Weekly Waffle #323
2nd March 2024
For this week’s weekly waffle, I have switched away from a homework week, back to a bit of Wild West Exodus / Mythos. The next miniature in the Soul Hunters box that wanted to paint is Ernesto Volk. Now I feel I have to come clean and say that reason I have picked Ernesto to follow Hans is not because of the fantastic sculpt, which it is. Or because he has some fantastic stats, because I have no idea about that. But because there isn’t a lot of white or cream in his paint scheme. All of the other characters in the box have quite a lot of white in them and I just didn’t feel like painting that at the moment. Mainly because I think it is going to be a real challenge and I want to keep the mojo high in the run up to Adepticon. I’m all for pushing myself, like I did last week, and learning from my mistakes. But I want to balance that against painting things in a way I know I can. So, what I don’t want to do is to try and learn lots of things all at the same time. Try something and get a feel for it then slowly build on it. And to keep my mojo up paint things in a way I know I can in between.
I’ve not tried to do anything differently with Ernesto than I did with Hans, so I started with the base and painted this in exactly the same way I did for Hans. After all the idea is that they are one squad or crew and for me being on the same bases goes a long way to tying them all together. I also did some work on the bases for the other members of the crew and painted them most of the way to completion. I just need to add the oil wash into the recesses on the base and then do a final highlight once the model is based. Doing them all now just made sense as a way to keep the feel the same because I don’t when I will get round to painting the rest of the crew and I didn’t want to forget how I had painted them. That could have been a real pain if I then had to rebase Ernesto and Hans.
What I have tired to do here though is to build on what I have been doing over the last few weeks. Concentrating on trying to get better blends and get the highlights and shadows in the right place. I’m conscious at the moment that I’m not really picking a single direction for the light source. Rather I’m going for a sort of all round light coming from above. This means that the highlights on both the front and rear of the model are the same. This isn’t really very realistic and up until hasn’t really been something I have thought about. The more I’m concentrating on painting a single model at a time the more I’m starting to think about these sorts of details. Part way through I did think that maybe I should just pick a single light direction and really focus on that, but I made a decision not to do this. I know it’s something that I’m going to have to work on in the future but I’m sticking to my plan of concentrating on one thing at a time until I start to feel like I am getting the hang of it. Or more accurately I’m doing taking that approach to individual projects. So, over the course of a couple of weeks I may try out a few different techniques, but they will be on individual projects. Then hopefully once I think I have a handle on them I can then start to look at how I can combine them in a single project.
There are few areas on his backpack that I think could be better, particular in relation to the shadows and highlights in the silver areas. I think part of the issue here was that was little bit afraid of really messing things up and because I was happy with the rest of the painting on the mini, I didn’t want to push things to far. I just tried to use a little bit of purple to act as a shade in an attempt to step away from just giving everything a wash with Nuln Oil. But I’ll let you have a look and would welcome any feedback you may have, good or bad.
For more Wild West Exodus you can check our my Gallery here
I have enjoyed painting this guy and really like the rest of the models in the box so I’m going to bite the bullet and make a start on them soon. Even if they do have lots of white and cream in their colour scheme. I just think they will look really cool once they are all painted up. And there is a fairly good chance they may be the start of a larger Enlightened force for Wild West Exodus. There are at least four or five crews that I like which should be enough to get a good, varied force. And at least one of the crews that I like is also one of the ones that can be used in Mythos. So, I would be killing two birds with one stone which seems like an efficient way of picking projects. But that approach will have to survive the trip to Adepticon because there is a very good chance I will find lots of shiny things there so my plans may well change.
That’s it for this week’s weekly waffle and the count down is ticking away to Adepticon. I’ve started to double check that I have everything I need for the trip. Not that I’m packing or anything yet, but just trying to remember where I have put things like travel adapters, phone charger and the like after I can back from Italy. Where my packing cubes are things like that. I want to get all of them sorted this coming week then I’m not running around at the last minute. I also need to sort out getting some dollars so I can actually pay for things whilst I’m away. I don’t think Pete will appreciate me running away whenever a bill turns up. And if some of our previous trips are anything to go by running at that point will probably be something I just wouldn’t be capable of doing.
With the post complete I’m now going to shoot off the cinema for the long waiting second fix of Dune. I’m really excited for this and the full Imax experience I think will be fantastic. The only negative I can think of at the moment is that I’m going to come out of the movie wanting to paint Dune miniatures. And I just don’t think there are any out there. I’ve seen some STL file but I’m still living in the Stone Age and don’t have 3d printer so my options are limited.
For next week I think I’m going to go back and do a bit of a homework project by trying to paint a min using a single light source. I have another Nut’s Planet mini lined up for this and the plan is to build on what I did last week with Silencer Bane.
And to keep you entertained until next time why don’t you have a look at so other content I’m enjoying at the moment:
