Countryside scenery

 Before I get back to large projects, I thought it was a good time to get some small stuff done. Some time ago my friend Hetairoi handed me this tiny chapel by Tabletop World. As they have released a new model, which he got too, he had no use for the old one:

So now I have a chapel!

My recipe on this kind of stone (as I tried on my Gondor Mansion earlier this year) is priming a light grey all over and then painting random stones with different colours and hues:

You can go wild with them

Now that I was starting the chapel, I also painted this set of stone walls by Reconquer Designs:

A bunch of stones

It's a medieval stone pen, but it's completely modular, so it can be used as a stone wall (as you'll see later!)

Sooo different colours! No need to be shy, you can use almost any colour as long as it looks natural

Just use any earthy colours

Even if you think they won't match

After that, I gave a Nuln wash all over. This helps to make the slabs and stones stand out and it gives the whole thing better definition.

The same but darker

And better defined

Don't worry, the stones won't look out of place, as now it's time for a grey drybrush, that will get all suitably equal. After the drybrush I added some watered down dark green wash on the lower part, to give the impression of humidity retained on the stone through the years.

Looks better now!

So does this!

Now the real party begins! To give the impression of real texture we need some lichen and moss. If you know what you are doing you can go any direction with this. I mean:

 I didn't dare to overdo it. With an old brush I splattered very watered down colours to create irregular stains. Mostly white (a lot!), then different shades of brown and dark green and finally a vivid green:

Final version of the stone. Remember to wash your hands after this

Not as spectacular as the chapel, but the work is the same

Weeeeell. Now it's time for the copper roof. I admit it, first time in my life painting one of this, so I checked quite a lot of pics and videos. I painted all the tiles copper and then added the verdigris: turquoise mixed with light green and a little white. The thing is that I added so much that it in fact covered all the copper! I mean, I guess that's precisely the way it's supposed to be, but I could have saved myself the trouble of painting the metal in the first place!

I mean it!

I'm not that sure about the weathering stage. I went a little crazy with worn out tiles, rusted effects and so. I left it like this, and I don't know wether it's too much:

Needs urgent maintenance!

Anyway, it will serve on my fantasy settings, and dirty buildings will always work there!

Here you have a front pic of the finished building:

Ta-daaa

A close up of the (very corroded!) door:

Please knock gently

I tried a little experiment on the shield on the front. It depicts some sort of patron angel and I wanted it to look really worn and faded, as though the original colours had slowly disappeared after years of exposure to the elements. I applied all the original colours as they were supposed to be, but incredibly watered down, so only a remainder of them are left. It looks more grey-ish and full of lichen, so I guess it more or less gives the impression I wanted:

The poor guy has known better times

The inside is cozy and pretty plain. I painted the book on the altar, but still haven't added any motif to the wall. I was thinking of some small Baroque reredos, but I'm not sure at all.

Need to decorate it!

Oh, BTW...
 

Of course I've been suggested to paint this dierctly on the wall. Hmmmm

Here you can see the chapel with a couple of modern minis, on the 32mm side of  things. So they fit in, this is the standard scale now, for sure.

Bretonnia on steroids

About the stone pen, here you can see it in it's original configuration:

Now I need some flock or something!

But as you can see, it's totally modular, so I can do things like this:

Maybe not the Great Wall, but it works for me!

Note to self: The board has to be incredibly flat to make this work, even the tiniest flock or rubble makes the walls totally unstable.

Well, this is it! A couple of pieces for a number of settings, and they count as an entry for Dave Stone's Season of Scenery! (Hopefully I'll be able to do some more stuff before the deadline, wish me luck!)

Warming up

Slowly getting back to bussiness. Some time ago I made a modest purchase from Westfalia Miniatures. Modest, not because I don't like their ranges. Pretty much the opposite. Modest beause I had to exert full self restraint, or else I would have finished up getting half of their web! It was more or less a test to see how their minis actually look in hand, if they were as good as they looked like in the pics. Spoiler: Oh, they do. They definitely do.

I have just painted a couple of them, for the mere sake of it. Let's start with this hazmat guy. Or whatever this is.

A land diving suit, I guess

I fell in love with the concept. So impractical, so difficult to wear... it was screaming Rogue Trader! I needed one. It can work as some security officer of some sort in the spaceport or any industrial area.

But other design that immediaetly caught my eye was... well, this.

Even more unclassifiable 

This zombie cyborg looked so unsettling that of course I needed it! It will be some kind of Servitor in my games, and I think it can team up with the egg hazmat guy if needed.

Clearly not the weirdest couple you've ever seen in the media

I honestly don't have a clear purpose for them both, but I'm glad I got them and that I painted them. It was nice to just get another couple of minis and finish them. These small batches help me from time to time to get some fresh air.

