Tuesday 20 September 2016

Tyranids and Lost Ones; more speedpainting

Another quick and cheerful bunch of minis to inspire the less-perfectionist amongst us.  I deliberately used even LESS colours than usual; mostly craft paint actually.  I'm kinda enjoying the "minimalist" challenge and I feel I'm getting solid result for minimal time investment.

I had an hour; I managed to paint and base 19 miniatures in that time.  The Tyrannids with their brown scheme were particularly easy and was pretty much brown craft paint, tinted appropriately

I wanted my Tyrannids to be more "insectlike" hence the rather dry brown paint scheme.  They will feature more as pulp and fantasy enemies rather than sci fi; as Weird West predators which roam the buffalo plains; fighting against 100 Year War longbowmen etc - I wanted to make them less slimy and "alien" and more "natural" and insectile. The little swarm Tyrannids do look like some sort of giant desert flea-thingie and the big ones do have a bit of a "mantis" vibe so I think I succeeded.
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I was really fast, slapping on an undercoat, using a lighter shade for the "shell" or carapace bits, and highlighting with a still lighter shade.  Viva la craft paint!  My only "detail" was the blue tongues.

The Lost Ones are from Helldorado: the conquistadors-invade-Hell theme of the game is very awesome but it was kinda obvious the game was never going to gain traction - I've tended to re-purpose the minis for other games.  They'll make a good savage tribe in a pulp "Lost World" genre pulp game.  In hindsight I should have used a more contrasting light shade of green to drybrush over the top to make the muscles "pop" more.

 Bonus points if you can identify this guy....

Another thing I've been doing is "touching up" old models; perhaps they have chipped paint, or need rebasing, or would benefit from a wash or highlight.  Some merely had meh paint jobs.  This is also fast, and has rejuvenated many of my older models.    Do you have any wince-worthy paintjobs? Perhaps you can simply tidy them up rather than starting from scratch....

5 comments:

  1. Thank you. Finally people posting good looking but regular job painted models. While I appreciate the pro guys who seem to paint the little small extra detail on each of the little extra detail, it pulls me off their blog as I would never realistically have the time/talent/tools to do the same

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    1. Ditto.

      I'm inspired the same way; remember the old LOTR magazines by d'Agostino? I used to think "I could do that!" or "hey, that looks easy, I bet I could improve on it by doing x" - and then actually get out my paints and do a few minis.

      Most blogs (and hobby magazines) tend to have amazing paint jobs, but let's face it, not all of us have the skills of Angel Giraldez, nor the time to paint an epaulette in 7 different layers.

      And many of us would have considerable piles of unpainted minis.... I know I do...

      Without joining a painting challenge or making a special resolution, I'm attempting to spend an hour a week painting models, and to try to do ~12 in that time - or one every 2-4 minutes.

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  2. Nice job- they look great!

    Painting at close range, I often spend a lot of time making them look good at that distance...only to have them be coloured blobs 3 feet away on the table and wonder why I bothered!

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    1. I found painting 15mm taught me a lot about painting at tabletop ranges; the use of exaggerated, bold highlights and brighter colours.

      They're also easy to paint. I'm applying my 15mm lessons to 28mm.

      It's not a coincidence 90% of my 15mm is painted, compared to about 50% of my 28mm....

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    2. I can say the same of myself. When painting 15s you quickly learn, how to highlight effectively and paint larger groups as units. With 28s I often fell into the trap to try to imitate masterclass painters like GWs Heavy Metal team without having the skill and the knowledge how to achieve the effects.

      PS
      Great work for speedpainting here!

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