The Road to Baltimore Golden Demon 2010

Games Workshop has announced the date for Gamesday 2010; saturday the 21st of August. My wife(the most loving and generous creature on earth) has made my decade and said we can head on down to Maryland and attend. We have to start saving and getting ready for the trip as we live in Maine, as that's quite a slog for our New Englander sensibilities.

More importantly, I have to start some concept work on my Golden Demon entries. I know I may not stand a chance against the other competitors, but dammit, I'm gonna try! I have to figure out one basic thing; how many categories will I enter? I always planned on only one category....but 9 months is a LOOOOOOOONG time to build models. I have lots of ideas for duels/dioramas...I want to lay brushes onto a large model...and what about something humorous for the open category?

These are very important considerations to be made. Why waste time on a piece you care nothing for? I have always felt I paint better when I have lots of love to put into a figurine, the excitement of working on it fuels my pace. And what about transporting? I can't have a huge awkward piece break in the middle of the trip, I'd probably cry!

So many things will influence my decisions when it comes to selecting the appropriate models to paint, too. I have an aquantaince whom is a GD winner, and he confirmed that it can get a little political, and that some of the competitors can be territorial cliqueish dicks(I intend to bring my own clique, my pals from my FLGS will be attending GamesDay, and my rival, Zach, will be entering with a rather eccentric piece). So much to think about!

Check in routinely for projektlogs and my thoughts on preparing for the run-up to GamesDay 2010!

To Do List pt. II

Well I didn't finish my To-Do List in time for today, but on the bright side I got a lot of work done! Those Ratmen, my Devastator squad, and as you can see, I've black basecoated my dreads and have applied my vomit brown on both of them. It also appears as though bad times could get worse for Obama.

Is Patrick Gonna Hafta Choke A Space Marine?

At last! Devastator squad reporting in! I FINALLY FINISHED THEM! Super happy with how they came out, and the base adds alot of depth and story to these guys. I used walnut scree on top of super glue and flattened the pieces as much as I could to create a textured look, spread some matte varnish on top of that and dunked the base into sand. I let that dry and added some albino moss on a few bases, and added a final coat of matte varnish to seal all of it in! Much love to Wil Davies at Chaos Bunny Studios for the exceptional yellow paint tutorial, they wouldn't look half this good without it!

That means there are only 2 more items left on my To-Do list. I can't even articulate appropriately how happy these guys are done. Sometimes, you can get intimidated by a project. I was so scared to even base these guys I allowed my fear to stop me from working on them by saying "Oh, I can't base them yet, I don't have the materials!" etc., etc.. This weekend was great for jumping in and wading through this morass of work. Writers say the best way to break through a bad case of writers block is just to write. Write anything. Well, I would officially call my dry spell over. Bring those Dreadnoughts on. I will make them my bitches.

These Aren't the Imperial Fists You're Looking For...

Soooo....yeah, someone at Games Workshop is having a little fun at my expense. They made these craptastic blocky looking bitz kits for my boys, then just today GW releases these kits for the Crimson Fists...look at the flowing shapes of the emblems...glorious....

So WTF am I supposed to do? How am I gonna manage to build my IF if GW is only giving love to the CF?

(note; sarcasm oozes off this post. In all seriousness, GW put out some new bits for the IF/CF and I am loving it, mainly because the old bitz kits were bad...real bad...like Galactic Crusade yellow plastic Mainres bad :( )

You Dirty Rat

Ha-ha! Another project bites the dust! Scratch those friggin clanrats off the to-do list. I really went pretty basic on the paint job, scab red on hoods, codex grey on cloaks, covered by a gryphonne sepia wash. The armor was mithril silver, and the sepia wash made it look nice and dirty, almost like dried blood. Perfect for filthy ratmen. I finished her off by gluing small grit art sand to the bases and applying a matte sealer so when I put the sepia wash on it wouldn't disturb the sand, and applying it after the wash might reactivate the paint. It came out darn good if I must say so myself. I was just so surprised that the project came together well.

To Do List, or Procrastination Panacea

Well, I've been sitting on my hands of late, and the work has been piling up. Let's see...a battalion of Clanrats for my friend...that squad of devastators for my yellow boys as well as my mortis pattern dread and an ironclad on the slab. Soooooo, yeah, lots to do! I'll be busting out those rats first, they're easy enough. The IF stuff has been sitting for a looooong time too...guess I just have to get off my ass and roll!

