Blood and bloody ashes - Matrim paints all things fantasy

[Matrim_Cauthon]

Hello all,

Allow me to introduce myself. I've been a long term lurker on these forums. The only threads I've participated in so far are the TOFP threads. While I absolutely love those threads, I find it is not easy for me to stay committed to just one fantasy army for a whole year.

So the plan now is to keep this painting log as a motivation for myself... hopefully in the same style as the TOFP threads. That is posting all minis I paint and learning from the feedback you guys give me! Great examples for me are legends such as Harry, Sigur, EmperorNorton, and a whole lot of others... we all know them . I hope this thread will eventually come close to those!

I have been painting for about fifteen years now. Nothing fancy mind. Painting time is not always available for a father of two little ones (1,5 and 3 years old).

So without further ado, I show you the last project I finished! A Wood Elf BloodBowl team:





Comments and constructive criticism are welcome!

[The Lurkin Gherkin]

Oooh! Nice to see some more BB! Painting looks great, and I love the wheel of time reference

[Karak Norn Clansman]

Good Wood Elf team, but I'd have liked a WoT conversion log more.

[Student]

Looks cool. What model is player number 4?

[Matrim_Cauthon]

Oooh! Nice to see some more BB! Painting looks great, and I love the wheel of time reference

Thanks! I am listening to the Wheel of Time audiobooks while I paint. Halfway through The Dragon Reborn now - the plan is to finish the re-read for when the final book comes out.

Good Wood Elf team, but I'd have liked a WoT conversion log more.

Thanks for the reply! Yeah, WoT conversions would be cool. I've a plan in mind to make a kind of diorama of one of the first scenes in The Eye of the World where Rand and Tam's house is attacked by trollocs. Shouldn't be too hard as the Beastmen GW make are pretty much what I have in mind when I think of a trolloc.

Looks cool. What model is player number 4?

Thanks! That is an old Warhammer Wardancer that carried a javelin (which I cut off - obviously) sculpted by Jes Goodwin. You can see it here (number 8).

Next up: simple display base for the Wood Elf Bloodbowl team and a Dark Elf Dreadlord on Black Dragon.

[Matrim_Cauthon]

All right... the Dragon and rider (Dreadlord) are done. This was a really fun miniature to paint! The wing membranes are a little bit more pronounced in real life than the picture shows. I spent some time on the base, to make the mini stand out a bit more. Let me know what you guys and gals think! Thanks for watching.





Still working on the display base for the woodies... taking a bit more time than I thought!

[Matrim_Cauthon]

Well, sorry for the triple post... but I guess all I can do is post more pictures .

The display base for the wood elf team is done! As I said earlier it is nothing fancy, but it does its job. I'm still a little in doubt whether to add chalk lines or not. Might come back to that later.

At the moment I'm painting empire dudes. Some characters, some flaggelants (both old and new ones) and a Witch Hunter warband for Mordheim. This will be my first experience painting finecast and I must say I am a little dissapointed at the quality of the cast. I didn't notice it until after I undercoated the minis (captain with hammer & pistol and the witch hunter) but there are several noticeable air bubbles. Will have to see what I can do to camouflage them during the painting process...

Anyway, here is the base for my woodies team:



Thanks for watching. Let me know what you think... Please, if you like, leave a comment!

Cheers!

[The Lurkin Gherkin]

Thanks! I am listening to the Wheel of Time audiobooks while I paint. Halfway through The Dragon Reborn now - the plan is to finish the re-read for when the final book comes out.

