How To Make Terrain For Your Miniatures tutorial

As always I want to share this quick tutorial on how to
make nice terrain for your miniatures. The terrain ( hills ) I did here
was designed and painted to look and match the Warmahordes aesthetics.
The Hills was not designed to look realistic and the colors are brighter
than usual.



The finished pieces are posted HERE.



You will need corkboard ( optional ), styropor, wood glue or white glue, texture paint or glue and sand, and paints ( use acrylic paints as toxic lacquer paints will melt away styropor ).



The outline photos below will guide you on how to make a quick terrain piece for your minis.



1. I used a 1/4 inch thick cork board as my main material on top as it is more durable than the usual styropor. You could use the packaging type styropor but I have a hard time cutting it to have a really flat top surface. I cut the cork board and the 1/2 thick styropor to my desired shape and glued them together.

2. Notice the light colored dots on the cork board? I inserted some satay sticks to keep them in place while the wood glue was curing. I then applied texture paint all over the piece to hide the actual texture of the styropor. You could apply the texture paints around the styropor only and retain the nice consistent texture of the cork board ( I know I will next time ). I also glued some aquarium pebbles all over to give it an additional texture.

The photo below shows the cured texture paint ( overnight curing ). Vallejo texture paints usually cure to a hard rubbery to rocky finish. Great stuff to produce those irregular textures on the sides of this hill. Now your hills is ready for painting!

3. Zenithal Priming as usual! I primed the whole piece with Russian Green primer ( preferably black ) and shot Vallejo White Surface Primer directly 90 degrees on top. Now I have a nice base coat that will affect the transparent paints on top later.

4. Base Coat - I sprayed some nice loud colors before the washes. Washes will always darken your work. So painting lighter base colors than the actual colors is highly recommended. Unless you like really dark toned pieces.

5. Dry brushed the main colors of the aquarium pebbles and the highlights. The photo below shows the pieces with highlights. The pieces are now ready for the washes.

6. Last step was to do the washes and a Matt Varnish topcoat. I wanted to finish these pieces already, so I discovered something! Instead of doing washes, I loaded my Vallejo Inks into my airbrush and did some post shading! Damn it worked like the old Tamiya Smoke, only better!



Why better you ask? Better because I have so many Vallejo Inks and Washes in different colors! lol

I hope you find this post helpful. Thanks as always for dropping by! Until next post guys! Just enjoy the hobby! :)

Warmachine Terrain - Hills by DC23

Just want to share a quick terrain I did for my Warmachine and Hordes miniatures. A ton of thanks to Kim Navarro ( local vetaran Warmahordes player ) for answering all my queries on the nuisance of hills in actual game play and the standard tournament measurements as well.



The tutorial on how I made this is HERE.



I tried to compliment the design aesthetics of Warmachine and Hordes with these hills. The rock formations are more edgy and cartoony unlike usual dioramas. The painting is also high contrast and the colors are brighter than usual. I feel the finish and the design fits the look of my Warmahordes or Warmahordes in general.



I usually play a scaled down version ( no focus or fury points ) of the game with my 8 year old son during weekends. We agreed +2DEF to the RAT of characters on top of the hills. I had fun shooting out his Khador Infantry with my Khador Widowmaker Marksman. I ended up with a dead Sorscha anyways. No hill could help my Sorscha at the end of the game.



Hope you like my simple hill terrain... will do a few linear obstacles and a couple of forests soon! Thanks as always for dropping by! Until next post guys! Just enjoy the hobby! :)

DC23_mecharts hits 6K at Instagram!

 EDIT: renamed my Instagram to my real name as I do not exclusively do Mecha these days anymore. I mostly paint and do whatever I like. So my Instagram name is now...

@don_suratos

A TON of Thanks to all my followers at Instagram! Woke up with a little more than 6,000 followers today! Thank You so much! I hope the Instagram featured models and modelers are getting exposure as well.



