Minotaurs Tactical Squad - Badab War - On the Painting Table

I have been waiting about six months to get this project off the ground, cant believe I had so much other stuff to get completed first. Part of the wait was for the release of the shoulder pads and the models for Ivanus Enkomi and Asterion Moloc from Forgeworld which are fantastic! I have a conversion in  mind even though I am going to purchase both these guys anyway. The thing I was waiting for was to see how Forgeworld was going to do the grenade launcher on Enkomi.

Anyhow back to the tactical squad. I completed my test mini see post here -

http://aureliuslegion.blogspot.com/2011/11/badab-war-minotaurs-finished.html

The picture below is of my Order of Navaar Chapter that I put on hold. What does that have to do with my Minotaurs? well they have been cleaned with Dettol and will be recycled into my new Minotaurs squad.

Picture above before cleaning

Picture above after cleaning with Dettol.

 and coat of Chaos Black as a base, I am not using a primer here. Want to see how that works out.

The next step was to apply my base colour of Tin Bitz.

Then a heavy dry brush of Brazen Brass followed by a heavy wash of Thraka Green and then a light dry brush of Brazen Brass again.

Next I applied a homemade wash of Thraka Green Wash and Scaly Green Paint.

Then another light dry brush with brazen Brass

 

Lastly cleaned up the recess with some neat application of the wash again.

That's it for the armour, next up will be the details so stay tuned.

Vitor

Silver Skulls - Tactical Marine Part 2

On to my final test finishing this guy up using the object source lighting technique. To start with I went ahead and painted him up as I would normally do, that is to say as if the light is coming from all around him GW style. I began by giving the miniature a heavy wash all over with Badab Black and started finalizing the shoulder pads and details.

Next was a drybrush of Boltgun Metal to bring out the armour detail as normal.

Now he is finished bar one or two minor detail tweaks and basing if I was painting him as I normally do a miniature for the tabletop. However I need to try to paint the highlights as if the light was coming from the top only. So I picked up the miniature and looked at it from the light source and noted the areas that I could see would be in full light, I used a Chainmail drybrush to highlight those. Those areas that would be in shadow I then used a wash of Badab Black to darken.

Forgive my camera skills but the pictures do not show the contrast as well as it is in reality on the miniature. all I needed was to finish the base and he was done. seeing as this was a platform for testing I decided on one more test and that was to do a base similar to Mars, red sand etc so here he is my Silver Skulls Tactical Marine Completed.

Last shot.

Vitor

Silver Skulls - Tactical Marine

Art by Clint Langley

My humble test subject has been sitting on my desk waiting patiently for me to decide what to do next, well he doesn't need to wait any longer as he is destined for the battlefield clad in Silver Skulls livery! All due to this amazing piece of artwork by, I believe, Clint Langley.

But wait there is lots of testing to do on him!

I wanted to have a go at trying to sculpt something in greenstuff.
I wanted to use my press mold again.
I wanted to see if you could paint without using primer.
I wanted to try out the object source lighting thing!!

To recap I removed his old paint job using Dettol, see my labels for the post.

Next was trying to sculpt something in greenstuff, well what easier thing to sculpt than a skull? Unfortunately I did not record a step by step in pictures but this was the procedure I followed. I took a small bit of greenstuff and flattened it out on the shoulder pad into a circle, very important make sure its equally thick! Mine wasn't so it screwed up the sculpt in the end. Next cut away the parts you don't want starting with the cheeks, then the eyes and finally shape the jaw and cut out the teeth.

 Because mine wasn't equally thick I had to file down the skull and it exaggerated the mistakes in my sculpt. Also use an agent to keep things smooth, I used water but I think oil or lip balm would have been better. For my first ever sculpt it's not to bad, at least it removed the fear of sculpting in greenstuff for me. With more practise it will improve.

Next up was the press mold for the tactical marking on the other shoulder pad again see my labels for how to do this.

Now it was time to start painting without a primer, I went directly to my black base coat as if it was a primer and then painted him up roughly to get an idea of the end result.

As you can see all my tests came out reasonably well and I am happy to declare them a success, with the exception of the object source light thing (OSL) which I didn't get to yet.

The object source lighting test will be a addressed in the next post where I finish the paint job.

Stay tuned.

Vitor

How to strip paint from a plastic and metal miniature using Dettol

I have painted over my test mini shown above a few too many times and it was in need of cleaning. I have seen many tutorials on cleaning paint off mini's using 'Simple Green' and 'Dettol' as 'Simple Green' is not available where I live I went for 'Dettol', household antiseptic, which you can get from supermarkets and pharmacies etc. Now I am told you have to use the regular kind as its the one that works, so that's what I bought and had a go at cleaning him up.

To get started take your desired plastic mini, a glass jar with lid and your 'Dettol'. An old toothbrush and toothpick (not shown) is required for the final clean up.

Place mini in jar and pour appropriate amount of 'Dettol' into jar to cover the mini. Seal jar with lid. Now go away and do some stuff, for the whole day or night.

After about 5 hours this is what the mini looked like, sorry for the poor quality picture.

You can see that almost all of the paint has come away from the mini. You can use your brush and toothpick at this stage to help get rid of the stubborn bits. A note here is the paint that comes off turns into a gluey substance and sticks everywhere so be careful. It will clean off with soapy water so don't worry.

After a whole night of soaking and cleaning up with the brush and toothpick and a good wash in warm soapy water, this is the final result.

You can still see some paint on the mini but I can assure you that it is virtually ingrained into the plastic and would not hinder any new painting.

The mini all primed and ready for the next test. here you can see there is no ill effects from the small amount of paint that did not come off from the soaking in 'Dettol'

To clean metal mini's just follow the same procedure. The best part of 'Dettol' is that you can reuse it!

I think it worked even better on the metal mini. It looks brand new.

Hope this helps you out if you ever need to clean a mini in the future. As always leave a comment below with your thoughts.


Vitor