First elf unit finished AND I really need to learn how to take photos...

Hi all again!

I finally finished painting my first unit for the high elves, the archers!

It's small, it's only one, but it's finished, so I'm happy as a kid in a candyshop (or in an old GW store, depending on tastes).

It's comprised of classic plastic monoposes with a metal command group, Marauder musician and Citadel  champion and standard bearer.

All in all it's not that bad, I'm quite pleased with how it came out.

As usual, it's not based, yet, but this time I painted the bases black, so it's not terrible. I'm playing with some ideas for the basing, and I ordered some ready made basing material from Geek Gaming, we'll see in the next few weeks.

So, without further ado, I'll show you the result of my efforts.

First of all, a group shot:

Next up is the command group, in all it's glory:

Lastly, I slightly modified the colors for the archers.

The helm on the prototype I first made was too bright imo (the shot is really dark, even the darker helm is much brighter in reality).

As a final word, I apologize for the quality of the shots, as they turned out really dark, even if I used a lightbox in taking them.

Maybe it's my camera (or my cellphone, to be precise), maybe it's only me.

It's really difficult to take proper photos of such a tiny subject, to be honest, and I'm struggling with it. Sometime I manage to have a decent shot, sometime not at all, and I feel the quality of the result is completely depending on luck, rather than me understanding the process.

It's really frustrating.

Do you have any advice, maybe? I'll be glad to hear from you.

Really, any help would be welcome!

Enough talk for today, back to painting.

Cheers

ilmostromarino

Trying out Contrast paints AND a new warband for Frostgrave done!

Hi again,

last month I took some time to try out the now-not-so-new contrast paints from GW, as what I saw on the web was quite interesting, and my personal attempt at using them gave me the idea they could be great time savers.

Turned out I really like some of them, while I was not been able to obtain any good from some of the others, but that's probably entirely my fault, as I failed to understand how to use them properly, I suspect.

They're not bad at all, I have to say, have some decent color shading by themselves, and are very good for putting base colors down in a quick session, BUT you really need to work on highlights and shading afterwards, if you're more interested in displaying your models than playing with them.

I mean, they're no magic, after all.

I've painted up a Frostgrave warband using contrast paints as basic colors and regular ones for highlights and metals, essentially.

To be honest, they're not the best paintjob i've ever done, but I was able to finish them in a really short time, so I guess I'll call it a win, everything considered.

You can judge the results by yourself, enjoy the shots.

(They still need basing, shame on me...)

First of all, the leader of the warband, Abraxas the Necromancer !

And then Philo, his apprentice - probably the mini I was most unpleased by. Sometime you just find a mini that you can't paint decently, I suppose.

Now it's time to show you Fufi the hound. All in all I like this miniature as much as I dislike the apprentice. Painting this dude has been soooooo easy...

Next one is Donnal the barbarian, an impressive warrior indeed and a great looking model too.

Last of the named characters, Rufio the thief, which I could probably have spent some more time workin on, I suppose.

Ok, nameless trooper time.

Let's start with three thugs, the most basic type of soldiers a wizard can hire in the frozen city.

Thug #1

Thug #2

Thug #3

Next up an archer and a crossbowman, to give a little bit of ranged options to the warband.

Archer

Crossbowman

Last of all, my summoned zombie, who will prove to be usefull for carrying treasures and distracting the enemy. (Yes, I rushed him even more than the others, as I completely forgot this model when I started painting the warband...)

And that concludes the tour.

Hope you like the models, let me know what you think and your experiences with contrast paints, if had any.

Cheers

ilmostromarino

Where to start painting?

My love for miniatures dates back at the end of the 80s, but in those days me and my friends used them for self-written-platform-like adventure games, with crazy rules and bizarre stories.

Those were glorious days, when our imagination run wild and game balance was something none of us had ever heard of.

Then came Heroquest and Space Crusade (Starquest in Italy) , who changed the way we played forever.

And finally, in '92, came Battle Masters, which was a blast!

Battle Masters was my first experience with fantasy mass battles, and God, I loved that game! I played it tons of times, and enjoyed every moment with it.

Even though most of the miniatures get lost in time and space, I still own and use the plastic tower that came in the box and the Chaos Archers, which are fantastic models!

It took me one more year to discover Warhammer Fantasy Battles, the 4th edition box, but that proved to be a much more difficult game system, and most of my friends didn't like it that much.

So I struggled to find opponents and, in the end, I dropped it for the 40k, witch was way more popular in my area.

And that was sad, because I really liked both the models and the setting and the idea of moving around the battlefield big, squared units of medieval-like fantasy cliches with banners, heroes, musicians and all of that.

Since I opened the big 4th ed. box, I really fell in love with the aesthetic of the high elven army, and even more upon reading the army book, with the all the fluff and the photos of the studio models.

But, in those days, I never had the determination (and the money) to collect an army I wouldn't even play with.

So that left me something like a wargaming scar, something I can't really shake me off... The urge to collect and paint a proper High Elves Army!

And now, I think, it's about time to accomplish exactly that! I will give to my "inner boy" the army he once dreamt of.

The long term goal of my project is to collect and paint each and every high elf model that was in 4th ed. (and to have some wargaming fun in the process).

I know it will take a lot of time, but I think it's doable, there weren't so many models at the time and I already managed to find quite a lot, actually.

Painting them will prove to be much harder, that's for sure!

Here comes the title of the post, "where to start painting"?

I already have a good amount of models from different units, and some heroes, too.

Which one to paint first?

After some procrastination, I opted for one of the most common units in the army: the archers. 

There are quite a few reasons for that: first of all I will need a lot of these, if I want to actually play with my army sooner or later; secondly they're quite disposable, since it's easy to find them for reasonable prices, and lastly I won't be too upset if I screw them up in the process (as I'm a little bit rusted in my painting-fu).

Here is the prototype for the first unit, a classic plastic monopose, what do you think of it?

I'm not too displeased of how it came out, and right now 15 of his brothers are on my painting desk waiting to be completed.

I hope to be able to show you the result of this batch painting soon enough, even if I'm struggling with it right now.

I've always hated batch painting, since I easily get bored of the same model over and over, so I think I will make smaller groups in the future, say 6 models at a time to avoid being bogged down.

The most important thing is, at this stage, not to lose the momentum, and keep painting till I have enough models to play something with them (maybe a little Song of Blades and Heroes game, which requires low model count... we'll see in the future).

Had you ever done something similar? Any advice?

Cheers,

ilmostromarino

A new hope!

Hi all,

time to start something new to me, time to start a blog about my efferts of getting back onto painting miniatures, making scenery and playing wargames. Hell yeah!

Truth is I am a really slow painter, and a lazy one as well, and as a result I have stored a huge amount of unpainted lead and plastic over the years, you know.

It's time to stop hoarding and start painting.

As a result of the global pandemic situation I have some more spare time these days, so it seems the right time to get my hands on all those beautifull miniatures i have laying around and make something out of them.

Hope is, having decided to share my work on the web, to get myself motivated and keep working against all laziness. We'll see if it works.

Wish me luck!

Cheers,

ilmostromarino