Never be afraid to paint outside the lines

Month: September 2015

From the workbench: St. Mark on Dragon, part 1

I saw this Dark Age figure at Gen Con, and just had to have it.

st_mark_dragon_1

It’s a lovely resin figure, which makes me very happy. Unfortunately the pieces don’t fit together quite as nicely as some of the resin figures I’ve had the pleasure of working with, so I had to do a bit of green-stuff work to hide the joins.

st_mark_dragon_2

The blue metals on the one side are close to finished, but everything else is (obviously) still very WIP. I’m really happy with how the metals are coming out. I’ve been shading my blues with red a lot lately. It’s only barely visible in these photos, but in real life I think it adds a lot of energy to them. I usually start by adding black to the mix to desaturate the blues, which aids the transition, and then add red or glaze with pure red in the deepest shadows. The result is clearly blue shaded with red this way, rather than looking purple.

According to traditional color theory, blue and orange are complements, as are red and green, but according to more modern color theory, cyan and red are complements. Since my blue hue is close to cyan, and I’m countering it with a primary red, this color scheme is more in line with modern than traditional color theory. Maybe.

“Negative Space”—finished

Negative Space

As soon as I saw the new Infinity—Combined Army starter pack in my local game store, I wanted to paint it. In fact, that was the box that ended up getting me started on my recent Infinity kick. I have to say the models are fantastic, light-years ahead of the older Infinity models; they are very easy to clean, and tremendously fun to paint.

Negative Space

The base was the first thing I built, and is primarily composed of parts of the optical drive and heat sink from my old MacBook (which I replaced once it started constantly crashing), mounted on a resin block from Secret Weapon miniatures. The base presented some interesting engineering challenges, to make it structurally sound where a thin piece of plasticard was sticking out from a resin block and just attached at the edge, so I added some plasticard braces and carved a groove in the resin block for extra support.

Negative Space

The miniatures are all magnetized to the base, so that they can be removed to be usable as gaming pieces or just be appreciated on their own, but snap nicely onto the base in the appropriate position and orientation for group display. This was especially nice for entering into the Gen Con competition, which requires units to be presented together on a display base. Making everything nice and stable as a unit also makes things safer when being handled by the judges and their minions.

Negative Space: Fraacta, Umbra Legates, Maakrep, Fraacta

From left to right: Fraacta, Umbra Legates, Maakrep, Fraacta.

Negative Space: Umbra Legates

Originally I intended to paint the entire box up as a unit, but ended up dropping the Unidrons and adding an extra Fraacta. The base I built was not really large enough for six models, I wasn’t really happy with the first Unidron I painted up, and I really liked the new Fraacta model that had just come out.

Negative Space: Fraacta

The running Fraacta was the last model I painted, and turned out the best because I had the color scheme down at that point. In the sculpt, the Fraacta is jumping off of some weird, pseudo-organic piece of rock. In order to make it match the base, I had to completely resculpt that rock to look mechanical, and then incorporate it into the base in such a way that it looked at least plausible for it to be mounted at that angle. I ended up cutting a big hole in the base to make it look like a part which could be rotated out to provide access to something underneath.

Negative Space: Fraacta

It’s hard to appreciate from the photos, but three of the four models have holes going all of the way through the bases. My favorite is the base of the standing Fraacta, where I carved out a circle from the middle of the base, and mounted a brass-etch grate and a clear piece of plastic (from a blister pack). I think incorporating negative space into most of the miniatures’ bases as well as the group display base makes them hang together really well as a unit.

Negative Space: Maakrep

The Maakrep was the first miniature I painted of the group, and ended up much greener than the others. I painted the standing Fraacta second, and that was when I really nailed the color scheme down. I ended up having to go back to the Maakrep and add a lot of turquoise glazes so that the colors would match.


This piece won first place in the unit category of the Gen Con painting competition, and was awarded a gold under their open judging format. Additionally, Angel Giraldez, the studio painter for Infinity, was at the con, and told me that he really liked my entry, which was very flattering. Thanks Angel!

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