Drybrushing Test

Recently, I've decided to up my drybrushing game. I've been painting since 2002 and back in the day we were told to use a shitty old brush to do our drybrushing after we walked up hill both ways in the snow. It worked fine and we liked it mostly because we had no other option. I assume some mad lad grabbed a makeup brush after watching their girlfriend drybrush their face. I also assume that people have been grabbing the expensive artist brushes but I've never heard of it. Only recently, have there been specialized dry brushes from GW and Armypainter. 

I grabbed a bunch of these different brushes and went wild on some fire that I need to paint for D&D. Here are the results!

Finished - Skyrim Dragon Priest Mask Volsung

 Been a while. Again, am busy despite not blogging about it. Don't play much 40k anymore or paint any. Considering selling off the massive backlog. 

Started brewing and distilling so maybe I'll write about that here too. 

I've also gotten back into making props. Working on my finishing techniques and am getting pretty good. 

I finished this dragon priest mask from Skyrim. It printed in 4 parts and glued up pretty well. After lots of sanding and dremeling, I got rid of most of the layer lines. Learned some cool things too. Noteable is that dremels are speed tools not torque tools. Was running it low and slow but that causes chipping and jumping. Once I turned the speed up, things got smoother. 

I even made a wall mount for it too. Planning
on doing more cool props like this. Up next is a giant Deathclaw skull from Fallout. 

Finished - Roboute Guilliman

 

Finally finished Bobby G. He was be sitting in his box for months now. I admit, I was intimidated by the size and the detail. I got over that After painting Abby and then this didn't seem so bad. 

I accepted that this was going to be a "good enough" situation because I was not going to blind painting the detail. 

The blue was a solid base of Altdorf Guard Blue (or Ultramarine Blue as it is named in my heart), then washed it with Guilliman Blue. I brought it back up wiht another drubrush of Altdorf then a light dry brush of Calgar Blue. I was not going to highlight each armor panel so this was going to have to work. Blue done. 

Thank the Emperor for Retributor Gold. I would have killed for a base/foundation gold paint back in the day when a decent gold took 5 layers. This gold had to cover the blue in one go because I was not going to paint all that filigree twice. There was no wash on it, just a little Runefang Steel highlight. 

Sword was white, yellow, two oranges, red, brown and black in overlapping layers. Not thrilled with how it came out but it looks good from arms length. Fire is just flipping hard. I saw a thing on painting flames with contrast paints. I bought the paints then chickened out at the last second and did it the old way. Maybe later. 

The mini cost me $60 and the paint is worth maybe $50 for a replacement value of $90. 

Finished - Krieg Bust

 

I'm into busts lately and other non-playable minis. 

Had fun with this even though it will never see play on a table but that goes for most of my armies too. 

Tried to learn some new things from this but I did pretty much standard for my colors. 

I will say that at larger scales, it makes you think more about light and shade but also gives a wider margin for errors. 

People really seemed to like it. Maybe I'll do more busts in the future if I can find good ones. 

Finished- Abandon the Despoiler

This project has been sitting on my to do list for maybe a year. I loved Abaddon in the previous editions and even did my own conversion out of the Terminator Lord kit and the old metal Abby. Turned out pretty good if I don't say so myself back in the day. Put a picture of the old one after the jump.

The armor is black base with a solid coat of Dark Reaper. Washed it black and Agrax to try and darken it down but that second wash didn't do much. Then I touched up the Dark Reaper and then did a highlight of Thunderhawk Blue on the hard edges and in the weird places that we highlight on pauldrons. Then on the areas I wanted to pop, I did a highlight of Ahriman Blue. It doesn't take much, bit it is effective. I think I could have taken it further around the Chaos star but I kinda like the subtilty. 

This was my first big project painting blue as black and I loves it. It turned out just how I wanted. I think I may go back with some more blue and make it pop more. I may use this and highlight with grey for any further Deathwatch minis. 

Finished - Void Dragon

This mini cost $90 from GW or you can print it for a few dollars if you have the files and know how. Imma let you guess which one I did. 

No idea the rules for this bad boy. Never seen a Codex with rules for it and know almost nothing about him. I had to print this mini. It was challenging. I used presupported files and that was a mistake. I don't claim to be an expert at supports but I find if I put them on then the tend to be easier to take off. After printing it was pretty tricky to paint and assemble this beast. The mini is basically supported in a web of delicate lightning bolts. 

I painted the mini in the same theme as my Necrons. I kinda phoned in on the skin. With the other C'tan, I tried to give them colored metallic skin but this guy just got some Agrax over Iron Hands Steel and a dry brush of Runefang Steel. The body really isn't what draws the eye. I could have tried some OSL or at least some glowing effects in places but didn't. 

It has been so long sing I painted and posted about a mini that I've forgotten how to do a TMM CV post. The point of it was to document what I had invested in 40k and minis incase of fire or robbery to that they could be replaced. I am unsure how to value printed minis so let's just use retail which is $90 for this bad boy. The paint job was maybe 10 hours and I'd value it at about $70. 

Cyberpunk 2077 Review

 I am about 40 hours or so into Cyberpunk 2077 and have completed maybe 10% of the game. I feel like I am just scratching the surface but have seen enough to know what I like and don’t like. There are going to be some spoilers in her, so beware. 

Let’s start with the pros before I get into the complaining. This is a beautiful world. The textures and architecture are stunning. There are little nooks of detail everywhere and you can always look closer. Hardly any space is blank or feels unused. Even areas where little action takes place have lots of details like hobo hovels and feel lived in. 

There is lots of variety in the game. There is an endless variety of people and even so I feel like I see familiar faces sometimes. I pass cliques of sex workers hanging out near their favorite streetfood vendor when I am going to and from my fixer. There is a small-time gangster slapping and stomping someone that wronged him in an alley (I stole his car when he was busy). I see gangs that are hanging out and committing crimes with their shiny rides parked in a believable tableau. When I go to the nicer parts of town, it is a lot of corpos walking around and looking at their devices. The world feels random and yet also hand crafted. I can admire how hard that was to do.