Reworking the design

I don't know anything about Photoshop, programming and things like that. Fortunately other people do, people like jens b from the Bemalforum, who are willing to help. He made the new header for my blog and offered to help with some other things as well. There will be some (minor) changes during the next weeks. Thanks a lot to Jens and all the other helping hands in the background.

Here is some music that made my day, if you don't understand German just enjoy the tunes: Peter Fox



Chris

Tutorial: Creating unique plants and flowers

Small plants and tiny flowers add a lot of dept to a base. Unfortunately, most products you can buy don't really look realistic or are not available in the correct scale. I found a way to create my own plants in just a few minutes .



All you need is PVA glue, thin roots and some sort of leaves. I used linden leaves from plusmodels for my plants.

I drilled holes into a box and glued small parts of my roots onto it. The Colour pot shows the size of the roots. They should be rather small.

The linden leaves come in 4 to 5 different sizes and are slightly bent to one side. As they are made of paper, you can easily bend them into any form. The colour is rather realistic and doesn't need that much work during the finishing touches.

The largest leave is still very tiny. Make sure to turn away before sneezing. (not kidding, was no fun to recollect them)

Use a sculpting tool or a wire for the next step....

....and bend the leave around your tool. The leave will keep this form, you don't have you use something to fix it.

Keep on...and do some research on the internet. My plants are a sort of dicotyledons. By imitating things you find in nature, your plants will look more realistic.

This is what your plants look like before painting. I used some Green Stuff to create a petal.

 And this is the finished base with painted flowers. I used some highly dilluted purple for the leaves. Very simple...

Some details...

More details.....





Chris

Bonecrusher update #3

Many things happened during the last days, mostly good things, some bad....

This blog went insane this month, it had more than 5k klicks in less then 20 days. This makes me really proud and happy, and as the last exams are finished, I can now focus on this thing here again. I will meet Goatman and Angelus from the Bemalforum next weekend and we will definitely have a lot of painting fun. Expect a huge coverage of that meeting with some of my best buddies. It is time to finish some more stuff for GD

I finished the Bonecrusher-base today and I am quite satisfied with it. It took me about 20 hours to build and paint the base, I have done all flowers myself. Tomorrow there will be a little tutorial about making unique flowers in 5 minutes.

Here is a picture of the finished base, now I need to finish the rat. Hope you like it.

Chris

Bonecrusher update #2

I was motivated to build a base, so I did. Nothing special, the rat ogre is meant to be the focus.

Still much work to do, I will add a lot of different flowers and some animals.



Chris

"The road" music

I watched "The road" just the other day and this movie just stunned me. It is sooo good. Here is one of my favourite songs from the soundtrack.

Chris

Tutorial: thinning down your paint

Many people have asked me about my "way of painting". Well, in most cases I try to explain the most important things one has to take care of. However, I always point out that my tecnique is not THE technique, but one possible way you can go.

The first thing most beginners are not aware of is the importance of a good colour consistency in order to achieve a satisfying result. I painted with barely dilluted paint for many years because nobody taught me better. The result was very bad, blendings didn't work at all. Furthermore I emptied my GW pots very quickly because I used tons of paint (quite brainless - I know).

I took a picture of paint in different consistencies to show the actual difference I am talking about.

1. This paint consistency is GW - colour out of the pot. At this stage the paint is good for nothing. With nothing I mean absolutely nothing, not for painting, mixing and definitely not for basecoating with a brush. Don't do it, it will ruin your mini from the base. When you follow the brush stroke towards the right side of the picture, you can see how grainy the paint is at this stage.

2. Here you can see the same colour (Midnight Blue) thinned down 1:1 with water. The brush stroke is even and there are no grainy spots visible. The paint is thin enough to show a slight blending towards the right side. This consistency is ok to paint the basic colour on top of your basecoat. In order to not flood the mini with paint, you should always wipe your brush before touching the miniature.

3. This is the paint consistency I use most of the time (about 5:1 mix with water). It is too thin to use it as basecoat but it's just perfect for me to paint clean blendings very quickly. Note that stage 3 is not suitable for beginners as you need quite some experience to control your paint.

4. This is the consistency I recommend most beginners to get a decent blending (10:1 mix with water). It takes quite some time and many brush strokes to see any progress but you can hardly do any mistakes. Don't forget to wipe your brush before applying your paint, the tip of the brush should feel almost dry. I used this consistency for about 3 years before I went up to stage 3.

5. This consistency is not suited to paint blendings any longer. As you can hardly see the paint, it would take ages to recognize a blending. However, this is the perfect mix (about 20:1 with water) to paint glazes. By using glazes you can change the impression of the colour underneath.

Hope this helps.

Chris