J.Wappel's GK Land Raiders, etc.

Well it's good to be back everyone, sorry about that unanticipated absence. The past couple of weeks RealLife has overrun my defenses and collapsed the entire hobby front, leaving me with no progress to report whatsoever. Things have been so hectic lately I haven't even had time to keep up with my beloved blogosphere [Gasp!] or post up any of my usual blather. After reading this over at Musings of a Smurf and reflecting on it a bit more, rather than feel down about the lack of hobby time I'm instead thankful to have accomplished a lot that needed to be done along with spending lots of time with my family. Thanks for helping to refresh my perspective, MoaS!

Enough rambling for now, let's get to it. All the recent excitement over the imminent return of the Grey Knights reminded me that I never got around to posting all the pictures I had of an amazing pair of Grey Knight Land Raider Redeemers painted by James Wappel of WindyCity Miniatures. I'm fairly certain I remember RealGenuis of BoLS fame showed off pictures of these last spring at that website and maybe also at The Painting Corps. Even so they're such brilliant models it's worth taking another look. Right then, check out these lovely Land Raiders...

While on the subject of WindyCity Miniatures, the next two photos are of miniatures painted by Cathy Wappel. These were also brought to last's years Adepticon and available in the Wappels' seminars for us to see as examples of their work and to admire. Also the Bretonnian was referenced specifically in the class on painting free hand designs to show how their techniques for painting tattoos can be applied in other situations. I know I've posted these here before but why not post 'em again? They're simply awesome!

(I'm not positive but I think that's RealGenius in the background taking photos.)

Alright, I've run out of time for now and need to wrap it up. If you ever get a chance to meet the Wappels, do so as they are some of the sweetest, nicest people I've encountered in this hobby. Great people with great talent... dig it!

Painting Notes for Raptors

Following on from last night's post about using this blog as a place to keep my painting notes, I'd now like to revisit those Raptors marines I started on last December. I foresee working on them intermittently all year long and beyond as I've decided for this army project my goal will be to collect and paint an entire Battle Company of the Raptors Legion. I expect this will take me a long time to complete, making this record of how I've chosen to paint them rather important for me to keep updated.

I haven't worked on these guys in almost a month (last seen here) and likely won't get back to them for another couple of months more as I really need to begin devoting my hobby time to WHFB. Adepticon is fast approaching and only today did I at last settle on what army I will be working on for the 1000 point Fantasy tournament for which I've registered. Once I have finished my Frog Fighters, I'm going to put everything else on hold while I focus in on the square-based side of life. Therefore lest I forget how I painted the first members of my Raptors Legion, here then are my painting notes for them:

Basecoat: Color Primer Army Green

Power Armor: Devlan Mud (twice), drybrush of Traitor Green, edge highlight sparingly with Thrall Flesh, Orange Rust weathering powder

Equipment: Thamar Black, Greatcoat Grey

Auspex Screen: Gnarls Green, Iosan Green, Wurm Green, thin lines of Morrow White

Eye Lenses: Iyanden Darksun, Moldy Ochre, Sulfuric Yellow, Gryphonne Sepia, dot of Morrow White

Chest Eagle and Weaponry: Boltgun Metal, Badab Black, Mithril Silver

Name Plate: Tin Bitz, Dwarf Bronze, Shining Gold, Devlan Mud

Purity Seal Wax: Mechrite Red, Skorne Red, Khador Red Base, Leviathan Purple

Purity Seal Parchment: Hammerfall Khaki, Menoth White Highlight, Morrow White, (Am I missing a wash here? I think it might have been Gryphonne Sepia.)

Skin: Tallarn Flesh, Ogryn Flesh, Midlund Flesh, Ryn Flesh

Base: thinned Umbral Umber, heavy drybrush of Bootstrap Leather, light dryrbrush of 'Jack Bone

Base Edge: Scorched Brown

As I discussed above, I will soon be turning my attention to Warhammer Fantasy. I need to try my best to make up for all the time I lost the last few months while vacillating over what army I'd want to take with me to the tournament. I'm starting from scratch with an all new army and I haven't played any games of Fantasy in years, at least as far back as sometime before 7th edition. This means there is indeed much to be done so this project is going to have to be my top priority. But I will talk more about these plans in the days to come, for now I just want to get back to painting my space frogs. Goodnight!

