The Toad - Infamy Miniatures

For what it is worth I have done the leather, hard to photograph the lower leather parts as it is dark but it is done.  Was painted working from RMS Ruddy Leather adding black to shade and a little khaki to highlight.  Made some random lines on the places the leather would likely weather with ivory and then glazed the entire area with sepia ink repeated this a couple of time to build up a texture to the leather

The Toad - Infamy Miniatures

Worked on the Toad last couple of days, have been trying to work out the colours for power plant and went with red to give it that sort of traction engine feel.

Personally I think I made the wrong choice with red as it was far too saturated and jarring on the eye looking at the front of the model.  I however decided to keep it and try to glaze it back using sepia and purple glazes.  I also decided to add some of the other metal colours to see how it played out against the red

I painted the brass trying something I have never tried previously.  Started with Vallejo Air Metallic Steel and then added a bright orange, a little crimson and some burn umber which gave a lovely metallic beige.  I then added more brown to this to shade in the deepest recesses I used pure black.  To highlight added more steel to the base colour using a coat of pure silver to give the reflection.  In order to add a little visual interest I gave some areas a glaze of Red Brick, a lovely purple red.

Think that now it is much more; to borrow a phrase from a friend, harmonious than it was before the brass and will hopefully only increase the more metals are painted.

The Toad - Infamy Miniatures

I progressed with the base more tonight.  I wanted toad off to one side, so inorder to balance out the overall peice little I decided to add some weight to the left hand side of the base by placing some industrial apparel which also had the double whammy effect of re-enforcing the dockland warehouse sort of feel I was aiming for.

Also started work on the metals.

Gone for (T)rue (M)etallic (M)etal as I am not a massive fan of NMM although I apprecaite the skill involved in it.  

It dawned on my tonight just how much metal there is on this metal....Jesus

The Toad - Infamy Miniatures

Started to work on the other cloth areas, namely the jacket and trousers. I originally was going to have all the cloth the same colour as it is in the picture of the peaky blinders i am using as the inspiration, however decided after raising my concerns about it with a friend that it would be far too boring, so to remedy that I decided to do the jacket slightly different, working up from a ruddy leather rather than the bone showd but otherwise using all the same colours as in the other cloth, this allowed for the jacket to look different yet linked into the rest of the clothing tonally.

I managed to make a massive balls up when I blacked out the areas of the model which are to be metal....I was not paying attention and talking to friends, and flicked loads of black spots over the painted parts......after an hour or so I managed to fix it. Would rather not have had to do this but sometimes things happen and you have to deal with them I guess. The blacking out of the future metal parts benefits the eventual finish on the metal and always best to work from black (silver at least)

I have also started the block out the leather using Red Brick as a base colour aiming for reddish hue to the leather.

Also start to build the base.

I have brought myself a load of molds from Diaorama, they are slightly more expensive that hirst arts molds I think but the quality is far better, I have a man hole cover mold that blew my mind detail wise.  The idea for the base is a warhouse on the edge of the Thames as that is the Toad's terriotry.  Still need to add some random bits, maybe some telephone cables, electrical cables etc

The base was built using scupltiboard and then the adding the plaster cast stones etc on top, so it is hollow and rather light.

The Toad - Infamy Miniatures

So I made a little promise with James the owner of Infamy Miniatures that I would paint one of his models for Salute to enter in the comp as I have all of them and have yet to paint one.....the forfiet was for me to give him my Reaver, although I am sure he would never have collected.  But it was a motivator for sure, but the models are so gorgeous that no motivation is needed just a gentle push to start in the first place.

I chose the Toad the newest release and it hasn't failed to impress me, lovely sculpting by Mihk

 Started off by undercoating black and then zenithal highlighting with a white undercoat

Peaky Blinders is one of my favourite drama series in recent times (yes I prefer it to game of thrones etc.) and I made a concious decision to use some of the pictures from the series when I worked on the Toad. Set in Victorian Burmingham at the turn of the 20th century and based on the youth gangs of the era, I thought it was the perfect colour palette for a steampunk gangster like the Toad.

From this picture I went with Arthur Shelby on the right - he just seemed the perfect fit and the colours in the skin all just fit in perfectly with what i had in mind anyway.

Started on the face.  I started with a basecoat of Stained Olive from Reaper to give that sickly green tinge to the flesh, then added various skin tones to it, building up to a more human colour yet still retaining a hint of the Stained Olive.

Sadly, the way I paint is grab a colour without looking at the name, just whatever seems right, so can't reveal every flesh tone.

I didn't take the highlights too high at this stage and began to add some shade with a little Dark Sea Blue from Vallejo mixed into some skin tone and Stained Olive. I blended this into the fat folds and then added a tiny amount of black to that for further shade.

I also used pure Dark Sea Green glazed onto the skin to insinuate stubble. Finally at this point I wanted to add a little contrast and colour interest to the skin. Adding some crimson glazing around the eyes, cheeks and nose (being a perfect contrast to the greens already in the skin) gave the face some life!

I started to add more colour by introducing pale yellow and pink glazes into the highlights, further increasing interest, then finally adding white to these glazes.

At the same time I worked the other way, improving the shadows with more dark sea green glazes.

At this point I left the skin alone. I have learned from far superior painters than myself to take parts of a model to a point of 'not quite finished' and then move on to other areas. This means that once the other colours are put on the model and start to interact with those already in situ, you can assess what you need to change.

I started to block out the base colour for the hat and waistcoat and painted the rollie he is smoking.

I also painted the pinstriped shirt using bone colours rather than white, to give that slightly used feel rather than a box-fresh bleached and starched shirt

I started to work up the colour of the hat and waist coat, starting with a base colour of Bone Shadow and adding progressively more white to it for the highlights and then adding Stained Olive (used in the skin and duplicated here to bring the model together as a whole) for the shade. I also used a little black for the really shaded areas.

On the very light areas you have pure white and on the deepest recesses black giving the area contrast and visual interest.

Exorcists Space Marine Chapter

Fulfiling my Space Marine addiction I have built more stuff!

I have decided to make my own assault cannons.  I got my friend Gert D'Hollander to draw my up some barrel guides in CAD and then sent them to a brass etch compnay and got an A4 sheet of them done, now this is not cheap at all but the results are great.

All you need is three of the guides, and then 6 2.5cm long barrels (length varies on what your own personal taste).  Super glue one barrel on the gun housing (plastic body) then drill holes into the plastic where the holes are.  Then insert the barrels into these holes.  Finally slide on 2 barrel guides one half way down the barrel and 2 at the end about 5% on.

Redid my assault cannon on the land raider crusader I have started building

And also the Stormtalon

The Stormtalon has been further converted with slightly extended wings relocation of the missile launchers under the wings and then assault cannons where the missiles used to be.

I have also made a start on my "counts as" Calgar

Using flexible ammo chutes from Zinge Industries to do the ammo belts to the bolters and using the pre hersey Praetor from FW for the body.

Commissar Falkov - Castle Miniatures Bust

I have been spreading my time out between three different projects, Space Marines, The Toad and this Bust, so progress is slow on each project but overall there is loads of progress

Have done the cyber eye and the cap peak, was pleased with the final result on the peak, not something I have overly tried before the high gloss black painted with matte paints.