Lanyssa Ryssyll

I like to wind down the painting year, and spend December knocking off casual projects. Lanyssa is one such project. I didn’t hate my previous attempt, but felt it was time to update her. Keeping Althai’s Lanyssa on the screen I gave her another bash.

I’m really happy with the skin, I started dark and worked my way up to light, and I think it’d be my “go to” method for skin on small-based models. Because your only going in one direction with your layers, you don’t have to try and hit recesses, potentially rubbing paint on the wrong areas. I’m not so happy with the hair – the decision to dry-brush it may have been the wrong one and the effect doesn’t mesh with the rest of the model. And she’s my first attempt at pulling off Object-Source-Lighting (OSL), on the glowing gems (hanging down from her waist). It’s subtle, but does look very cool. After deciding on the blue, I was not sure what colour to paint the pants/leather – I choose Umbral Umber (a really dark brown), because I wanted to keep the blue as the focus of the model. She’s essentially two-tone (with the cloak being a neutral grey), and almost “urban” in feel. You will note that I have no painted the eyes – after being happy with the face I didn’t want to ruin my good work with jabbing paint into the eye socket. One day I’ll get the courage to do it all, but not today.

Every time I look at her, I just want to paint a Cygnar army.

Up Next … … Secret Xmas Project

Titan Gladiator

Apologies Internets, but I owe you some posts. I’ve been busy painting and playing, so have not had a chance to upload new photos until tonight. Here is the first shot – the Titan Gladiator. I learned a lot from painting the Bronzeback, and that meant that painting the Gladiator went a lot smoother. I undercoated in black, and it has resulted in much darker golds and an overall more menacing feel to the model. I’m also hitting my stride regarding the whites and they’re starting to look smoother (still room for improvement).

I made a custom base for this model in an attempt to raise up the tusks and alleviate the “titan problem” of sticking out too far. Its better, but still too much overhands. At least now, however, he can chomp on a small/medium based model and not put its eye out.

A fantastic model, both rule-wise and sculpt-wise, I’ve just got to get used to trying to slam things.

Next Up … Lanyssa Ryssyll

Aptimus Marketh

Aptimus Marketh, aka, “MC Arketh” (just look at those ‘Hammer’ pants!) – flew off the paint brush! All told, he took just over 2 sessions (about 4 hours) to finish – and I am pretty damn happy with the result. I’ve got my white cloth mojo happening, and the Skorne red blended nicely. I think the flesh tones could be tighter, but am still happy. I even didn’t mind painting the gold!

After looking at him on the base, he’s leaning a bit forward for my liking, but he’s still an impressive model – which will hopefully translate on the field.

Next Up … Titan Gladiator

Nihilators

My first (real) attempt at painting a full “cannon fodder” unit. Rather than attempt the entire unit at once, I’ve broken them down into two groups of 3, then two groups of 2 – knocking them off while painting other things (like Tyrant Xerxis, or Master Tormenter Morghoul). The unit does suffer for consistency – I’ve changed the way I paint white cloth since I did the first three, for example – but it’s getting done!

These are a nice model to break up the other Skorne with, purely because they have so little armour – and it helped me work on my Skorne flesh tones. I’m still not painting flesh as smoothly as I’d like to, but I think that painting the darkest layer first is paying off as I don’t have to go back so often and fix it up – resulting in faster models, which I think is important for units of this size. Sure, I could spend 10+ hours per model in the unit, but I’d prefer to spend 4 to 6 and not burn out.

Looking at those numbers, its quite shocking how much time I spent per model. I’d never really looked at things that way.

Next Up … Aptimus Marketh