Ahhh! Such good books! They get a little slow but then pick up again, cannot wait for the last one

Anyway, i shouldnt be so focussed WoT when theres such awesome painting going on! Great dragon!!! Are your colours mixed with yellows or is that the lighting? I feel as if there is a distinctly yellow tinge to the colours

[Matrim_Cauthon]

Great dragon!!! Are your colours mixed with yellows or is that the lighting? I feel as if there is a distinctly yellow tinge to the colours

Thanks for the kind words! Yeah I know photography is not my best skill. I always take the pictures using a perfectly white background, but the colours never seem right. I then do a colour correction in paint shop pro to make the background white again which makes all the colours seem much more realistic. Might be that this gives the yellow tinge to the pictures, but I feel the colours are truer to reality than when I don't do it. Ah well... Choices .

The empire guys I am painting are almost finished... will try to have up pictures as soon as I can!

[Matrim_Cauthon]

To illustrate what I do after I take a picture, I've made this:



Picture 1 is straight from the camera (well almost, I've obviously downsized it). Picture 2 is the same but after a manual colour correction to make the background white(r). Picture 3 is how I post most of my pictures - that is to paste the mini on to a dual tone background, which I think makes the mini stand out a bit more.

What do you guys think? Should I post my stuff as pictured in 1, 2 or 3?

Any comments on the Witch Hunter itself are welcome too of course! Thanks for looking.

[azhagmorglum]

Definitely not 1. 2 and 3 are fine, 3 is better I'd say, the blue background hurts the eyes less.

And great witch hunter btw

[Student]

The witchhunter looks cool. I like the strength of the blue and yellow. Background 3 looks the best. How do you copy and paste the mini ature onto the new background? Do you have to cut round it?

[Matrim_Cauthon]

Definitely not 1. 2 and 3 are fine, 3 is better I'd say, the blue background hurts the eyes less. And great witch hunter btw

Thanks man. I like 3 best too, so I guess I'll just keep at it then!

The witchhunter looks cool. I like the strength of the blue and yellow. Background 3 looks the best. How do you copy and paste the mini ature onto the new background? Do you have to cut round it?

Thanks! To copy the mini: after the colour correction (step 2) it's pretty easy to select all the background using the magic wand (in photoshop) then invert the selection and copy it onto a dual tone background. I use Paint Shop Pro 8 for the job. I'm sure there's better programs to do this, but that's what I'm used to.

Here is a picture of the Witch Hunter, including it's back. And also a picture of some old school flagellants I finished for my Witch Hunter Warband (Mordheim):

[Matrim_Cauthon]

All right... no comments means I have to keep blasting more pictures of finished minis your way . The last mini I finished is an empire captain:



I must say I really enjoy these plastic characters. The Witch Hunter and Captain with Hammer & Pistol (that I'm finishing now) were also fun to paint, but I am not a big fan of finecast. The cloak of this captain (as well as that of the witch hunter) were an exercise in layering blue. The transitions could be much smoother... but somehow I can't get any better results than this at the moment. I guess more practice will in time yield better and smoother results.

Thanks for looking and please let me know what you think of my minis soo far!

[Elfboy]

I love your empire captain, the yellow looks great.

[Matrim_Cauthon]

I love your empire captain, the yellow looks great.

Thanks mate!

The next update is another finecast character. If you look closely you might see some air bubbles. I only just saw them while painting and they are not in super visible places so I didn't see the need to greenstuff them. Lots of fiddly details though. And the quality of the sculpt doesn't really do it justice (ok neither does my paintjob, but hey). It was only when I looked at pictures on the web that I noticed that the pointy bits on his helmet were actually daggers. I painted them as if they were the ends of the feathers. Aah well... All in all I'm pretty satisfied with the paintjob!



Let me know what you think of it... Thanks!

[Confessor_Atol]

Fantastic work on your empire, the blue and yellow really stand out. I always wonder what type of birds these guys are getting those feathers from. I bet they keep Lords of Changes locked up in their doungons just to pluck from time to time.

[Matrim_Cauthon]

Fantastic work on your empire, the blue and yellow really stand out. I always wonder what type of birds these guys are getting those feathers from. I bet they keep Lords of Changes locked up in their doungons just to pluck from time to time.

