Mireadur's log. Caledor BSB Done, HE completed 30/05/22

[Tetrin]

Beautiful!

I just love your cloth/banner..

[Mireadur]

Just came from the tournament. It was only 10 players today and most people actually came with unpainted armies... Prety sad overall.

My army was:

-20 spearmen
-20 spearmen
-20 archers
-17white lions
-12 swordmasters
-6 Reavers
-2 Tiranoc chariots
-1 RBT
-1 Eagle
-BSB on foot, 2hander y armour of caledor
-Mage lvl2 with silver wand
-Noble on foot enchanted shield and the armour piercing 5pts sword
-Prince on griffon with star lance, G fenix, Helm of fortune and T loec.

1st battle i fought agaisnt a dwarf guy with 5 warmachines and a gyrocopter. I lost 8-12. Deployment rules fubared me but in exchange his warmachines did little.

2nd battle i played agaisnt a really friendly guy with Kairos fateweaver.. Fortunately the battle type was the one which goes by the standards you have so i had 9 points on start while he only had 6. We lost 2 points each so i won that battle 15-5 (my only real chance of winning today really ).

The final battle i went agaisnt vampire counts... Pretty harsh army for what i had with 4 vampires 2 of them special characters and a lvl3 count, he had the regeneration banner but i broke the item with our 6th spell (of course my mages refuse to use the lesser schools). Dice didnt help much and i lost 1-19 .

All in all it was a decent day, i really hate tournamets and the core rules but i must say i didnt have a bad time in all truth. The 1st battle was very entertaining thanks to the dwarf player getting a lot of ''1's'' with his warmachines, so we could get to the CC with many units.

I also took the camera with me(which i forgot on the table after the 1st battle but fortunately a friend grabbed it), but i only fought people with unpainted armies!! So... No pics sorry.

[Mireadur]

Ive been 2 weeks off after an intense october in painting, but im slowly back on track. The last days ive been lazily preparing a big unit of classic LSG for the painting, as i had promised Baalan.

Ive only done the movement tray and trimmed and primed in black the guys. Half of the minis were already semi-painted, but fortunately with a soft layer so the black coat ive applied has not buried any details (and saved me from having to use the deadly solvent).

So im going to try and finish the standard bearer and champion during this week just as i had told Baalan i would and from there i will start painting in blocks. Also im leaving again for work, not out of the country though, so my painting times are going to get severely cut down probably by the next week. This time, however, ive promised myself that i will paint at least 30mins per day after work, we will see if i can make it hehe. My objetive now is to finish this huge 32 man unit, being realistic, by February.

[Elaithnir]

So...many...Seaguard...
That's it. I'm ordering some of these from GW ASAP!

[Mireadur]

Still is missing the banner, shield and quiver, but the model itself is finished finally. As always, it's been difficult to restart painting after 2 weeks off. But today so far ive put almost 3 hours on it.

It looks like the whole standard bearer will take around 6 hours to be completed, optional equipment included, so... The whole unit is going to take me 3 or 4 months ugghh

Still dont have a date for my departure for work, so my expectations are to finish at least the champion too, maybe monday.

[Lord Anathir]

All in all it was a decent day, i really hate tournamets and the core rules but i must say i didnt have a bad time in all truth. The 1st battle was very entertaining thanks to the dwarf player getting a lot of ''1's'' with his warmachines, so we could get to the CC with many units.

I think you just hate the lack of comp. Ban specal characters and cap warmachines and you would have played against reasonable armies like our own.

[Mireadur]

All in all it was a decent day, i really hate tournamets and the core rules but i must say i didnt have a bad time in all truth. The 1st battle was very entertaining thanks to the dwarf player getting a lot of ''1's'' with his warmachines, so we could get to the CC with many units.

I think you just hate the lack of comp. Ban specal characters and cap warmachines and you would have played against reasonable armies like our own.

Definitely =). Thats impossible in my town anyway =) The players here are too amateur (and few) like to pretend making things ''more elaborated''.

[Shandiar]

Fantastic paintjob all around, but your griffon rider is exceptional with care for details, colourscheme and blends. It's just outright gorgeous and better painted than the GW one in my opinion.

[Mireadur]

Fantastic paintjob all around, but your griffon rider is exceptional with care for details, colourscheme and blends. It's just outright gorgeous and better painted than the GW one in my opinion.

Thanks for your comments, im specially fond of that griffon prince too, and i think it is the best mini ive ever painted (and probably will!).

Also have completely finished now the seaguard standard. For the shields im going to wait until the next year as it appears a local store is getting the premium category from GW and will be able to sell direct only stuff then (with a discount). I think i will be buying 3 sets of the new metal seaguard shields then.

I used the IoB plastic banner as you can see, and after having to paint its greatly detailed surface ive come to the conclusion that freehands are faster! I think i spent like 2 hours on the standard (dunno why so long ) and still painted it in a very ''hasty'' way.

