NOVA Open Charitable Foundation WIP 4

 I continued working on the charity Knight today. Oils were added to the pneumatics, eye lenses were repainted, and pigments were liberally distributed to tarnished surfaces. This guy is getting close to completion. I wish I had the opportunity to win this army!

NOVA Open Charitable Foundation WIP 3

The gloss is starting to go away, and the finished knight is beginning to emerge. I usually take photos of stuff, not just to share, but also so I can review the painting and clean up spots I might have missed. For instance the sensors need cleaner green transitions, and the leaking oils to the pneumatics needs to be reapplied post matte. I am happy with this guy. Some lucky person will win this model along with eh rest of the army as part of the charity raffle.

NOVA Open Charitable Foundation WIP 2

The NOVA Charitable Foundation knight is in the home stretch. It might be hard to tell due to the gloss coat, but the armor plates are done. Once I dull coat the model the shading will be brought back forward, and the weird interplay between the matte oils and chipping and glossy undercoat (for protection) will have the same finish quality. For those who don't know, you can win this knight along with a beautiful Mechanicus force by entering the NOCF raffle. Once again we are supporting Doctors Without Borders, a wonderful organization providing medical care to people all over the world.

NOVA Open Charitable Foundation Knight

This ungainly fellow is a 30k Knight for the Charitable foundation. Every year I paint something for charity, and this year I was lucky enough to be tasked with painting an all resin Forgeworld knight. Since this guy is part of an army give away, I am sticking to painting style of the team leader. His style involves a lot of transparent paints, which is new to me. So far so good.

Tiger II Display Base Construction

The Warlord Games Bolt Action Tiger II model has awful tracks. This is fine for wargaming, but not really acceptable for a dual use model for display or wargaming. To solve that problem I decided to build a little display base of the model.

The base was a simple wooden box that I picked up at an art craft store. After painting it black, I taped the edges and built the dirt out of a mixture of tan Magic Merlin plaster, dark earth weathering powder, static grass, ground up dry leaves, and a Tiger II track mold that I had made from a Rubicon Models plastic kit. While the plaster was wet, the static grass tufts and leaves were added. As the plaster dried and became moldable, I used the track mold, and the back of a paint brush to press in some details. After the plaster had fully set, I used an overall wash of a dark earth weathering powder. As usual, a little bit of Green Earth pigment was added. I love that stuff!

Despite the base having absolutely no gaming purpose, I think it adds a nice touch to a model that might spend more time on a shelf than in a game. After seeing how well the dirt turned out, I might just have to make an entire table using that technique.

Stug Zug For NOVA Open

A while ago we decided to give Bolt Action a try at 1/72 scale. When we finally have forces painted, this will allow us to play with all of the 1/72 scale models on the market. The scale is also helpful in that individual infantry are still individually based. That satisfies our group need to not abstract a squad into a single base. I had not intended to put these into the painting competition, but I think these came out pretty well.  What I am most excited about, was proving to myself that I could paint at this scale, and produce models that make battles more interesting to watch.

So, with only two days left before the NOVA Open, I'd like to invite all of you to partake in the speed painting competition, and to watch me compete. Please steal techniques if I happen to have any techniques that are new to you. You are also welcome to kibitz during my painting session Thursday at 3:00PM.

NOVA Open Narrative Event Model

I was lucky enough to receive the NOVA Open 2015 event model from the man himself, MVB. Using the only artwork I've seen for these guys, I tried to paint the Virtue in various dark metallics with blue overtones towards the face. One of the things I like about the model is the scale. It looks closer to 20mm rather than 28. I've thought heroic 28mm was too large for a while. After getting into Bolt Action and painting Perry Brothers Miniatures I find it hard to like heroic scale. Smaller scales mean there is more space to maneuver making battlefield terrain more important. If you like this model, then I think the nova store will be selling them. I challenge our community to upgrade the piece to show the marine winning the fight. Seriously who wants humanity to loose!

Building A NOVA Display Board Step By Step

This year I needed a simple, lightweight display board that would show off my DKoK army well. The DKoK force is so large that I needed to maximize space. To that end, I decided that less was more, and simplified the design. this board cost probably less than $30 dollars to make. This board was fairly easy to build, and if you avoid some of the traps I fell into it can look really good. 

Step 1: Cut pink foam to the desired dimensions using home depot wooden yard sticks as a frame. 

Step 2: Use a wire brush scrape the detail into the board

Step 3: Make a slurry of magic merlin plaster and coat the entire board thinly. This will dry hard to the touch in 30 minutes. All of the details need to be added now. Add sand, small rocks, balsa wood, jerry cans, oil barrels, and chains as necessary. I just pushed these into the wet plaster.

Step 4: Without priming, mix alcohol with weathering powders and paint on the gunk. I used two types of SWM rust colors, as well as their green color. These were essentially wet mixed.

Step 5: Dust the entire board with weathering pigments. Again, this was done with no primer. Once the board was coated in pigments I dumped a lot of alcohol on the board to set the pigments and get them to run. 

Step 6: Dust the board with the mid-tone pigment and highlight pigments. I used SWM green earth and SWM yellow earth to do this. I dusted yellow earth along the embankment.

Step 7: Steal a pot from the kitchen and melt woodland scenics realistic water in it. It comes in little pellets. Pour the water onto the display board and let it cool. I used popsicle sticks to spread the edges of the water/plastic out so a raised lip was not formed. I also poured the mixture into the craters. This is where all hell broke loose. The craters melted and the water started eating through the display board. One you are happy with the water, using a cooking torch I heated the surface to remove bubbles. It was at this point that I noticed that the debris in the river had started to melt, and that paint had come off large sections of it.

Lessons Learned: Use resin for the water, and don't dump so much alcohol on the board that it requires napkins to soak up.