Paintguide: Catachan Gunny Harker

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Basing with cork – Escaping the sandbox

Some years back someone showed me who to make cool bases with cork – A neat little trick to avoid bases that look like a sand-box. The raw material for this is cork, taken from cork tablemats, those that were hot in the 1990s or so??

There are a lot of pros to using these opposed to bark, stones, wood-chip, plaster etc:

1. Cork is cheap – I bought 2 cork table mats for 2€, and they’ll last me a lifetime.
2. Cork is easy to work with – You can shape it using your fingers, but once glued in place it is very durable.
3. Cork is clean – Stuff you find in the garden needs to be baked to avoid maggots, rot, fungus and other nasty stuff.

Working with the cork from the tablemats is pretty easy. I simply tear it apart and find some suitable pieces that fits the base. Some times I glue multiple layers of cork on top of each other to get height on the base.

I glue the cork to the base using PVA glue, and allow time for it to dry before basing the rest with flock or sand.

Then I apply PVA to the rest of the base and use a tub with sand or flock.

After the PVA holding sand or flock has dried I apply a layer of 50:50 PVA:Water to seal everything and prevent the sand from coming off when the mini is painted and transported to battle. 

Following that I tend to litter the bases with bits from the bitsbox, to add some additional effects to the base.

And finally an example from some Space Marines that I did using this method. On a side note this method is excellent for lava-bases – All you have to do is to leave cracks between the pieces of cork and then paint them like lava.

/Nicolai aka Atoom  

Modelling interchangeable weapons without magnets.

I’ve been glueing DE dolls today, and came across the need for doing interchangeable weapons on the Raider. Since I used all my magnets on something else I had to come up with a workaround for ensuring that I could change the gun.

So here is my shortcut to making the weapons on the Dark Eldar Raider interchangeable with a hobby knife, a drill and some wire.

First I cut the barrels off the guns (marked with red) – Make sure that the cut is straight and 90 degrees across the centerline of the gun.

Then I drilled the gun part and glued a piece of wire in it, for the barrels to be mounted on – Make sure to check that the wire is aligned with the centerline of the gun to avoid that the barrels ‘hangs’. I drilled the barrels after drilling the gun and mounting the wire – Same caution needs to be applied here as before.

Then I assembled the gun-mount and now the weapon can be changed. A word of advise: The longer the wire / drilling of the barrel the more stable the gun will be.

I hope that this works for the Ravager as well, as I have one arriving tomorrow :o)

/Nicolai aka Atoom

Modelling smoke

Several of my projects include smoke, rocket blast, flamer fire etc and today I’m going to show how to achieve that effect easily.

Tools needed are:

• A drill & a piece of wire (old paperclips works well)
• Super glue
• PVA glue
• Foam – I use GF9 Scenic foam, but I suspect that an old foam madras will work fine as well…

Making the Smoke / blast effect:

Drill a hole where you want your smoke to originate from and glue the wire in place. Once dry, cut the wire to fit the length of the blast/smoke. The wire is intended to support the foam, so it should have same length as your smoke column.

Pick out some foam for building the smoke and thread that onto the wire.

Make a dry fit after setting foam on the wire to check that you like the result

Mix PVA glue and water evenly 50:50. You want to thin the glue so that can be absorbed by the foam. Apply that to the foam. It is important that the foam is soaked, as it is the PVA that hardens it after it has dried up.

Find a suitable place for your creation to dry – No good leaving it on the table, as that will result in the foam being glued to the table. I just hang my stuff from the lamp.

Wait for it to dry and paint you new model up – Enjoy!

/Nicolai aka Atoom

Freehanding made simple and effective.

Freehand can make or break a doll – If it looks nice then it’ll really take the mini to the next level, whereas poor freehand will make the mini look like it has been ambushed by orkish graffiti painters.

Here is my ‘secret’ receipt for making freehand simple, and effective:

Look at the image you’re about to paint freestyle – Find the centre-line and search for the geometrical figures that it is made up of.

In my example I’m going to paint an airborne badge on the shoulder pad of a storm trooper.