As i suspected, the extras on the models (shields and quivers) mean a crapload of added time per model. This unit is going to be the most harduous proyect ive ever attempted, but it will be worth it.

[Faradhym]

Stunning work. I've enjoyed all your blog updates and like many others, I'm particularly impressed by your painting speed, dedication to your projects and the incredible quality of your work. Keep going

[Mireadur]

Stunning work. I've enjoyed all your blog updates and like many others, I'm particularly impressed by your painting speed, dedication to yours projects and the incredible quality of your work. Keep going

Much thanks for your compliments sir. I dont think my painting speed is fast, but is truth that im trying hard to keep myself rolling on the proyect :p

I got a new update, i began the work on the 1st row of the seaguard, but left them aside for a bit just enough to finish the Phoenix guard standard bearer. Unfortunately i got called for work today and got to depart tomorrow in the morning. I guess i wont have internet for a few there and also suppose will be a bit busy these days, so sadly i think i wont be able to finish the mini until the weekend.

Anyway heres the model current state. The cloak is the only part finished. Stll have to do the greenish cloth, gold, lights on silver and standard motiff.

[Dragon.Prince63]

The cloak of that phoenix guard is AMAZING!!! Cant wait to see a whole unit of them finished!!!

[Mireadur]

The cloak of that phoenix guard is AMAZING!!! Cant wait to see a whole unit of them finished!!!

Thanks , I personally think that added too much yellow, but the next ones will improve i guess. I will post the pics with the finished model this sunday, and going to work on the IoB swordmaster champion and paint him on ''hero-level'' next.

[ekalb]

Your work is absolutely stunning my friend.

[Mireadur]

Thanks Ekalb .

I finished the PG standard now. Lately i wanted to have at least 1 model painted from all units (im still missing PG, LSG and DPs). Thats why i painted both standard bearers lately. Im not touching dragon princes yet, however. Before i want to paint the IoB swordmaster champion as a noble, and continue the long work on the 32man LSG unit.

Anyway heres the PG BSB. Im not sold on the standard freehand i did, but i guess it is a freehand after all . I had huge trouble making the lights on the golden parts, im really bad at seeing in my head how light reflects on metal, but the result overall is pretty good i think. The unit is going to be really ''shiny'', what fits very well with my idea of the phoenix guard.





Sooo Going to try finishing the SM model between monday and tuesday, before i have to leave home again. Im not taking a camera to my work place though. So wont be able to post anymore pics until im back home the next time.

[Dragon.Prince63]

....... There is nothing else I can say....

[Mireadur]

I thought id follow Iceman's steps and post a guide on how to paint the IoB Blade Lord since it can offer a perfect example of how i paint the metals, a question i've been asked a lot in the forum.

So i will post today the 1st part of the guide. And either tomorrow or thursday, the 2nd and final one, with pics of the finished model included. It is very important to note that i thin the paints down with water quite a lot, specially the metal mixes that i will use later to give lights to said metal.

1st of all, i prime in white then apply a watered soft layer of black on all the model.


For the next step, i paint carefully all the silver parts on the model with mithril silver. I normally paint all scales 1 by 1. It is not that slow to paint scales 1 by 1, and it pays off by keeping a solid black colour in the spaces between the metal joints, an effect you can hardly achieve by covering the mini in silver completely and then applying washes.


Next i paint scorched brown in all the areas i want golden and also the skin. I used snakebite leather as base colour for the hair and turquoise hawk on the cloth and armour ribbets(sp?). Finally, a wash of badab black has been applied to the silver metal parts.


Now i paint the face with elf flesh.


Apply 2 washes of gripphon sephia.


Next i do a 50/50 mix of elf flesh and skull white and apply lights to the face on the most prominent areas such as chin, cheeks, nose, brows.


Mixing white and elf flesh on 80/20 i apply more lights to the face on the same places as before but in a smaller area. At this point can apply pure white too in very small places such as the nose tip or the chin tip. Finally paint the eyes and the tongue. For the eyes of this guy i painted a small enchanted blue dot followed by an even smaller black chaos dot. I do this because ive noticed that painting eyes in a different colour than black doesnt look realistic.


Ok, now that the face is finished we can go on the silver metal. With a mix of silver mithril and skull white 70/30 i try to resemble the best i can what would be the reflections of metal. The scales are the easiest part, as all you need to do is cover half of each scale with this mix.



The final step for the silver parts is adding even more white to the previous mix (60 white /40 silver maybe) and applying it in even smaller areas than before. I also applied a very watered down wash with asurmen blue.


Tomorrow will try to finish the mini and then post the rest of the guide. Hope its helpful.

[Bolt Thrower]

Very helpful! Look forward to the rest to hear about the gold technique. Thanks!

