Back to basics - Hacking old lead like in the old days.

If you've ever read the little text at the top of his page, you might have guessed I'm a bit of a Jes Goodwin fan like many. Now the thing is, I started my journey into the hobby by buying chaos champions and warriors of his in 91 and although I did paint the first 2 as they were (with thick coats of enamels), I quickly tried to do my own conversions, inspired by the magnificent exemples in the books and magazines.

Eldar space fleet in progress and some frills and fauna...

Back in December, some WIPsters and I vowed to go on a buying embargo. We've done that before and the idea is to basically stop buying and hoarding models  and to reduce the leadpile or at least stop its uncontrollable growth (saving a few coins in the process ideally).

We can do it anywhere - Holiday chaos conversions

I believe you've already noticed that summer was upon us and that with comes Holidays and jours of sunbathing, hiking and visits all around...

All of this is nice and good but does that mean that the vast flows of creativity that inhabit us just just because we're abroad or too close to a beach ? Of course not.

There are always opportunities with kids napping or sleeping at night, little hobby havens for those who just can't really take a break from their little toys...

Since reading cheap literature and taking naps myself is not for me, I've recently opted for a good way (for me) to use free time in holidays (I might reconsider things when I'm not single).

Ars Moriendi - A life in progress post

(Some appropriate music first)

It's common knowledge that life's a funny thing. You'll hear the "life's worth nothing but nothing's worth life" motto and all kinds of ready made predigested thoughts when getting on the topic but rest assured I won't bore you with any of it...

It's just that life's funny, you get a slap from one hand and a caress from the other... but memento mori I suppose (OK I did continue).

Why all the weird (and let's face it, slightly gloomy) tone ? Well because among a massive dose of real life that hit me in a face like a trout, some good things have immerged. One of those is that Brian Roe AKA the Roebeast from the Magical house of sunshine blog, has kindly organised a giveaway to celebrate his 200th follower and I've somehow managed to be the winner of it thanks to a fluke !

I think giving away a present in which Brian put some time and effort makes it even more valuable and the excellent thing about it apart from its quality, is that it blends just nicely with my bases and their sort of purplish tone.

of the influence of Japanese culture on my view of the Grim darkness...

Sometimes you just work on too many projects to finish any. Such is my hobby right now...

A full plate of miniature goodness, just needs to be dealt with in the right order... Can you spot some things you recognise?

Steal your face - part 2

Some conversions require dedication, yep, that's right, dedication.

The venator bounty-hunter for confrontation are not a gang you cast "resurection" on that easily...

I took some plastic bits anddid some dry builds (well with some blue-tack) for them during new year's eve :

 but I was looking for some proper heads.

This resulted in me trying to steal the heads of other miniatures by taking prints and casting them in resin but it proved to be quite a failure as you can see in that post. 

The idea of making the band has no left me at all so I took a little trip on the background  side of the venators to see what could be done.

The necromunda redemptionists are going to offer their heads in sacrifice to the Venators but Mutantdale made me feel remorses about cutting the heads off of them for this purpose only. So I decided to go back on the copy way...

This time it would be pressmoulding.

After some very interesting discussion with Shoebox, I opted for Oyumaru and greenstuff and used this tutorial by the very same Shoebox.

Oymaru is the exact same product as instant mold, the only difference being it is not sold by the same companies and comes out with silly colors. 

I opted for Oyumaru because :

- It's cheaper

- You can have many colours (though it has no impact on the modelling whatsoever)

- It's japonese (Yes I'm that superficial)

Basic ingredients are simple :

- Some Oyumaru sticks (I used the pink ones because my daughter asked me to)

- some models

- some hot water

- 3 minutes

Pour some hot water in a mug and make yourslef and your wife/husband a nice cup of tea with the rest.

Cut some oyumaru pieces and put them in the hot water for 3 minutes.

Put the  pieces in sime absorbant paper to avoid having water drops on it.

And then apply them on the heads of the models like a maniac, screaming horrible things in a mad laughter...

It looks fairly similar to the siligum and resin casting so far doesn't it?

Well now you will see how the dreaded pink-blob gang is far superior to the blue-blob head gang...

