Turelio's Hobby Hoard

I've almost got my painting desk clean again. It's been months since it was this clean, and every time I try to do anything here it gets worse. Hopefully I'll be doing normal painting again shortly...

I have a two in one update! I've been really busy the last few weeks which has worn me out and stopped me painting much. On top of that, a lot of hobby time was spent prepping for the next chapter in the DnD game I run for my friends, The Band of Bakers: Currently the Band of Bakers are on the second of a series of trials set to them by several gods, each of which has an association with a member of the party. This weekend they faced the second trial, which usually involves a party member being separated to prove their skills while the others fight, effectively splitting the party for a few rounds. This weekend the party's ranger Varis faced the Trial of Melora, and the Bakers were victorious. Everyone seemed to have a good time, including myself, aside from the party wizard Miri, who wasn't able to make it, and was therefore planeshifted away for the game (With soon-to-be-mysterious results!). My friend Garry managed to nab some photos during the game, and kind...

At dinner tonight, I made the following post onto Facebook from the restaurant... I've never played or ran a Cyberpunk RPG. I have very little knowledge of the genre. But I feel I need to run one now with everyone starting with a similar set up. This popped into my head: You take your seat inside the small booth, sliding behind the table. Your Contractor slides into a matching seat across from you. The circular room houses another seven near-identical booths, and you watch them fill up over the next few minutes - Pairings of Contractors and Data Jockeys in each booth, glancing around at the others and tapping at menu screens the same way you do. Five minutes go by while you're forced to listen to a pop song from five years ago remixed to a digital beat that could possibly have been sourced from the latest stock market feed. That's been the rage lately.  Your drinks are delivered, ushered into your booth by a team of serving staff wearing the most up to date fashi...

Apologies for the lack of updates lately. After prepping for PAX Aus, attending, travelling back, then getting back to getting my life in order, back to work, and being knocked around with hayfever, I've had very few chances to blog. Anyway, this is a quick shot of my next project - some Haqqislam models from Infinity by Corvus Belli. I'm planning on trying out the Sketch Style of underpainting (See Contrast Minis for a better description than I am able to give) to see how quickly I can get them done. These have been sitting on my desk for a while, and even if they are quick models to test out a style on, it will by fun to at least get some more progress on them, as well as try out a new technique to see if it is something I want to try using more in the future. 

Chatting to friends on the weekend, I mentioned that I had a plan for what projects I was approaching next. As painters, we all have different ways of planning, however I get easily distracted, so I need to do things like this to stay focused. A few months ago, I spent a few dollars on an A4 whiteboard from Daiso and some Command Velcro strips, and mounted this thing on my wall: The original plan was this. I divide my projects into Army (Low to Middle quality), High quality, and the build projects I need to do. I can list a few things, and if I spot something later I want to do, I add it to the list in red. That way I know to add it to the next list when the current list is complete. You can also see a few time scrawls on the board from when I was doing my final work on the Crossroads 7 a while ago. See how the penmanship degrades? That's sleep deprivation, everyone... So this has helped me focus a bit better. This is a habit which needs changing, so won't happen instantly. I s...

Just a couple of quick photos of Deathsleet from the Reaper Bones range. It was fun to paint, however I'm not too fussed about taking proper photos at the moment. I spent a bit longer on the base than I originally planned. I put a few fake jewels on the base, keeping with the colour scheme, and then covered most of the base in snow. This was done in two stages, first with white texture paste mixed with Reaper Pearl White, and then with gloss medium mixed with GW snow powder for the melting snow. I was considering doing some powdered glass for snow effects as well, however after handing it to people, including small kids, at Gammacon in Canberra all weekend, I'm glad I didn't. Anyway, it's been a fun project, and gave me the chance to try out some snow effects I hadn't tried before. Honestly, I'm more likely to use the gloss and snow powder than the texture paste in the future, as I like the effect more.

A few Wip pictures of a Reaper Bones dragon I'm working on. It's a bit more experimenting with the airbrush and masking methods. It hasn't turned out exactly as I wanted, but at the end I'm aiming for a finished tabletop piece with a few interesting details. Right now, I just have to finish the base.

Alright, so I tried to post this a few months ago, and realised earlier in the week it never went up. So I'm going to post these up here and have a chat about what I remember. In my mind, I'm going to blame the killers I was on when I was meant to post this for it not going up the first time, but in reality I was only on Panadol, so I'm either a liar, weak, or both :D This was the start of the process, as I built a few of the Samaritans (Or whatever they are, I just kept calling them Samaritans) when they came out of the bags with the Scythe Witches and things from the Strain. These heavy weapons guys caused some confusion at first - I managed to get a mispack where I got an extra body. There was a moment of checking around for the missing parts before I realised what had happened. I'm sure the spare body will be of use one day though.  These were quick to build models, and they plugged together well. I was using a lot of zip kicker as I did t...

Crooligans! Now that the Crossroads Seven are finished, I've been trying to clear a few projects that have been sitting reasonably unattended for a while. The crooligans have been mocking me for a while, what with their being really useful in game, cheap, and only slightly green, so look worse than unpainted models. Anyway, over the weekend at a group painting day, I managed to get them reasonably finished, with the final touches done when I got home on Sunday night. I like that I get to use a muted green and bone pallet for most of the model, then some crazy colours when it comes to the skin, and a few other parts (purple patches crop up here and there) Those pinks and reds turn up in the skintones of the Crooligans, and the bright green was a mix of Reaper Clears in order to give them some creepy glowing eyes.  This is just before I left the painting day. Everything was done bar the oil washes and static grass, however I did a wash of darker brown over the hair...

Well, this was fun! As gruelling as it was to remain focussed on one project for so long and keep it consistent, this was fun. And I'm really pleased with the end result. What follows below are photos taken during the process, some notes on each model, and the final group photos. Admittedly, few Malifaux models are composed of few pieces. There were several sessions of constructing the models, as well as gap filling, and that is most likely the most boring part of the experience. I had already developed and idea on how to do the bases early on, and knocked a few elements out of the mix as I went (Paper posters advertising the band,  multiple different kinds of rocks apart from the two that ended up being used), but kept a few others. Planks of discarded wood from the collapsed Crossroads Hotel was something in the original mix, which is why a few are singed, however they ended up being used to support a few miniatures as well, which was a happy occurrence. The base textu...