Arming the Stompa

I crack myself up figuring out the headlines for my stompa-posts... for real. Sometimes I hate my type of humour.

So, I finished the head yesterday night. And today I did the easy arm. It's supposed to be pretty much metal, greasy stuff and rust. The last two parts will be added once I get the last arm on so it doesn't look too different depending on what arm you're looking at.

Arm detail. Lot's of different shades of metal. Washes are lovely!

Brushes. Part Deux.

I read a little about Raphael brushes earlier and decided that I had to give them a try and ordered a bunch of them from Jackson Art in the UK. And now, after having used them for about two months I thought I should do a little write-up on Kolinsky Sable brushes.

To be perfectly honest. There is absolutely no reason not to buy ”professional” brushes. The points stay pointy way longer than on budget brushes. The bristles don't separate while you're applying paint on your figure. And the springy-ness... they revert back to their straight pointy shape within no-time compared to the GW-brushes.

As you can see from the comparison picture above, even the size 2 brush is as pointy as the smaller ones. Which is perfect for when you need to apply lining with a wash in small areas but with a regular flow of paint.

To the right is three of my Winsor Newton brushes. They're also really really good. But as you can see they all have really short bristles / body compared to the Raphael brushes. Which for me isn't ideal. I prefer to have a longer working time. Some prefer the shorter bristles. It's all a matter of taste I guess. But if you're not using really really thinned paint with some slow-dri added to it, the W&N 3/0 is almost impossible to use for more than a couple of seconds. Sometimes that's all the time you need, sometimes not. (Like when doing checkers on orky parts -.-)

The two GW-brushes have been used for as long as the W&N brushes, and you really can tell that they're of an inferior quality. The points aren't really pointy anymore and they've started to hook. (Not to mention that the paint is starting to flake off from the handle. WTF is up with that?).

So, do yourself a favor. Get one or two Kolinsky Sable brushes from Raphael, Winsor & Newton, whomever. They sure are worth the higher price you pay. And they last longer... (as long as you care for them just like you should care for all your brushes) so really. You're saving money in the long run. :)

If you're curious about brush-caring. There's a pretty good article of it over at The Painting Corps. I usually wash mine every now and then under lukewarm running tap water with some soap in my hand. When flakes of paint stop coming off. Or the soap isn't colored when you turn the bristles in your hand. It's clean. Not the best of solutions. I should invest in some brush soap. Since my technique dries the brushes out I dip them in Vallejos cleaning solution and then for a tip and store them in a brush holding wallet until it's time to use them again.

"Push! Push! I can see the head!"

Finally got around to add the head. And it sure makes it a whole new stompa. As usual with minis (or huge-is as this is) the head is really the focal point. Without it. Or with a bland face. Things just look dull.

Instead of the mek-ish ork commander that was supplied with the stompa I decided to add one of the grots from Forgeworlds Grot Tank-set. It just felt much more appropriate to have a ton of grots running the machine. Even though the fluff says otherwise. I guess this grot, Kommanda Ruhmul, has proven himself in battle so many times that he got transplanted from the kan into the head of the stompa instead. Or something like that... only the God Emperor knows how the ork mind works. If anyone does.

And as usual, it's a ton of work left to do. Highlighting all the panels, drybrushing metal bitz and whatnot. But I got so happy when the head was on I had to put it up here.

<witty headline about my stompa>

So, the body is almost finished. I would like to be able to work on it even more. Adding tiny details and whatnot. Probably for the next one. Because there will be at least one more Stompa built and painted. Even though it's a huge project. Much bigger than anticipated, it's one hell of a fun project. There's so many parts that you can try our different techniques on and stuff.

But since this one, together with 3 grot tanks and a couple of boys has to be ready for the 10th of November I will have to try and limit the amount of time I put into the stompa.

Todays tasks will be adding details (I've started doing the headlight thingies as you can see in the top picture) and then give it a couple of coats of varnish.

Parts taken from some Blood Angel thingie. You can see the added drybrushing and line highlightning here as well. I've also added some chips n scratches to the skull.

And something from the Ultramarines scout company. This stompa has really been in some scraps with the beakies!

The transfers have some silvering, but I hope that will be remedied once I start varnishing the body. It'll get at least two coats of gloss before I add matte (for the muddy parts) and satin (for the more metal-ish parts).

Oh, and the snow has finally arrived in the southern-ish parts of Sweden. This is what it looks like from one of my windows! Time to bring out the warm jackets and a gun to fend of the polar bears and flesh eating penguins!

It's all about the Stompa

I applied some oil washes to it to add some more contrast and darken it a little. I should've gotten around to adding detailing to it, but I just had to try out how to weather it. So I took an old toothbrush and some various pigments and went bananas on the front of the skirt. Looking pretty good, and it also goes to show that adding scratches to the bottom of the skirt really isn't needed. It's all gonna be covered anyhow. So there some time saving right there!

Stompa-update

I finally finished all the parts of it that's going to be pure metal. And a lucky addition as well... I spoke to Lifter about how serious I should make it. He said "Dead Serious!" and then I said "Ok. I was thinking of having the skull on it?" to which he replied "Yeah, an oversized one!".

I was kind of wondering what he was talking about. The skull is as big as it is? And after some confusion he told me to paint a skull. Not use the one that comes in the box. So there it is! A huge frickin' skull! To put fear into the humies an beakies an all the others!

