Jonagon's Paintin' Projects 2013 Edition

[Jonagon]

Well guys, I spent the last year painting a lot, some of my stuff can be seen here:

http://www.coolminiornot.com/artist/Jonagon

I started working on some big projects for Salute painting competition, but as usual got well bogged down in a big sculpting/modelling project. They always take ages and get me down. This is where I got to:



So I ended up 'taking a break' from painting/modelling for a little while. Had been working on a NMM High elf before that:



Anyway, after about a month off, I'm now rediscovering the fire a bit. Think I'm going to move a little bit back towards army painting a little and start a new Grey Knights project. I've been writing a little bit of background for them lately. But before that I'm planning to enter a painting competition at my local store in a couple of weeks, I can do prep and conversions before hand, but all the painting has to be done in 5.5 hrs in the store on the day.

So I'm going to look at a Farseer for that first, then move onto the GK project. That's the plan, am pretty keen to start already, but am 200 miles from all hobby materials for another few days yet. Here's to 2013, though work is probably going to keep me busier than ever; Let's hope it's a good year.

This blog I can hopefully use to keep track of my painting in 2013.

[LinnScarlett]

Hmm... keeping track of your blogs and updates... that should be in my 2013 hobby resolutions: make sure to keep the guys on 2S updated with your goings on! I am looking forward to seeing your stuff, Jona, so don't keep me insuspense too long concerning the results of your competition entry! 

[Jonagon]

Happy 2013!

I've come up with some new years hobby resolutions now:

- Update blog/forum logs weekly (will try and get into a habit of doing it on Fridays)
- Sell off my Space Marine army (by March)
- Sell off my Skorne Army (by March)
- Don't buy any more minis for painting only (I have enough to last a good year already!)
- Enter Salute painting comp in April
- Enter GD in September
- Army project at rate of 1 unit per month and play casual games with it, 15 games in the year. (not sure yet if this will be Grey Knights or Cygnar)

Since I've been back from holidays I've been getting on with my little elf a bit, a few people asked about the sword, so I tried to get some closeups of that.

Still got a bunch of tidying up to do and a few details to do:





I started working on a quick base too, the planking is made of coffee stirers. Only problem is as much water effect as I put onto it, it seems to keep dissapearing! I have a theory it's soaking into the wood, but I don't really know, I suppose I'll give it some more and see what happens!



PS: If anyone wants to buy any Space Marines or Skorne models, give me a shout! The marines are all painted like this:


Most of the Skorne are painted like this:

[loeldrad]

Great job! I love the scale pieces of his armor. Not sure on the water effect but you're probably right on it being absorbed into the wood. Can't wait to see it all finished!

What paint colors did you use for the gold? Just curious!

[Jonagon]

Thanks dude

Method was the Darren Latham method with a bit of variation:

- Basecoat snakebite leather
- blend up to bleached bone maybe a little white too.
- Shadow with dark flesh, liche purple and black
- edge highlights in white

glaze of yellow

add back some tiny white highlights on edges/corners.

Used a mix of brands, Cote D'Arms, GW and Vallejo.

The Cote D'Arms (CDA) colours were:

103 Sun Yellow
112 Bone

Black and White were the Vallejo Game Colour range.

[Thantos]

Awesome! Love them, especially that NMM goodness. Makes me want to pick up the paintbrush again .. all i managed was to highlight a unit of nid gargoyles over xmas.. not that rewarding 

You like CDA paints? I tried them and found them quite oily, perhaps was just the ones i got. Do you use them for anything explicitly?

[Jonagon]

Cheers dude!  You should do it! Give your brushes some love!

Yeah I do like the CDA, use them a fair bit now, don't find them really oily, but they are more 'flowy' in that, they seem to be a bit easier to manage/push around, but a little more transparent than GW.

I finished my elf last night, first mini of 2013!





In the end the water effects look ok, but not perfect, something to think about for the future. I do like the planking though, made of coffee stirrers, so I'll have to remember that for another time.

Cool mini or not voting link, if you have the time!


