More Monsters

We've been having more painting hangouts in the last few weeks, and it's been a lot of fun. Over the last three sessions I finished two more monsters from the Witcher boardgame, a harpy and a werewolf, which in retrospect is quite fitting given we are currently in the month of October.

Harpy:
Again I wasn't putting much effort into the Harpy, just threw on some colours real quick and called it a day. I was reminded of images of angels and demons from movies like 2005's Constantine and 2008's Max Paine, so I went for a demonic colour scheme. I wanted to try my new Two Thin Coats purple triad, so I roughly layered up the skin in Two Thin Coats 10016 Amethyst Rayne, 10017 Sorcerer's Cloak, and 10018 Runic Purple.

I used Vallejo colours for the wings, though I'm not 100% sure which ones I used. The basecoat was probably Vallejo 72.010 Game Color Bloody Red. I tried to drybrush orange - most likely Vallejo 72.009 Game Color Hot Orange - but it wasn't drybrushing properly, the result came out more like a smoothly blended transition. Which wasn't what I was after, but I went with it. I got a similar effect with the yellow - probably Vallejo 72.006 Game Color Sun Yellow.

I washed the wings and skin, I think I used Citadel Shade Carroburg Crimson for both. I then picked out the beak in Vallejo 72.763 Game Air Desert Yellow, highlighted with what was probably the same Sun Yellow, then glazed it with Citadel Glaze Lamenters Yellow.

I don't remember exactly what greys and browns I used for the base, but I used different basecolours for the rock, dirt, and rope, but washed them all together, I think I used Citadel Shade Nuln Oil, though it might have been Citadel Shade Agrax Earthshade. I drybrushed the rocks in a lighter grey, and I think I drybrushed both the dirt and rope in the same tan.


Werewolf:
After soliciting colour scheme suggestions from the rest of the group, I decided to go for a wintery scheme. I actually made an effort with this guy, mainly because he needed more attention due to the different textures covering the whole model.

I basecoated the skin in The Army Painter WP1432 Warpaints Ice Storm. The fur was Vallejo 70.990 Model Color Light Grey. I think the nose was Vallejo 70.862 Model Color Black Grey. The leather was Green Stuff World 1834 Acrylic Color Quicksand Brown. I mixed Formula P3 Ryn Flesh with a little bit of Citadel Colour Base Mephiston Red to get a pink for the mouth. I picked out the teeth, claws and eyes in Two Thin Coats 10036 Trooper White (or it might have been 10035 Ivory Tusk). I used a darker grey for the stone and a darker brown for the dirt.

I then washed the entire model in Citadel Shade Agrax Earthshade, which went on very well (although you can see in the photos that I missed a spot or two), but kinda blended the fur and skin together so that there wasn't much difference between them anymore. I dryrbushed the fur in the Light Grey, but I felt it was too dark so I went over it again with Vallejo 70.989 Model Color Sky Grey then Vallejo 79.993 Model Color White Grey. I lightly dryrbushed the skin with Ice Storm to give it back a little of the blue. I drybrushed the rock in Light Grey, and the dirt in Quicksand Brown.

I glazed over the eyes with Citadel Glaze Lamenters Yellow, clumsily dotted the pupils with Vallejo 70.950 Model Color Black, and called it a day.

Elemental Jellybeans

I've been interested in doing more clear resin casting. I figured the Elemental Champions would look great with some added transparency. I started with the units, which gave me a chance to experiment with making molds and tinting resin.

Casting:
These models proved to be far more difficult to cast than Ol' Grim's torso, as there were far more nooks and crannies to catch air bubbles. I ended up designing and printing a casting box that had a "door" on each side; I would glue the model into the box, then use the shafts from ear buds to create vents anywhere I thought air was likely to get caught:

Then I sealed the "doors" in place with PVA, using elastic bands to hold them until the PVA dried:

With this done I was able to pour in silicone to make a mold:

Once this set I could pull the doors off and easily extract the mold, carefully cutting it open to remove the model:

I would then transfer the mold to a casting box I designed and printed, that would actually feed the resin to the mold from underneath, so it would slowly fill from the bottom up:

Actually mixing the resin, trying to de-gas it, then slowly and carefully pouring it into the mold was something like a half-hour process per mold. Between trying to get better casts and trying to dial in the tint colours, and of course casting enough to get 15 units, it took ages to finish.

