LOL, im on the gw blog!

Hello everyone! Well not exactly me as i stated in the title but one of my latest creations made it to the pages of games workshop blog! Yes its the Jozef my canoptek spyder.
Well i think its a great success and encouragement  for someone like me who is trying to improve my painting and still unable to notice any improvement. I needed somethink like that as im currently depressed working on my ghost ark. As i ruined the model by my indecision as i ve switched between few colour themes while painting, unable to decide whitch one i want and it ended as it ended. But more about ghost ark, wip pictures, final pictures, maybee a showcase if i ll manage to save this model from the depths of basic table top quality this weekend. I still belive i ll mange to enhance it somehow, but im affraid not everything turns out as happy end:-/ Thanks for your support, comments, youtube subs and see you in couple of days with an update!;-)

Necron painting tutorial

Hi all! First i must say im exhausted, took a painting marathon today as i started working on necron battleforce. While asembling warriors i came up with idea to do somethink else than just another showcase video showing you what i have done so i plugged webcam in a little earlier than ussual and pressed rec button time to time trying to describe what i am doing. It is first tutorial i ve ever made so i belive there is a lot of room for improvement so i ll try to do my best with the next one depending on feedback. I did not take hd pictures of the ressult as they are identical to testing pieces i did about month ago so i ll take more shots when whole battleforce ll be done. Hope this little tutorial ll help at least somebody in the future and i beg you, please excuse my english, i ve been trying to improvise as best as i could, but sometimes it was hard to find right words even in my mother tongue, and even harder when i was trying to translate my toughts instantly as i did theese shots on first try. I belive i ll improve with next videos and please, be patient with me;-)

Relaxing & necron dilemma

Hello everyone, after one week of painting break im back with little update. I ve been mainly relaxing, enjoying new diablo game, watching ice hockey and tried to paint aobr deffkopta i ve ordered from ebay. Well when you look at pictures around you may notice its not my best piece around. I know it, and i blame my self for ressult as i was really lazzy to even plug in my airbrush and did everythink like when i was begining with model painting, including all common mistakes;-) On the other side i enjoyed this quick piece, it filled my time when i was bored and reminded me how quickly paintjob can turn in to total mess when not following my ussual painting habits. But enought of about deffkopta painting ideas and lets tell you what ll come in following weeks.

As i quite enjoyed few necron pieces i did recently i ve decided to start another small army. Dont get me wrong, i still like my imperial guard but currently i dont know whitch models to buy as i ve got core of army finished allready, but with next edition of 40k rulles around the corner i dont want to buy models i ll dont play due to rulles changes. So i ve decided to put guard on hold and start doing somethink elese. Originaly i tought my next 40K army ll be Tau, but then i saw necron second wawe and knew these are the models i really want on my display shelf. As you know i did few testing pieces and im quite happy with the ressults.

 Now i ve got a dilemma, do i really need another army? Im playing about 1 game of 40k per month so would not be better for me to just paint couple of non imperial guard related models while waiting for 6th edition?
Im still not 100% decided to go for necron battleforce as a next box im going purchase from my limited nerd budget but i think it would not harm me if i ll have big guard army stationary at our local game club while having small necron force at home, sitting on my display shelf waiting for occasionall games we are having time to time in my kitchen. In addition when i took a look at the number of visitors to this blog and positive feedback i ve received since i did first necron testing pieces i think it ll not hurt my painting diary either as it ll add little more variety to this place. Well i think it is time to say: except more necrons soon and thanks for reading! See you;-)

Jozef showcase and painting notes

Hi again, im back as promised with showcase vid and painting notes. You can read on or if you enjoy listening to my terrible accent you can just click play below;-)
Painting of this piece was...well if i had to say it by one word it would be dissaster. Not because of the model it self but day before postman delivered me package with this spider the light bulb in table lamp cracled. Well that was no big deal i replaced it with one i found in my storage boxes but it was much stronger and at first i was impressed how much light i have on my desk now but it was emiting extreme heat, i was sweating during whole painting and whats worse, when i was trying to speed up drying of the wash by just holding model near the bulb then after few seconds i noticed there is black smoke comming from his carpace part, damaging the coat, ruining the effect i achieved by about 8 layers of wash. I had to paint whole carpace again, but as i had too many layers of paint on it i had to simplify it to about 3 layers and here is the messy ressult. Then i realized there is to much heat on the table and found out that was the reason of many distractions during painting as i had to complete dissasemble and clean my airbrush about 4 times during painting as the paint was drying really really fast even inside of it, cloging an creating uneven surfaces.

