Tutorial: Painting Iron Hands Symbols

So last night, I broke out a test model and practiced my freehand work a tad. Since transfers cost 16 pounds (at least 20 bucks for us over here in the USA), I thought it would save me a few bucks if I learned to paint the symbols myself.

Looking at the Legion's icon, and by studying the decals themselves from Forgeworld's online store, I was able to simplify the geometry enough to achieve a satisfactory result with my paltry skills.

Here is the transfer sheet from Forgeworld:

And here is my simplified method of painting this symbol that can be achieved in small scales, even if you don't have the steadiest hand!

1. Paint a square
2. Paint a trapezoid underneath the square, leaving a line of separation between them
3. Individually paint 4 thin lines for fingers, leaving the middle finger the longest (I cut off the picture above by accident)
4. Paint a diagonal line from the side of the square for the thumb.
5. Be sure to continue to leave a thin line of separation between all the fingers and the square.
6. If you mess up, black paint (carefully applied) can act as your eraser.

And that is all there is to it! Simple enough that I should be able to replicate it on the 40+ marines and vehicles I have in my basic army, and I shouldn't want to poke my eyes out with forks. 

Hopefully somebody finds this helpful!

The Flesh is Weak. Raise the Storm!

Painting BFG Imperial Ships

Today I went about trying out a way to paint my Imperial Fleet for BFG / Rogue Trader in a way that would be both fast and good-looking. I used a model I had gotten off ebay, that I had to strip in simple green, so there was still lumps of paint in hard-to-reach areas. This made it kinda rough, and perfect for a test model! For your benefit, I broke down the steps while doing this...

STEP 1:
Basecoat the model black. You can do the flying stand too, but in all actuality you will probably have to redo it.



Step 2:
Drybrush a mixture of 50/50 Black and Light gray, or a pre-mixed dark gray if you have it, onto all but the prow. The actual colors are not important, as long as you drybrush from darker to lighter. After the dark gray, go over it again with a drybrush of the lighter gray. Again, don't hit the prow so that there isn't too much of a buildup of paint. NOTE: I used gray, but building up any color would work with this technique. Therefore, you could do green, blue, or any other color you desire by building up from dark to light. Just decide on the color you want to use, mix 50/50 black with it for the first coat, do a second coat in the unmixed color, and finish with a 3rd drybrush of 25/75 Bleached Bone mixed with the color (bleached bone being the 25).


Step 3:
In this step, fill in the prow with the color of your choice. Red, Blue, or White are popular colors. If you get a bit over the prow lines, don't sweat it too much. The next step should take care of this issue.


Step 4:
To paint the prow lines, start with Tin Bitz. While that is drying you can paint weapon barrels and the engines in Mithril Silver (or gunmetal, if you prefer a darker metallic). After that is done, you finish up with Shining Gold over the Tin Bitz. Alternatively, you could skip doing tin bitz and shining gold and just use silver, if that would match your colors better.


Step 5:
Lastly, we need a couple of washes to bring out the definition. I used Badab Black for the body, and for the prow I used Devlan Mud. You need to pick washes that best complement the colors you chose. For example, don't try putting Baal Red on a Blue prow, unless you WANT a purple prow. Be smart about it.





If you desire, you can finish up the flying stand at this point. I've seen people take an old toothbrush, dip it in white paint, and flick it at the base to get a starfield effect. Obviously, if you are going to do this, remove the model first so you don't spray white globs all over it. Also, I have seen people paint script for the vessel's name on the base. Furthermore, why not try a combination of the two? If you have an airbrush, it would be easy to go crazy with nebula effects and so forth. Just make sure, just like your regular 40k minis, that the bases of your fleet match to give it uniformity.

I hope you enjoyed this tutorial! I strongly urge people to look into BFG, as it is a great supplemental game to 40k.

