Calamara Part 2

Here is the long awaited update for Calamara.

I've decided to assemble her entire body without the arms or tentacles in order to make her easier to paint. Both arms have been fitted with pins to make the final assembly easier and any putty that may be needed after attaching them will be in shade and easy to touch up as necessary. Overall the cleanup and assembly of her body was relatively easy.

Here you see the 5 tentacles. Each tentacle has a long pin inserted into the bottom so that they can be held throughout the painting process. The tentacles ended up requiring a lot more work than I had initially expect in order to handle the mold lines that were present. I ended up adding putty along the mold lines and working in the appropriate details. This ended up taking several passes before finally getting them into good shape.

Finally you can see the two arms. Her right arm actually attaches to the right hand which is encircled by one of her tentacles. Test fitting went well for this join and I don't foresee any real issues with the final assembly after painting everything.

 To be continued...

Fire Wings w/ mounted Beelphegor Part 3

Assembly continued...

This picture is the bottom half of the head and the horns. You can see the pin for the left side and get a pretty good idea of how the horns will attach. Both horns fit perfectly and they will not be glued on until after the dragon is completely painted.

Next we have the back side of the bottom half of the head and the neck. Pinning this piece wasn't really necessary but as you will see I will end up pinning all of the major connection points.

And finally we have a pic of the bottom half of the head and neck after they have been assembled and puttied.

 

To be continued...

Fire Wings w/ mounted Beelphegor Part 2

Alright... I have been working a lot on the prep work for this model during my posting absence, mostly in part to wanting to have the assembly mostly done prior to posting things to make it a little more coherent.

One of my friends wanted me to post the whole pinning process, so the prep photos are all an attempt to show that.

The first picture shows the dragons body and the 6 spines that attach to it. You can see the pins in 5 of the 6 spines, as I opted not to pin one of the spines since it already had a pretty good nub and fit very well without any extra effort. Each of the spines was drilled as well as the corresponding insert on the body.

Here is a photo of the body after the spines have been attached and puttied.

And there you have the first set of pictures, to be continued...

Update

Well, it has been a few months since I've posted anything, but believe it or not I have actually been pretty busy.

My original intent earlier this year was to have Calamara ready for WonderFest, but I ran into some delays with the cleanup / sculpting work on the tentacles. Needless to say, it didn't end up getting finished. I have since finished the prep work on Calamara and she will be making a future appearance as I get around to starting the paint on her.

I attended WonderFest, JerseyFest and the National Capital Model Soldier Society shows.

WonderFest was a great show as always. I took my Huri Khan bust, Nurgle Champion, PeaceKeeper, Carnivean and Ainariel for the competition. I ended up receiving a Bronze for everything with the exception of Ainariel which got a certificate.

At JerseyFest this year, I attended the Casey Love painting class which was a great experience. If you don't know who Casey is, you should definitely check him out. Due to the delays in finishing anything for shows this year, I ended up painting a Werewolf bust by Morland Studios. It was a fun little bust that ended up getting a Bronze.

For the NCMSS show this year, I only had the Werewolf bust and it garnered a Silver.

I will be working on getting photographs of past works taken and put into the gallery, but that is for another day...

Fire Wings w/ mounted Beelphegor Part 1

The MFCA (Model Figure Collectors of America) annual show was last weekend. It was a great show with lots of amazing figures on display. It was a nice day trip with nothing else going on but the hobby, which leads me up to this post.

World Expo is being hosted in Chicago next July and I have been trying to figure out which of my many future project ideas would make the cut for the show project. So here we go...

I picked this up upon its initial release about 4 years ago and it has been a long time coming... Just ask Nicholas from Crown Military Miniatures. He asked me yet again if I had brought it in for the competition. It was at this time that I decided that this would be my primary entry for World Expo, so many thanks to Nicholas for prompting this.

This is the first of many posts on this project that will be featured over the course of the next year, but I decided that I should at least get started on the process of cleaning it up, since Calamara has taken so much more prep work than I initially anticipated (I originally intended to have her ready for Wonderfest, which is next weekend).

This is a beautiful kit and I am really looking forward to it!