I had to do a lot of cleanup work too, filling bubbles with UV resin and even trying to replace missing details by building up with UV resin then sanding down to the desired shape. One particular recurring issue, for example, was the fingers on the Fire Kami; only one cast came out with fingers that I could "rescue" using UV resin, all the rest needed greenstuff work to look even remotely decent:

The Air Avatar was a little bit more involved. The mold was made the same way, but before casting I took some miscast bricks (made from Green Stuff World acrylic resin powder mixed with water and cast in a Green Stuff World brick mold), broke them into smaller pieces with a hobby knife, and painted them to look like small rocks.

I cut a strip of clear plastic from a blister pack, and used a heat gun to soften it so I could bend it to follow the contour of the Air Avatar. I attached the rocks to the plastic strip using Green Stuff World UV resin.

I put the rock-encrusted strip of clear plastic into the Air Avatar mold before filling it with resin, embedding the rocks inside the resin.

Air Avatar:

I cast the Air Avatar using clear resin with no added dye. The Air Avatar was actually the first model I painted, so I did some things differently from the rest. I airbrushed on Mr. Hobby Mr. Color GX 113 UVCut Flat to serve in place of a primer. I was also hoping that blocking as much UV as possible would protect the resin from yellowing over time. After glueing the model onto its base I applied a masking tape I had gotten from a local art store onto the rest of the base and used blu-tack to try to protect right up to the model.

I painted the rocks that are part of the original sculpt with the same colour I used on the inner rocks: a leftover mix of brown artist acrylics (Daler Rowney "Graduate Acrylic" 201 Burnt Sienna, Phoenix Artist's Acrylic Value Series 690 Vandyke Brown, and Phoenix 601 Raw Sienna) that I've had lying around for a while. I lightly drybrushed the entire model with Formula P3 Menoth White Highlight; I decided to use this on the whole model to try to help the detail to stand out. I then washed the rocks on the base in Citadel Shade Agrax Earthshade. I gave the model another airbrushed varnish of Mr. Hobby Mr. Color GX 112 UVCut Gloss; I considered leaving it glossy as this enhanced the transparency, but it didn't really make sense for air to be glossy so I went over again with the UVCut Flat. For illustrative purposes, here it is before the matt coat, next to an Air Kami with a gloss varnish:

And here is the same model after I went over the gloss coat with a matt varnish, you can see how the matt finish makes it looks less clear:

After the model was done, when I tried to remove the masking tape from the base, it left a stubborn residue behind:

After some experimentation I found something that was able to clean up the residue, however I don't remember what it was and I think it also melted the plastic of the base a tiny bit, but luckily I was able to smooth it out enough to not be too noticeable.

Air Kamis:

The Air Kamis were cast in clear resin then airbrushed with a varnish to act as a primer. I think I actually used the GX 113 Gloss on all the models other than the Air Avatar; I might have been hoping this would help washes flow into recesses rather than tinting the whole model, tbh I don't remember. This time I used Talens Liquid Masking Film to protect the base, which fortunately worked very well.

I gave the models a light drybrush with Two Thin Coats 10036 Trooper White. The grunts' armour was then basecoated with Scalecolor SC-63 Metal N' Alchemy Black Metal, then washed it with Citadel Shade Nuln Oil. This was followed with a dryrbushed of Vallejo 72.053 Game Color Chainmail Silver. I decided it was too dark, so I drybrushed the upper surfaces with Vallejo 72.052 Game Color Silver.

To differentiate the Elite I basecoated its armour with Citadel Color Tin Bitz, then washed it with Citadel Washes Ogryn Flesh (thinned with Citadel Technical Lahmian Medium because my pot is old and has thickened). It was then dryrbushed with Citadel Layer Gehenna's Gold, but I decided it was too dark so I drybrushed the upper surfaces with Citadel Layer Auric Armour Gold. I also left the "gemstones" on the gauntlets clear on the Elite, where I had just painted over them on the grunts.

I varnished them with Mr. Hobby Mr. Color GX 112 UVCut Gloss then Mr. Hobby Mr. Color GX 113 UVCut Flat.

Earth Kamis:

I initially cast the Earth Kamis with green-tinted resin; first I tried a mix of ten drops of Pebeo Fluid Pigment 67 Blue with around five drops of Pebeo Fluid Pigment 62 yellow (in 30ml of resin, which was very excessive). This became very opaque; an issue that always seemed to occur if I used more than a couple of drops of Pebeo yellow. My second attempt came out better with six drops of Pebeo blue to two drops of Pebeo yellow in 20ml of resin. Later I aquired some Green Stuff World 2402 Dye For Resins Green, using seven drops in 20ml of resin.

