Friday, December 18, 2009

Making Snow Bases Tutorial

Alrighty, my first real tutorial.

Since I put up my Space Pup on various sites I've gotten requests for how I make the snow bases.
It's quite simple actually.

Items you will need:
-PVA Glue (Do NOT use wood glue)
-Bicarbonate (Do NOT use baking soda)
-Water
-Mixing palette/plate/whatever works for you
-Skull white (or equivalent color)
-A brush you're not too fond of.

Alright, on to the pictures.

1) Paint the parts of the base/general surface you want to be covered with snow.

2) Mix up PVA glue, quite an amount of bicarbonate and water (pretty much to a 2:4:1 ratio), basically until it gains a very thick consistency.


3) Use the brush to add the mix onto the painted areas (I usually wait for the mixture to dry up somewhat (more like coagulate) in order to keep it onto the surface easier since it's more sticky and less running.

4) Sprinkle bicarbonate on top of the mixture before it's dry.


5) You will get something looking like this after you shake off the excess bicarbonate.


6) Here I created a rock before adding any snow with milliput, then painted it, to both give the base some height as well as more character.


7) Now when it's dry mix up some watered down white paint with PVA glue (from top to bottom: PVA glue, Skull White, Water).


8) Paint it over the bicarbonate (this helps create a much more snowy white color and at the same time it binds everything down, so we won't have bicarbonate falling all over when we handle the minis). Repeat this step until you've achieved the whiteness you want on your "snow".

Now just let it all dry and voilá! You've got snow!

Next up; There will be blood!

Banner creation...

Finished my first out of two exams today, scored 24/27 so I'm overall happy today, might get some painting done :D

Anyway, I was a tad bored so I created a banner, it says, "Miniatures From Valhall" (of course) but I also have made an alternate version, shown here below, which do you prefer?

Wednesday, December 16, 2009

Finished Space Wolf



First Space Wolf I've ever painted.
Also pretty much the first one I've really taken my time to paint in many years.
Before I used to speed-paint (3-4 hours only per model) my Ultramarines, now I take 10-15 hours per model.

I'm really satisfied with the result, I'm through with shiny gold emblems and trims (have also painted a 2000+ Black legion Army in my past), with that in mind along with the fact that I want a very feral-looking Space Wolf army bolstered this paint scheme. The shoulder pads' colors were "taken" from the new Codex front. I really loved that deep red and tan/bone colored trims.

I will add extensive Celtic and Scandinavian freehand on the empty shoulder pad later (read: I need to learn to do it good before I use it on this model).

Comments and Criticism always welcome and appreciated.

Have to start somewhere...

Might as well start by letting you all know what my current projects are:
-2000+ points worth of Space Wolves (this army will be built over an extremely long time period since I want it to be just as appealing to look at as it will be fun to play with it.)
-Van Saar Gang for Necromunda
-Cityfight board/underhive

So far I've only gotten the modelling work almost done on my Necromunda gangers and regarding the table me and Dennis (Author of the Miniatures Of Death blog) have gotten exactly nowhere but collecting tons of Necromunda bulkheads and various plastic ruins.

My real active project is my Space Wolves. Having played Ultramarines 5th Company since 2nd edition kind of wore me out, vanilla marine codex is something I don't want to look at for quite some time now.
I've started with modelling 9 Grey Hunters, 3 Wolf Guards in Power Armour, 5 Wolf Guards in Terminator Armour, 5 Wolf Scouts, and I'm 95% done with modeling one of my Wolf Priest.

Some of my GS work is displayed here.

This is a selection of all my GS work on the Space
Puppies thus far.






















Wolf Scouts












And here is my Wolf Priest

















Next up is my 1st painted Space Wolf