Diy alien grass with sawdust

The homemade crafting part of miniature gaming always interested me. As a kid I tried making a river crossing out of cardboard and foam. Never had a mentor to guide me tho, which youtube has helped with. I looked up homemade grass recipes and found a few for sawdust as a base. One trip to the hardware store to scoop some off the ground later I was ready.

Thanks lil sis for leaving this paint lying around

The recipe is simple, paint, wash stock and sawdust mixed up and left to dry.

Foil over this bowl for easy cleanup after the mixture is done drying

Pva glue applied to the bases and then stuck them in the purple grass

While this application worked, the grass is still liable to come off if you touch it. My thought to solve this was to put a second layer of pva on top, diluted with water this time.

I did one test model with a mix slanted more towards pva and the result was sturdy but had a gloss finish. Didn’t think to try different ratios with these models besides 50/50. either way i think i can matte it down with the drybrush i want to give the grass anyways to elevate it with contrast. I also bought a thing of matte medium at the art store awhile ago so maybe applying that over top will do the trick?

Brightening white

Added a little layer of this to the whites

The blue tinged everything looked cool with these white bits but i was dying to see how they looked with a true white highlight.

Maybe too washed out now but can always do more shade work. I also think the head will help the look since it will be largely white as well.

For a while ive decided i like the white helmets on my eldar but havent taken steps to change them from various blues and blacks. Using buff as an undershade this time as opposed to the more orange skin tone id used before lets see how it goes.

If only i had the brush accuracy to not spill buff into the face mask i want to stay dark

Space wizard cloak highlights

The effect is quite subtle. The new layer has almost a pink hue. Im scared to push it further but also want bigger contrast.

Finally i mixed ice yellow into the brew and used a lighter pink seen in picture 1. Then used more pure red to fill out the darker tones. Good enough for me for now.

Space elf wizard belated post (eldar farseer)

Never made a blog post when i first made this guy’s paintjob and i wish id recorded the recipe now.

Never made a post when i first painted this and now wish i recorded my recipe.

On the figures left arm you can see my method of building up the red from black primer by undershading with flesh tones.

I remember using blue wash to add shading to the white fabric, which i believe i used glacier blue to paint.

The chest has layers of silver over brown i think?

Would love to know what red i used so i can adapt it for a highlight shade. I think i used the reaper red.

Got inspired again, starting off with grunt work

Priming bits and bobs i never got around to like this head

Hard thing about priming a head is you cant do it all at once because theres nowhere to rest it for drying unless you go half then half.

Drybrushed two tones of dark blue onto the main body raiment that was previously muted greyblack. Can add higher shades once these dry.

Want to redden up the interior of the purple robe. Tried to blue it up to contrast the outside of it but dont like the effect.

Pink mohawk kabalite

Just like with the yellow/red/orange mohawk i did before, i basecoated some light flesh tone over the black primer before proceeding.

Unsure with what pink to use since i dont own a premixed pink, i mixed up two for starters.

On the right is model color vermillion plus model color ice yellow from vallejo. On the left i mixed vermillion with game color glacier blue. Inexact ratios, roughly a drop of each paint.

I tried both over the flesh basecoat and preferred the glacier blue mix that reads more pink than red.

All credit to vince venturella for giving me the idea to use a bluish white for pink in his exploring pink video.

I painted the reddish pink as a base with blue pink over it to give depth.

Neither pinks have great coverage so it took a few layers

After a few layers trying to be neat i felt like there was no depth, however, so i turned to my washes. I tried red on one side and purple on the other.

Purple gave the desired effect.

As i went to wipe off the red wash i got more than i bargained for on the napkin.

I tried to put new pink to cover but i accidentally wiped off all the paint down to the black primer on the raised edges. Since washes take awhile to dry i will let it sit overnight before i fix it up.

At last i touched it up, gave it purple shading, then hit it with some generous drybrushing of pink. The shading got washed out a bit more than i might like so maybe i hit it with some more purple.

Ive also since done up the bases on this squad of five. The recipe is black primer, dark brown, dry brushed ice yellow, then painted a thin layer of reaper rich leather brown. I may hit it with more ice yellow drybrush tho to add contrast.

My last little touch on these warriors for now was an ice blue drybrush on the black of the guns. And a drybrush of buff on the bases and the mohawks. Almost imperceptible that drybrush but i swear i did it.

Kabalite warrior update: highlights and a mohawk

Decided that these warriors came out a bit blah so hit them with some dry brushed scale 75 Heavy Metal to get silverish highlights. Subtle but nice. Maybe i try a brighter silver if i think they could use more contrast.

I also tried painting some purple into the little poison canisters on the guns and I’m not a fan right now. Not sure what I want to replace it tho.

Step one of this mohawk was to cover the black primer with a layer of light fleshtone. This will help with the bright colors i want to add, letting me get more done with less layers of paint.

Next comes base coats of color.

A little messy but next comes a wash to tie it all together:

And that stuff takes a while to dry.

Check in after dinner and it’s dry:

Now it’s due for some highlights to bring back the vibrancy of the colors while keeping the added shadows from the wash in the recesses.

Highlighted. And blue on the poison can now which I prefer to the purple.

Knives are sharp mmkay?

This picture is *after* I stopped the bleeding.

I think I know how to avoid it again but yeah. While fiddling with some dark eldar weaponry and sprue nubs i had the knife fly right into my finger.

I think next time Id do better to trim the nubs shorter with clippers before going at them with the knife. My knife was sharp already, fresh blade, so I dont think that was the issue. Perhaps a clamp of some kind would work in the future so my finger isnt in harms way but I dont know how i would set that up.

Funnily enough I read somewhere that super glue was first invented as a medical adhesive so I tried using it to seal the flap of skin over the cut. An awkward location for a normal bandaid, so close to the nail. And it worked ok. The glue would kind of flake off after several hours but then I would reapply.

Not much painting from me for now while Ive been in pain from some combination of computer use, bad posture, sedentary pandemic life, and whatever else may have contributed.

Got this beaut waiting for me when im ready though:

Bye for now 👋

Cheap Brush Calamity

It just popped off when i picked it up. Had felt wobbly for weeks, i think ever since I left it soaking in water which i learned later was a brush care nono.

Nothing a little glue cant fix? Let me put that aside to dry.

And it had such a good tip too 😦

Update: it wooorks! The glue did the trick and the brush is back to brushing. I did let it get pretty stiff tho oops, some dish soap loosened the bristles up luckily.

Old school Kabalite warriors with a dirty gold scheme

My lastest Work in Progress (WIP):

Got my hands on some dirt cheap old Dark Eldar kabalites (thanks ebay) new on their sprues and have built and painted a few so far.

So hard to decide on what colors I want the accents to be but I feel set on this golden armor theme.

If for no other reason than to simplify my further choices lol!

I got the gold by first painting every armor bit silver. Then washed with brown ink. Then drybrushed gold. Then highlighted silver. The silver highlights scare me though so i havent done much of those. So easy to make them ugly ugh.

Eye lenses red? Blue? Orange? We shall see.

The poses on these have surprised me with their finnickyness. Ive gotten the arms wrong on one so far and I almost didnt have a gun that didnt cover the woman warriors face (her boobs stuck out too much for the weapon on her sprue to sit in front of her chest lol).

I feel conflicted because on the one hand waiting could lead me to a eureka moment but not painting could leave me to giving up and leaving them unfinished. At least I built another model while i contemplated the paint job to keep my hands busy. But building and painting are kindof different skills that dont necessarily buld each other up.

Wile E out!