worked well. The basecoat was approximately a 50/50 mix of Tallarn Flesh and Adeptus Battle Grey and all clothing was painted in dull browns and fawns that would show up too much. Highlighting on the skin was added with Kommando Khaki and a few final highlights were added with a little extra white. The rats were painted in basically the same way as the ox. I then scrub-brushed the Corpses with Charadon Granite in much the same way as the ox and then they got that same blood treatment. I ended up with a fairly disturbing look I feel.



The reds on the shields and the Necromancer's robe were painted in much the same way. I started with a basecoat of Scorched Brown and layered up to Blood Red. Final Highlights added a mix of Dwarf Flesh and Bubonic Brown to the Blood red (I'd have just used Vomit Brown if I had any at the time). I thinned a mix of Graveyard Earth and Kommando Khaki and splashed it over the edges of the Necromancer's Cloak. Many layers to build up a subtle, muddy look. Then blood mix spattered over this.

The black parts on the Necromancer were simply Chaos Black highlighted by adding Dwarf Flesh (one of my pet techniques).

The Necromancer's Flesh was basically painted the same as the corpses just with a little more neatness and a little extra highlighting to draw the eye.

The parchments were basecoated Charadon Granite and highlighted by adding Skull White. The text was added with a thinned mix of Bestial Brown and Chaos Black. I finished the parchment with a thin wash of Charadon Granite to tie things together.

Well, that's the main thrust of the painting of this beast, minus the base of course... and I'll get back to that very soon.

All in I'm really happy with how he turned out though there were a number of ropey moments and I quite the project many times over the course of the process. Glad I persevered though, obviously...

I'll finish with another pic of the rear of the figure.

Transportation of Corpses... and Open contests...

MOOOOO!!!!

Sorry for the delay everyone. I've been pretty tired the last week of so with work, getting my Open entry finished up and then working Games Day last weekend. But all worth it as my Open entry, a converted Corpse Cart, picked up third place in the contest. My first win in the Open after a few tries over the years.

So, to the entry itself. Not long after joining the studio I started thinking it'd be cool to enter the Open and the task of selecting a figure began. After a few false starts I settled upon the Corpse Cart. The Corpse Cart is a wonderful plastic kit though one that I really haven't seen painted that many times and certainly not as a contest entry. That was as good a reason as any to make it the project I would go with. Then we hit a problem. I can paint well but the guys who regularly enter the open aren't good painters, they are often the best of the best and I couldn't really compete paintjob to paintjob so I had to work out something else and sculpting and conversion seemed like a plan.

I'd thought about painting a Corpse Cart many times over the years and had always planned to not have it pulled by zombies. Nothing against zombies of course (who would) but I wanted something different. The idea had always been a skeletal horse but I started thinking if I could impress more. A few early thoughts were of getting a plastic regular horse and 'zombifying' it. Then I took a look at the ancient Plague Cart model that was presumably the initial spur of the Corpse Cart concept.



A classic figure of it's day but showing it's age. Then I saw the Ox pulling it. Hmmm, Steve thinks, that could be cool. We we certainly thinking scratchbuild for that and I quickly decided that zombie ox was more appropriate than skeletal ox. So, I delved straight ito sculpting myself a zombie ox. A little way into the sculpting process I started thinking that, without the constraints of casting, it really should be hollowed out and so you can look into the ox and see all the inside of his ribcage and if you peer back into the darkness, his intestines. Niiiice!

After a lot of working out the logistics of how the cart would attach to the ox I had the piece ready. And here's the pics I luckily remembered to take before painting...





With the ox complete I was concentrating on the cart itself. I decided to put the new single figure plastic Necromancer, released with Storm of Magic, on the back instead of the figure that comes with the cart. He fits quite well as long as you open the right arm component out a bit and fill the gap. Just a bit of trimming to get it to fit nicely.

I also added a grotesque face to the bell and generally went around the cart either removing or adding small details.

So, with the conversion done I was ready for painting... aaaand... to be continued. I don't want to turn this one post into a behemoth so will save the painting stage for another post. There will be another after that to talk about the basework... not sure if I have decent pics... hope I have some.

But I'm not going to leave this post without showing you the finished article. Admittedly not the best pic ever but it at least shows the whole figure. So, here it is... The Corpse Cart!!!

Bringing back dirty...

Currently I am knee deep in the painting part of my entry for the Open competition at next week's Games Day. I spent far too long on conversion work and building the base so am currently painting at warp speed. It hasn't helped that there have been a number of false starts on various painting tasks.

I'd originally planned a somewhat Eavy Metal style paintjob with bright colours, contrasts and lot's of sharp edge highlighting but time constraints and my lack of recent painting practice has set me on a different path.