Until next time,
--FP135

Sunday Terrain Piece 2: Adeptus Astartes Hero Shrine

For this Sunday's piece, you will need to devote a little more time and money than last week's crater project, but this project can add a nice centerpiece to your cityfight board. Let's start with the supplies you will need:

A pack of cork tiles (6-7 USD)
Hot glue gun *High Temp, mini sticks* (5-7 USD)
Mini-glue sticks (5-6 USD)
Greco-pillars *found in wedding cake supply aisle* (5 USD)
Squared-off craft sticks (4 USD)
PVA glue *aka white glue, elmer's glue, etc*(.50 USD)
Craft paints *black, gray, white* (.50 USD each)
A leftover plastic miniature for the statue
Plastic bits *to make the bell, statue stand, etc*

The first step is to make your building template. Each floor has to be the same size, so cut out 2 squares of equal size from your cork tiles. The left-over pieces from the tile can be used to make the wall sections to the upper floor. Using the hot glue, attach the four pillars to the four corners of your bottom floor. Make sure they are all oriented in the same direction, as some pillars have distinct sides. Glue your top floor on next before you start on making the walls of the top floor. Leave a gap in the walls for an entrance to the top floor. Also, it makes the piece more usable game-wise if you make the walls as ruined facades, rather than complete walls. This makes it easier to place miniatures in the tower. You could be really adventurous and make a removable roof if you wanted complete walls, but that was a little more involved (and complete) than I wanted this project to be. With ruined walls, it blends much more seamlessly into my ruined-cityscape.

Next, its time to make the statue. I used a bottle cap from a 20 oz drink, and glued a miniature to the top with the hot glue. A small, square piece of cork makes a good piece to attach an inscription block for the statue. Glue this whole bit into the center of the bottom floor.

The following step is quite tedious, but produces spectacular results. Before you start, carve a hole in the floor of the 2nd story that goes through completely. Then, cut pieces of the craft sticks so that they match the length of your 2nd floor and lay them down in the similar fashion to a wood floor laminate. When you get to the hole in the floor, cut a whole piece to fit across the entire length, but break it unevenly. The remove a piece so that the edges of the boards end over the hole, but broken and jagged-like. Once you have finished laying the entire floor, use extra sticks as a trim border around the perimeter, to clean up the appearance of any mis-matched sizes. If you make a roof to the 2nd floor, make sure you make a bigger hole in that too, to give the illusion that a bomb or some other projectile penetrated through the building. Adding a few vertical boards in the corners helps too.

Use some crumbled cork to add rubble to the bottom floor. Use plastic bits to create a bell in the tower, and glue that down. Or use a bell of appropriate size, if available. How you create access to the 2nd floor is up to you: a ladder, staircase, or lift are all acceptable, some are just more difficult than others to make. I made a staircase, by cutting out 2 cork forms and gluing rectangular steps to the forms. That project was separate, and a little out of the scope of this tutorial however.

Now, all your cork sections are not going to be very sturdy. This is remedied by sealing the cork with PVA glue. Watered down a little, the PVA glue spreads pretty well. Use it to cover all of the cork sections and seal it. Don't get any on the wood floor, though, or you can't use a wash to darken and age the wood later.

After the glue dries, all that is left is the paint! Start with black or gray, your preference, and drybrush the next lighter color on.

The rest of the minor details are up to you. Now you have a dominating tower that rules the cityscape!

Sunday Terrain Piece 1: Easy Craters

Here is a quick tutorial for a easy piece of terrain that won't take up your entire Sunday. This is so you can do those other things your wife has been nagging you to do all week, like go to church, take her shopping, fix the garage door, and so on...

First off, the supplies:
-Keebler mini-pie crust tins (made of aluminum, cracker crumb crust things) 2.99 USD
-Jello pudding or pie filling 1.99 USD
-Patching plaster (powdered, not ready made) 2.99 USD
-PVA glue 0.39 USD
-Craft Paint, Black and White 2.00 USD
-Anything to use for texture: ballast, potting soil, dirt, etc VARIES

Total cost of supplies: about 10 bucks for approximately 10-15 craters (can be less or more depending on the types of materials you use such as the ballast or plaster)

Step 1: Make a pie and eat it too
This is the best part for a Sunday afternoon! Make the pie and eat it. You paid for a pie crust, so make it and eat it! Save the tin!!!!