Knights of Bal Timorea, Part 4

I am happy to report Sir Cumference has finally begun his long journey to the land of California. Safe travels, friend! I finished painting him a couple of nights ago but was not able to get him in the mail until earlier today so I'm keeping my fingers crossed that he arrives on time. Seems my original confidence that I'd finish with plenty of time to spare was rather unwarranted. I'll never learn, will I?

From beginning to end this project was a blast and I'm really happy I decided to participate in The Knights of Bal Timorea. Despite the misgivings I had along the way about the color scheme and concept I had chosen, I'm now quite pleased with my contribution to the group. There are certainly things I wish I could have done better but there are as well some parts of the mini that turned out much better than I had hoped. Also I learned at least a few new techniques that should be helpful in the future so I'd say this was a success. Hooray!

I mentioned back in Part 1 of this series that my inspiration for Sir Cumference was the villainous black knight of the same name seen in the 1946 cartoon, A Knight for a Day. This is the reason why I went with a predominantly black color scheme. I knew right away that I wanted his heraldry to be the letter pi but there were a number of variants that I had considered. Ultimately I decided to keep it as simple as possible knowing even that would be challenge enough for me. My aim with the green background for this heraldry was to be reminiscent of a chalkboard in math class upon which the symbol has been written. I hoped the black would reinforce this Old School Chalkboard feeling and compliment the simple aesthetic I had in mind for the miniature.

I decided to go with red for the helmet's dragon crest because I thought the extra bit of color would be nice since the rest of the model is quite dark overall. Also at one point my goal was to have Sir Cumference finished by Christmas so the red and green helmet seemed at the time appropriately festive. My final reason for choosing to paint the dragon red is that amongst the knickknacks on my painting desk is this little fellow seen to the left whom I picked up decades ago during a family vacation. I thought it would be neat to pay respect to him as one of my longtime painting buddies and to incorporate a little more of myself into the project.

Like I said I'm really happy with how my miniature turned out and look forward to seeing him ranked up with the rest of the entries. That being said I am now a little sad to let him go, though I know I must as it is his destiny. It is the journey for which he was born.

And so with that Sir Cumference and his faithful steed, the warhorse Diameter, set off for distant lands in search of glory. Happy questing, brave knight. Farewell!

Knights of Bal Timorea, Part 2

Once again I've demonstrated my inability to predict how long it will take for me to finish a project. A week of distractions and pre-holiday cheer has passed and Sir Cumference is still not yet complete. I am however feeling much better about the project than I had been as expressed in my previous post concerning The Knights of Bal Timorea. Painting the areas of black cloth on the warhorse and knight helped immensely and I'm now happy with how the model is turning out. I'd like to have him mailed out on Monday so that does not leave much wiggle room if my entry is to be in California on time.

The picture above shows the miniature after the areas of black cloth received a single application of Badab Black. This can be compared to the first picture of this post which was taken just prior to this step. I'm probably going to add Badab Black one more time once everything else is finished as it's still too blue for my liking and I would like to further darken its appearance. Really though from a couple feet away the "black" looks fine, but I think it needs to be darker. Here's another look at the areas I'm talking about, both before and after washing.

before

after

There's not much left to do on this miniature with the only big challenge left to tackle being the heraldry. I have an idea of what I want the design to be and have started to work out how I will go about painting it. My goal is to simplify the process enough for me to be able to replicate the heraldry with some modicum of consistency. I'll have to paint it five or six times on this Bretonnian knight so hopefully it's an easy enough design that I've chosen. Freehand painting has never been a strength of mine so no doubt this is going to be lots of fun. :)

Alright, time to get at it. I hope life is treating all of you very well, take care!

Knights of Bal Timorea, Part 1

I just got home a couple of hours ago from a quick trip with the family to NC looking for our future place to live. It was a good time and we saw a bunch of nice potential residences. Last weekend before leaving town I did, however, begin the review of my current projects and realized quickly what had to be my top hobby priority. The revised deadline for The Knights of Bal Timorea is Jan. 1st, at which time my entry must be in the hands of the folks at Santa Cruz Warhammer in order to participate in the project's finale. Since my knight will be competing with all the other late holiday season mailings, that means I need to send him out ASAP.

