Agnar Steelspray

Short post today, here's the beginnings of my character Fell Caller for Riven Bonds!

Darius

Painted this guy up for the P3 painting competition where he took a gold coin. He was painted using an airbrush and the traditional two brush blending method. He was also finished after I had a spinal tap, so that was fun. 

Tarnished copper Axis WIP

Among many other projects, I'm working on this guy.  

The copper is slow going, and needs some work, I believe.

The mold line on the leg will be covered by a layer of gloss coat, then painted over.

Gen Con P3 Gold Gunnbjorn

I spent the better part of July and August painting this guy up.  I'm pleased with how he came out, and how he did in the competition.  Mrika's model was absolutely gorgeous, and there were many great looking figures to compete with, and I'm proud he did well.

Gunnbjorn was painted with a mix of airbrushing and brushes.  I tried to keep to a cooler scheme with a few warm items here and there, such as the MoW helmet and the browns of his belt and cap.

If you feel like voting on him, here's the CMON link.

Comments and questions welcome!

Gen Con 2013 and P3 contest figures

This Gen Con was my return after two years of being unable to go.  I wasn't able to go two years ago because I got married, and last year I was unable to go due to another vacation that was in the way.

As usual, I had to enter a figure in the Privateer Press painting contest and this was the first year I entered more than one figure.  I thought for a good while about what figure I wanted to paint, and eventually settled on Gunnbjorn.  I know he may not be the most loved Trollblood Warlock, but he sure is a fun model to paint.  The other model was the Spriggan that I featured here a few months ago.  I didn't intend on entering him in a contest when I was painting him, but it is good to know a figure I painted for fun can still earn a gold coin in the contest.  

I'll be taking better pictures in the coming weeks, but here's what they looked like in the display case.

I was trying to update this blog on weekly basis before I stopped so I could focus on my Gen Con painting, but from now on I'm going to update a little more infrequently.  I used to try and have a new model every week to showcase here, so that meant I rushed my work sometimes.  I now know what I want to focus on with my painting for the next year, and that means I may take a little more time per figure.  I received some good feedback on Gunnbjorn and will be working on implementing what I learned.  Rest assured, the figures will still keep coming, but they may be a little more spaced out.

Gen Con was a blast, and I can't wait until next year!

It's Con season!

And with Con Season comes painting contests!

This means this blog is going to go dark for a while. 

When I start to paint for contests I sometimes loose interest in what I'm painting, which results in me sitting figures down knowing they will never get finished.  Normally, when I paint figures to a table top standard, like I'm doing with my Trolls, I can push through and throw pictures up here.  When I'm painting figures to a competition standard, I can't just work through the figure unless I'm feeling really good about it.

In past years, I've been able to get Silvers in the single figure P3 painting competition.  I came in second to Jennifer Haley one year and second to Marike Reimer in another, which to me was pretty awesome.  To see my figures next to theirs was pretty encouraging.  When Privateer changed the process to coins, I received a gold coin for me entry, and instantly knew what I could have done to push him over the edge to get that trophy.

I plan to enter a figure in every category except the diorama portion.  I have an idea, but time constraints may prevent me from making one.  I will post pictures of my entries here once the contest is over and hopefully there will be some pretty shiny things to accompany them!  There may be a few posts here and there of figures I've painted in between, but posts wont be as reliably published until after Gen Con.  

Thanks for reading, and I look forward to posting some good news in a few months!

Butcher, revisited

What happens when I have a lens I've never worked with before?  I wait until the night before I like to post to my blog and get a bunch of out of focus, over exposed pictures.

All is not lost, however.  I got a glimpse of what I can achieve with a different lens, as the following pictures show.  This guy won me a gold coin in the 2010 Privateer Press painting contest.  I know I have pictures of him on the blog already, but those pictures were taken with a pocket camera on the floor of my old basement apartment kitchen.  To say the least, they were not as accurate of a representation of the figure as I would like, and I think these are a little closer to what it looks like in real life.  To this day it's still one of my favorite pieces, so he was an easy choice to test a different lens with.

If you want to take pictures of you figures and accurately represent them on the internet, you must not get discouraged when the pictures don't turn out like you want them to.  There are a lot of different factors that must be taken into consideration that can affect the outcome of your photos.  Lighting \and focus are the two biggest things I need to improve and become more comfortable with.  I'm using too much light right now, and I need to figure out a good way to position the light so it's diffused properly and doesn't wash out my figures.

I also learned not to wait until the night before I post to my blog to take pictures of 5 different figures.  I'm too tired to keep up the trial and error.  In order to really learn this camera and develop my skills, I need a good day to just get the feel of this.  What keeps me motivated is the idea of fantastic pictures of my figures, and working out a process that works for me.

Comments and questions welcome!