Blog Stars

Just a quick post about some of the blogs I have been reading (well mostly looking at the pictures if I'm honest...). A quick warning before I begin though - if you start looking at these blogs and clicking on the links they contain - you could loose hours of your life...

The first one is Dead Fish Painting - which is Sebastien Picque's work. I absolutely love his painting on the Smog miniatures - which is without doubt my favourite miniatures line at the moment. The creativity of Christophe Madura is just mind blowing, and Sebastien's painting complements it perfectly. Another amazing painter who has done some work on the Smog line is Angel Giraldez who is the staff painter for Corvus Belli - there's a lot of great work on his blog.

The next is Jerome Otremba - Amazing work here... I especially like the larger scale busts he has painted (and in some cases sculpted too).

Another painting and sculpting blog is Darkeden, featuring the work of Remy Tremblay - who produces some of the most frighteningly realistic painting I have ever seen - just look in the SFX section and you'll see what I mean...

This blog is by a painter who work I wasn't familiar with until recently, Guillaume Hemery. I just love the bright intensity of his colours. I like my miniatures to have strong contrasting colours, but he has really taken it to 11... His Bad Moon Orcs are just stunning.

Great use of colour on the work in this blog by Roberto Chaudon - really nice sculpting too.

I'll leave at that for now or I'll get lost in all the links between the different blogs! Plenty to look at though, and I have only shared a few - inspiring stuff.

cheers

mike

A plague on you!

Just finished the Skaven commission I mentioned in the last post - pretty happy with how he came out. I loved the miniature as soon as I saw it - except the banner... To me it totally unbalanced a beautiful sculpt, the figure itself has some of the best animation I've seen on for a long time.

I clipped the banner off the back-plate and built another from brass tube - decorated with elements of the original. I've always liked Japanese style banners for Skaven - and I wanted to give him a banner that looked like it has been around for a while, passed down between warlords - tattered and faded. The cloth is made from lead foil - the sort that you get on old battles of port or sherry. It's really soft and pliable and perfect for banners - I have a small supply that I hoard away for miniatures I really like.

The paint scheme is obviously quite similar to the GW studio version - and that's totally intentional, I really love the way that one's painted, and couldn't see the point of doing him in different colours just to be - well, different... I also think the bright red armour fits well with the slightly Japanese feel.

There's a lot going on with the miniature and banner - strong colours and fine details, so I wanted the base to be quite simple and muted. I didn't want something that fought for your attention with Queek himself. I cut out a small section of tube, lined it with brick patterned plastic card, and built a box round it. It's good to break up the smoothness of the brick pattern by cutting out some of the bricks to make them look like they're loose or broken.

Ali is pretty much done with painting the next Studio McVey release and we should be able to preview it next week - looks good, just talking about names!

cheers

mike

Studio Update

Just a quick post to give an update on what's happening in the studio at the moment - updates have been conspicuous by their absence lately.

We just got the first resin casting in for the latest Studio McVey release - in fact Ali is sitting here painting it as I type. It's a great mini - and another first for Studio McVey, I'll let you guess what that means for yourselves! I had originally intended to have this one out before the end of the month - but I think it might just spill over into early December. We'll most likely preview it on the mailing list first - as we have done for the last couple of releases.

I have been busy with all sorts of things in the last couple of weeks - some of which I hope to talk about here at some point in the next few months, and filling in my 'spare' time with a commission from the new GW Skaven range. I'm really enjoying painting it - it makes a nice change from 40K miniatures, which I seem to have painted a lot of lately (when I say a lot - I mean a lot for me!). I hope to have it finished soon.

I have also been meaning to post a link to the WAMP Little Angels charity painting contest - it's for a great cause - the details can be found here.

More details about the next release soon!

mike

Ali's Vitharr

Sorry for the lack of posts recently - we just seem to have been really busy in the past week.

Here's Ali's version of Vitharr - a very different look and feel to mine, I think you'll agree. I really like the gritty realism on this one - and there's some wonderfully subtle painting.

I have finished a few commission pieces lately - so as soon as I get round to processing the pictures, I'll post them here.

cheers

mike

PS - Dropped off the next Studio McVey sculpt at the production company today. It's actually one half of a pair... More news on the release soon!