He snores and eats all our gobbos,
but dat big lug is handy in a fight!
~ Orc Warlord Grizgutz Badax
Welcome back to The Art of Caesura!
So I'm still on holiday at the moment. I'm visiting my family in Canada and it's been a few years since I've been back. While I'm back in my childhood house I've been going through a lot of my old stuff including my old miniatures. I thought it would be fun to look at some of the first models that I painted.
Having looked at the very first miniature that I ever painted last week, lets look at one of my better efforts from that period: Wee Wendell, The old metal Warhammer Giant!
This was always one of my favourite "miniatures". He is oozing with character, both in the model and on the tabletop (I love the randomness of the giant attack-table, and the template in the back of the army book for when he fell down!
Plus, he's hefty - he's nearly solid metal! I remember that that made him pretty tricky to build, so I took him to my local GW and the store manager taught me how to pin (no sooner had the manager come back with a band-aid for me where I'd punctured my finger with a paperclip, but then he did the exact same thing!) Man, they sure don't build them like they used to!
Like my rabble of orcs, I'm not a huge fan of unifying colours for these disparate horde armies. I had a great time painting his pants to make them look like they're made out of flags (my best was a purple Dark Elf flag on his right knee, you can see it two pictures down), and the obligatory fabric with hearts, sticking out of the pack of his pants.
A huge influence on my painting then compared to now, is that back then they didn't really have shades. They had inks, but they weren't great - they didn't flow very well and left a bit of a glossy finish. So you had to layer everything. When I reflect on this guy, I realize that I've actually become a fairly lazy painter: slap down the base colours, shade, few highlights and Bob's your uncle. Back then I would literally start an Ushabti bone colour at brown and spend ages working my way up.
Looking at some of these results (especially on the yellow and blue fabric above, and the off-white one below and to the left of it) I recognize that I need to bring more layering back into my repertoire. You can get some really nice textures from it. It's a little embarrassing to think that I'm stealing techniques that I was better at a decade and a half ago, but I guess improvement in any skill isn't a linear process, and the important thing is being willing to take one step forward and two steps back sometimes to get the results that you want.
Wow, we got very philosophical there! Anyway back to the model at hand. I'm happy with him, even after all these years. I mean, if I painted him today I would be able to get him done in half the time and I think my flesh tones have improved, but I'm still happy with this big guy.
Anyway, I hope you don't mind these excursions into the past - reflection is always a valuable process. Keepin' it real on The Art of Caesura!
Watching: The Incredibles 2
Playing: Magic the Gathering: Duels
Reading: A Gentleman in Moscow
Next Week:
My efforts on display...
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