Thursday 26 March 2009

Dire Avenger Exarch


Well, it seems that I'm not able to gather enought time to write a decent post lately. Whatever, Easter is around the corner, and with a few free days at hand I'll do my best to finish all the posts I have half-written as drafts. Or at least I'll try to, considering that some of them are several months old!

Today I'll just post some pictures I took from my latest painting: the Exarch for the Dire Avengers squad. It was intended to be finished for a painting contest in a shop close to my place, and it was indeed finished on time; but took me about ten hours of job, because I wanted to achieve a close-to top grade result. And therefore, instead of giving me one point for finishing an infantry soldier, I'm earning five because I've put an effort on it similar to painting a character - general, farseer or whatever. I think I deserve it after so many hours of hard job.

The pictures are again bad (too dark), and they don't show properly the level of contrast of the paint, but luckily half an hour ago I've finished building a home-made light box that I hope will greatly help me in my future shots. I painted the body of the Exarch first and then I went for the head, mixing several blues and adding turquoise for the hightlights. The weapons were black, highlighted with different greens. They were a bit rushed, as was the white tabard, because I was running out of time for the contest. The standard was the final touch; I freehanded the first things that came to my mind, and maybe should consider to add something else once I've retrieved the piece from the contest.

Hope you like it.






Wednesday 11 March 2009

Miscellaneous


Hi again! It’s been three weeks since last time I posted on my blog. Did you think I was being idle all this time? Not at all! I have a big bunch of news to write here, but not too much time; so I’ll try to be as brief as possible, without skipping any of the things I’ve been doing lately. Hard but...

First of all, painting job. I’ve finished another brood of ten termagaunts, already varnished and ready for battle. This means another ten points for my score, yes! I’ve also started painting two tyranid warriors to complete my five-bug brood; they’ll be ready for next week (and then I’ll add another four points to my score, yes yes yes).

But that’s not all. I’ve been told that there is a painting contest in a hobby shop in my city, and I’m planning to present my squad of dire avengers. For that mean, I have to finish painting the exarch of the squad (another point) and prepare a base to show them in all their glory. I’ve been looking for a circle-shaped one, but can’t find any with the proper size, until this very afternoon I entered a carpentry which was ending business and found some great ones at half price! I’m glad with it, and now I only have to model some terrain with a bit of clay (I’m not scared about that although it’s the first time I model terrain, but any help or advice will be really welcome).


In the picture you can see the base I got, and also two things more: first, a small tool case I’m gonna use to keep the tons of bits I have scattered around my home (that I’ve also bought today – great shopping day indeed); and second, some miniatures that belong to my recently started project... an army of Gondor for the new “War of the Ring” game! I’ve to admit that I never thought of getting some of the LotR minitures, not because of their quality (some of them are quite good indeed) but for the gaming rules used, that I disliked very much. But hey, the new system uses batallions of troops. Batallions! I’m imaging a couple of hundreds of soldiers in the board fighting each other in a somehow “historical” style and... well, can’t stop drooling :) Some of my mates had already started their armies and I simply couldn’t resist... so I picked up an army that was not being used yet, and chose the Gondorians because 1.They seem really easy to paint, and 2.I’ll be able to field lots of beautiful armoured soldiers, that can be led by Gandalf or Aragorn himself! Besides, I’have access to some really special units, like the Army of the Dead, and can include some allies too (although I think I’ll favour a “pure” Gondor army). At the same time, I’ve had an idea about how to make easier their storage, and have decided to magnetize them all to their movement trays, and then I’m planning to magnetize the trays themselves so they can stick to a metal tool case I have yet to buy.


I’ve calculated that I can keep the whole army in a medium sized case. That would be great because I don’t have so much room left at this moment! I’m using some magnets I got from the internet (as opposed to the USA, it’s difficult to buy them where I live). The result is simply terrific; and I’ve started calling it “Lord of the Magnets: the Game”, hehehe.

Wow, it’s late again. I haven’t finished writing all I wanted to, and in fact I’ve left the best part of it! Well, although I’m extremely busy lately, I hope I’ll post the remaining stuff in the following days... I’ve been working on it really hard!