Showing posts with label Hobby. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Hobby. Show all posts

Thursday 18 February 2016

Paint Pot Restoration - Citadel Colour & Wargames Foundry Paints

Hi Friends, while I am still finishing off a whole bunch of miniatures for this blog and I thought I should share this easy paint pot restoration technique with you.

Now If you been painting Citadel miniatures like I have since the early 1980's you may have amassed quite a number of paints, I myself am probably nearing the 200 mark and although I mainly use Vallejo Model Color nowadays but on occasions I still go back to my Golden Age (pre 1992) Citadel Colour ranges and much has been blogged about these superb paints

I still own all the Citadel Colour paints sets and 95% of the paints are still close to full and in good working order the only problem is the many of the lids are broken and on ones that I have not opened for 20 years the plastic can be a bit brittle and snap forcing me to then prise the lid open with a screwdriver.

All the abuse during painting can lead to the ugly pots of beloved paint and the possibly of air drying your paints up so I went looking for a solution.

Now everybody knows that the original Citadel Colour range is still available now as the Coat D'Arms colour range but I didn't want to replace my original paints I wanted to revive them so I went looking for replacement pots, originally I wanted to transfer all my Citadel Colour into pipette type bottle like Vallejo paints but this was going to a lot of hard work and I am limited to about 4 hours a week painting time at the moment.

Anyway did a bit of Googling for a replacement pot solution and first came across these...

Coat D'Arms Empty Paint Pot Deal for £6.00 for 10

Coat D'Arms Paint Pot Lid for 0.15p each

Now the above solution looked a bit expensive once I had added the £3.50 P&P and when I have about 100 Citadel Colour paints with the white lids and then I came across these on eBay from a craft supplies seller...

Ebay 20 Empty Paint Pots for £7.55 (Buy it now) with Free P&P

I ordered 20 and tested them and they were perfect, in most cases I only have only needed to rip the old battered lid of and firmly push new lid on then I was left with a fully restored citadel colour pot.

Big bag of empty pots arrives at my workstation

Classic Citadel Hawk Turquoise was the first to get a make over as the lid shattered on me the other night and it was in danger of drying out.
Some of my Citadel Colour in retirement
And a few more waiting for a make over
This technique also works great with Wargames Foundry paints which surprisingly all the lids on mine were terribly broken and cracked now these are great paints which I use often so it probably just wear and tear rather than a fault with the product.


Wargames Foundry paints really did need saving and are now restored good as new

thanks for visiting now get painting... and following this blog 
cheers
J




Friday 25 September 2015

Low output - Beastmen and other stuff


Hello! Welcome back, it's the end of my holiday season (if only work would stop ringing me during said season) and my miniatures are getting some well deserved attention so I have got back to the task in hand and finished some more Chaos Beastmen, speed painted a classic Citadel limited edition miniature and got caught up in a Yogi frenzy (see below).

First we have preslotta C38 Chaos Beastman 'Horseman', well not much to say about this miniature other than it's a naked bloke with hooves who you would struggle to outrun, I remember as a teenager tittering with my rocker mates at this miniatures todger, I'll leave it at that :D


Horseman - side
Horseman - front
Horseman - side
Next we have a CH4 Chaos Beastman 'Vrak', I don't think he was meant to be based on any animal in particular which seems to be the case for many of this range and he even has a true Beastman name 'Vrak' departing from the old names like 'Koala-man' (if only he existed :D), the miniatures were very bestial a precursor to where we are today I think.  For the shield I did not have time to paint it so I dug out a arcane armorial decal (another example here) and stuck it on and in this case the gum was faulty so I had to set it with Microsol, a must have for any serious painter/modeller as it sets the decal, sinks in and follows the contours it is adhered to. 