Step 2: Mix the plaster
Mix up your plaster. Generally, the stuff calls for 1 part water to 3 parts powder, but I usually have to add more water than that. Adding some glue helps thin it too, and it should dry stronger too.

Step 3: Crush up the tin to look like a crater
The pie tin needs to be molded a little to get a proper crater-like shape. Turn it upside down (or rightside up for a crater) and press the middle so that you make a depression there. How deep you want it is up to you. This will also warp the sides in a little bit, but that is ok.

Step 4: Fill it with the plaster, and make a crater
Turning it back over, fill it up to the top with plaster. Give it a few taps on the table to vibrate some of the bubbles out to ensure it bonds strong. Let it sit for at least 5-6 hours (go watch some football if it is in season!), then CAREFULLY extract the plaster piece from the tin by bending the edges of the tin outwards away from the plaster piece. Once out of the tin, let dry for a couple more hours. (Do that chore on your "honey-do" list.)

Step 5: Paint and glue
Mix up a sticky paste consisting of PVA glue, black paint, and your texture medium. Using one of your lousy brushes (a big one), glop this stuff on the entire thing. Really build up the middle portion to make it more gradual, so the depression you made doesn't have such steep sides. Wait for this stuff to dry for several hours (Sunday dinner! Yum). On the plus side, because you added the black paint you don't need to base coat it again.

Step 6: Final drybrushing and sealing (Urban style, skip if you have different paint scheme in mind)

Take some black paint and add a glob of white to make a dark grey. Drybrush the entire outside of the crater, and the crater rim. Don't do the interior so much, but give it a light drybrush. Add more white to your grey, and drybrush again, but lighter this time. Adding a lot more white to your grey, give it a x3 very light drybrushing. On the inside of the crater, drybrush a light coat of earth-colored brown. Seal it with your preffered sealant (varnish, spray matte, modge-podge, etc).



Your done!! A super easy crater that you barely had to pay any attention to! You still had time for all that other Sunday stuff, and got a couple pieces made for your game table at the same time. The only downside to this method is that it does take a long time between steps, due to drying time. Your drying time may vary depending on climatic differences.

For BEST RESULTS, I reccommend making these in batches. The mini-pie tins come in packs of six, so make them all at once to save time. Also, ready-mixed patching plaster will not work the same. It takes forever to dry, for some reason, and it doesn't dry as hard.

Finally, you can reuse your tins! Just put them back into a crater-like shape after you peel them off the first one. I expect to get at least a half-dozen uses out of mine before I can no longer use them. Not too bad, for a ten dollar project.

Until next time, have fun modelling!

Continuing the Foamcore Project- Extra Credit

When you get up the next morning, your building will look like the first picture up there. For some people, that is good enough. I, however, am not one of those people, and I suspect you are not either. So, it's time for some extra homework to get extra kudos!

If you have the time and the paint, then it's time to go to work. First off, I like to coat the building with a black wash made from watered down black acrylic. Any black paint will do, and in fact, the cheaper the better. I got a pot for 50 cents from Wal-Mart. Add a big ol' glob and a dash of water to thin it out, then paint the wash over the entire piece. This watered-down solution should run into all the cracks and bring out the depth of the texture.

Next, using your large brush, drybrush a dark gray over the entire piece. Pay special attention to the edges, because concrete is lighter on the inside when cracked open. Drybrush, for those new to the hobby, is a painting technique where you get paint on your brush, then dab some of it off onto something you don't mind getting paint on, before lightly brushing over the area you wish to paint. This causes only the raised texture to catch the pigment on your brush.

After this coat dries, add some white paint to your grey, and mix it up good. Using the same drybrushing technique, apply this lighter grey over the entire piece again, really emphasizing the edges. You can add a third coat, this one pure white, but I usually think that's a little over the top.

After the second coat, the piece is table-top ready. You can add a clearcoat if you wish, but I find that the glue we used in the mixture is usually sufficient by itself. Later, I will share some of my tips to make the terrain piece worthy of sharing the table with your best painted miniatures!

Foamcore Ruins, Part 3

Finally, the last part. Spreading the stuff on is not really an art, but it does help to have a technique.