 Enought of excuses, now lets tell you a bit about whole painting process. I chose really simple approach, same as with necron warriors i was showcasing about week ago as i wanted clasic color scheme with few little adjustments to fit my personal taste and knowing the less im going to do on the model the less i ll be able to mess. After priming,  model received coat of model air steel and then i started airbrushing vallejo washes. First layer was just dusting sephia wash around to create illusion of dusty metal, but i ve been careful not to add to much as it can turn in to really rusty look very fast and i wanted to avoid that. Then i ve added several coats of black wash to all the black parts to rehighlight them again with sephia wash once more. And thats it, i chose washes over black paint as surface created by this way is much more interesting and its really mat while still showing some of the steel basecoat. You can do chipping on this surface really easy as surface created like that is really fragile and all you have to do is to slide nail against the edge and you ll receive nice crackle showing the base colour underneath. Then i ve just sealed everything by matt varnish and here is the ressult. Hope you like the model as i do. I know its not going to win painting competition, but i think its a nice gaming piece, what about you?Let me know in the comments and thanks for reading, see you!

Jozef the canoptek spyder done

Hi all! Finaly, my new pet arrived! I ve spent saturday afternoon painting this piece and today i ve been working on base and few datails while watching tv, eating, cleaning, cooking and all the stuff people usualy do on sundays. Painting this was one big experiment as if you exclude basecoat of wma steel and scorpion green its painted by just washes. I ve never tried this aproach before on biger surface so i did not knew what the ressult ll be, and it turned quite well however i managed to damage coat and had to do black parts again, but unfortunately as the original layer was ressult of about 10 layers of wash and when i was reworking to achive desired effect it allready started beign visible there is to many layers of paint so i simplified whole proces and left it as it is on the pictures. I ll make showcase and painting notes video probably tommorow so if you are interested about painting process and how i achieved what i achieved wait for the next post;-) Thanks for reading and have a nice sunday!

On the desk - challenging myself

Good morning everyone! I would like to write short update about what am i working on, what am i thinking about and whats going to come in following days. Right now im working on few non 40k models, first one is Tiger tank in 1/72 scale whitch i got as a xmas present from my father as he knows about my obscession by german ww2 stuff. I did not wanted to buld this model at all, as i like the freedom you have while painting scifi/fantasy kits but inspired watching few documentary movies on youtube lately i felt like now its time to jump on to that model as im waiting for preordered necron stuff anyway. I took oportunity to practice color modulation/spraying freehand camo pattern/oil washing whole surface and have model almost finished right now, but still few hours of work left on it. Ressult is not very good as i really approached this tiger as oportunity  to try stuff i was unshure about and afraid to try on my favourite gw models;-) However this piece refreshed my memory and i realized again how poor detailed and bad quality models are thrown to wargamers compared to models from major historical scale models producers.

Second little project on my desk is infinity boxed set Aleph - posthumans. No im not going to start playing this game, but i visited friend of mine on sunday and complained to him i dont have much to do while waiting for canoptek spider kit and he quickly grabed box from his storage and offered it to me to fill my time. Its always refreshing to paint few pieces from different universe/setting so im glad i had this chance. That was the good side of the thing, now the bad one;-) By just watching painted examples on the box i allready knew this is not going to be easy. White/light blue/purple colour theme is very bright and every little mistake ll be visible even when looking from few feet away and to make this even more challenging, i never shaded white before;-) On the example of painting everything shines, there is gradient on every little surface, every little detail is outlined and each of the collors is somehow shining catching attention of your eye, creating very pleasing experience. I must say trying to replicate this can be very frustrating as box artwork is just yelling: "it does not matter how you paint theese minis, they ll always look like crap". However infinity models are just great and its pleasure to paint them. Yes they are metal and it can get very nervous during assembly but trust me, it is worth the effort and im saying that as a metal model hater. Started painting yesterday and i must say im failing horribly to get even close to the box artwork but its a joy to paint such a beautiful models, however they deserve hands of much better painter than i am.  I knew before i started this ll be hard, but i think its the challenge i must take if i want to improve and finaly start painting better than at tabletop quality. However it is long time since i noticed even slight improvement, but as long is i enjoy this hoby i dont mind as having fun while painting is most important for me.
See you by weekend as i ll be working on allready mentioned canoptek spider! See you guys and thanks for reading;-)

Undead machines

Hello everyone! Just came from the minigolf game and finaly found time to take pictures of few necron warriors i painted on sunday/monday evenings. Why necrons? Well i was so excited about necron second wawe models   and decided to try painting few necron warriors i saw at my friends bitz box as a practice for canoptek wraith and spider as i really want to paint them, maybe start another small army based around battleforce and few models i like. When taking pictures i plugged webcam in and took showcase vid as well. I went for traditional colour scheme. Basecoating whole models with mix of black and vma steel (2:1 ratio) and then highlighting from above of model with pure vma steel. Added rusty look by spraying vallejo sephia wash all over them except from above. Then washing their joints and shoulders with devlan mud, continuing on shoulders with two layers of badab black wash, pulling the wash away from shoulder edges. Glowing effect is done by scorpion green diluted about 10:1 for water, carefuly adding layer after layer until achieving desired effect. Pretty straightforwad mini but i like atmosphere and impresion when looking and them, hope you like them too and see you next time!