Forget the flashes around the heads, this will be fixed, i even think I'll do another batch ut making sure the oyumaru mould is perfect, I kind of rushed on the first batch and I've lost some details but second batch should be good. I'm really liking how things are turning out. The lady on the far right side won't have the complete masl but just a part like a sort of venitian mask.

While I was at it, I also built the 2 nobles I had in mind :

They will have fancy hairdo like this :

or this 

If I manage to sculpt them of course...

Apart from that, you can see here that the nimber of Work In Progress is quite high on the table at the moment. 

- 20 red redemption cultists

- 9 chaos androids

- 7 sensei gangers

- 1 sphincter beast

- 1 plastic Kaleb Daark

- 1 adventurer paladin

- 1 adventurer cleric

- 10 marauder archers

- 10 chaos warriors

- 1 chaos lord

- 12 slaanesh cultists

- 3 dark elf crossbowmen

- 2 minotaurs

- 1 wizard

- 1 chaos grav-attack

Hopefully I should be able to lower the number a bit...

Just when I didn't need anything more on the "to do" list , I decided to build bases for my chaos dwarf swivel guns... (sorry about the very bad pictures but you get the idea)

I guess I can consider myself busy for the time being... ;)

You think I ain't worth a dollar but I feel like a millionaire...

Yep, today was a bit special, I actually felt like a millionaire. People in Grenoble (where I live) have seen me dancing in the street with my 3 years old daughter like a mad man :

I won at something for the first time in my life...

Let me explain a bit. I'm not the competitive kind of guy. I tend to avoid competition though I never shy away from emulation. Hobby wise, competition is something I've always avoided because basically I don't have what it takes but also because in my teens, I used to live in Nantes where there was the most insane concentration of golden demon winners, people who really had a huge impact on raising the artistic and technical level of this competition... (the guys who were actually the first to go and get slayer swords outside of their own country) real monsters I mean.

Though they were all very nice to see at the local hobby shop (and even in the GW store which was quite a nice place at the time but that's another story), it was clear I was not playing in the big league.

I recently left my now famous Rooster knight at my new Hobby shop (with golden demon winners there too ^^) which has a monthly competition.

I came there this afternoon to pick my Rooster knight and to leave my last demon hunter and I just learnt that I had won January's event !

I won a 5€ voucher which is not much but the very fact I won something has made my day ! 

I know there are some really good painters amongst my readers and even some genuine golden demon winners so bear with me, I know this is no great achievement but this is just the kind of things which boost my hobby. Getting some nice comments, constructive criticism and sometimes a few thumbs up or a little prize is just priceless to me. It just means I'm not doing this alone at my desk like I used to before starting this blog.

Emulation it is, now I want to to even better because I see so much great stuf around I want to come up with my personnal best too.

As always I'm incapable of concentrating on one task alone so here are the things which are making their way at the moment :

A unit of chaos droids led by a poor necron conversion, with bases done and a slight zenithal grey spray over the black base coat. I'll just paint the edges in light grey, paint the metal areas in mithril silver and then I'll wash the whole model with diluted black and matt medium. I'll just have a few details to add (I'v recently found some very good inspiration for them so stay tuned) and they'll be good.

You can't really tell by looking at the pic above but the sensei gang is doing well for the time being and though I wanted to paint them all one by one, well, old habits die hard and all so I just came back to batch painting... All flesh parts, grey parts, blue parts and dark brown parts have been done so far.

The deostick grav-attack is nearly done, I'v found the proper reactor donors (old color pens from my daughter) for the sides so I still have to add those with some green stuffing and he's good to go to the painting range... The base has to be refined a bit but the gap filler used is heavy enough to make a good balance for the model.

Kaleb's doing well too with not much left to do. I finally came up with completely random black and white patterns which are not really artistic but which are doing the job I think :

I forgot to say that I used a little trick taught by Stygianheart which is very easy but helps a lot. I just placed a few drops of PVA glue (just try different sizes) with a drop of superglue in the middle. The result gives some convincing exploded pustules and organic shpaes depending on the amount of PVA and superglue used.

Here are the tests on some Pcard and you can see on the grav-attack above the result on a finished model.

Thanks mate, keep good tips like these coming !

Every fortune begins with a single penny...