My first commission: Outhouse Groom's cake topper.

After a conversation with one of her co-workers, my wife informed said co-worker that I could make an outhouse for the groom's cake's topper.  (I, like a good husband, completely forgot the story that made this piece personal.)  Without further ado:

I used the woodplank mold from Hirst Arts and I had some leftover Excalibur (dental plaster) from when I bought 50lbs of it years ago.

What's left of 50 lbs.  I didn't follow the instructions on HirstArts.com this time, and ended up spooning it into a plastic cup, then adding water.  Since I'm limited in my supply, I attempted to be frugal and had positive results.

Spooning, mixing, and pouring.  You do want to overfill the mold so the bottom of the piece can be scraped flat.  The next pic is just those pieces I wanted cast, filled up, then scraped flat in the lower two pictures.  I originally was going to use some of the roof pieces from another mold, but found some corrugated cardboard, which did the job more realistically.

...and the mold after scraping:

All right, here is one of the wall pieces, one of the larger planks, and a roof piece (which wasn't used) after curing and popping out of the mold.

I'm hoping that I have the scale correct to match the toppers, but what I ended up doing was having each wall 3x2 of the "6-board" pieces.  The door was the same, but I added the support "z" with the larger planks.

You can see where I started peeling apart the cardboard in the above picture that will become the roof of the outhouse.  The door is below.

Pictures start to get sparse here.  I forget to pause and take them while my muse has taken over.  I used the legos to hold the walls together as they set and used Aleene's Tacky Glue to stick the pieces together.  It works, I'm not 100% awed by it, but I like it.  I was fearful of breaking the door piece when making the "moon" so instead of cutting it into the door, I glued a piece of shaped plastic.  (I think the plastic was simply the lid of one of my spray-paint cans.)

I don't have any WIP's of painting, but let me try to sum it up.  I primed it black, using Armory Primer.  (Not my favorite brand, it works just like Krylon...since this project wasn't high detailed, I wouldn't have used my P3 or Citadel Primer on it.)  I then dry-brushed the walls with Citadel Scorched Brown, and gave it a lighter drybrush of Reaper Pro-Paint Oiled Leather.  I then washed it with the old-old Citadel Flesh Wash, a layer of Citadel Badab Black, and some Ogryn Flesh wash, also Citadel.

For the roof, I painted it Citadel Foundation Adeptus Battlegrey, stippled on some Reaper Master Series Carrot Top Red to get a "rusty/aged" look to it, washed with Ogryn Flesh, some Badab Black, and Citadel Gryphonne Sepia.  I did a final drybrush with some stippling of Citadel Mithril Silver to give some of the edges that "rubbed-shiny" fresh look.  I also painted the moon on the door with P3's Thamar Black.  Once the paint and washes were dry, I attempted some minor "dirtying up" with Vallejo Pigments Dark Yellow Ochre, and Natural Siena.  Then set it all with my old can of Krylon Matte Finish.  I don't always seal stuff, but since the pigments were on there and it was going on top of a cake, I didn't want it to fall off into the chocolate.

And some quick shout-out pics of my materials:

If you have any questions and or comments, let me know.  Thanks for looking.

More on the IF Drop Pod + Confessions of a Brush Killer

It's not much, but I finally found time to get around to painting more on the drop pod.  Like I said, not much.

All I did was start laying down a coat of P3 Thamar Black where I'm going to lay down metallic paint. This isn't the only part that'll be metal (thinking of P3 Pig Iron then some weathering/scorching from re-entry/dirt from landing effects).

Now to the confessions of a brush killer.  I usually used cheap crappy brushes because I mistreat my brushes.  Paint in the ferrules, splayed ends, all that junk.  I finally bought some higher quality brushes to help improve my skill.  I used a P3 small flat-brush (found at any webstore/FLGS who carries Privateer Press products) and I was using the Army Painter's Vehicle/Terrain brush.  TAP's brush was stiff, but it's about a quarter of an inch wide so the point is to lay down paint on large areas quickly.  I was quite impressed with the P3 brush and quickly found that I was abusing it by having black paint the first time I used it all the way in the ferrule; but there is redemption.  I picked up The Master's Brush Cleaner and Preserver and I may have found salvation for my brushes.  Here's a pic of the brushes and the cleaner.

Anti-climactic pic, I know.  I may update when I have more black down, or the update may come sometime this summer when I have some metallic down.  Thanks for reading.

Drop Pod-Theory not in Practice: Primed

Once again, I'm attempting some "under-painting" with my primer to get some built-in shading.  First, I primed it all white with P3 primer.  (I want the yellow to really be bright.)

I was going to flip it upside down and spray with Armory Gray primer at a 45 degree angle to get shading.  I was out of gray, so I used black.  A little too stark, but I'm experimenting anyway.

Now for the yellow:

I did a little more tweaking with the yellow, attempting to cover up the black so it looks less black and more of a deeper shade of yellow:

The yellow itself is TAP's Daemonic Yellow primer and may be too thick to properly do what I'm trying, but it looks like it's working.  I'll eventually find the right balance.  Now onto actually painting it. 

WIP Drop Pod: Works in Theory, not in Practice.

I used to enjoy shooting pool with the kids when I did group-home work.  It was something they could completely own me in, and for them, who rarely had any control over anything in their lives, schooling the program manager felt good.  I had my high school physics class, so I feel like I have good grasp on vectors and other junk.  So, I can see my shot, how it lines up, angles, etc....  Take the shot, and miss.  In theory, I can see what is supposed to happen, in practice, well, it doesn’t happen.  Thus, drop pods.
 
I have my first 40k vehicle, the drop pod.  Some days, I am too incompetent for this hobby, but....  I wanted this drop pod, one that I can have closed until troop deployment, then open on the battlefield; so line of sight, can be actual line of sight.  Tricksy little bugger to put together, I get close, and realize I put all the harnesses together wrong and glued them in backwards.  Awesome.  I break the harnesses out of the drop pod, and think, hmmm, now it’s the drop pod for my still half finished dreadnought.  Fiddling around with opening/shutting doors and I realize that a lot of things just aren’t lined up “right.”  I make the decision to chalk it up to first time drop pod assembly and decide to glue the doors shut.  Some things still don’t line up properly, but here is the assembled picture:

 

Not too shabby, now let’s go stretch my painting muscles.  The plan is for it to be an Imperial Fist drop pod.  My painting also works more in theory and practice, but I’ll work on improving while painting.  I’m hoping for this year (2013) to finally finish at least one model to a level of personal acceptance.  (You see, I still haven’t played one single game.  I want to have a fully painted force ready for tabling prior to playing.  I know I’m never going to win a Golden Demon, and that’s not even my goal for painting.  My goal is to have a painted army.  Painted better than the “3-color minimum.”  Painted better than basic tabletop; and to be vain, just painted better than the average player’s army.  Pride cometh before the fall.)  I digress.  I’m going to attempt to do some underpainting for shading on this thing.  I want to have an airbrush before 2014, but for now I’m going to prime the entire thing white (P3 white) which is how I start all of my IF miniatures.  Then, I’m going to flip that thing upside-down, and lightly spray some Armory Gray (not my favorite brand of primer,  I prefer The Army Painter and P3, but I don’t like TAP’s regular line) at a 45 degree angle to get some shading.  Then, if necessary, flip it back right side up, and 45 degree the P3 white again to bring up my highlights.  Lastly, I’ll blast (lightly so I can get the yellow, and hopefully some natural shading) the entire model with TAP Daemonic Yellow for my base coat.  Let’s see if I get that far satisfactorily before I move on.  Pictures will come soon.  Thanks for reading.