Next I think I'm going to be doing a grey knight colour test. I'm hoping to take part in slow grow campaign using grey knights soon so have been thinking about what I'm going to do.

As far as painting goes I'm fairly sure I want to use SENMM, I've been experimenting with it a little, as below. I'll probably do a fair amount of gold on some of them too to pick out the more senior models. However, this is a lot of work, so I'll time myself during the test model and see how it goes!

I'm still thinking about basing and so on, I have 1 GK model which is a golden demon project which is currently on hold:

Not sure whether to continue down this route for the basing (ruined mechanicus planet)

Or go with some sweet lava basing which would allow me to justify warmer highlights in the painting. I painted this a few months back pretty quickly and kinda liked having warm highlights tie into the lava, so that's tempting and then I can leave the GD project to come back to in the future:


Anyone got any thoughts?

[LinnScarlett]

Hm... well I could spew my opinion on the GK, as I've a box of the boys sitting on my desk, staring at me for want of being modelled and painted too...

And, personally, warm high-lights just feel too fuzzy-duzzy fluffy for GK. I am not quite sure why, but whenever my thoughts wander to how I will be painting my boys, it's all stark artificial light reflection in my head. With blues, or off-whites, perhaps even greens depending on where they might be. But warm colours... they feel to me as they will detract from the GK's stark no-nonesenses hardcoreness (...). I don't know, I wouldn't do warm highlights here. Not to GK, at least.

./end completely unfounded artistical argumentation :p

[loeldrad]

I think if it was well done (which I know you're capable of!) with a good looking lava base reflecting off the quality SENMM that you've shown on your demo model, it would look awesome!

I feel where you're going with that Linn in it not being a traditional GK look but I think a nice lava theme would be awesome. I can picture a badass diorama of some Bloodletters squaring off against a few SENMM GK's over some cracked lava filled terrain.

[Jonagon]

Well! I'm 2 hours into my test model (with a target time of 10 hours to complete) and so far things are not going exactly to the warm highlights plan, so maybe moving away from that. I'll post some WIP later in the week. At the moment he just looks blue and brown. 

[LinnScarlett]

Well, in the way of light-spectrum contrasts the orange might also heavily infest with the grey and make the grey NMM come out as optically... brown, or even greenish, due to the way our eyes perceive side by side colours. I don't know, I am not feeling them warm highlights. But then, admittedly, I don't feel lava and warm highlights much to begin with, for anyone. Orangey-tones, yuck. I am a big fan of stark complimentary or contrasting off-source lighting, depending on what the colour scheme of the miniatures themselves are. 

[Jonagon]

Well the idea was if I was using a blue/grey for most of the armour then orange would contrast perfectly with that.

[Jonagon]

I've been struggling a bit with this guy and been working mad hours, but I'd like some opinion on this I think. For some reason the photos all look awful, I'm sure it doesn't look that bad in real life   

Anyway, very very much WIP but do you think this is gonna end up working or is the pallet too blue? That's my main worry it's a lot of work and at this point it just looks like rubbish to me, but maybe I've been starring at it too long! :p




Would love some opinions!

[LinnScarlett]

It is difficult to say how it is in real life, if the photos are as bad as you say - but on the photos, it looks... incredibly blue, at least on my screen. Near spacewolfy. On the other hand, I like my Grey Knights silvery, so that might play a role. Beside the blue though, the painting so far looks perfectly awesome!

[Tempest Six Two]

The GK looks great Jonagon, SENMM seems to be a tricky one to pull off correctly and I think you're definitely on the right track. However I think you'll find that the overall blue colour will disappear a bit with more work on the white sections, like giving it really white highlights of pure light reflection- the blue is the dominant colour at this point, as the white doesn't pull the eye to it enough. I also know Thantos was doing some SENMM stuff a while ago, maybe he can give some more hands-on feedback and suggestions as well?

And, i sympathise with the whole 'been looking at it too long'- i just took my Blood Angels out of their case last night for the first time in almost a month, and was like 'hey, these aren't too bad!' when i'd previously been getting critical of them/ my paint scheme etc. Fresh set of eyes always helps with perspective.