Diesel DM

Nog challenged me for the #donateorpaint challenge and I managed to finish up Jakes in under 3 days:

Allison Jakes – Front

I’m happy to have completed it in time with a decent paint job.  While I was initially pretty excited to paint this one, overall I found the model to be too busy.  Too many buckles and belts and pads and it all felt detrimental to painting the model.

Allison Jakes – Side

To alleviate the bizarre downhill pose she came with I ended up sculpting a little hill on the base for her right foot to sit on in order to make her not be staring into the ground.  With the extra green stuff I made the little gray boulder in front of her.

Allison Jakes – Back

Pyre Troll

As part of the “alternate” battle box, the Pyre troll was up for getting painted during the Journeyman League. I had so much fun painting this guy.  I used an air brush to lay down the base purple color, then used the air brush to apply some gross highlights from the top, as well as the pink belly area.  Then I went in with two-brush-blending and added additional contrast.  I was quite pleased to have made use of the airbrush for something beyond priming, basing or sealing.  Then came the fists and the real fun began.  For the uninitiated: painting yellow is about as hard as it gets.  You need to thin it way out to get it go on smooth, at which point you can easily need 5 or more layers to get coverage, and if it’s a dark color it’s essentially impossible.  You need to base with something lighter first (MWB or MWH, Moldy Ochre, something with coverage to it.  For this model in order to get a solid base coat of yellow I turned back the airbrush.  I masked off the body of the model using plastic cling wrap.  I can’t remember what I based the fists with now, probably MWH or Jack Bone.  Then I laid down several coats of Cygnus Yellow until it was a solid yellow.  Using the airbrush allowed for lots of very thin layers, whereas using a brush would have clogged details by the time I got solid coverage.

Flaming Fists!

Once I had a solid yellow base I went with ember orange for where the flame starts to cool off as it gets farther from the fists, then some Khador Red Hightlight and Base and eventually mixed with a bit of Thamar black for the extreme tips.  The mouth interior of the mouth took a couple tries as it first was too flat yellow, so I added additional orange red to give it some visual interest.

As is often the case with PP plastics, the only downside to painting this model was the awful mold lines that I apparently failed to completely remove from the arms and shoulders.

Before and After: from bare metal to border legion

It was a long month and I put in a lot of hours and late nights, but I managed to pull off a victory.  I know have a fully painted 35-pt 5th Border Legion army.  Check out Nog’s Painting Cave for a full story on how everyone did.

My painting speed definitely increased as I progressed through this challenge.  The last model completed, the Spriggan, took very little time but still came out look good and matching the rest of the army.  How this speed increase will apply to my regular painting remains to be seen, but hopefully it has a positive impact allowing me to get more painted models to the table.  I have quite the Cygnar backlog of baremetal minis, so I hope to make a serious dent in that.  Once you play a few fully painted games it gets more and more irritating to place unpainted models on the field.  Especially alongside the Stormwall that I painted up, it’s such a focal point that looks so good, bare metal really jumps out next to it.

The painting challenge was a lot of fun and I’m glad I participated.  It will probably be some time before I recuperate enough to take up another such challenge, but the results of this one speak for themselves.  It will be good to try out this crazy force on the table.

For now it’s back to Cygnar, I’ve got some metals laid down on a Sentinel for Kara Sloan’s army.  I’ve only played one game with him, expecting him to take some Shield Guard damage, but instead he took out quite a swath of Risen, so I’d like to keep trying him out in her (and eventually Caine’s) army.  But it needs to be painted!  After that I need to get the Stormsmith’s painted up for use with the Stormwall.

The Butcher’s pent up rage erupted in an almost palpable wave of heat. The Doom Reavers let loose an eery howl as their fell blades began to cut faster and deeper. They moved through the last of the ‘jacks to meet the knights head on, cutting through them to the last. The Savage moved into the next group of bane knights, swinging with abandon as they dropped around him. (more…)