Which didn't really matter because I then decided to save clear green for different models and switched to purple for my Earth Kamis instead. I tried two drops of Green Stuff World 2401 Dye For Resins Blue with three drops of Green Stuff World 2404 Dye For Resins Red in 15ml of resin, but this was too dark. Next I tried five drops of Pebeo blue (which seems to be much less saturated) with two drops of GSW red in 20ml of resin, and finally three drops of Pebeo blue with one drop of GSW red in 20ml of resin:

I varnished the models, glued them to the bases, and applied the liquid mask to protect the bases. The grunts' helmets were painted Black Metal, washed with Nuln Oil, then dryrbushed with chainmail silver and finally the raised surfaces were dryrbrushed with silver. The Elite's helmet was basecoated in Tin Bitz, washed it with Ogryn Flesh, dryrbushed with Citadel Layer Gehenna's Gold, then the upper surfaces were drybrushed with Auric Armour Gold.

Finally the unarmoured areas were washed with (old) Citadel Shade Druchii Violet. I only did this on the lighter two; when I started on the darker one the shade wasn't really visible and I was afraid it would darken it even further, so I quickly wased it off with water and left it unshaded. I varnished them with Mr. Hobby Mr. Color GX 112 UVCut Gloss, but decided not to follow up with the matt varnish as I liked the idea of the gemstones being shiny.

Fire Kamis:

Initially I tried to tint the resin orange while casting, but then I decided to just use yellow so that I would have bright yellow as the lightest parts of the flames. I had a hard time with the yellow tint, as the Pebeo Fluid Pigment 62 Yellow was very concentrated and just a few drops would turn the model opaque. The Green Stuff World 2403 Dye For Resins Yellow was much more controllable; in the end I used about five drops of GSW yellow in 15ml of resin.

I varnished the models, glued them to the bases, and applied the liquid mask to protect the bases. I then washed the models with Citadel Shade Casandora Yellow; this gave the models the orange tint I had hoped for but darkened them a lot more than I had been expecting. It also seemed to even out the differences in the intensity of the yellow tint between the models.

The flames were looking flatter than I had hoped, so I tried to darked the recesses on the lower parts of the models with another, more carefully applied wash of Casandora Yellow. To try to lighten the models up a bit and create more contrast I tried to take some of the wash off the raised areas by lightly rubbing them with cotton swabs that I moistened and then picked up a small amount of The Masters Brush Cleaner And Preserver, washing the models with a generous amount of water afterwards to make sure there was no residue or leftover brush cleaner. I think this did lighten the raised areas a little, but it's hard to be sure, that might be just my imagination.

The grunts' helmets were painted Black Metal, washed with Nuln Oil, then dryrbushed with chainmail silver and finally the raised surfaces were dryrbrushed with silver. The Elite's helmet was basecoated in Tin Bitz, washed it with Ogryn Flesh, dryrbushed with Citadel Layer Gehenna's Gold, then the upper surfaces were drybrushed with Auric Armour Gold. I also made sure to use the one cast with good fingers for the elite, which allowed me to leave the fingers clear rather than painting over them as I did with the grunts.

Fire Avatars:

I had some trouble casting these guys as the "brain" at the top kept coming out empty. Which is kinda funny to be fair. Eventually I got a good cast, and then ended up with a second good cast (I had only been planning on making one) when I had some leftover resin. I used the same yellow tint as the Fire Kamis, and painted them the exact same way as the Elite Fire Kami.

Water Avatars:

For the first cast I tried about five drops of Pebeo blue in 20ml of resin, I tried to lighten up the second one a little with about three drops of Pebeo blue in 20ml of resin. The first cast had rather a lot of small air bubbles on the surface; the second had far less. Unfortunately I careless chose the rougher of the two casts when I was taking photos...

I varnished the models, glued them to the bases, and applied the liquid mask to protect the bases. The metallic parts were basecoated in Tin Bitz, washed it with Ogryn Flesh, dryrbushed with Citadel Layer Gehenna's Gold, then the upper surfaces were drybrushed with Auric Armour Gold.

The models were looking good; I would say they were my favourites in fact, like deep blue marbles. However I decided to try to bring out the details of the water's surface a bit more; I considered a light white drybrush, but decided instead to try to shade the recesses with a wash of Vallejo 73.207 Game Wash Blue Wash. This darkened the models more than I would have liked, and kinda flowed a bit too much; it didn't really stay in most the recesses and so didn't accentuate the detail as much as I would have liked. That might be at least partly due to the gloss varnish I was using in lieu of primer?