Treeman Part 3

I have a pretty good idea how I want the Treeman to turn out, so I spent some time this weekend with the airbrush trying to work out the basecoat colors for the effect that I want. After looking at the figure, I basically broke it down into two main components, the "fleshy" parts and the bark armor that protects it.

I am going for a birch type of effect on the flesh parts which is what is shown in the photo below. The browns were added in mostly to provide some contrast. At this point the flesh is basically done other than glazing in the shadows and final highlights

Treeman Part 2

The base needed a little bit of work to integrate better with the figure. I chose the Durthu pose of the figure which has his left leg resting on a bit of mechanical ruins which I decided to do away with. In its place, I put a small piece of shale rock and used a thin coat of Apoxy putty to give some texture to the ground. Lastly, I took a piece of root ball that I stumbled across and embedded it into the putty.

I coated the root with super glue to give it some strength and stability and this thin layer of super glue basically platicized the root. Once I paint the root and cover up the super glue, the shininess will disappear.

The base is not 100% complete, but it is far enough along now that I don't need  the figure around to complete it.

Calamara Part 1

Here is my other work in progress figure that was started prior to the creation of the blog.  This is actually the first garage kit that I ever purchased, so it is kind of fitting that it is the first one that I am planning on completing. I picked this up at JerseyFest 3 years ago from Monster Dork Studio.

I actually began working on this kit at the beginning of the year and a lot of work has gone into sculpting over the mold lines on the many tentacles. The sculpting work has definitely been a good learning experience. The final product is only ever as good as the prep work that goes into it...

The picture below is the unassembled kit out of the box. This is another example of an old picture that was taken prior to actually figuring out the camera, but since it is just the preliminary photo, I hope you will forgive me for the poor quality. I was in a bit of a rush to get the photo done so that I could continue advancing the project.

More to come...

Treeman Part 1

This is one of my current work in progress figures. I really like the sculpt and I really started working on him in late 2014, before moving to my new house. I did all of the cleanup and minor sub assemblies before packing him away. I pulled him back out earlier this year as I was planning my prospective entries for some of this years painting competitions and he was basically at the top of my list.

The picture below is the final assembly prior to painting. I actually took the picture a while back, so the quality of the picture is a little so/so and I've been working on my picture quality since then, so hopefully future ones will be better.

The following is the base that I have selected to go with this figure:

Well, there you have it,  my first work in progress project has been posted. More to come...

Studio

In case anyone was curious, I though that I would post a couple pictures of what my studio looks like. I am very fortunate to have a rather large room in our basement set aside for my studio space. The three pictures below line one wall of my studio.

Painting Area

Starting from the left you can see a thin dresser for storage and my paint rack which is the home for my airbrush paints. The top of the desk provides plenty of workspace for my current project and has three OttLight lamps to provide the lighting (they are turned off in this picture). I have since added a cork board to hang reference pictures on and as a minor note, this is the cleanest that the desktop will ever be :)

Preparation Area

Given the fact that I had the space and that I have wanted to have the ability to provide space for friends to be able to paint with me, I decided to add the Preparation Area which doubles as extra painting space for company. It also allows me to keep the mess associated with the assembly of a given kit away from my painting area.

Airbrush Area

Last but not least, we have the airbrush cabinet and spray booth. The cabinet was custom built with the help of my good friend Jack and provides storage space for many of the tools of the hobby, as well as space to store some of the larger Garage Kits, those in the 1/6 scale range.

Welcome!

Welcome to my miniature painting site!

I have been saying that I was going to start this blog for quite some time and finally decided that I was going to make it a reality. My delays at the initial post have mostly been due to not having a lot of initial content to properly kick it off, but I guess I have to start somewhere...

My goal for this site is primarily to share my work with a few friends who are located in a couple different parts of the country and anyone else who may happen to stumble upon it. The subject of the blog will detail my current works-in-progress, however, I am planning on adding a Gallery in the future that will focus on finished pieces.

As one can imagine, I have a couple of projects in the works and I will be posting some pictures to kick off those threads in the very near future...

Hope to see you soon!