Well I managed to make it through January on something of a high but things have slowed down somewhat this week with no gaming at all. Game night was as Al was working and D&D got moved from Friday to today. Now that doesn’t mean I’ve lost any enthusiasm for the year, it’s just that things haven’t lined up this week to get the gaming in. Having said that it means that my D&D character will survive for at least one more night and I do have a plan for tonight. Granted it’s a very foolish plan and my lovable little halfing monk will die horribly but it’s a plan so I’ll have to try it.
Now not getting any gaming in this week hasn’t been all bad. I’ve picked up some Hotwheels cars for use in Gas Lands and started to look at how I can convert them. I started off by drilling out the rivets that hold the cars together so that I can remove the body work for painting. Not really necessary but I like to tinker and once I’d done the first it wasn’t that much effort to do the rest. And it does make it nice and easy to paint them up as well as giving good access if you want to do any conversions. I picked my least favourite cars to stat with and on this first one I just wanted to give it a new paint job by making it look a bit weathered. I’ve had some AK Worn Effects for a while now but I’ve never got round to using so this was the perfect opportunity to give it a go. To be fair I don’t think I did a great job with it but was nice to try something new. I think on this I just rushed things and started to rub the blue paint off a bit too soon which resulted in more of a scratched than work effect. Not a disaster and it set me up for the next car.
For the next one I started in the same way by priming the car in black and then giving it a heavy dry brush with a dark metal followed by a lighter dry brush with a light metal. Then everything was given a rust wash before a final light dry brush with the metal again. I was aiming for an overall work and aged metal effect and I think it works quite well. It’s also very easy to do and could also be done in batches to speed things up.
As I mentioned removing the body also makes it easier to get access to customising the model. On this one I have cut out the windows and put in some mesh instead which was just a case of cutting it roughly to shape and then pressing it into the body before trimming off the excess. A lick of paint and bobs your uncle. If like me you also have a bit of thing for magnets it’s really easy at this stage to fix a few to inside of the call that will allow you to mix and match load outs on the same car. You could run it a basic car with no upgrades on one game then in the next fit a machine gun to the roof.All in all I’m happy with how things have turned out and this approach should allow me to knock out a few cars so that we can get some games in next week.
On the Crystal Brush front I’ve got quite a bit of work done on Jynz, the scoundrel or to be more precise I’ve done quite a bit of work on the base. The model comes with a square base that is designed to look like some sort of decking and on this there is a barrel full of bombs. I started with these as I had a clear idea of how I wanted them to look and thought that if I could get these looking nice it would be a bit of inspiration for what I know will be the harder bits to come. Being really honest with myself I’ve made the barrel a little bit too dark as I was looking to get a bit more contrast between it and the decking. That’s not to say that I’m not happy with it it’s just that as this is about pushing myself as a painter and part of that is being honest with myself when things aren’t quite right. The other bit that has to hand in glove with this though is not beating yourself up when things don’t go quite right and keeping the bigger picture in view. In this case I think the wood effect looks good I’d just have preferred if there was a bit more contrast.
I’m not having as much success with my Arena Rex effort though. Painting black animal skin is proving to be a real challenge. It’s trying to find a way to get nice clear highlights but still keeping the overall black feel. There are some images on line where people have used a blue for the highlights and this the way I’m planning on going but it this will very much be a case of trial and error.
The first test base I did for Nero was also something of disaster so it’s back to the drawing board on that one as well. Need to find a finer medium to give the feel of dry arena floor.
That’s it for this week. I’m hoping to get a game of Gas Lands in next week and to make a bit more progress on my Crystal Brush entries. But above all of these I’m really going to try and keep my D&D character alive. Even though we have only been playing for a few weeks I’ve become quite attached to him. It wouldn’t be the end of the world if I had to roll up a new character but I’m going to do everything I can to keep this chap going. So until next week have a good weekend and I’ll catch you all again next week.