Vrak - side
Vrak - side
Then I had a day off and was sorting out the thousands of slottabases into a new box I purchased from Aldi and low & behold I found the missing foot to Tinman (mentioned here in the comments back in 2013, thanks Orlygg :D) stuck to a 40x40mm base so after breaking off the crudely sculpted replacement and a bit of pinning and medium Superglue he was good as new.  Tinman was a limited edition miniature (LE14) who appeared in the Warhammer Fantasy Battle scenario 'The Crude, the Mad and the Rusty' with his maker 'Oxy O'cetylene' the dwarf engineer (I am not a big fan of dwarves so I won't be painting him in a hurry), I went on to paint him aiming for a heavily corroded look, I was testing the new Citadel Nihilakh Oxide techinical paint as I don't seem to be able to find a good copper oxide colour, for the normal rust I used my tried and tested method detailed here. Overall I am happy with the results and to compliment the rusty colours I added some Autumn tufts with leaf fall, which are widely available on ebay.


Tinman - front
Tinman - back

The last miniature on today's post is 'Yogi Yakamoto' from the Citadel Judge Dredd range JD13 Sky Surfers, he appeared in the Judge Dredd story 'The Midnight Surfer',  I painted this miniature after being inspired by several pictures of this miniature on the Oldhammer Facebook group. I copied the colours he was in the comic strip except I accidentally painted his chest which should have been flesh coloured. More will follow as I enjoyed painting this miniature.

Yogi the Sky Surfer with original Citadel flying base
Banzai! Yogi's Sky Surfboard

Here's my new box from Aldi with all my spare slottabases neatly organised, we'll see how long that lasts, plastic shields next. :D




Thanks for visiting now get following this blog.
J

Thursday 25 June 2015

More C38 Chaos Beastmen

Hi, for today's post we go back to 'C' series Chaos Beastmen, luckily they vary so much you don't really get bored of them.  I have painted four new additions which all are being drafted into my Morcockian 'true' Beastman regiment.

Four new Chaos Beastmen ready to join their friends
The first Beastman in this post is not actually a Beastman but a Devil from the much loved C18 Night Horror range,  This miniature started life as a Runequest Broo (the original Chaos Beastmen, see Broo previous mention) and he can be seen here but at some time later must have had his arm re-sculpted with the bottle removed replacing it with him making a demonic sign before going into the C18 slottabase molds. His head was available separately too in the Runquest Broo range.  Last thing I would like to say about this miniature is that the original Runequest Broo swigging the bottle appears in the ranks of Byran Ansell's Chaos Beastman regiments here's a photo (thanks Steve), a great pedigree for this miniature indeed.


Devil Night Horror - front
Devil Night Horror - back
Next we have have Sea-horseman from from the C38 Chaos Beastman range, a bizarre creature with armour festooned with all sorts of aquatic creatures and a nicely sculpted chaos star on it's shield, you may have noticed that many of the later Realm of Chaos Slanneshi Chaos Beastmen resemble sea life of some sorts, could Sea-horseman have been inspiration for these miniatures?   I have two more variants of this miniature, Fishman  and Fishman with Slug man's head. (I think Sea-horseman is another miniature I have to thank Steve for)


Seahorse man - front
Seahorse man - back
Next we have another C38 Chaos Beastman simply named again as Beastman who appears to be a variant of the C38 Eagleman, I was not overly keen on this miniature and only painted him for completeness, it's not a great sculpt, he appears to have a grotesque little head grafted onto the side of his head.


Beastman - front
Beastman - back
And finally we have another C38 Chaos Beastman that you don't see around often again simply named Beast man, he was in a terrible condition with lots of brittle metal, the bow just fell off and needed gluing back on, oxidation needed brushing off with a hard brush but the nice thing about this one is that is he is armed with a bow  a rare option for Beastmen, I did not really feel the Beastman vibe with this miniature as it looks more like a Half-Orc or Goblinoid, I wanted to give him an unusual skin colour as I did not want him to be mistaken as a goblinoid so I opted for Vallejo Pale Blue which worked well then I realised the finished miniature looked like a cross between Rogue Trooper and an Avatar Na'vi but I am happy with it and he fits in nicely with the others. This Beastman is a variant of the Horned C38 Beastman (better picture to come) who also has variant not standing on a rock when it was later converted to a slotta base mould.


