The Painting Bunkerc y

Today is a good day.  I finished off the fifth Realm of Battle board of the eight that I started a little over two months ago.  This board has thus far been by far the most challenging I’ve completed.  Both technically and creatively.  I remember at one point thinking I’ve arrived at the place where my vision and my technical ability no longer over lap.  I kept going though, determined to push myself and see what I started through.  I’m glad I did preserver too  because the final piece is my most pleasing to date.

I also have to point out that I’ve been doing some work on my photography skills and had some tutoring from my friend and fellow Blogger Troy on using Photoshop.  I went and downloaded photoshop and this morning Troy spend several hours with me showing me some basic techniques to improve the quality of the pictures that I post on my blog.  You’ll notice that they look different, although not perfectly the way I’d like them its a new direction for me and I intend on working on this skill and honing it moving forward.  Go and have a look at Troy’s blog too, its still model building just a different genre to ours.  I am working on him though you’ll all be happy to hear.  Thanks again for your help on this Troy and being so generous with your time.

So lets get down to business,  I’ll put up some pictures and leave a few remarks under each one and walk you through what went on.  Also, take a good look at the working photos to see what I meant.  It may not look like much, but a lot of work went into these pieces and I think I jagged bits of it too.

The overpass of doom and spiral stair case of despair…  As some of you will remember one of the first boards I did was of a giant crane that I purchased for $35!!! (can you believe it!) from Toys’r us.  Well, when I built that crane I had two of the centre sections left and I always planned on using them on one of the other boards.  With the last board of the industrial precinct about to commence I thought it would make sense to use it somewhere on it, and seeing as it looked a bit like a walk way, I thought it would be interesting having it spanning over the large double lane road that runs through the centre of this board.  I knew one of the ends of the walk way would run into a building, however I had to really put my thinking cap on to work out where the other end would go.

One of the first technical challenges I had to overcome was the heights.  One end that went into a building was more or less governed how high it was going to be, in this case, on the second story of a three story building.  What made it difficult though was the foundation that the building was resting on, it was just a random height, and the other side was at street level.  So the building on the other side, even if it was a GW plastic kit, would not match up height wise and the walk way would be un-level.

Enter the spiral stare case of despair.  Wow did this test me.  You can see in the working photos whats gone into it.  It was a real challenge.  But I have to say, it was an enjoyable one, at no time did I ever feel like throwing it against the wall and jumping on it.

Which is new for me.

The whole way I just would come up to another technical challenge and work out the solution…  I did do a fair few sketches too of this piece before I assembled it, I knew the height I needed it to be, then it was a case of just doing some math and a bit of straight forward planning and then following that plan.  However it was still challenging, and even with all my planning I wasn’t sure if it was going to go together when I finished it.  

The final piece is the storage tank.  I really like this piece most of it is actually scratch built too.  It was great fun making it and looks awesome, remember when in doubt modelling add an Imperial Eagle, when in doubt painting add hazard stripes.  

Love this shot

So there you go.  I really hope you like the pieces and the new style of photos I’ve put up.  I’d be interested in hearing your comments too if you feel the urge to share your thoughts.

Until next time

John

Well, after getting back on my brief holiday over the weekend I got home with renewed vigour and enthusiasm to get my hobby on… and that I have.  Sometimes taking a break and total abstinence from hobby is the best thing to renew your interest.  So its now 3 down, 7 to go for the Realm of Battle boards.  Today I bring you the finished Forge World Realm of Battle Cityscape Concourse Sector.  As I’ve mentioned before I want these boards to tell a little story, not just be a disparate bunch of boards with buildings on them.   These two boards (I’ve got two if you remember) I see as the administration centres for the Shattered Cathedral.

This first one being the actual administration centre and a records storage depot or perhaps entrance to an underground archive…   With this building though I wanted it to be a line of sight blocker.  No windows, no damage or anything, just something that will clearly block LoS for 90% of the units that are used in 40k.

So enough with the yackaty yack, lets get to the pictures.

Another possible use for the smaller of the two buildings is use it in a scenario where its an objective and at the end of the game the controlling player gets some sort of deployment or initiative advantage in a game that features Zone Mortalis… nice.  Perhaps another purpose is that its an Adeptus Arbites (and friendly local Inquisitor) squad house, the Cathedral precincts local police station.

I made the second floor of the Administration Building and roof of the Archive detachable to make using them in a game easier.  As usual (now) below is a gallery of all the work in progress shots of this build that I take along the way.  Feel free to have a snoop around to see how I do business.

Thanks for dropping in, I’m really looking forward to the next finished post I’ll be brining you.  Its the second Concourse Sector and it features a Chaplaincy and Chaplaincy Accommodation….  I’m really excited about it, it looks amazing and its not even painted yet!

Ok,  thats it for me for now

John

Two down, six to go….

This scenery project has been by far my most ambitious, it’s also the most satisfying now its complete.  Now that I’ve finished it, I can also say its the most daunting project I’ve done.  On so many levels I struggled with this piece, the size of it, the complexity of it, the many different mediums involved in creating it, the planning required to build and paint it and the level of detail required to paint it all tested my patience more than once.

However the over all result and the presence it has have all been worth it.

Lets look at the pictures then I’ll explain how I painted the white / marble effect as I’ve had a few questions on how I did it, and I’m pleased to say its pretty easy.  But first to the pics…

I really like this picture

So there you go.  I hope you have enjoyed seeing this come to life.  The next board(s) I’m going to complete will be the two which have featured in these photos, and they are the Concourse Sectors.  I’m doing these as I seem them as the Administration centres of the Cathedral, all those Imperial Administrators need somewhere to administrate the Imperium from…

Anyways, how I painted the white on the Shattered Plaza, Honoured Imperium Statues and the Cathedral…

1.  Black Undercoat

2.  Citadel Codex Grey (or new range equivalent)

3.  Highlight Codex Grey with white (I used a touch of grey in mine)

4.  Add chipping using favourite chipping technique

5.  Cut in shaded areas with a watered down brown ink

6.  Seal using a gloss or semi gloss clear

7.  Make an oil wash containing a mixture of brown oil paint, white oil paint and brown weathering powder ( should look like muddy water, and have the same consistency)

8.  Using the wash, apply to recesses of model

9.  Make a mixture of brown and black paint to apply to severely battle damaged areas (like where large parts of the building are missing)

10.  Seal with a matt varnish

There are probably a few other steps you can add in to suit your own visual tastes, however this is broadly what I did to achieve the effect.  Hope that answers a few questions.

Ok, thats it for me for a few days now, I’m going to Canberra over the Australia Day long weekend to play in arguably the largest and longest running 40k comp in Australia, CanCon (it now has many other systems running too)  So if you’re playing or attending come and say g’day its great being able to put faces to names I see on my FB page.  It’s been many years since I played at CanCon, in fact the last time was well over 10 yrs ago when I took out first place for under 21’s… eeeerrrr (2nd ed era)  Looking at some of the names of players attending, the calibre will be very high with 30 of the top 100 players in Australia attending (there are 130ish players in total playing in 40k)

There will no doubt be tones of pics and a comprehensive post CanCon debrief up the following week.

Until next time, bye for now.

John