Knights of Bal Timorea, the Finale!

I just returned home from staying out at the beach for the last several days with my family so I'm now catching up on all the exciting hobby goings-on I missed while disconnected. Right away I am delighted to learn that Alex of One Inch Warrior has won the drawing for the Knights of Bal Timorea project. Congratulations, Alex... hooray! Along with the big announcement last Thursday SC John of Santa Cruz Warhammer also posted some awesome pictures of all the entries to the contest. Seeing them together is really cool indeed. I'm grateful to all the other participants and had a fantastic time working on my knightly submission, this was easily one of my favorite hobby projects from last year.

I hope there are more opportunities to participate in community projects like this in future, this was a lot of fun and also a nice little diversion from the usual routine. Thanks again to everyone involved and to Santa Cruz Warhammer guys for issuing the call to arms. Woo-hoo!

Sir Cumference rides again! Only now he has joined company with a glory-hungry band of knights... happy questing, fellas!

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 3

After taking the weekend off from painting I am back at it tonight trying to wrap things up on Sir Cumference, my entry for the Knights of Bal Timorea. I had hoped to already have him in the mail today so I now really need to finish pronto in order to make the Jan. 1st deadline. With that in mind I simply marked out a few dots onto the shield spaces to serve as a guide and then went for it, at last making my attempt at painting the heraldry. I'm not crazy about how they turned out but oh well, so much for consistency or quality. But more importantly, they're done... and yes, the design is supposed to be the letter pi. [cue the sad trombone] Whaa-whaa.

There are a few things left for me to touch up as well as some details still unpainted. The dragon on top of the knight's helmet has only received its initial coat, likewise the stones on the miniature's base. Oh and the horse needs some more attention but otherwise I suppose there's not that much left to paint after all. I went ahead and gave the cloth areas another wash of Badab Black to take away more of the blue tone and am now satisfied with the color. I'd like to finish painting the model tonight and then send him off on his way to California tomorrow afternoon. If not I'll try to find some time during the day to paint whatever remains undone. Looks like it could be a buzzer-beater... :)

My motivation to paint fizzled away since my previous update, the days having been spent with family enjoying Christmas. I nonetheless had several opportunities when I could have picked up a brush but just didn't have the enthusiasm needed to do so. My grandfather had been quite sick for the past couple of weeks and was in bad shape over the weekend before finally passing away late last night. I therefore found myself in a melancholy mood at times and not much inclined to paint. I don't want to dwell upon it now but I did feel moved to at least mention this as it has been weighing upon me.

It's been a sad day for my family but I believe it was cathartic and healthy. With my wife's consent of course, this evening I indulged in some perfectly timed escapism with my first viewing of Ultramarines: A Warhammer 40,000 Movie. In a day or so I'll likely throw together the obligatory review of the movie which every blogger is apparently required to write. I will say for now that it was just what I needed to get me out of my gloomy mood. Who can't smile when chainswords are chopping heads? After that it was very nice to sit down and begin painting again, my hobby mojo restored. I expect to be done with Sir Cumference by 5pm tomorrow at the latest and will then be ready to return to my regularly scheduled hobby projects.

Alright, that's all now... happy painting and gaming, everyone!

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!