Epic Nemo

Just a really quick post. Ali just finished this commission piece a few days ago, so I thought I would share it here.

Not gone...

Well so much for my regular posts at the start of the year...!

Just wanted to make a quick post to say we have not abandoned this blog completely, and will be making some (hopefully) meaningful posts soon. I am working on a new painting commission that I should be able to post soon, and Ali has a couple of pieces that just need to have the images sized to add to the Blog.

In the mean time... One of my favourite sculptors - Gregory Clavilier, has a blog of his own and it's well worth checking out. I have been working with Greg on and off for many years now, and his work never fails to amaze me. His latest creations are for the amazing looking Smog range.

More soon!

Crusaders

Here's some pictures of my latest miniature - Black Templars High Marshal Helbrecht. I have always really liked this sculpt, it's got great movement and the character of the whole piece is really strong. I wanted to make him look like he's been out in the field on campaign for a while, so I made all of the colours a little faded and opted for quite strong lighting from above. I think I am most pleased with how the cloak came out - the lighting works well, and it's nice to add a rich, strong colour to the inside.

Black can be tricky to have as a main colour - it needs surrounding with lighter and brighter colours to give it some shape, so the white fabric really helps to bring the anatomy of the figure out. I definitely didn't want to make the white too stark and clean, so opted for an off-white instead. It's a mix of light bone and black, shaded down with black and blue.

I'm pleased with the base. The figure has such a sense of direction and movement that I wanted to have him on a path or road. I decided that he was on a Pilgrim's path, littered with bones and discarded weapons - the wall has the prayers and messages of the pilgrims nailed to it. The warm ocher colours are a good contrast with the miniature and suggest a dusty, desert setting

Corbulo

Just finished Brother Corbulo for a commission. He's the first Blood Angle I have painted in a long time (12+ years...?) and after a little struggle with the shade of red I wanted to achieve, he went quite smoothly. I didn't want to paint him all deep red - that would mean that the little details, like gems and vials of blood, would be lost - so I opted for a slightly orange-red colour. I kept the rest if the colour scheme pretty warm to be sympathetic to that - shading with quite a lot of red and brown tones (apart from the red armour, which I shaded down with deep blue).

With so many strong colours I thought it was important to keep the face fairly bright - and it stands out well, so I am happy with how that worked.

I've already started on another Space Marine - after not painting any for years, I can't seem to stop now...

A kingly gift

You may have noticed that Ali's work has been conspicuous by it's absence from this blog in the last few months. That's mainly because she has been very busy illustrating her first Children's book (very good it is too!) so hasn't had the time to paint many miniatures. There have been a few though - and this one was a present for my last birthday, way back in June. I have always loved the (sadly now defunct) Ilyad range, and this one (Empereur Haghendorf I believe) is just one of my all time favourite sculpts. It's by the incomparable Jaques-Alexandre Gillios - and I think it's a work of art. It's a great example of how a static pose can be full of dynamic energy and movement. Ali's painting is beautiful too - perfect colour choice (as always - she has sickeningly good colour sense...), and she has really captured the character of the sculpt.

We have a Small but very precious supply of Ilyad miniatures and I am really keen to paint one myself - I have always been a little nervous to tackle one though - the sculpting is so amazing that I really wanted to be able to do it justice with the painting... I do feel that I am painting at a level where I could be happy with the results now though (for the first time in about 12 years!) - maybe I'll give it a go. I'll add it to the list....

One other quick thing for this post. I said that I had found other items in my 'buried treasure' that I might share here. This letter made Ali and I laugh - it's from March 1987. Shortly after that I got taken into the Design Studio for a trial period - and they offered me full time work in April 1987...

Burried.... treasure?

Well so much for my intention to update this blog once a week! I manged to keep that up for a while, but work and Christmas conspired against me, and it's been quite a while since the last post. Never mind, new year - new start!

On a recent trip to my mothers house to clear out some old stuff, I came across a few boxes of my old miniatures, and it was quite a trip into the past. There were many boxes of painted miniatures, including a large wooden case I made for a school project - and many boxes of unpainted castings (of course). I have never made an estimation at how many miniatures I have painted in my life, but it's a lot... 8,000+ I would have thought. There were several hundred in the boxes I found - and they were painted before I was 17, which is 23 years ago now... Anyway it's a lot of miniatures! I thought I would share a couple of my early attempts here - just to show that we all have to start somewhere. Back then, any information about how to paint was hard to come by, and drybrushing was the height of sophistication! All of my earliest miniatures were painted with Humbrol Enamels, but the halflings shown here were some of the first I painted with the brand new Citadel Acrylics - that was quite a revelation!

I found a couple of really old Citadel box sets too - in pristine condition. One was the Michael Moorcock's Eternal Champions and the other was the Chaos Dwarf Renegades. I was amazed by the quality of the castings in the Eternal Champion set - they looked closer to masters castings than production metal. I might even paint one some time - it would be interesting to paint a miniature from that period in a more 'modern' style than I was using in those days!

I found some even older box sets - like a couple of the really old Regiments of Renown, when they didn't even have printed sleeves on the boxes, just a vac-formed tray. I also found my old copies of the Citadel Journals - which I poured over for hours trying to work out how people like John Blanche and Phil Lewis painted their miniatures.

Not quite sure what I'm going to do with all this 'treasure', most likely just store it away again and re-discover it in another 20 years! There were a few more interesting bits and pieces that I may share here if I get round to photographing them.

Back to the modern era, I thought I'd better share something that I painted less then 20 years ago! I painted this for Felix Paniagua early last year and it's part of his amazing Avatars of War range - which seems to just get better and better (I just love his most recent - the Dwarf Lord of Chaos). I wanted to have a classic Elven colour scheme for this one - so I kept all of the colours cool. It's a great sculpt and a pleasure to paint.

Space Marine Librarian

Just finished this Space Marine Librarian, so I thought I would share it here. It took me a little while to come up with a colour scheme I was happy with (that amount of detail can really confuse things) but I'm pretty happy with how it came out. I wanted to keep the colour of the armour quite deep as I knew there was going to be quite a lot of lighter coloured detail - like the scrolls, parchment and face. I always try and keep the area around the head as deep as possible - then it throws more emphasis on the face. 

I used the open hand (there are three variations of the left hand in the blister) rather than a weapon - and added a 'magical' effect in the palm, as if he is gathering power for a psychic attack.

I kept the colour scheme for the base to a fairly limited palette - there is so much detail and texture on the miniature itself, I didn't want the base fighting against it. I also chose a colour scheme that would contrast with the Librarian.