Regular readers will know I'd been playing with one hour paintjobs and a lot of washes in the months before my move to Nottingham. A much dirtier style and it's been kind of fun. So there had been a part of me wanting to play with a more radical painting approach on a competition entry. I'm not going to go into the details of this today as I'll probably be wanting to talk about my Open entry after next week when I see if my new approach has caused me to crash and burn...

However... it does bring me to my point. What's so wrong with dirty miniatures. Now, I'm not talking about sloppy or poor painting but why does it always have to be so clean and meticulous. I'm not just talking Eavy Metal style here, there seems to be a feeling in the larger minis world that painting has to be perfect blends to stand up to microscope scrutiny. There are other ways. When I started painting back in the eighties, gritty atmosphere on minis was pretty much the norm. Now, painting quality has improved so much since then but did we have to leave the style behind?

I had my first chance to take a good look at some of John Blanche's minis a few months back and I found them profoundly awesome. Given that John was one of the major forces behind the modern minis hobby it's perhaps ironic that his style has ended up as something of a counterculture. In viewing his miniatures close up you really can see the thought process and the layers of detail. It's not something that is best served by photographs of his work.

So, I've been on something of a mission over the last week or so to reinvent what I'm doing in terms of painting. Been fun so far. My entry is in many pieces so I'm rather looking forward to the time when I can get them put together and see how the various elements work together. I'm pretty sure it will be something of a departure from my normal style regardless of how well it comes out.

But it's something to think about. Do we always have to be so neat and tidy?

Hopefully I'll soon be able to talk a little more about what I've been getting up to on this miniature. There will be a blog post very soon to introduce you to a new technique I have been using on this figure. I'm calling it scrubbing and it's working pretty well for me...

On to the Demons...

So, it's that time of year. Golden Demon approaches so I must prepare to take yet another stab at winning that elusive Slayer Sword...

... oh wait, hang on. Nope, can't do that anymore as staff can't enter. Fair enough.

This leaves me with the Open competition and it's reputation for being fiendishly difficult bringing in many of the ludicrously talented Eavy Metal painters and Citadel Design Team. Time is fairly short and I'm considerably busier than I was. Tempting to just say 'don't bother' this year. But, I like a challenge so I'm going to try and get something done.

And so we get to the point of this post. How does one approach a painting contest? Obviously there's fun to be had but contests are a lot of work and personally I enter to win (though always prepared to lose without a major strop. I'm usually fairly calm when I get brutalised by better painters).

I always like the targeted approach to such things. I break things down and try to come at it from the right angle. This year I have the Open to contend with and this has it's own challenges. If I assume that I want a shot at winning I immediately can't just enter an unconverted single figure on a slotted base. Last year, Kornel Kozak won third place doing exactly that but I'm not that good at painting. And there are multiple regular entrants who are ridiculously better at painting than me. So, how do you proceed? Well, you look at the fact that it's not all about painting.

I can sculpt a bit so I will bring that particular part of my arsenal to my assault. I would make the immediate plan for there to be something that is an obvious demonstration of my sculpting (rather than lots of subtle details).

And the second prong of the assault is to be appropriate to the imagery of the system you are painting for. I would try to make the judges think 'that's so Warhammer' or 'that's so 40K'. For me, the master of this is multiple Slayer Sword winner Jakob Nielson who produces entries that just ooze with the atmosphere of GW's worlds.

I think doing both of these along with the best I can manage painting wise hopefully offsets the fact that there are better painters. As said, I can live with not winning (and it's a bad idea to enter anything if you can't handle losing) but don't want to put all that time in without at least having a shot.

So, what am I going to do? Sorry, not telling. As is traditional for me, I don't publically show my entries until the day. You want a clue? Okay... Squelch, squelch, crack, squeek, MOOOOO!

So I lamped him...

A lot of my latter freelance and independent sculpting days were spent working on finer details than my normal blank canvas style. I commented often about practically living under my optivisor and I was developing a hump for all the leaning forward...

Now I'm working under new lamps and it's been something of a revelation. My previous setup was two angle poises with 32watt daylight bulbs in each. Seemed pretty good. Now I'm using a non-flicker strip light with three tubes in it. More light and it's setup for minimal glare. It's been an utter revelation. Even working fine detail I rarely have to resort to the optivisor. It should say something that I'm feeling more comfortable now sculpting 9-5 than I was before sculpting intermittently.

So, whether sculpting or painting, be good to yourself and get proper lighting. It can get pretty expensive but it's money well spent if it makes your work more comfortable and better with it.