[Mireadur]

The thing was getting too big, so while the movement base dries im going to post what i've done so far. The model is all done except the blade, which i want to paint white (it will represent the white sword).

Ok so lets go with the cloth. I mixed turquoise and white on 75/25 more or less. For all the process of lighting the cloth i go with very watered down paint to a point where when the brush comes in contact with the mini the paint will almost flow uncontrolled all around BUT it still doesnt!

In these 2 pics you can see how i keep adding white to the mix and painting smaller and smaller areas of the mini. I used 4 layers there counting a last pure white touch on very small areas.



The hair: For the hair i mixed 75% of golden yellow with 25% of snakebite leather and applied it all around the hair. The next layer was this same mix but like 90/10. Finally i did a last layer with pure golden yellow.

You can see the process in the following pics:





The gold. We've finally gotten here.

1st i apply shinning gold over all the parts of the armour previously painted in scorched brown. Followed by a wash with devlan mud when the gold dries.



Once the thing has dried up well, I take pure vomit brown and water it down a lot. Then apply it to the parts where i believe there should be reflections.

Then i mix 50/50 white and vomit brown and do the same as always, apply it into smaller areas and more pronounced vertexes.

Finally i go with an almost white mix 90/10. and apply it only on vertexes of the armour, etc. In the 3rd pic you can also see how i started painting the gems. The process is very simple and fast, and it looks good:

-1st paint the gems in black (REMEMBER TO APPLY THE MIXES OF RED VERY VERY WATERED).
-2nd mix red blood with a drop of black (you get a very very dark red) and apply it leaving the very top of the gem in black.
-3rd add more red to the mix and paint the gems again, leaving visible a very small portion of the previous colour.
-4th step is pure red blood.
-5th step paint in a reddish orange the bottom part of the gem.
-6th make the orange more yellow and paint the very bottom tips of the gems.
-7th Finally, i paint the white dot over the area left in black. Try to make it small, and increase if neccesary.

1st pic is a bit blurry, sorry.






I also painted in vermin brown all the leather parts of the model, such as the belt, hilt, etc. for further lights added a tad of white to the brown.

The cloth around the small sword is painted in pure lighting blue followed by layers of light blue+ white, until pure white.

The final part is the sword and finishing the base. I will be back in 1 or 2 hours with the final update.

Thanks for watching.

[Siegfried VII]

I just finished seeing all the pictures of your painting log and I must say that you've made a brilliant work! Well done!

[Elaithnir]

Mir you have EXCELLENT brush control. Man, I should squeeze some time into my poor spearelves. 15 still to go!

[Mireadur]

Thanks for the comments guys, and heres the last update with the sword and general pics included.

Unfortunately some pics came blurry so i had to eliminate them.. But descriptions should be good enough.

Started painting the blade in boltgun metal. Then used a 50/50 mix of silver mithril and skull white.

When it dried i added even more white, like 80/20 to the silver mithril and added a new layer.

Finally went pure white on the sword edges.

For the runes i painted them pure blood red. Then added a little bit of yellow and with the mix i painted all the runes but the lowest one (left it in pure red) Then added more yellow and painted the runes leaving the bottom 2 without this new mix. Finally went on pure sunburst yellow on the last rune.

As a final touch i painted small spots on the runes with very clear orange, yellow and even yellow mixed with white. And, must not forget that i added a very watered wash with baal red trying not to wash the whitest areas of the blade.



And heres a finished view of the model, base included. I hope it helped a bit to those of you who have been interested in my metal and cloth methods (basically my painting method as i do everything the same way )

[Shandiar]

Wow - and thanks for the throughly and well-written guide with great pics!

[Bolt Thrower]

Mir, thanks so much for taking the time and sharing. This kind of stuff is what makes this a great forum. I will definitely be putting some of your techniques to use!

[Prince of Spires]

Great painting guide. There are a lot of good tips in there I will try to apply at some point. Thanks for sharing and for taking the time to put up such a detailed guide.

Rod

[enrgie]

Keep the pictures flowing. Really great work you've got there. Love the Griffon...just wish it was more usable in game.

[Raizon]

You, Sir, are brilliant with those brushes of your's! I can safely say you've kicked 'Eavy Metal into the dirt with these minis.

As a matter of fact i like what you have done so much, I may 'borrow' some ideas.


Thank you so much for these pictures.

[Baerion]

The guide is great and the NMM look (since I suppose you do use metals) is great. I've wanted to do something like that for awhile now, but all of my mini's painted thus far have been painted with metals so I'll have to save this for my next army if there is one.

Looking forward to seeing the rest of the unit at some point!

[Alathenar]

Havn't checked here in months and its so great to see how much more you have done. The Griffon truly is something special, overall fantastic work ...Oh and I see your a Barca supporter

[Avicii]

love the turquoise/ teal color scheme. i have just started to paint one very similar myself!!
can you tell me what colors you used for the turquoise?