The Week in Pictures!

January 8, 2022 DebbieForster2 Comments

It feels like this week has been a whirlwind! Multiple vet visits, the dentist for the first time in years and Foundry work feels like it has kept me away from painting a great deal.

I have been working through a Daughter’s of Khaine commission when not doing other chores however and I feel they are coming on nicely.

Most of those pictures are still works in progress. I do like the miniatures but they are very spindly which has been a challenge.

Thankfully, we are both now on the mend from Covid, which means the Foundry miniatures that have been ordered are mostly caught up. Numerous trips to the post office have occurred but it feels good to mostly clear the backlog.

The vet trips were all successful. The two kittens are now spayed so no more yowling for boys at 3am! Big bud Roscoe’s eye has also mostly healed. We need to continue with his drops for another couple of weeks and the ulcer should be gone.

The dentist was as pleasant an experience as I could expect, but I need 4 fillings… less fun.

Next week I start college on Tuesday mornings doing an Introduction to Counselling course. I am back at the dentist too but I hope to get the Daughters of Khaine finished and get some work on Primaris Dante done! I am going to be busy!

miniatures.

Gaunt Summoner

September 21, 2021 DebbieForster3 Comments

I’ve found some time, between the commissions and the Foundry, to practice some more layer blending.

It’s a technique I am far from mastering but feel this mini has forced me to consider how I layer blend and as such, I have gotten better at it.

I wanted to try blending different colours, not just light to dark tones. I feel the result is a very vibrant mini and that I have had a good bit of success with the technique. It’s nowhere near perfect, but it is a good step in the right direction.

Points for knowing who he is summoning!!

miniatures.

Forster’s Foundry: Lunar Auxilia

September 15, 2021September 5, 2021 DebbieForsterLeave a comment

The 3D printing goes well! As well as the two new ranges, we have added to the Lunar Auxilia as well. Personally, I really like the range and have had a lot of fun painting them up in the various schemes. I’ve not yet had the time to paint the latest additions but I am sure I will very soon.

I’m really looking forward to painting the mounted guns, and there are some tanks in the works too – I love tanks so I’m in for some fun in the next week or so!

The range can be found here:

Lunar Auxilia

miniatures.

Forster’s Foundry: Perfect Sons

September 9, 2021September 1, 2021 DebbieForster3 Comments

Another new line we have added to the 3D printing website is the Perfect Sons – done by That Evil One, who also does the Luna Auxilia.

They are fun alternatives to Chaos Space Marines and the sculpts are great quality. Here are some of the ones we have made already:

There are a lot of minis in this range, and it’s going to take me some time to get them all painted, but I’m looking forward to it. My personal favourite is the robot stomper!!

Link to the range is here:

Perfect Sons

miniatures.

Trickery!

August 9, 2021 DebbieForster1 Comment

I have created one of my own D&D miniatures using the 3D printers. It was fun to work on a character that I have a connection with and have played for over a year now. She is a tiefling rogue and doesn’t have a great deal of common sense!

She is obsessed with daggers, collecting random items of little value and having fun.

miniatures.

Feature photos

November 3, 2020 DebbieForster1 Comment

A quick post today. I was asked to photograph five miniatures for a feature on YouTube – when the video is up I will post links. They were to be my favourite miniatures. These are the results:

I also submitted Ahriman and the Ahriman, because that is a hilarious diorama which I am still very proud of!

These are some of my finest miniatures and it was good taking proper pictures too!

miniatures. · Painting Tutorial

Tutorial: Skin Tones – Method 1

February 6, 2020February 6, 2020 DebbieForster2 Comments

The Daily Head seems to have been rather successful on twitter and so I have decided to share how I am doing the skintone practice with others. This is the method I learned at Seige Studios on their course. I have others I want to try out as well, but seeing how I have already got a few heads base coated, I wanted to stick with this way until I need to make some more.

Step 1: Base Coat.

I airbrushed the bases of all the heads starting with Cadian flesh, moving on to Kislev flesh and then a final highlight of Flayed One Flesh

Step 2:

Wash the entire head with a very watered down Seraphim Sepia.

Step 3:

Recess shade all the recesses with neat Seraphim Sepia.

Step 4

Recess shade two thirds of the recesses with Agrax Earthshade – not watered down/thinned.

Step 5:

Recess shade one third of the recesses – started from the nose/centre of the face, with Nuln Oil.