Thanks a lot man! Might be they do keep of Lord of Change... might also be they just dye regular white feathers - who knows!

Update time: I painted up a few regular state troops to up the unit size a bit. I will post pictures of the whole units too if you want them. Six of them to join my Swordsmen (ok they are not all swordsmen but who notices), Two longbowmen and two crossbowmen.





As always, please let me know what you think!

I am now in the process of batch painting 40 (!) halberdiers. 40 is a lot... so I got a little distracted to do this:



That's right, some good old Warhammer Quest! I got sick and tired watching copies go second hand for 200£+, I decided to make my own version. Everything can be found online, so I thought it worth a shot. I started with the floor tiles. Print them at a decent resolution, stick 'em on cardboard, plastify and there you go! Already looking forward to playing a game on them! I managed to buy some WHQ doors pretty cheap online... now all I have to do is paint up some minis!

Cheers!

[Boreas_NL]

Nice job on those Empire models! The blue and yellow works quite well and certainly stands out... They are from Nordland, right? Both the Captain and the Witch Hunter are amongst the nicest new models around. Don't talk down on your painting, it's certainly not bad!

The Quest tiles look great, too! I used to play Heroquest, a lot, but I kind of skipped Warhammer Quest and went straight to WFRP. We use a custom 3D dungeon that I built (which is also quite fun for games of Mordheim). Your way is certainly a lot quicker and easier, good thinking!

Good luck painting all those Halberdiers!

[Matrim_Cauthon]

Nice job on those Empire models! The blue and yellow works quite well and certainly stands out... They are from Nordland, right? Both the Captain and the Witch Hunter are amongst the nicest new models around. Don't talk down on your painting, it's certainly not bad!

The Quest tiles look great, too! I used to play Heroquest, a lot, but I kind of skipped Warhammer Quest and went straight to WFRP. We use a custom 3D dungeon that I built (which is also quite fun for games of Mordheim). Your way is certainly a lot quicker and easier, good thinking!

Good luck painting all those Halberdiers!

Thanks man! It means a lot coming from a hobby Guru such as yourself!

They are from Nordland indeed, although that actually came as an afterthought. I just like painting things blue and yellow as I think it's a great combination.

Major update time! I have finished the 40 halberdiers!! Well, 39 halberdiers and a Warrior Priest. I actually really enjoyed the batch painting process. Each round took about 2 hours... and they took quite some rounds to finish. I'll post them here as much for your information as for my own later reference... All in all they took me about 25 hours to paint. Seems long but the feeling you get when they are done... that's what you do it for, right!?

Round 1: Undercoat skull white spray
Round 2: Paint all the yellow parts with Iyanden Darksun
Round 3: Paint all the flesh parts Tallarn Flesh/Dheneb Stone 50/50 mix
Round 4: Paint all the blue parts Enchanted Blue
Round 5: Paint all the leather and wood parts Calthan Brown
Round 6: Paint all the white parts Dheneb Stone
Round 7: Washing time! Wash all yellow and flesh with Gryphone Sepia
Round 8: Wash all blue with Asurmen Blue
Round 9: Wash everything else with Devlan Mud
Round 10: Paint all metal parts Boltgun Metal
Round 11: Wash the metal with Badab Black

I leave the metal for last because I hold my minis by their halberds as I paint - that way I don't screw up the paintjob too much.

Round 12: Paint the base Scorched Brown
Round 13: Drybrush the base with Vermin Brown
Round 14: Pick out some stones with Adaptus Battlegrey
Round 15: Highlight the stones with Astronomican Grey
Round 16: Paint the base rim with Graveyard Earth
Round 17: Paint the base rim AGAIN with Graveyard Earth
Round 18: Put on some tufts of static grass here and there

But I guess all you guys want is pictures , so without further ado:



And some close ups of the files:











Sorry for the long post, but I hope you like them. Please leave comments and to quote Boreas: if you feel really adventurous rate this thread!