Beast man with bow - front
Beast man with bow - back
Beast man with bow - side
Here is how my Beastman units are forming up on the Chaos shelf in my display case.


Chaos Beastmen regiments ranked up
The chaos shelf in full.


Chaos Shelf
The display case in full, a recent present from the in-laws.

Showcase with my favourite miniatures displayed
I hope you enjoyed this post, now get following
thanks
J
























Wednesday 24 June 2015

Painting Rust - Brogar Brainbeater

Hello Friends, in this post I would like to share a simple technique I used for painting rusty armour, this is the first time I have ever used it on a standard sized miniature but often used it on my Imperial Guard tanks back in the mid 1990's when we were playing Warhammer 40k 2nd edition.  I needed a short break from painting Chaos Beastmen so I when I went through my storage box of chaos miniatures and selected victim for this experiment, who but none other than 'Brogar Brainbeater' fitted the bill with his heavy armour and halberd, he started life as a F5 Marauder and was eventually discontinued and incorporated into the Chaos Thug range, I really like this heavily armoured miniature and wanted to give him the degenerated look of a knight who had turned to chaos.

So this is how I went about it.

What you need:
An old Brush 
Tub lid with rim to keep your crushed pastels on as they are really messy 
White Spirit (I used Winsor and Newton but any should be fine)
2 artist pastels Orange and Terracotta both crushed
A can of Army Painter Platemail primer spray (only £3 in my model shop) 
Vallejo Oily Steel acrylic paint




Method:

  1. Clean up miniature as usual.
  2. Spray with Army Painter Platemail primer.
  3. Constantly wetting the old brush with white spirit,  dip and mix with the Terracotta crushed pastel and paint liberally over miniature getting it in the recesses while leaving some raised areas in the original platemail colour, it is important to keep dipping your brush as the pastels soak up the white spirit in lightening speed and it will go dry.
  4. do the same again with the crushed Orange pastel working it on top of the Terracotta but leaving some Terracotta still visible.
  5. Any raised areas where you wanted to show the original metal but went over it with pastels revisit and carefully paint over with your metal colour in my case Vallejo Oily Steel.
  6. Paint in your details, horns, belts, etc
  7. Base as usual and Acrylic SPRAY varnish, do not brush varnish or you will be left with a reddy brown mess as the pastels go powdery when dry and will reactivate.
  8. You should now be finished, quick and easy.

Here the final miniature I hope you like the results I think it is quite effective.


Rusty Brogar Brainbeater - front

Rusty Brogar Brainbeater - back

I hope you enjoyed this post and let me know if you give this technique a go.

thanks
J


Friday 24 October 2014

On The Workbench - October 2014

Hi Folks,
Apologies for my lack of posts, here are few photos of what is happening on the workbench at the moment to tide you over until I finally finish the miniatures (hopefully soon), as many of you will know fitting miniature painting in when you have a seven month year old baby in the house it is quite tough but the odd half hour sessions I manage to fit in are starting to bear fruit.  I probably started too many miniatures at once.

This is all work in progress.

Here are C27 Beastman 'Shearmone', C38 Beastmen 'Crab man', 'Camel man', 'Owl man' and an old Warrior Maiden 'Mace lady' from the Citadel collectors series.  All they need is basing.



Next we have Chaos Wizards from the Citdael collectors series and a couple of Chaos Familiars 'Daemonet' and 'Lune', these miniatures still need plenty of work.



Next we have miniatures that are still being prepared, two cats given to me by Cheetor over at Sho3box (thank you mate) and two Squats from the RT601 Adventurers range, 'Squat Miner' and 'Squat Engineer'.



I hope to have these painted and up on the blog soon,

Thanks for visiting and get following.
J

Tuesday 12 March 2013

Hobby Room finished

Hobby room now set up now time to start moving all my stuff back out the loft :D Decorators finished, carpenter been and gone and carpet fitted today. Thanks god for Ikea.

Hope you like
J