Interlude: Holiday sketches

 Something out of the usual today. I've enjoyed some days off with the family. Nothing spectacular, just a short trip a couple of hours far from home. The thing is that, though the forecast predicted some rain, we had a little more than expected, and even some snow, so we had to stay indoors more time than we had planned. The kids managed well (most important thing!) and I took the chance to take a ballpen and a sketchbook and let myself go with some quick drawings of our excursions over the area.

These were my first attempts of doing this kind of thing in years, so please excuse the quality and just value the enthusiasm XD

First, the castle of Burgo de Osma, the village where we stayed, top of the hill, with the medieval (originally Roman) bridge over the river.

Please mind the river, I clearly still have a lot to learn

Not a great deal, I'm afraid, more a warm-up than anything else. I tried to depict the 10th century ruined castle that dominates the landscape over the area, from a pic I took from the other side of the river.

Then I took a slightly more serious endeavour, I tried a more detailed drawing of the cathedral of the village. This time I have a couple of WIP pics:

The cathedral of Burgo de Osma

There are some serious perspective issues and some stuff I only noticed when it was too late, but somehow the ctrl+z thing didn't work here. I have to say it's the first time I try to do this thing right with ink, with no previous pencil whatsoever, so I had no chance to correct any mistake.

The inner geek in me can't help but see the village (the center of it nowadays remaining essentially medieval) but with a Mordheim twist, full of ruined stone and wooden houses, high walls and tons of dangers and adventures behind every corner. I guess I should call it Osmaburgheim to make it sound commercial, hmmm...

We made a short trip to a nearby castle, Gormaz, which happens to be the largest fortress in Spain. I was amazed by the sheer bulk of it, ruined and abandoned as it is (which is an absolute shame, but that's another story). A 10th century castle (though built over a previous fortification), originally from the Caliphate and (very long story short) later on conquered by Castilians.

Again, from a pic I took with the phone

Dated yesterday

I would have liked to draw some other pieces, as I took bazillions of pics of dead rocks piled up in awesome shapes like those above, but I'm happy I found some time to produce at least these.

I guess I should provide the source pics for you to decide how close I got from the original XD

Now it's the time to confess I have like a ton of minis I got from Crusader years ago for a 28mm medieval project I have in mind. I may have to bring them on the bench...

Second chance

These days I've been in an unexpected project. Back in 2004 I painted an Orc Warlord on Wyvern as a commission for a friend. Recently both rider and beast suffered from an undesired gravity challenge, and were reduced to this state:

Ouch

My friend asked me if I could glue the pieces again and restore the model to its previous general shape. But of course, once I had this in my hands, I couldn't just reattach the bits back and leave it alone. A 20 years old paintjob deserved some deeper restoration.

So I took this different approach!

I repainted the whole Wyvern. Both belly and wing membranes were painted in Vallejo Khaki and I tried a slightly more vibrant green for the scales and so.

There are not two adjacent scales in the same exact tone of green

I kind of did the same to the Orc Warlord. I dared to paint more pieces of armour in red, instead of plain metal, and added Orc flames, checkers and stuff. The helmet had lost the horns/fangs/whatever it had at both sides, so I replaced them with a couple of horns belonging to the Dwarf plastic boxed set (form 5th Edition, I believe?)

If he sneezes, chances are to get his eyes ripped off the face

Here you have the whole piece back again to life:

I'm suddenly feeling the urge to play WHFB again after so many years!

It's not that usual to get such a second chance of painting a commissioned model. It's interesting, as you get to see how much you have actually evolved along the years, and to see what you do differently now or keep on doing the same.

Let's see what comes next!

To Infinity... and beyond!

 Quite some time since I didn't paint Infinity, but in fact the original project wasn't really finished, so about time I did something about it!

I had painted the Operation Kaldstrom core box, but my pal also got the "Beyond Operation Kaldstrom" expansion pack, as well as a couple of heavy units; here y ou have them all!

First of all, I had a mini still pending from the core box, Oktavia Grímsdóttir. I had painted her, but not taken any pics. She´s a mercenary (well, maybe a little bit more complicated than that, but the word covers it all for this post's sake), so she can provide some flexibility to your games.

Now with added snow

 Right, I've added snow to the bases (I have to fix this one!). The effect works fine at tabletop distance, but I'm afraid that if you look closer, it looks like the mini has just opened a box from Amazon and all the protecting stuff has spilled all over.

Anyway! The Panoceania team is made of  these guys, a Varg (spec ops), a Boyg Soldier (scary bloke in his uberarmour) and a Locust (a hacker, don't be fooled by his gun):

A Varg, A Boyg and a Locust come into a bar...

A Varg, A Boyg and a Locust come out from the bar...

I tried to reproduce the same colour I previously used on other Panoceania units, but I believe this time I got maybe a slightly deeper blue. Anyway I think it works. They all have interesting designs and are exquisite miniatures, but that's precisely what makes a challenge out of each one of them!

Let's move on. The Yu Jing team also consists of three members, a Shàng Jí ("superior"), which is a Hacker in an armour; a special character, Jing Qo, The Shadow of Huangdi; and a Ye Mao ("wildcat"), covering the spec ops role for the group.

Seriously, you have to be more careful when you open your boxes, look at the floor

Hey, no, I'm not done with you, come here immediately!

Once again I tried to reproduce the colours, but I think this time my orange is a little bit more vibrant than my previous work, which was slightly more yellow toned. However, I believe they all look fine when together.

I told you that besides the "Beyond" expansion pack, my pal also got heavy units. In Infitity these are known as TAG (Tactical Armoured Gear). Panoceania got this Cutter:

Well, this monster truly impresses

On the other hand, Yu Jing counts with the Blue Wolf Mongol Cavalry:

Looking for Red Riding Hood

For sure you can have quite a game with all this! Here you have a pic with this whole batch:

We could make the cover of a book with such a composition

And a final pic with all the stuff I've painted so far, with snow bases for all:

The whole project!

Fortunately the differences in tones are not severe and the new freshly painted minis match the previous ones, I'm relieved!

Well, of course now that the minis are painted, there's only one thing we can do... we have to learn to play! I'll let you know of my progress on that front!!