Broken Paintbrush

Dark Elf Reaper Bolt Thrower

dnyarak — Wed, 08 Sep 2010 22:44:50 +0000

Ahh… the dreaded Reaper Bolt Thrower. Not much to be said about it other than this is another paint job from the beginning of the army but other than the metal areas I think it looks pretty good and looks great for a table-top piece.

I had created a larger base for the unit but in never got passed to the primed black stage, perhaps when I finish it I will repost with the unit on the base.

Iron Warriors Rhino #4 Done

dnyarak — Tue, 07 Sep 2010 02:41:06 +0000

Finished up the details on Rhino #4 which mostly entailed the stripes and spot light. After the last Rhino’s attempt at doing the strips freehand I decided to cheat a bit on this one and mask the black areas off with scotch tape.

I started by taping all the area around where I wanted black so I could spray it. I then took some clear masking fluid and sponged it into the area. This way I could take an eraser to it and uncover the metal area underneath.

I then sprayed it black, waited for it to dry and then covered it with scotch tape. After marking out each stripe I cut it apart with the handy knife and removed the tape where I wanted the yellow. After painting up the yellow I removed the tape and washed the whole thing with sepia wash. Once that was dry I rubbed off the clear masking fluid to finish the worn effect.

Overall I’m happy with how the stripes turned out with this technique, which is good because it was very tedious.

And here are the two finished Rhinos together. Work has started on the last Rhino of this group and will hopefully have it done latter this week.

As always comments are welcome and appreciated!

Today’s Tip: Editing with GIMP

dnyarak — Sat, 04 Sep 2010 16:21:35 +0000

Ok so you have a descent camera, a light box, and nice looking models you want to share with world. Now what? Well for me I spend a few minutes to edit each picture before posting it online.

My program of choice:

This is an open source (and free) version of Photoshop that can do way more than I will ever need but it does the things I do need very well.

For this tutorial I will go over cropping and white balance.

Cropping

There may be ways to take the perfect picture so that you don’t need to crop out the extra white space but I find that if I zoom in to the point the model fills the screen the depth of field is too narrow and much of the model is blurry. Below is a pre-cropped image from my light box from my recently finished terminator squad.

This is an easy fix in GIMP: click on the rectangular select tool and drag it so it roughly contains your model. Now there should be a dotted box around your model.

If it doesn’t fit just right you can click inside the box and move your cursor towards the edge you want to move in or out until a box appears on the edge. You can then click and drag this box to move the edge of your selection. Once you have the perfect fit click on Image->Crop to Selection.

Just by removing most of the extra white space around the models they present better and the viewer can focus on the models rather than try to pick them out of the sea of whiteness.

White Balance

Most digital cameras have a way to adjust the white balance of the picture but don’t always work as well as they could (mostly user error in my own case). White balance is the major contributor of ‘off colors’ in an image assuming the models are lit well with non-yellow bulbs. GIMP has a great tool that quickly, and usually acuratly, readjusts the white balance so whites really are white and the blacks black. This is found under Colors->Auto->White Balance

This not only makes the contrast between light and dark clearer but also makes the colors more vibrant but is not completely perfect. In the picture above you may notice that the white background has a somewhat blue hue to it. Not a big deal but it does mean that the auto balance didn’t quite get it. To fix this you can manually adjust the white balance using the Levels tool.

In the picture above I reset the auto balance to make the changes more apparent but I’ll often use the auto adjust and then fine tune it with the levels tool. The Levels tool window shows a histogram of the various shades from black to white. As you can see there is a large peak near the upper side that corresponds to the large amount of white in the picture (the poster board) but is not actually at the edge of the graph. To fix this you can click on the eye dropper underneath the gram on the right side. The tool tip will call this the ‘Pick white point’ button. Your cursor will then turn into the tear dropper, click it on your picture where you want to designate to be pure white. Try clicking it in various parts of the models too to get an idea of what it is doing.

You can see that it instantly brightens the picture but may wash out some of the depth. To fix this we may need to adjust the black level. You can try to use the ‘pick black point’ button like the white one above but I find this doesn’t often work as well. Instead try grabbing the small, black triangle under the graph and slide it to the right. You probably won’t need to go to far before seeing the difference. Here it is a mater of balance between showing details in the darker areas, or giving a more realistic shadowing.

You now have a nice, cropped and white balanced picture for others to enjoy. Further steps may include adding a ‘watermark’ to the image or overlaying it into a neat background.

I hope you found this tip helpful and let me know if you have any photo editing tips you would like to share.

Iron Warriors Rhino #3 Finished

dnyarak — Sat, 04 Sep 2010 01:28:53 +0000

Decided to finish each of the Rhinos one at a time, so here is the first.

I credit Wienas for the idea o f hazard strips on the front panel, so thanks for that! I think they turned out ok.

I made the mistake of deciding to paint the interior and although it turned out ok, the amount of work that went into something that may never been seen any way… not so sure.

