It's been shit except for!

So this work was completed Thursday and Friday, but Saturday was my 1st anniversary/wedding reception at which Robyn and myself exchanged rings and danced our first dance and  danced ourselves silly all night and Blaise ran round shooting everybody with steampunk guns and generally had a great time. The party was steam punk themed and Blaise chose mine and his costume so we went as steampunk Batman and Robin and believe me capes are a pain in the arse.
Anyway back to the welves whose capes are also a pain in the arse, and the lovely rumours on the interwebs saying no more eternal guard (I have 40 of thes fuckers and as it's winter and the tree spirits are asleep this is my fighty unit) and everything skirmishes( you may have noticed the lengths i have gone to making ranked units of archers) but as you can still buy eternal guard on the store as both a unit of 5 and a command rank i'm taking this as bollocks (please be bollocks) especially in light of the majority of the Bret range that isn't a plastic box disappearing I won't panic just yet(but it is on standby)
Right first the thing that takes the most time on these figures is the white and this is why it starts here.

 It starts as this blue  it is the highlighted to this

Then this

then this

then this and after two more stage i forgot to take pictures of this

which gives it a nice icy feel

So here are the stage on the unit and the completed unit.

close up of the champion(you'll notice that the sword now has a metal blade, the longer I looked at it the shitter it looked)

 The musician

and the unit standard, I've used the normal BSB because i have the limited one that came in the army box on release( yes that's how long it's taken me to paint this army don't be expecting space marine centurions anytime soon)

And now with the final layers of snow 

the cloaks on this unit are a degree whiter on the last unit but this is what I was after so if I have time they'll get brought up to this colour as well.

And now the glade guard scouts( I know there's a lot of photos so bear with me and yes I know the font size has changed and no I don't know why or how to change it back) for the scouts I've used old glade guard and realised something sculpters have got lazy, the faces on these figures have better detail than the much later wardancers faces i painted last year, I've noticed it now on a few things detail has been replaced by smooth surface which does give you more flexibility on one hand but say with the feathers on the griffon on the island of blood set but faces! I want detail, I want character on something in the range that isn't a space marine because the facial sculpting on them is amazing although not so much with hair thinking about it's all a bit Max Headroom(ask your parents or youtube) any way I'm rambling back to figures

First coat and inkwash forgot that every figure in the 80s/90s wore a wrestling championship belt.The on to my first layer of basing on these and the movement trays. when 8th came out and the new rules for skirmishers came out I had an idea individual movement trays for each figure with a 1/4" border so you where always 1/2" away the next figure but still had the fexibility to place them in any position you required( if anyone wants to mass produce these you have my full blessing and permission because they are a pain to make out of plasticard but I expect freebies)

and here from behind in a line with the cloaks of leaves painted to match the leaves scattered on the bases of the other units.

 So now dark blue done and Light blue now just up to white on the cloaks

 And finished I'd like to do something to sort out the edges of the movement trays but that's a job for another day.

 And from behind with snow on the hoods and cloaks to show them blending in. 

So next it's the waywatchers who will be an order of magnitude higher than these in their detail and basing. see you later this week. And here is the customary shot of child labour that I include every so often, Blaise cleaning my bike, she's called Bubbles.

How the fuck did i miss that?

Here's a little update and a question are you as shit as me? I want to know here is exhibit A I've finished all the green bits and the flesh so why is this elbow this colour.

Exhibit B I've done all the dark blue I'm putting the light blue/white base colour on why are her boots black? I mean come on I've even started the outline for the freehand banner.

Anyway on to whats been done obviously the skin is now finished as is the wood grain on all bows standards and sword of the champion. This is a test if it looks good when the units done all weapons will get wooden blades

So now onto the next stage of basing final highlights on general  ground area and stones and flocking of bits of grass and then the first layer of snow using the powder snow flock.

this is the first stage of the process I've been using for snow, I don't like the baking soda look it doesn't look like snow( I'm originally from Saddleworth Moor on the Pennines, so I am thoroughly aquainted with what snow actually looks like) and I'm not using crushed glass because no effect is worth permanent lung damage.

So I use a combination of various powder flocks and GW's fibre snow  which is by far the best looking but would take about twenty layers to make snow.  First layer is the powder flock because this falls between the grass fibre flock and looks like snow in long grass. You may have noticed some large clumps on the tree this was as gap filler for the icicles.

The icicles are great but they are flat and the tree isn't so they look a bit weird without the flock, I've since knocked the flock down to normal levels and it looks a lot better, also do not separate icicles with your snips do it with your fingers. i tried the snips too start with and a piece flew off in the direction of my printer never to be found until it tears through an important document or buggers up the mechanism when i really need it.

And  here we are without clumping, the whole unit will get one or two more layers of fibre flock as needed when all painting is finished. The dark dlue is now done and the base is on for the white and the light blue, these are the same colour just different highlight mixes and steps.

See you later.

Next unit and lessons learned

So the first unit took way too long to do, and that was mainly down to fiddly bits I'd missed and getting all the bindings done. I'd decided at the outset that all the bindings where made of vines so they would be the only green  pieces on the models but faded due to the season.  This time I've decided to do the bindings first.

this has allowed me to be a bit slapdash and get all the shading done without worrying about hitting white bits or flesh. I've also done all of the base colours on the bases as this was another pain in the arse. I've then done the flesh base around the vines and clothing.

with this all done I put the base colour on the wood and the hair on the standard bearer.

and finally washed with reikland flesh on all these areas, the next step will be to highlight these areas and highlight the base, then onto the blue and whites and complete the model, hopefully the whole process should be 4 nights total instead of  the 8 the last unit took. 

Done!Done!DONE!

Yes the first unit is complete and here they are stalking through the winter woods.

this unit really does say get out of my fucking forest here's some more pictures.

and here is the champion

and the musician

and the company standard

and the unit generally just looking a bit mean

so one more unit of glade guard, one unit of scouts, two units of waywatchers, a unit of warhawk riders and a mage to go by the 10th of May. Sleep is for wimps, (and middle aged dads)

Nearly done 1st unit

So the bows are now done

 so i've done the first layer of skin now

and started the basing and i finished the musician  to see how they would look completed.

 and now stuck in place

 should finish them tomorrow would have finished tonight but, game of thrones!