Grogspar: Finished Mini

Hey guys. Those of you that have been following along with my little journey and multiple painting tangents may remember the Boson Grogspar I was painting for my friend Jamie Bell aka Northblade to give to him at Templecon this year. He was unable to attend due to unforeseen circumstances so the mini went home with a fellow canuck to be delivered. I decided I wasn't going to post final photos until Northblade had the mini in hand and he recieved the good Boson last Saturday. Here are the photos of the finished mini for y'all to view:

This mini was a pleasure to paint. The first it is always enjoyable to paint a mini for a friend who you know will appreciate it no matter how it comes out. The second reason being it was just a fun sculpt with some cool detail and features. I was really happy with how the skin came out on Grogspar. The stripes on the shirt were one of my first attempts a "free handed" detail but I was very happy with the results. I don't love the metals and wish I could have done them over but alas there wasn't time. All in all I am very happy with how the mini came out and that I was able to avoid buying an entire pirate army to paint for myself. Mr Bell hope you are pleased with it and you still owe Zack and myself a beverage for your poor betting skillz :p

A Goodbye and a Grogspar (wip)

As many in the WM/H community are aware Gday Bloke over at Lost Hemisphere announced that LH as we currently know it will be coming to an end. I read this as I was walking out of work this am and felt a little saddened but fully understand where he was coming from. Lost Hemisphere has played a large roll in my enjoyment of this game/hobby and has been appointment viewing every am just to see what is going on. I have published a few article with the guys (I think three) and while not part of the inner circle felt I always felt welcome to contribute. The LH guy has provided a lot of fun hobby reads, event coverage when I couldn't go, and (for me) guys who I would happily call friends in the real world. I'd like to say thanks to you guys and best wishes in future endeavors and look forward to seeing you at Templecon.

OK After I got home from work I headed down to the cave to get a little work in before bed. I played around a little with Grogspars hat and did my wash on the skin and metals. The metals will need additional shading prior to highlighting and the skin needs to be highlighted in my normal troll progression.

I also did some experimentation on another mini but that didn't turn out so hot so he will remain locked up in the basement.

Boson or Bosun....I don't know

Well in my last post I started working on Grogspar for my my annual Templecon mini. I wrote his name as Boson Grogspar since that is how it is written on PP's webpage but when I was looking at my merc book it is written as Bosun so I have no idea which is correct. One way of the other I got some more work done on Mr Grogspar today and figured I do one last post before the end of the year.

The first thing I did was wash the pants with GW sepia wash. I didn't take a picture of this step as it was done quickly while I was moving clothes to the dryer. I then laid down the basecoat of bootstrap leather on the quiver on his back and strap on the harpoon gun. The next step is where I headed out into uncharted water for me......

Here you can see Grogspar with stripes added to his shirt. I decided to jump right in and see if we could pull this off. The first thing I did was highlighted most of the shirt with P3 Trollblood highlight. I then took some VMA black and roughed in the black stripes. I think they came out pretty well and am pleased with the shirt at this time. I normally wouldn't do detail work such as this early on in painting a mini but figured I needed to try it now so if I had to redo it I wasn't messing up a nearly completed mini. As you can see here his skin is still slick from the gloss varnish as it has not received it's shading wash yet.

The last thing I did was start to put down some of the metal base color. I got interrupted so I didn't get to the metal sticking out of the bag on his back.

I am pleased with Grogspar's progression up to this point. I need to highlight the white on the shirt and was the metals and skins. After that it will be highlighting and detail work. OK that is all for now. Have a safe new year's eve all and see you in 2013.

Yo Ho Yo Ho a Pirates Life for Me!

Well any of you that have been on Pirates of the Caribbean should have that son stuck in your head now :) So the cave finally came back to life this am. I was in the basement doing some laundry getting ready to head to my folks and got a start on my annual Templecon mini. this year I am painting up Boson Grogspar for a buddy of mine.

I primed him with Vallejo Surface primer: grey primer via the airbrush

 

After giving the primer a few minutes to dry I thinned up some P3 rucksack tan and basecoated the paints via the airbrush. I then Primed the skin with my premixed trollblood skin tone. This was also applied via the airbrush as a low psi so I could avoid too much overspray onto the paints.

I then took out some black paint and a standard brush and blacked out the boots, belt, hat and all section I intend to paint metallic. I also painted the shirt P3 bastion grey. I am debating if I am going to leave the shirt as a grey color or if I am going to attempt to do a stripped shirt in either black/white or black/grey.

It is not pictured but I then slapped a layer of gloss varnish on the currently painted sections to protect them and to provide a slick surface of my washes which will (most likely) be the next steps. All in all pretty good start for ~45-60min total work.