Kroot Lone-Spear Bird Rider

 A couple of posts back, I mentioned projects that I'd acquired ages ago and not got around to finishing. This week, I turned to a model that I bought at a show in the golden age of 2015 or so. It's some kind of large bird, from (I think) Reaper. It's certainly made of some sort of rubbery white plastic, like their earlier (not very good) Bones miniatures. I think it might be something to do with the RPG Numenera.

Anyhow, I've been looking for a rider for this creature for ages. I thought it might work well as a Kroot riding beast. The original model had odd little wings and a very strange lower jaw, so I removed them.

 

I had a pair of Kroot legs - well, a pair missing one leg below the knee, so I'd have to make a bionic one. That was fine, but I had no body. So, I made a T-shape out of sprue as a basis for the upper body, and sculpted around it.

I recently saw some superb sculpting by a guy called "pax acrylica" on Instagram. It seemed that he was using a mix of green stuff and milliput, and I thought I'd give that a try. I found that this worked really well: the resulting mixture was softer than green stuff but lacked the slightly grainy, clay-like quality of milliput, and dried hard with a smooth texture like dry soap. I'd strongly recommend trying this.

This made a decent body, and I sculpted a cloak to cover the back of it, so I wouldn't have to do the shoulder musculature. I sculpted a saddle, some straps, and a weird beaky lower jaw for the bird creature. I added some reins, made out of string, which I slightly regret. String seems to always be a bit frayed when I use it on miniatures, as if it's coming to bits. Maybe if I soaked it in PVA first, it might work better. Anyhow, that was pretty much it. I trimmed his gun down a bit, and added a couple of pieces to the base to strengthen the bird's wobbly legs. 

And now for paint!

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To be honest, I nearly didn't post this at all. I simply couldn't take a half-decent picture of this model. Everything was either too dark or washed out - and trust me, whatever you might be thinking that I'm doing wrong, I have tried to rectify. Nothing works. There are quite a few models that I've painted now - the random space people seem to be particularly prone to this - which I just can't photograph. I have wondered whether to continue with this blog, as it's hard to be enthusiastic when I can't display my models - which is, after all, the point. I probably will continue, but I expect the updates will be less frequent.

More Medieval Marines

 Here are some marines. I had so much trouble getting a half-decent photograph of any of these.

This is a "masters of the chapter" model which was missing a head and an arm.

This guy is an unconverted veteran marine.

The two below are lower-ranking marines with basic bolters, based on some pretty battered plastic marines that I got from ebay. This bloke has a Bretonnian man-at-arms head and helmet. 

And the final marine has an Empire shield on his left pauldron. I used chequered patterns for variety and to suggest additional heraldry.

They'll be joining the rest of my knightly marines (named the Shining Knights until I think of something better). I don't know why, but the pictures look as if there's almost no shading on these models. I should get back to painting something more photogenic.

How Do I Get Better At This?

Here is the first picture I ever posted on this blog, back in April 2016 - eight years ago! He was a conversion of a Privateer Press model called Saxon Orrik, who I renamed Algebra Flaps and used as the leader of my Necromunda gang, the Terror Bird Cavalry (it's a long story).

Actually, he's not bad. There's a lot of detail, and I painted him in rather drab colours. And back then my camera was even worse than my current one. 

Since then, I've improved a lot, and I've done models that I'm proud of, like these guys:

I think my painting's got better, both in terms of detail and accuracy, and also in having an idea of what works in a model. However, I'm not sure how to get much better from here.

For one thing, I still don't know how to take reliably decent photos. I've never been able to make much of online advice on this, and trial and error hasn't yielded a reliable system that works each time. My current method is to take half a dozen pictures with my phone and keep the least awful one. I live in the (probably optimistic) view that my models would look much better if I could just work out how to photograph them.

I also find it tricky to progress with painting. A lot of online miniature painting is of near Golden Demon quality, probably by people who earn a living at it or people who are professional artists in some other medium. It can actually be pretty offputting to see how good other people's work is: I think you learn more from people who are a couple of notches better than people who are basically painting the Sistine Chapel in 28mm scale.

It doesn't help that I'm not very interested in learning how to do non-metallic metal, and I don't want to buy an airbrush. I'd like to be able to paint like the old 'Eavy Metal articles that I used to look at when I was younger, which means 28mm SFF models.

So, does anyone have any suggestions? I've leaned a hell of a lot following the people in the list on the right, and I'm very grateful to the people who have commented on my work (Suber and Hobbs in particular!). But if anyone's got any ideas of how to improve, please do let me know.

And Now With Backdrops

 A very quick post here. A friend of mine backed a Kickstarter for two books by the artist Jon Hodgson and gave them both to me (thanks Ruth!). They're sets of backgrounds for photographing fantasy and science fiction miniatures.

I had a go at using the backgrounds to photograph some models. They're slightly rubbish photos but I think the backdrops look really nice. I can even put little captions on the pictures, White Dwarf style!

The Red Coated League claims another minor planet

High up on a gantry, an android patrol is surprised by a desperate bandit

Deep in the hive city, a psyker warns the militia not to touch his bike

Cool, eh? Here is a fantasy version.

Wild woodlanders raid the decadent city.

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If you'd like a copy of these books, you can get them HERE.

And now with added drama...

 After the surprising results of the black box photography for the turnip soldiers, I've been mucking about with the camera, trying to capture the same effect on other models. As my photography skills are pretty much non-existent, it's mainly been a process of trial and error. Here is the converted bounty hunter I made a few posts ago, in "dramavision":

That's, er, quite good really, for me at least. At any rate, it's the first time I've shaded something grey (her trousers, in this case) and they haven't looked grainy and stark. 

Flushed with success, I thought I'd have a try at using this style on the Warband of the Seasons I made a while back, which is one of the "darker" set of models I've made recently. Here are the members of the warband without the "auto adjust colours" option being applied, which I sometimes have to use to make pictures presentable.

They look quite cool, probably because you can't see all the godawful mistakes I've made in painting them. They've got a certain "painting in a house where you wouldn't want to stay overnight" quality. This is how they look with the "auto adjust colours" feature activated:

I'm not quite sure what to make of all this. I like the moody style, but it doesn't show the details terribly well and I think my own models are usually more cheerful than this type of lighting. I don't think I'd use it for the 1950s Tau, say. Anyhow, it's interesting, and I'm pleased with the results. On with the turnippers.