I have had more than three months to paint just this one miniature so of course I only get around to it now a week or so before it needs to be finished. Fortunately I have a pretty clear idea of what I want my contribution to this open group project to be so I'm not worried about completing the model in time. I had a couple hours to work on it Sunday night and made some decent progress. In all honesty though I'm really not happy with how it looks at this point and I considered scrapping my initial plan and going in a different direction. The thing is I'm working from a rather specific source of inspiration and so far am not satisfied with the way that idea is translating to my Bretonnian nobleman. I wasn't sure if I even wanted to post a picture because of my reservations over this but since I feel like pressing on with it, I might as well present my potential BIP (Blunder In Progress). Why not, right? Here he is pictured as I left him after that first painting session:

The color scheme is primarily green and black as seen above but I am yet to begin on the black which is the part that has been bothering me the most. I therefore hope once I work on the areas of black cloth I'll start to like it more and that's why I've decided to just continue as planned. If the scheme looks wrong in the end, oh well. This miniature is likely destined for someone else's figure case so I therefore probably won't mind nearly as much sending him off to his new home. And besides, it does seem like it would be a fittingly bizarre, ill-conceived representation of my efforts here at diceRolla. I say this because the whole idea is based on both a cartoon and a tired, horribly lame joke. Let me explain.

A couple of months back I saw a really old Disney cartoon called A Knight for a Day that I remember watching as a kid probably 25 or more years ago. It's a weird cartoon with a very weak hero, "Cedric," whom I never liked so that even as a little one I cheered for the bad guy to win. The black clad, cigar smoking villain in this tale is a true brute and spends most of the story bashing on the hapless good guy, driving him through castle walls and such. But for no apparent reason the writers chose to insert a completely inappropriate joke by naming this badass black knight, "Sir Cumference," a name which from that point on is not worked at all into either the story or any other more interesting jokes. It's used as just a dumb, throwaway math pun of all things. Why? I don't know... like I said, it's a weird cartoon.

And that was it for me. I realized then for SC John's project I wanted to make a tribute to this pitiful moment in animation humor. All the better that I would get to sneak in an admittedly awful joke into an otherwise very cool community effort. Now that's the diceRolla way! Having said that I might now be justifiably disqualified from participating in which case I will find my own suitably shameful way in which to display Sir Cumference, the Black Knight of Bal Timorea. At this time I don't know what that might be but I'll come up with something if I must.

Okay, that's it for now. My plan is to finish this mini off in a couple of days and then get back to those Raptors marines. Happy gaming, everyone!

Citadel Woods Finished

Even though it took me a couple weeks longer to finish painting this group of Citadel Woods than I'd originally planned, I am still very happy and am quite satisfied with how they turned out. So much so that I decided to have some fun taking pictures of them today. I painted the miniatures seen in the following photos at least 15 years ago, but the trees were not finished until 3am this morning. Actually before going to bed I went to put my new terrain pieces away and promptly dropped two trees, snapping off a number of branches and breaking a few leaves. It was therefore another hour before I had everything repaired which made for an exciting conclusion to my late night hobby session.

I love this terrain kit! I think Games Workshop did a fantastic job on it and I look forward to working on my next batch of Citadel Woods perhaps sometime in the coming weeks, though likely not until the new year considering all the projects I'm juggling. I have another three sets of Woods still unassembled which I will paint in the same fashion as these. I like this scenery so much, however, that I now would like to eventually get a couple more kits to be painted as burned up sections of forest that have seen heavy fighting. I think that would introduce some nice variety to the collection and would look pretty cool as well.

That's all for later, though. Regarding the matter at hand, here are some pictures of my newly completed terrain pieces:

Citadel Woods #1

Citadel Woods #2

Citadel Woods #3

A surprise encounter.

"Look out, he's right behind you!"

"Artillery's hard work, lads, so be grateful for the shade."

The garrison was alert for any potential threats...

... but they still didn't stand a chance.

"Hi, I'm a wizard. I wear sensible shoes."