The airborne badge is made up of several geometrical shapes. The parachute is a triangle with a centre line and half a circle. Painting the centreline of the triangle would be a good way to start to position the badge on the shoulder pad. So I start with the triangle to position the image.

Then I paint the half circle, and fill it.

Then I paint the sides and top of the wings, that’ll help me position the feathers nicely and ensure that they are parallel with the top and that the length is correct.

Finally all remaining feathers are painted, and the freehand is now done.

This technique can also be used for writing – In my example I want 102 on the other shoulder pad. So I start by painting the 0 in the centre of the shoulder pad, and then use that to guide the two other numbers.

Another trick is to use a pencil to draw some guide lines and the paint on top of that if the image is more complex than the one shown here.

/Nicolai aka Atoom

Homemade airbrush stencils that fit any purpose.

Making a stencil that fits exactly you purpose made easy – In matter of minutes you’ll have yourself any image transferred into a stencil for painting your dolls!

Tools needed are:

• Computer and printer.
• Laminator & a laminating pockets.
• Hobby knife & Scissors.
• Airbrush, compressor and paint.

Making the stencil:

1. Use Google picture search to find the image you want to use as stencil. Simple images like skulls and the imperial eagle are nice, simple and easy to use.
2. Measure the area where the image is to fit, as you’ll use these measurements to scale the image.
3. Use Powerpoint or Word to scale the picture (right click the picture and select 'Format Auto shape' after pasting it into a new document - then the size can be set using the size tab). Check my tutorial on banners for detailed info.
4. Print the image and laminate it.
5. Use combination of hobby knife and scissors to cut the stencil from the laminated piece of paper.

Applying & using the stencil:

1. Use masking tape to fix it to the target.
2. Use airbrush to apply paint.
3. Remove stencil and enjoy the result.

Example:

I have used a brush to paint the eyes in the skull. But this could have been done using a stencil also…

/Nicolai aka Atoom



Weathering tanks – Quick and dirty!

As mentioned in an earlier post tanks needs to get some weathering in order to look like they have seen action… I’ll show how I do mud and chipping of paint, quickly and with a nice finish.

The tools needed are:

• A large drybrush, or any brush with stiff brushes for stibbling mud onto tracks and surrounding areas.
• Some foam from a blister for making the chipped paint, tear off a piece, don’t cut it, as you need the rugged edge for application of paint.
• Brown paints for the mud, at least two a dark and a light brown
• Black and metal paints for the chipped paint effects.

Mud:

1. Bring out your drybrush (you could use a stibbling brush, but I prefer a brush with long hair).
2. Dip it in the darkest brown.
3. Wipe some paint off on some paper.
4. Stipple areas around the tracks and the tracks.

Repeat for each time you change to a lighter tone of brown. Stipple less and less for each time to leave the darker brown to show.

Chipped paint:

1. Take the foam and dip the ragged edge in the black paint.
2. Wipe some paint off on some paper (I tend to do that on my wet-palette, as it thins the paint).
3. Press the foam gently against areas where a tank is likely to hit something that will remove paint, or areas where battle damage has occurred.
4. Bring out a small brush.
5. Paint the centre areas of the blacks with metal.

Combining the two I got his result in 20 minutes or so:

/Nicolai aka Atoom

Black-lining – Quick and easy!

Just a quick tutorial on how to cut corners on black-lining – Something I personally hate, until now that is. I’m pretty sure that this is no news to many, but I’ll post it anyways, as I estimate that I save more than an hour using this technique for every tank I paint.

The tool is simply a pen! A black pen 0.1mm water based, water resistant, pigment ink pen! The pen is used to simply draw the black lines onto the tank instead of using a brush. It is easy to handle, making it fast and reducing the mistakes to a minimum.

Here are some pictures:

Before:

After:

Now all it needs is some weathering and freehand – Something that I’ll get back to another time…

Not only is the pen good for black-lining tanks, it also works on power-armour and other minis where the recesses are clearly defined. Another use for the pen is shading freehand and drawing text, as it is much more steady than a brush (at least in my hands that is).

/Nicolai aka Atoom