-x20 Clanrats
-x5 Devastator Marines
-Mortis Pattern Dreadnought
-Ironclad Dreadnought

Done in a week? We'll see.

Should You Fail, Destroy All Evidence

Well, the better artist won today, and that wasn't me. We started the competition at 1pm, 5 competitiors, the pieces were chaos knights. It was very quiet the whole time, only the rough scraping of brush on model breaking the tension. In the end, a gentleman whose name escapes me emerged victorious. His piece was the green knight. I placed about 4th. I was very defeated by my friends Zach and Josh.

I want to mention how well these gentlmen all competed, they created simple yet elegant entries and earned their places as superior painters. The subjects were definitely a challenge, namely the fact that they were essentially two models to paint in 4 hours. None of us had ever really painted them either, which I feel was very fair.

My impressions and feelings; I didn't like losing! There, I said it. I did bitch after the contest, and I was the only one complaining. I always espouse an attitude of "If you do not win, the only way you truly fail is to not learn from the experience". But I felt I had invested alot into this competition and I was defeated. Looking back, I regret my actions after we wrapped and were graded, what with all the sour grapes talk on my part. I will not allow this to color my attitude from now on, and I learned some valuable lessons, especially about some egregious mistakes I made in painting my submission.

Rule #1-(and this should apply to all things in life) Keep it simple stupid! Don't go crazy building a wild-ass design with poorly matched colors.

Rule #2- Metallics are an accent, not a paint scheme. If you have more time for metallics to be taken to a quality extent, go for it. Otherwise, refer to rule #1.

Rule #3- Be efficient. Take the time to be careful on the delicate stuff, but haste is a virtue in timed competition.

Victory Belongs to the Most Perservering- Napoleon

My FLGS is sponsoring a painting competition today. Guess where your friendly local painter will be today. Oh yeah, that's right.

This will be my first painting competition. Even though it is a small one, in my mind, it's for all the beans. My arch-nemesis, Zach, may be competing with me today. I intend to take the field today and destroy him. No fancy maneuvers, no tricks, just victory.

I always approach any competition in a certain way. I sometimes feel like a blood hungry berzerker, donning my armor, prepping my weapons....packing my paints :) But in all seriousness. I did psych myself out getting ready for this today. It's going to last 4 hours, we don't know the model we will be given, and I'm not certain of how we will be judged. I don't even know who else will be there! I just know I want to show my best skill, and crush them without mercy. So I guess when you have no reliable reconnaisance on a battlefield, confidence can be the only course. I'll report back when I come home tonight!


c

Silence on the Hill on Veterans Day

Good morning folks, and happy Veterans day. I'd like to take a moment on my little corner of the internet to thank those brave individuals serving at home and abroad in our armed forces. Your work is appreciated, and I wish you all safe journeys as you pursue the goal of protecting America and prosecuting the difficult task of war in the name of freedom. Thank you also to those men and women whom never left the armed services, but whose silent testimony in death have inspired Americans to be the best we can be, and appreciate our rights, purchased with your blood. Thank you vets, you are not forgotten.

I Convert, Therefore I Am

Ah, my Severites. This is just a bit of a change of pace for me. Prior to Loving Yellow Paint, I Loved Kit-Bashing. These boys you can see here are my home brew Imperial Gaurd regiment, the Severites. They had really low-tech(note the las-locks instead of lasrifles), and had a Baroque sensibility to them. More than that however was the copious amount of kits it took to create a squad of Gaurdsmen. I needed a box of IG Cadian shock troops, two boxes of WHFB Imperial Outriders, a box of WHFB Handgunners, and ta-da! Severites!

I put a lot of love into these guys, but they have been the victims of financial and sane constrictures; I'm not rich and I'm not crazy.

To your direct left you can see a Severite medic! He's consulting an anatomy test and prepping his tools for cuttin' and drillin'!

Oooh, look at that heavy weapon team! Yup, those are cannon wheels from the WHFB artillery kit.
These fine fellows are always ready for a scrap, I made sure that bayonets played a heavy influence in their design. I used the feathered cap heads to help denote different squads, it makes modelling sense and it makes battlefield sense!

They've also got some heavy duty backpacks. I intended the impression to be given of a group of hard-core campaigners.

The las-locks not only have bayonets, but the power packs from lasrifles smacked onto the bottom of there Handgunner pieces. Beauty ain't it?