Step 6:

Black out everything that is not the face – this will stop the mind getting confused while you focus on the face. We are trained to know faces from birth, so keeping the face upright will also really help with this. Also shade in the eyes! I use black 70.950 by model colour for this as it is a nice matt black, but Abaddon Black will also suffice.

Step 7:

I have a special brush for eyes. It’s a fine detail brush with the point cut off to make it flat – this makes excellent dots without the point slipping and creating a mess. Use this amazing dot brush to place a dot at the two sides of each eye, as shown. Most of the time, this gets rid of the boogly eye that you get when you dot the black in the middle.

Also, highlight the ‘T Zones’ of the face with thinned down Kislev flesh. If you want a paler look, Flayed One Flesh would work here too.

Here is my progress so far. I know my brush control has improved from the first one. Things can only get better from here too. Just keep practicing!

miniatures. · painting

Hobby Audit – Jan 2020

January 13, 2020January 13, 2020 DebbieForster2 Comments

When I was a teacher, we used to assess our own skills using a system of rating yourself out of 10 against several key areas. It helped with self reflection and was a valuable tool when it came to setting yourself targets. I thought I would do something similar with my hobby skills and then set about improving them as the year goes on. I made a list of skills – as many as I could think of, and rated myself out of 10 for each of them:

As you can see, I have been thought through this a fair bit and rated myself as I see fit.

Areas I want to improve, or need to work on the most would be Object Source Lighting, Skin Tones and Battle Damage. I am not terrible at them, but I want to get better. These are the key weak points in my skills.

As for Non-Metallic Metals, I want to learn how to do brighter gold shades and improve my silver before branching out and attempting others, such as copper.

Freehand is perhaps my strongest skill, though I know I am not perfect at that – is anyone ever perfect at a skill? It doesn’t mean I don’t want to continue to work on it though. I am far from complaicent with it and know I can do a lot more and a lot better as well.

I have the whole year ahead to improve my painting skills and techniques and to try different things as well. I shall revisit this list in a few months time and see what I have done to improve those areas I am not so sure about.

hobby · miniatures.

New Airbrush!

January 3, 2020January 2, 2020 DebbieForster3 Comments

I was lucky enough to get a new Airbrush for Christmas and today, I tried it out for the first time. I have only been using airbrushes for about six months, and find them to be a useful tool when it comes to base coating. The one I have been using, the Harder and Steenback Ultra has been brilliant when it comes to learning and is a great piece of kit, I have done a lot with it since I started as well.

When I went on the painting course in August, the model of airbrush used as the Harder and Steenbeck Evolution AL Plus. It’s made of aluminium and is less than half the weight of the other one at 56g. It might not seem like a big deal, however I use the airbrush for extended periods of time and I also have carpel tunnel syndrome in my right wrist. I don’t want to make the condition worse and although this is a small thing, it will make a big difference. This is the one I am now using!

First thing I did was take it apart, which was easy – there were instructions to follow which helped. Once it was back together again and connected up, I had a go at some scenary to check the flow of the airbrush itself and see what it could do:

The paint flowed well, and the coverage was even. It’s not perfect but then my skills are still being refined. Patchiness in the paint work is down to my lack of ability rather than the airbrush itself. I was pleased with how these sections turned out and I want to try and do some fine detail work with the airbrush another time to see exactly how small an area I can cover.

This airbrush is a quality piece of kit. It has finer control of the trigger; I need less pressure to activate it and it fits in the hand better than the Ultra does. It’s more refined and suited to someone who has had practice with an airbrush and wants to move on to something a little more sophisticated.

I also base coated a tank, which is the first commission of the year:

I am very pleased with it so far, and look forward to being able to refine my skill with the airbrush as the year progresses.

miniatures.

Mephiston!

January 2, 2020January 1, 2020 DebbieForster2 Comments

A very good friend of mine is a bit of a Mephiston fangirl – no shame in admitting that, he is an awesome character. Happily enough, he has also just had a new miniature (and novel) released and I was only too happy to paint him for her.

I wanted to do something a bit special with him; he is a Christmas present after all, and I wanted to push my skills. There is no point having them if you’re not going to use them. I used layered blending to create depth on the red cloth and armour. I have done this with blue before but not red, so it was good to try it with a new colour.

I then gave my friend some choices about freehand on the cloak. I could do a fancy pattern, the Blood Angels symbol or a galaxy. She went for option number two, and after some discussion, we opted for a flaming blood drop. It was tricky to do and took a while to get right. Symmetry is something I find difficult, so when it turned out how it did, I was most pleased.

Enough of my waffling on about it though, here he is in all his red glory: