Brexit?

I know. You are accustomed to coming here and looking at painting toy soldiers. For a long while I have felt their is no point writing about anything political. We the people as it where cannot change anything just at the moment. However; my view is evolving and I feel the need to lay it all out once again.

Barty Crouch Jr and Death Eaters

Barty Crouch Jr and Death Eaters

I said I'd end up buying some more of these. I'm not even a Harry Potter fan really. I've seen the films. I thought they were pretty good. I'm not convinced they make my top 10. What I like is collecting I will collect anything. I used to have a collection of bottle caps. I also used to have a collection of miscellaneous cables until I was made to throw them out (I still ache for the loss of my miscellaneous cables). But better than the random hoarded items is when you can collect entire sets of things. Since my wife decided we were going all in on the Harry Potter pre order and I was doing the evil side. I mean now I am doing the evil side. Now I have to own every single evil model. That's just the rules now.

Severina Raine

Severina Raine

Finally got around to painting this Black Library Celebration miniature from this year. She was actually fairly straightforward to do. Red, black, silver and gold are all pretty well staple colors. I do want to say that the sculpt is really fine, really crisp. I know that Citadel Finecast has a really bad reputation, so much so that they don't use the 'finecast' brand any more. But actually the new stuff, the stuff that is designed for resin is a high quality product.

Really enjoyable to spend a lot of time painting a single model too - although this doesn't help my annual target much.

Horus Heresy March army update.

750 points of Emperor's Children

As previously advertised this month we are both expanding our forces to 750 points. I am thrilled that Helen has decided to make a post on her blog (find it in the sidebar) showing off her Salamanders in more detail. In this post I am going to talk about the stuff I have added to grow my force to 750 points.

Horus Heresy February Battle Report

The set up

Something a bit different today. As I have previously mentioned my wife and I are doing an escalation campaign of Horus Heresy. Today we played our first game. 500 points using the Zone Mortalis rules.

Last, and very possibly also least. Peter Pettigrew

Peter Pettigrew

This model has the quite unique combination of being a really lame character, but at the same time being quite a lot of work, from a painting point of view. Which is why it got left until last. Painting pinstripes is hard. Fortunately because peters suit is so bashed up and dirty and torn, the fact that the stripes are a bit wiggley is, I think lost in the general composition of the model. I tried really hard on the face to try and capture his ruddy cheeks by introducing a bit of red glaze. Hopefully he looks like he's unfit and out of breath, and not like he's just gotten into mothers make up box. Otherwise the model was a study in browns. I own a lot of different brown and brown adjacent colours. I'm not convinced that his shirt is quite the right colour. But evil characters in films tend to be lit dark and gloomy sort of colours so it's super hard to work out what colour anything is meant to be. I like the model anyway. Proud of it.

So that's all the harry potter bad guys painted. I think my wife has painted only something like three and a half of the good guys from the pre order because she's a slacker less of a monotask then me and gets really busy doing other equally valuable things. Of course Knight models have come out with a few extra bits and bobs since we pre ordered the entire range, and this set is particularly tempting. At the same time, I'm itching to get back to something a bit more my usual speed; as much as painting the more realistic stuff like these (and also the Warlord Games Doctor who miniatures, seriously if they ever do a 7th Doctor set I'll be picking it up in a flash). Maybe eventually though. The collector in me likes finished collections..

Bellatrix and Troll

Bellatrix

What a successful 'let's just get this done' this has been. I actually went outside today and let the sun touch my face, went and had a picnic in the park with my family (and predictably, pick up some more paint from GW... although this was for helens salamanders) I still managed to get two miniatures painted. Bellatrix is the last character of the ones I have who's just an exercise in painting black. Went for a gray black on the cloth bits and a blue black on the leather bits. Went the whole hog this time and did two highlights. I also tried a new (paler) skin. recipe which I think probably worked out okay. I still think the models look far better in person then they do in photographs. This is probably because I just don't know how to work the photograph app on my iphone to the best of it's ability. I'm quite proud of the face and hair anyway.   

Troll

I'm less proud of the troll. I do stand by what I said the other day. The big creatures in this range just feel like they were sculpted by work experience boy. Troll just feels clumsy and chunky like an action figure. Also trying to colour match to what is actually really-bad-for-2001 CGI was difficult. He's darker then the film troll. I  think. I dunno. I wanted to emphasise the bluish tinge that the troll seems to have in some parts so that he didn't just blend into the cobblestone base thing. And then I went woah thats too bright, and hit it with a bunch of washes (including some purple around the feet and hands). All the highlights were done by drybrishing because it just seemed to suit the models details.

I have one of these models left. Which I will probably paint tomorrow. Then I might have to find something else to paint before we tumble around to March and I can crack on with my Emperors children again. 

Malfoy Family

Malfoy Family

Another day, and more inroads into my collection of models from the evil side of Knight Models Harry Potter miniatures game. Not exactly how I expected to spend the last couple of days, but then the box is almost empty now.

Two nasty pieces of work.

Dementor

Never ever stop when you are in the zone. I don't really know why I am juggernaughting through all these harry potter miniatures. However I am now pretty close to getting all my evil side ones done and getting stuff crossed off the list is always good. 

I have to have a little moan about this sculpt though. The Dementor here is just really really bad. I mean I get that he's kind of formless but you can basically see the lumps of putty in it's spooky robes. It was also as I'm sure you can imagine pretty miserable to paint. Highlight black. Paint some hands. Done.

Dolores Umbridge

Oh man what. Why did they have to sculpt Umbridge wearing that coat cloak thing with the weird black pattern on. She has other all pink outfits that would have been far easier to paint. I tried. I tried. I probably ruined a subtly shaded and highlighted pink in order to do it. This is the kind of rubbish you don't have to put up with when you are dealing with intellectual property designed from the ground up to be part of a miniatures game, that crops up from time to time when you are dealing with something that was originally a film or TV show. I think I did a good job on the face, which hopefully takes away from the horrible cack handed effort on the pattern. Maybe. 

Voldemort (and some acromantulas)

Lord Voldemort

Sometimes you don't paint something because it's massively intimidating and you are afraid you will muck it up. However, after much thought I finally worked out how I was going to paint this guy.