It's kinda random. I wanted it to look like the buildergrots painted it on a couple of years ago when the stompa was finished. And that it's gotten a few repairs after that, but no coats of paint.

And that blue plate on the back... it's getting a huge Ultramarines logo!

Now it's just some drybrushing. Picking out stuff/details in red and then finally I can get around to washes and make it look a little less clean-ish and more ork-ish and dirt-ish-y!

Wayland Games and their new site. Some updates.

I got this affiliate letter from Wayland Games (click the banner, shop stuff!) and it said (amongst many other things):

[…] we are about to start the final push to get our new site ready for launch. Our target is December 1^st currently. There is a possibility it will slip by a week depending how the final testing goes.

Which is a God-send. If it weren't for the fact that they actually ship stuff in time I'd be using any other retailer. So here's hoping that the new website will actually be easier to navigate (not that that's hard to accomplish looking at their current one).

It's not like I blame them. As I posted earlier, I'm doing a re-design of a web-shop at the moment. And it's a gargantuan task. Especially if you're out of the norm by just a slight margin and have to have customization done. Like a more or less live stock-status. When will an item be considered in/out of stock? When the customer has put it in his shopping cart or when it's paid for? What happens if someone pays earlier? Etc etc... tons of things to consider.

The e-mail also said:

Two more interesting items for you.. We have 2 more sites launching on the same day. One is another games site.. using a slightly different business model. The second is a departure for us but selling a range of products most gamers will be interested in. at least to some extent. 

Can this be the EU Battlefoam outlet perhaps?

On the bench: Stompa

The headline should perhaps read "In the box". But it's out of the box, but in the box... gaaaah I'z makin' me krazy!

Anyhow. First coats done with the airbrush. Now it's time for all the fiddly detailing. All nuts and bolts have to be picked out. The rockits have to be painted in bold colors etc etc...

One of the major problems I have with the airbrush is knowing when to stop. It's awesome for doing some stuff. Like the shading I did on all the plates and general basecoating. But I always try to force myself doing stuff better done with a brush. Ending in me having to cover up mistakes and overspray later on. Is this common? Do you do the same mistakes I do?

I should replace that filter. Remember me the next time I pull out the spray booth.

I was supposed to, but...

Aporkalypso! The Big Red Un!

I was supposed to paint my ”slow orks” but then the mailman came with the Stompa I ordered from Wayland Games. Aaaand... everything stopped and I started to build. 

4 solid hours into it so far. Tomorrow I hope I'll be able to finish the slow orks and add the final details to the stompa. Painting it will be a b*tch though. As usual with orky things there's a metric buttload of tiny details that you must paint. Sometimes I feel I should just bin the orks and go with something more sleek and shiny. Tau? 

The plan for this fellow though is to have him in a Dred Mob at the aporkalypse game in Uppsala this November. Together with my 2 squads of kanz, a deff dread and hopefully 3 grot tanks standing in as kanz. All depending on how much painting time I get in. 

Oh, and the rest of my 2000 points will be filled with boyz, more boyz and then some boyz. I hope the other players on my team bring tons of mechanized stuff, because I wont have any. :)

On the bench: The slow orks...

Slowly getting done... slowly. Left ork is ”done”. 

Time for another post telling you guys that work is crazy. Really no time to do anything but work and then read some Black Library stuff. Every now and then I have an hour or so to put paint on some orks. And this is how far I've progressed in... three weeks?

”But PX, what are you working with? Why is it taking so much time off your hands?” 
My official title is typographer. It's basically like being a graphic designer but with focus on type / layout.

So right now I'm working with a -huge- bank making sure all their documents and forms (and let me tell you, it's a crazy amount of documents!) can be considered within the boundaries of good typography, while working with their new brand design AND readability. Both for the machines that read and make them, and the people they're actually made for. And on top of that I'm working with a up and coming book publisher based in N.Y. (time difference is a b*tch), a film production agency and a major retailer of outdoors equipment.

So my day is usually Waking up. Checking mail from N.Y. Sending mail. Working my ass off. Dinner. Talk to New York. Do some stuff for the bank that's supposedly due ”yesterday” and then take a couple of sleeping pills and go to sleep.

I love it though. But sometimes I wish I had more time for 40K.

Today I had a ton of time, since I'm having a cold, again. So I painted up some orks (and spent some time playing the World of Tanks beta). I'm trying out a new technique. Instead of just priming them black and then painting like usual I do a quick zenital highlight on top of the black primer. Using my airbrush I add three to four layers of white and then block in the basic colours with really thinned paint. More glaze-like than paint-like. Usually one part paint to two parts of "gunk".

What this does is creating the basic highlights while I apply the basecoats. All that's needed after that is a thin wash and some line highlights and the area is done. Way quicker than first blocking in the basecoat, washing it, and then building up shadows and highlights.

And you also bypass that depressing part when you have painted the basecoats on your squad for three days straight, and they still look completely flat and uninteresting. I really hate that part of painting. It's not until I've added some washes that I feel good about the figures/the painting again.


I also added myself to the list of participants of an aporkalypse game in November. So I just had to buy myself a Stompa and some other stuff. More about that later (when the panic sets in :)). I have absolutely no idea of how long it takes to paint a Stompa to an acceptable level. But hopefully I can get it up to tabletop standard pretty quick and then work on it some more after the game.