Now I'm slowly getting back to cruise speed, so I may get some pending projects on the bench. Nothing too ambitious, don't fear, I'll see what comes next... 

(Un)finished bussiness

OK, I'm back from a summer break with the family, so it was about time to take my brushes back too!

I had a couple of minis pending from the last batch of Yu Jing, and I thought I could get them done! They were cool to assemble (now that I got all the bits it was way easier!) and I used the same recipe, so it was quite a straightforward work. Here you have both minis:

Dynamic and cool as all the ranges

The lady with what I imagine must be some kind of gravitic parachute (at least in my imagination) not only wears her regulation tactical heels, but tactical suspender belts (you can't see them in the pic on those dark pants, sorry, but I promise they are there).

You can see both units finally finished: 

Booster Pack Beta

White Banner Expansion pack

Fair is fair, kudos to the Corvus Belli crew, who immediately replaced the missing bits, they did a really good job on that.

The whole batch looks this way, now that it's finished: 

Ahhh... completion. Feels good

This is how both Panoceania and Yu Jing forces look when facing each other:

I need a larger backdrop!

BONUS

If you made this far, I think I can take a few more seconds of your life to show you some pics from my holidays!

We made a modest trip to Tarragona (a little bit south from Barcelona, on the coast), which once was the  capital of the Roman Hispania Tarraconensis province and thus has quite a nice collection of really beautiful, old rocks.

The Amphiteatre visit is quite an experience to have

There is a Visigoth basilica built inside (later a Romanesque church)

The Aqueduct is something worth the trip out of town:

It's so wide that now its an actual, functional bridge

The Circus is only partially kept, barely part of the curve at the Porta Triumphalis stands:

Devoured by the town

 

But you can visit it underneath

Fun fact, the Town Hall plaza is built directly on the old arena, and it's indeed shaped that way. The buildings are built on the old arches of the Circus and their structure is clearly visible on the houses.

Scale models, who are we without scale models. The old Roman upper town, with the Forum and Circus:

 And then the medieval town, where you can barely recognise the Circus:

 

 Apart from that we had some medieval vibes too, as we visited the Cathedral:

Kind reminder that cathedrals were once colourful and not just plain stone

And a little town in the inside, Miravet, with this fabulous Templar fortress:

 

This would be all for today, but I'll be painting more stuff pretty soon!

Warhammer Quest Darkwater (Pt. 2, the rest of the heroes)

Back again to Darkwater! 

If you get back to my previous post on this project, you'll see I had three (six) characters to do.

First one I got done was the centaur. I really didn't like the feathered tiara, and neither did may pal. In this case the solution was pretty obvious: 

You can never go wrong with antlers!

The original mini has a lot of antler decorations, and it felt quite natural. Hence the "cervitaur" looking. I replaced the tail too with greenstuff, but no other conversions were really needed.

Antlers in correct position now

I made two identical versions of the character, and that made it all quite easier:

Twins!

 Next character proved to be kind of controversial. In the original setting it's a sort of less-than-human member of a tribe in the new Age of Sigmar universe. Apart from removing the back scrubber he carries, I decided to take a totally different approach:

There's always place for a barbarian in a dungeon game

However, my pal asked me for something totally different. A fresh approach. I think it would be difficult to guess...

I see what's happening, yeah...

You're face to face with greatness, and it's strange...

You don't even know how you feel...

(It's adorable!)

Well, it's nice to see that humans never change

Open your eyes, let's begin...

Yes, it's really me, it's Maui

Well, spare me the rest of the song, please. Right, this is what he asked... this is what he got.

You're welcome

So this is my barbarian...

Big barbarian man or small ogre, I'll let you decide

Didn't really know what to paint on that shield

And, well... kind of Maui

I didn't get the tatoos as I would have liked (oh, my eyes!), but they do their part

Cousins!

 Well, after that what else can I offer you? The last character is a druid. I left mine untouched, as the mini just depicts a Jade Wizard:

Pretty straightforward work, nothing complicated

 I left the good stuff for my mate, who asked me for something diferent again, he asked me if I could have an eye on the mini...

...and get a fix

(OK, the pun only works in English, right)

I had to paint some stuff before assembling or adding greenstuff

But in the end I think I got something

I should have used white for the dog. Doh

 Well, here you have both groups:

Easy conversions

Unexpected conversions

 Well, I think this is worth of some final group shots

A bunch of heroes

Yet another one

 Well, first milestone on the game reached!

Though they are just a bunch of minis (statistically speaking), I think they were the hardest to do, as I don't really plan any heavy conversions on the baddies. Those Nurgle minis look really cool to me (with just a few exceptions), so we'll see if I just paint them as they are.

But I believe I'll be having a small summer break before! I'll try to keep it up with your blogs and will definitely be back soon!

Enjoy!