Dark Elf Chariot

dnyarak — Fri, 03 Sep 2010 00:18:16 +0000

Next up in my Dark Elf Army postings is the neat, but ineffective Cold One Chariot. This was also one of the first I painted when getting back into the hobby so forgive the not-so-great painting As much as the temptation is to go back and repaint the model, it is good enough to sit on the table and I would rather focus on the units I have yet to paint.

In some ways I am glad they didn’t redo the chariot with the new cold ones. As cool as the new dinos look for the knights, I like the look of the bulkier beasts for the chariot. Though it they redid the whole model in plastic I would probably buy another, though this model hasn’t found it into many of my army lists in 7th edition, and may even less in 8th.

Any one have success using chariots in 8th edition? On the plus side they can no longer be auto-killed with S7+ hits but being single model units they would have a tough time against those giant hordes and their ridiculous attacks and combat res.

Iron Warriors Terminators – Squad 4 Complete

dnyarak — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 16:49:01 +0000

So as I continue to balance between completing old units and finishing new ones (see the Mentor Legion guys I just finished) I have put the finishing touches on my 4th Terminator squad (WIP shots here)

There wasn’t much left to finish on this squad. I finished the base using my new style and painted on the XIV to mark them as part of the 14th Grand Company.

One more squad off the painting table and marked green in the status page! Next up is the rhinos…

Dark Elf Masters

dnyarak — Sun, 29 Aug 2010 20:56:07 +0000

May I now introduce you to my Dark Elf army. When I first got back into the hobby a few years back the Dark Elves were the army I started back up with since they had just been re-released. I choose to post the pictures of my Masters/Dreadlords first because it shows the improvement in my painting most distinctly. The new dreadlord model was one of the last I painted before moving back over to 40k where as the old dreadlord model was one of the first I painted when getting back into the army.

After taking the pictures I realized the base was never finished, he is now moved to the painting desk to remedy this. The weapon arm was swapped with the sword from the Cold One Knights set as I didn’t like the pose of the model with the hook weapon, I’m saving that for something else. I would often army this character with the Heart Seeker sword which is why I attempted to paint the sword with the red tone, not the greatest but it gets the job done.

This is the old OOP model showing off the classic GW cartoonish sculpting. I think the most obvious change in painting skill is shown in the face of the two models. I still have a long way to go to paint great looking skin, but I’ve come a long way from Elf Flesh and Flesh Ink.

Mentor Legion Squad Finished – Part 6

dnyarak — Sat, 28 Aug 2010 00:19:46 +0000

I was finally able to finish the last few details of the squad, including the base and matte varnish. I’m still playing around with some various backgrounds and picked up a pack of card stock of a couple shades of tan and gray. For this shot I used the dark gray card as the tans turned out too yellow and light. The only thing I don’t like about using the card stock is the lines, oh well. On to the individual shots:

With these guys finished I think I am going to take a break from the Mentor Legion for now, the thought of painting up a battle force + ABR of these guys just tires me out! I have some Iron Warriors to finish up any way that have been patently awaiting the brush… stay tuned for those terminators and rhinos that have been sitting on my desk!

Thoughts, ideas or criticism? Let me know!

Mentor Legion Squad WIP – Part 5

dnyarak — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 03:01:58 +0000

Well I wasn’t able to finish the squad over the weekend, but I made some good progress. Until now I had been debating on how the Mentor Legion would show company/squad markings. They are a codex chapter but having different colored shoulder bands wouldn’t fit their look. I couldn’t find any thing scouring the interwebs so I decided on knee pads for the company color and Gothic numbering for the squad. This squad has been placed in the 2nd Company, 3rd Tactical Squad.

This guy was my first attempt at free handing the tactical arrow and it turned out terrible! So I opted for the half-cheating approach. I used the transfers from the kit for the inner white arrow and repainted the red edging and then repainted the white inner area. I used the transfers on the other tactical arrows as well with an over-paint to cover the decal.

I tried using the same technique for the Gothic number 3 but the decal was way too big for the curved surface and kept bulging. After trying to cut it apart and restitch it I gave up and decided to try the free hand approach. Overall I think they turned out pretty good.

I also did some work on the two missing guns which I painted separately and are now resting in their rightful holders. I am now down to finishing the metal areas, a little armor damage and the bases. Stay tuned!

Mentor Legion Squad WIP – Part 4

dnyarak — Sat, 21 Aug 2010 16:37:26 +0000

Well I was finally able to get all the white done on this small squad. I think the last two guys got a little rushed in my anxiousness to get them done, but overall they seem to match up pretty well. Now with the white done there is little left to do other than details: the aquilas, purity seals, squad markings, and the bases. Hopefully I can get these done over the weekend.

I also tried a couple different background for the photo shoot as white models on a white background don’t work all that well. For both of these shots I grabbed a nearby t-shirt and crumpled it up as the backdrop.

Tan backdrop:

Dark brown backdrop:

What do you guys think about the different backgrounds? I am also going to try out a dark, textured paper somewhat like what Massive Voodoo uses.