Emperors Champion, finished.

Click for flickr. See if you can spot all the dust on my sensor.

 So, here he is. The Emperors Champion! I wouldn't say I've spent enough time on him. But really... there is just a time when all your patience is spent and you just want to do something entirely different. Like getting wasted on alcohol instead of acrylics...

The mushroom thing that's been going on? The word champion is quite close to the swedish word for mushroom, champinjon. So it's been the standing "joke". Not that it was especially funny, apart from finding new words for all the post headlines.

First time I've tried out working with non metallic metallics. I can't say I'm especially fond of it. It looks good from one certain angle. The illusion is really there. And then you move your head and it looks kinda weird. Almost like when you take off your glasses while watching a 3D-movie.

All in all I'm pretty pleased with how it turned out. The model in itself is awesome, and there are no dead spaces you need to "hide" or anything like that. It's just "paint". The exercise in painting black was especially fun, if you find frustrating to be fun.

Originally I had a pretty blueish black, so when highlighting that I added more blue. The problem was that the blue I chose was pretty cold, so when the final highlights came on it looked really really off since the cold hue made the illusion that it was further back.

Color theory 101

The warmer highlight kinda pops out more than the blue (cooler) highlight. Even though the cool tone is lighter than the warm one the illusion of it being lighter is kinda diminished. Something I – with I don't know how many hours of color theory classes – really should've thought of. But when the urge to paint grabs you, you just go with the flow!

I'm gonna hit it with some matt varnish later today (especially on the base). So if you spot anything you think I should correct, now is the time to do it. I'll go and submit it tomorrow!

Emperors Boletus, WIP #3

I'm getting to the end of mushrooms to use in the headline. Thankfully I'm at the end of the Emperors Champion as well. Yesterday was a frantic base-painting & -building session. Pigments, oils, weird solvents, and it all ended up with me doing some old school drybrushing and washing. It's just so damn hard to get proper contrast with pigments alone. No matter that it's more "realistic".

The Vallejo washes acted up as well, leaving weird residue when dry. So they're now officially on my shit-list. I've added plain distilled water to them instead of the regular gunk I use (Liquitex Flow Aid + 95% distilled water) when thinning. No difference. I've even gone so far as to add two agitator balls to the bottles just to make sure that they're mixed properly. No luck. Back to home made ones and GW-washes.

So anyhow, the champion... Still some stuff I have to fix. The buckle on the front is on top of the prio-list now. The blending is just not as smooth and it got kinda grainy >_< Tomorrow perhaps, I'm all exhausted after re-painting the sword like a 100 times.

The pipes are gonna get some green gunk flowing out of them. I'm slowly slowly building up the "flow" with water effects. It wont cure faster with the use of a hair dryer... bummer.

Emprahs Enokitake, WIP #3

Click for bigger @ Flickr

I made like 40 track links yesterday. Then I realized it actually was holiday and spent the reminder of the evening drinking beer, high on glue (seriously, what is in that Testors Model Master?) and browsing Dakka Dakka.

Today I awoke, fresh and with a mission to finalize the paintjob on my Emperors Champion. At least to the degree that I can attach him to the still drying base. Before adding weathering and touchups. It doesn't come out too well in the photos but there is a dark / light side to him. The left is visibly much brighter. But I guess I will have to add to it even further in order to really make it stand out. All that when basing is done. For now I'm pretty much done with this one.

Tomorrow will be fun. Back in Orkebro for some test playing of the Dwarf Kings Hold. Boomos baby-son is gonna be the "Counts As" Dwarf King! I'll be myself... counts as undead that is...

Emperors Champion, WIP #2

Blurry photos, but meh... Tried out NMM but I'm not totally sold on it. On some parts it looks pretty good, but figuring out where all the indirect / specular highlights would appear is kinda giving me a headache.

Redid, or refined, the blending on the tabard thingie today as well. The line on the bottom looks kinda "alone". So it'll probably get some sort of decoration like the crusade crosses or something.

Oh, and the new 40K Radio episode is out, and they really make fun of all the hilariousness in this thread over on Dakka. I LOL'd...

EDIT

Redid the "buckle" to look more polished. I kinda want to put a cross on there... or some sort of symbol. The aquila perhaps?

I guess we have to post some 40K...

And I guess it's time to change the name of the blog... With Boomo posting a lot (way more than Lifter does... do you hear me Lifter?) it's not PX & 40K anymore. And to be honest, it's not "all 40K all the time" anymore either... Perhaps I should do some naming-contest thingie since I'm not at all good with coming up with names?

Anyhow... the iPad (no worries, this will be kinda 40K-connected soon) is awesome for watching movies while painting. I had to re-arrange my workspace a little with all the Reaper paints I got. So now I cannot see the telly while painting. iPad to the rescue!

It's not like I watch it a lot though. I mean... I'm actually trying to paint stuff! But it's nice. And I can stream stuff from the computer. Which means that I don't have to watch the home shopping channel.

Emperors champion, WIP.

And now for the 40K stuff... It's the Emperors Mushroom! The GW-store in Stockholm has this Finecast painting comp and I thought I could paint it up for that one. Dunno how well it's going to turn out though. I'm trying to use directional lightning coming from the sword / left. Which means that the sword in itself later on will be -really-bright-. Hopefully it all will come together later on. If not, it's been a mini full with new experiences.

In closing, I'd like to point you to this article on Dakka about photographing stuff, and getting good results from using a crappy camera like the iPhone 3GS. Now I use a Nikon D700 with specialized macro lense and gak. Spent $6000 and I still take photos like I was blind or something. It's not the equipment, it's what you do with it! :)