Hobby Update Late in the Month of April!

Phew!!! Busy few weeks at PaintHammer Towers (it’s more of a sand castle tower in truth!). I have been all over the place with work, personal stuff and getting engaged (despite my hunt for the One Ring, I had to settle for the non magical/evil variety).

So non hobby stuff out of the way here is what I have been up to in the hobby. I have been beavering away on my Rock Idol doing some test poses with the rider, Wurzhag, who will be sporting a matching voodoo mask to the Idol itself. Both of their eyes will be glowing with the same colour to try to convey that wurzhag is controlling the great stone beast. I will be removing the dagger from wurzhag’s left hand to instead hold a chain from which he is gaining balance while the Idol moves. By luck the idol is in a very similar pose to the idol so I think this will look pretty cool. I am toying with adding an obligatory Shadowblade leaping from the raised fist or shoulder of the idol to assassinate wurzhag, what do you guys think? Being such a massive model I decided to OTT and “pin” the Idol to the base using a wood screw. This made me feel epically #Manly. Kinda feeling the base looks a bit empty compared to my other big gribblies so I might add a tree to the rear of the base to better distribute the “model density” on the base :)

I have also been working on my Dragon-OrcOgre Mournfang doing the base coats and washes. This sparked a bit of debate/discussion on twitter with Chris Tomlin (of Black Sun Podcast Fame and incredible painter, check out his dark elves and you will be in awe) and Steve Wren (another prolific and talented painter in the UK whose recent Wood Elves are cleaning up Painting Awards the country over) as to how people go about painting their models. I for one base coat and wash the entire model (whole or in parts) and then layer and highlight one area “type” up to completion rotating between other colours for efficiency and to cover up any little errors I make. I mainly paint this way for speed and corrections and to be frank it’s the only way I have ever painted lol! These guys (Dorian @vigadeath paints this way too) however basecoat, wash, layer and highlight one area up to finalised completion before starting the process again on another area. I am pretty intrigued by this as a technique and will be giving it a go, these guys are awesome painters and if it works for them then I would be daft to assume I know better! I think my next character or small single model will be painted this way to test! The other different thing I do is despite base coating and washing in one fell swoop I use different washes on each area, which is different to what others would do. If others were doing it my way then they would wash the whole model the same colour. I tend not to do this so that colours maintain their vibrancy and are distinct from one another and are easier to highlight/blend :) Out of curiosity how do you guys paint?

Finally I have been working on a little 40k filth and built a couple metal Grey knights! Not much to say except pew pew mother lovers ;)