First off, make sure you are doing this on a surface that can get a bit of gunk on it and it won't matter. I use a piece of unused foamboard that I also use for painting miniatures on. You don't want this stuff getting on your nice kitchen table (I speak from experience)....

Using your large brush, spread on the first coat evenly. It is perfectly okay to put a thick coat on, because with all the glue in the mixture it will be nice and solid when it dries. Due to the black paint you put in, your mixture should be a dark gray color. This makes it easy to see the spots you missed, and serves as a good base-coat. All the white powder and glue lightened up the black, so if you want a totally black basecoat you will have to paint it when it dries. I will cover painting it in the next part.

When you are applying the coat of stuff, pay special attention to the corners and the edges. The plaster helps define the edges and make them look more like ruined rubble. Adding successive layers can help build up more rubble in the corners.

In order for it to harden properly, you should let it dry for at least 10 hours. Or overnight, whichever you prefer. I tend to make this my last project for the day, because I hate to wait for anything. Make sure it is out of reach of kids and pets. Also, the temperature and humidity has an effect on the drying time. I am basing my drying times on 68 F, really dry conditions. Your results may vary.

Next up, Painting the Foamcore Ruins!

Foamcore Ruins, Part 2

The Next Step:

Now that our basic design is complete and taped together, now its time to mix up a little compound to give the model texture and give it strength. This is not an exact science, and I do not use precise amounts of the ingredients. It helps lend individuality to each piece. If you want pieces to conform with each other, then it is best to make multiple pieces at the same time.

Start with your patching plaster powder (hereafter referred to as 'p3'), and add a little into a mixing container you don't plan on eating out of any time soon. On top of this, I sneak a pinch of potting soil out of my wife's plants. This is to add texture to the wall that the plaster alone does not achieve. The potting soil is optional, however, as it does not much else.

To this dry mixture, I add some black paint, and a huge gob of PVA glue. The glue and the paint are the only liquids added to the dry mixture, and this combination makes for a solid product once dry. If you find the consistency too dry and crumbly, then just add more paint or glue until you get a consistency of a thick paste. Think thin mayonnaise, but without the side-effects that incurs such as vomiting and nausea. If the potting soil makes it more like crunchy peanut-butter, then you are on the right track, just add more glue and paint.

Alternatively, if you find that your mixture is runny like thick milk, add some more plaster and soil to dry it up a bit. You want a creamy paste as your end result, such as pictured above.

In the Third Step, we'll cover the application of this gooey concoction.

Foamcore Ruins, Part 1

Alas, I finally got around to making a tutorial on my foamcore ruins. This is a fairly well-known method, but I have got enough questions about my previous pieces that I thought I would share my 'secrets' with you all.

First off, the supplies you will need:
-PVA Glue (Elmers, or white glue, for those who don't know what PVA is)
-Cheap black paint
-Powdered Patching Plaster (The kind used for repairing drywall and the like)
-A larger paint brush
-Foamcore (It is a kind of posterboard made from a piece of thin styrofoam sandwiched between 2 layers of paper, found in most department stores)
-Masking tape (That off-yellow tape people use to cover up stuff they don't want to get paint on)
-Sharp hobby knife or utility blade to cut the foam core
-A suitable place that you can cut stuff on or get real messy and not get in trouble with the wife (or for some of you, the mom! Hey, I don't judge.)

Step 1: Creating your basic shape.

When I am making ruins, I tend to make a small single corner. That way, if I want larger buildings, all I need to do is line up four corners to look like they were a single building at one point. With this in mind, I set about making the corner. One long wall usually serves as the focal point of my structure. I then match up one smaller wall at the corner. Adding in a small second floor, cut to match the degradation of the building, helps add a third dimension of playability to the ruin. A doorway ensures that it is not an impregnable fortress. A simple base to keep it all together, and we have all the basic elements of a structure.

After you have your basic shapes, put them all together with the masking tape. Make sure every edge is masked, as seen in the pictures. This will help make the piece more durable, so pieces aren't coming off of it.

The next step is preparing the mix....