All the [miniature] world's a stage...

These trees were a real joy to paint and it's nice knowing that they'll be of use no matter how much jumping I do from one army project to another. I'm not sure what this coming week will be like for my hobby activities as Thanksgiving is on Thursday, but I will nonetheless endeavor to get in as much hobby time as RealLife allows. If you can't tell by my choice of subject matter in tonight's photos, I've had Warhammer Fantasy on my mind recently so that will likely receive a fair share of my attention.

That's all for tonight... happy painting and gaming, everyone!

AdeptiBlog 2011

It's official, I'm going to AdeptiCon! Five months from now I will once again load up the diceRollamobile and hit the road for charming Lombard, Illinois. I had a great time last year and am very happy to be going back. Three days of rolling dice and hobby seminars, hanging out with old friends and new, and most important of all... celebrities!

"See ya next year, doofus!"

At the last AdeptiCon I filled my schedule entirely with hobby seminars and ended up spending around thirty hours in hotel conference rooms, painting miniatures and learning new tricks. (A lengthy review of these seminars can be found here, many of the same ones are being offered again in 2011.) I therefore initially thought I would only take one or two more of these and focus mainly on the gaming opportunities. Of course this plan did not last long into my review of the pre-registration catalogue as I spotted lots of classes that sounded interesting and helpful. So for 2011 I'm doing close to a fifty-fifty split between hobby seminars and playing games. I also cautioned myself to leave more room for free time but that didn't happen either. Whatever, it's going to be another busy weekend of AdeptiFun.

Each day I'll have one gaming event in the morning going into the afternoon, to then be followed by seminars lasting into the night. I like the idea of unwinding with some classroom time after a few hard-fought hours in the tabletop trenches and feel like I've worked out a good schedule that nicely balances my interests. Also I've heard these shorter tournaments are a bit more relaxed than the big, all-day or even multi-day competitions, so I'm optimistic that the ones I'm playing in will be better suited to my usual gaming disposition.

Friday I start out at 11am with the 1000 point Warhammer Fantasy "It's How You Use It" tournament. I don't have an army picked out and it's been more than four years since I last played Warhammer Fantasy with regularity or gave it any serious attention. I therefore have some significant preparation work to do for this event and I'm psyched about the challenge this presents. Unlike the Privateer Press games, which I did briefly consider for AdeptiCon, I am at least comfortable with Warhammer Fantasy's fundamental game mechanics after years of playing previous editions and think I can get up to speed with the current rules by April. Or it could all go horribly wrong. Either way it should at least be an enjoyable journey.

Saturday morning at 9am I'm registered to play in the first of the day's WH40k: Combat Patrol sessions. Again I haven't decided what type of force I'll use for these games. I have plenty already painted from which I can choose though I would prefer to make something new specifically for the event. It's nice to know that if I get crunched for time I can field something ready to go from one of my usual armies, but I want that to be only as a last resort. I'm leaning toward either mechanized veteran Praetorian IG or scrap huntin' Orks, but I'm really open to anything that seems like fun.

Lastly I'll close out the weekend with Spec Ops: Killzone on Sunday at 11:30 am. I've become quite taken with Big Jim's skirmish rules for 40k and am thus particularly excited to play in this event at AdeptiCon. Thanks to the Killzone Blitz earlier this month my Rogue Trader team isn't far off from being complete and is my top choice to use in these games. I'm going to finish painting them and will then begin field testing to determine which of the Rogue Trader's entourage make the final cut. Playing on the awesome boards b.smoove of A Gentleman's Ones has been assembling for this event should make for a fittingly dramatic finale to my weekend hobby binge.

And so those are the gaming events for which I've registered. There's a lot for me to get done before April, especially since I now might be moving to North Carolina as early as February, which I'm sure would help tremendously with the requisite painting and practice games. Along with the 40k and Fantasy stuff mentioned above I also have plans for display boards, a Blood Bowl team for some possible extracurricular gaming, and even an entry or two for the Rogue Demon painting competition. I'm really happy with the variety of projects which I'll be working on over the coming months in preparation for this and will be sure to post updates on my progress.

Alright, that's it. I hope everyone has a great weekend, bye!