Overall I think these models look fun, and I learned a lot while making them. The bronze looks really good to me, I'm really happy with how that turned out. In the future I'll try to use lighter tints while casting, knowing know that shading has such a pronounced darkening effect on clear casts. I am planning on casting and painting the monsters as well (eventually); in fact I specifically chose the two metallic colours for the units based on how I plan to paint the monsters. These guys did take a long time however, hopefully it won't take me as long to get the monsters done.

A New Way Of Modelling Energy Blades?

I'm not saying this has never been done before, but personally I don't recall ever seeing energy blades on a miniature done this way, so it's new to me at least. And I'll confess to being somewhat proud of coming up with it by myself, even if it turns out I'm not the first person to pull it off.

The Sword:
A while back I was working on a 3D printed statue (which I'll finish someday...), and ran into an issue where several small curved blades were too delicate and snapped off. I eventually figured out a way to internally support a blade with a steel pin. And then one day I had an idea: what if I did the same thing, but with clear resin, and painted the internal pin white?

I started by modelling a simple curved blade, with a channel inside that followed the curvature. It was surprisingly difficult to actually print this out; for some reason the channel would often only go halfway up the blade, or even less. The files looked fine, but I would get inconsistent results even from a single print batch. Initially I had the channel go to the tip of the blade then stop, but in the end I had to make it go the entire way through the blade and out the tip. Eventually I was able to get a few successful prints (out of a lot of failures). I took an 0.6mm steel tailor pin and carefully bent it to match the curvature of the channel, grinding down the tip to be fairly round instead of pointed. I primed the pin and then painted it white.

I then carefully glued it in place at the right depth using superglue - a process that failed at least once, as you have to work fast to get it in place before the superglue sets. I did this before the "final curing" of the printed blade so that it would be soft enough to deform over the pin, making it easy to slide the pin into place. After the pin was glued in place, I finished curing the blade with a UV lamp. I then used UV resin to fill the leftover recess in the tip, then carefully sanded it to shape. I also sanded the rest of the blade smooth, which I figured would also add some tooth to the surface to help with the painting.

I then brushed on a VERY thin coat of Formula P3 Blue Ink mixed about 1:1 with Vallejo 73.596 Glaze Medium; I had to be careful to get a light even coat, brushing the glaze on then basically brushing most of it back off. I then airbrushed the blade with Mr. Hobby Mr. Color GX 112 UVCut Gloss to smooth it out and protect the clear resin from UV to try to reduce the yellowing that happens over time in clear resins.

Coupled with the OSL the results are pretty good, with a bright core and a darker, more saturated "aura", much like the classic rendering of a lightsaber.

Kara Mint:
The model is Kara Mint by HardWitch-Games, I modified the 32mm pre-supported model by removing the blade and leaving a hole in the hilt for a pin, printed it at 105% scale (which is just what felt like it fit next to my Marcher World models) using Phrozen ABS-like matte grey resin on my Longer Orange 4K. The base was made from GSW Brown Stuff using Shiboicarus' Space Station Roller A, printed at 69% in order to fit in with my existing GSW texture rollers.

After priming with Mr. Hobby Surfacer, I basecoated the model with Vallejo 71.073 Model Air Metallic Black, thinned with Vallejo 71.261 Airbrush Thinner. I first ran this through a GSW airbrush paint filter cup to try to avoid the blockage issues I was having previously. This was using my new Harder Steinbeck Ultra 2024 airbrush, which so far has indeed been far superior to the cheap double-action airbrushes I've been using so far. Nevertheless I made sure to brush the metallic black into all the recesses with a long-bristled brush; I'm starting to feel that 3D printed models have a tendency to have more hard-to-reach areas that traditional cast models, probably due to the different restrictions imposed by the production method (and also perhaps due to the differing experience of the creators).

I then sprayed the model with Vallejo 71.072 Model Air Metallic Gunmetal from about 45 degrees. This came out brighter than I had expected; even though I shook up the dropper bottle a fair bit, I wonder if the paint had separated from the pigment? Maybe not. I did follow this with a spray of Vallejo 72.053 Game Color Chainmail Silver from almost directly above, but I'm not convinced this actually did much as I wasn't sure I could actually see any real difference.

