On Lessons Big and Small

I present to you....the Siege Animantarix!

As viewed from my kitchen counter... I finished this bad boy up earlier today (Aug 9th), for a friend of mine who attends our local shop, Endzone. This took me far longer than I expected it to. while it's not the most highly detailed of models (here's looking at you, Dystopian Wars), it is big. Huge, large, immense, words that I never thought I would say in the context of model size. As such, the first lesson that I learned to appreciate more, is paint in steps. Start on one thing, such as the leg plates, and completely do those from start to finish, and do so for the next section, and the next, and so on. While this does result in a lot more time mixing, I found that this was very handy for a model this size. It's far easier to do this than mixing a large dose and rushing to basecoat all the areas that it's supposed to cover in one go. Another lesson I learned from painting this big thing is proper blending. While I don't know any of the brush techniques used for blending yet, I found out that blending consists of about 6-8 colors that are very close to each other on the wheel. For example, I followed the Skorne Red painting guide as outlined in the Forces of Hordes: Skorne book. I'm glad I did so, or my blending would not have come out as neatly as it did. While not a replica of what's on the box, it was fun to do. This also applies to the metallics. For the longest time, I thought that metallics consisted of painting the base coat and applying an appropriate wash. I always wondered how the professionals, and my fellow bloggers, achieved the results they did with their metallics. The painting guide in the Skorne book was very helpful in this regard. Again, the shadow to highlight consisted of about 6 steps of shades that were very close to each other. In conclusion, this was simply a blast to paint, and I'm sort of sad to see it leave the painting table. But I'm content in the knowledge that it will see play time. In fact, it saw play time as soon as I dropped it off! Here's hoping that this thing will lead the head of the Skorne forces into victory.