Interlude: Yet another Secret Santa (out of time again!)

Just like it happened a year ago, I've taken part in a Secret Santa event with a group of friends. The only point in this is painting whatever you have in mind for the person you are assigned to, so no contest, no showoff, no pressure. In fact some of the people haven't painted a single mini since last year's event, making this one actually the very second mini ever painted by them! :)

Rules are easy. Take whatever you have at home (well, if you please buying new minis no one will complain, sure, but the idea is keeping it all simple), a 28mm scale infantry mini is a good reference rule, but proceed at will. Paint it and send it to your pal! It's fun, but we were totally out of time once again (predictable). Let me talk first of what I painted. We made a raffle and I got a guy who is starting his way into post-apoc stuff; so the choice was easy, I took a mini from the previous Punkapocalyptic KS:

They are currently running a new KS and this is the only mini I've painted of the previous campaign. Sigh

First thing is black priming and then the flesh. It's my usual M.O., having the skin defined helps me later on when it comes to decisions on colours.

Well, she looks scary now

I wanted her to have a distinctive look, and I remembered those tartan pattern trousers, they screamed punk vibe to me. Here's my recipe; it works for me, but doesn't mean it's the only way to do that.

Base colour, shades and lights. Vallejo Red is the base colour here

Vertical stripes. Mix of Red and dark brown, German Camo Something, Vallejo too

The same, but horizontal

I painted in a mix of black and dark brown the intersections. So you have those dark squares

Same process, vertical and horizontal, but now with  very thin lines, both sides of the larger stripes

Horizontal white lines in the wide open spaces

Finally, vertical lines in yellow

I can't state enough the importance of thinnin the paint during the whole process, seriously. If you don't, you take the risk of ruining it all. Don't be scared of not covering, the important thing here is keeping track of what are you really painting on each step so you don't get lost among all the stripes.

That was the tricky part. The rest of steps can be resumed. Just paint the rest of the mini!

Post-Apoc Punk

Yes, you also have to paint the back of the mini. Those are the rules

I went out of the confort zone with this one and I have to say I enjoyed it a lot. Now I'm only looking for places where I can paint tartan on my minis :D

But let's see what I got!

Oldschool Librarian. Much appreciated!

He totally fits in my RT Ultramarines Army, so I can't be happier! Airbrush technique remains witchcraft to me, it's amazing what you can achieve with one of those magic sticks :O

But this is not all, please check the rest of the goodies in the Secret Santa 2017. Trust me, all the participants have put a lot on each mini :)

This is it, quite a bunch of minis! Hope you enjoy the pics from all of the group. Now we should start preparing the next event if we really want it to be finished before the end of 2018...

After this interlude, my regular blog stuff will be restored soon. Maybe.