I initially basecoated the cloth in Citadel Foundation Mechrite Red and the "underclothes" in Vallejo 70.862 Model Color Black Grey. After cleaning up the basecoats I washed the steel and black cloth in Citadel Shade Nuln Oil. I tried to shade the red cloth with The Army Painter WP1138 Quickshade Washes Red Tone mixed (1:1-ish) with Vallejo 73.596 Glaze Medium. This didn't really seem to do much, so I went back with a couple of washes of straight Red Tone, which of course tended towards the recesses as it was designed to do, rather than shading all over. This didn't darken it much overall, but did pool into a few spots and darken a lot there, which I didn't like.

At this point I changed my mind about the red, and decided to go with a magenta instead. But my only magenta paint was Formula P3 Murderous Magenta, so I needed to start with something darker. I went over the red with a couple of layers of Redwood Brown, but that still didn't feel dark enough so I glazed it with a roughly 1:1 mix of Citadel Shade Agrax Earthshade and Vallejo 73.596 Glaze Medium - however this didn't seem to darken it as much as I expected, except where it pooled in the recesses. I figured it would have to do and moved on to the highlighting.

I edge-highlighted the grey cloth with Vallejo 70.869 Model Color Basalt Grey as I wanted it to stay fairly dark. The steel was edge-highlighted with Vallejo 72.052 Game Color Silver. With this done I glazed the areas I wanted to be brass/gold with Formula P3 Blazing Ink thinned with the glaze medium.

I had just watched a fantastic video from Ninjon, and was eager to try a (highly simplified) version of the cloth texture painting technique he used. I blocked out the basic highlight areas of the magenta cloth with the P3 Murderous Magenta, then I thinned it down and feathered it on over the block-highlights and the surroundings, extending the highlights but also creating gradient and texture using multiple passes. I then mixed Murderous Magenta with Citadel Edge Fulgrim Pink and blocked out some smaller highlights, then thinned the mix with water and P3 Mixing Medium and feathered it on in the same way. I had originally planned to apply a magenta ink glaze to tie the colours together a bit more, but I decided it was fine like this.

Finally I could move on to the base. I was having a hard time deciding on a colour, so I asked for advice from a couple of painting discords. The most popular suggestion was turquise (followed by green), which I liked more the more I thought about it. So I put down a solid coat of Formula P3 Boiler Black, then edge-highlighted it with Green Stuff World 1876 Metallic Paint Aqua Turquise. I drubrushed over it with the same colour to soften the edge highlights somewhat, then washed the base with (old) Nuln Oil. This left it looking very desaturated, with very little colour visible; there was barely any difference from the steel on the model. So I glazed it with a roughly 1:1 mix of the Vallejo glaze medium and Formula P3 Turquise Ink.

I wanted to try airbrushing a glow to accentuate the energy sword, but was feeling nervous as I had never done it before. I went looking for youtube videos on airbrushing OSL, but most of the ones I found actually did this first then painted the rest of the model after, and of course it was too late for that. However I did finally stumble onto a useful video from Paint by Az, and another from Slayer Miniatures, that cleared things up in my head and - along with some encouragement on Discord - gave me the courage to give it a shot.

So I started by airbrushing a tiny bit of Daler-Rowney 011 FW Acrylic Ink White onto the model, and followed it with a rough spray of Formula P3 Blue Ink. And I stopped there because it already looked overwhelming. I was struggling to control the flow here; my compressor doesn't have a good regulator so I've been finding it really hard to put down light controlled sprays, I ended up putting down far more paint than I had intended and I'm probably lucky it wasn't even heavier than that.

Finally I painted the base rim with Vallejo 70.950 Model Color Black, attached the sword, and varnished the model with Mr. Hobby Mr. Color GX 112 UVCut Gloss followed by 113 UVCut Flat once the gloss coat was dry. I marked the bottom of the base with Dr. Ph. Martin's Pen-White using an Isomars 0.4mm technical pen (which somehow seems to have rusting issues; I'm thinking of replacing it with a Rotring or Koh-I-Noor).


I think she looks pretty good despite what's actually a fairly simple paint job. I enjoyed trying some new techniques, and the actual painting didn't even take all that long (in actual man-hours), once I had figured out the sword at least.

I think I can get better results for the glowing blade by using tinted casting resin, that I cast directly onto the painted pin. It might be tricky, but if it works it could potentially look better (I imagine it will give a brighter core while having a strong "aura" colour), and should avoid the need to use UV resin to fill a hole. In the future I want to try to build an actual glowing lightsaber using LEDs in the hilt; I don't know if I can get it to fit in the hands of a 35mm human figure, but I intend to try. Eventually.