I have to apologize for not following back though. As much as I want to see all your awesome works, I might have a hard time focusing on the stuffs I keep track on. I specially keep track of everything tagged as #DC23PPC as those are work in progress photos and final entry photos of our ongoing Pilot Painting Contest.



Rest assured I see all your works, I might even feature them if the photography is really nice. Joining our group page...

DC23mecharts FB Group Page

 and posting with good photos at Facebook will give you a chance of getting featured at my Instagram as well. I might also feature awesome works  if you tag your  Privateer Press miniatures ( WarmaHordes ) or Gunpla  with my hashtag...

#DC23mecharts

I will be posting a " Thank You " post at Instagram with a list of all the consistent people who uses my hashtag. Again, I cannot thank you enough guys! Thanks as always for dropping by! Just enjoy the hobby! :)

Sen-Ti-Nel Yotsuba and ! Ma.K. Danboard Unboxing

I just want to share my new Sen-Ti-Nel  figure I got from GreatToysOnline.com. I am not a manga or anime person ( more of a Lord of The Rings guy ) but I like this figure so much! I am also going to get some Figma figures as I am really digging the Anime design and the quality of the figures.



This is a Ma.K. version of Danboard of Yotsuba and !. The box also has Duralumin, the cute little teddy bear figure. The box contains 3 awesome figures, a transparent stand, 4 thrusters, a set of hands and a Bazooka of sorts. The coolest part of the Danboard figure is that the head opens to show a very detailed cockpit! I can't put into words how much I love this figure, I am off to GreatToysOnline.com to order a few figures after this post!



Check out the awesome photos of this Sen-Ti-Nel  figure and see for yourself! Thanks as always for dropping by! Until next post! :)

The Noob Way Of How To Paint Miniatures

I am so shy to tag this as a tutorial, much more put it up with a banner on my tutorial page, I do hope a younger miniature or a less experienced miniature painter finds this helpful though.



My very first painted miniature was back in 2012. I painted a Trollbloods Madrak Ironhide metal model from Privateer Press. I got hooked painting minis back then, until I eventually went into hobby hiatus. I am starting to enjoy painting Privateer Press miniatures again these days. Although I still mainly work on my Gundam commissioned works and I plan to join GBWC 2015 at the end of the year, I really find hand painting minis so much more relaxing.



I just want to share how I paint my minis.



1. Zenithal Priming



I start by priming them and doing Zenithal White painting that would serve as my base coat. The Zenithal painting exaggerates the shadows and highlights of the model. I shoot 90 degrees on top of the model with white paint. This technique brings out the details of the model effortlessly. 

2. Black Ink Wash



I use Black Game Ink highly diluted with Glaze Medium. The wash further brings out the details of the model. The Glaze Medium helps increase the flow of the ink and will flow through the crevices of the details of the model. Now you are ready to paint the base colors.

3. Paint the Base Colors



I am still learning on how to blend colors in hand painting. I used to use distilled water in thing my paints. I now know that mediums are way better than distilled water in thinning paints. Distilled water will expand and weaken the binder once dry. The paint will dry a bit more brittle than desired. Mediums are basically the same components as the paint minus the colored pigments. It will keep the elasticity of the paint and will not weaken the cured paint. Chemistry aside, using mediums for blending is like magic! It dries a bit slower than using distilled water thus you could do wet to wet technique a lot easier.



I also hand paint a thin layer of Retarder Medium over the model before painting the base color. The retarder will further retard the drying time and wait until you paint the highlights or lighter colors and shadows.

4. Paint the Details and Highlights



The photo below does not show the highlights and details yet. I shot a Matt Coat over the model to see how the main colors are blending. I will try to finish this model tonight and will update this blog post. :)

I also sometimes shoot the main color of the model with an airbrush. This is the quickest way to paint the base color. However I do not do this often ( except for naked models like the Dire Troll Blitzer below ) as I feel black and white is still the best base color for my minis.

The Khador Wardog is shaping up nicely. I think I am slowly but steadily learning how to blend colors in hand painting. I highly recommend mediums in thinning your Vallejo paints for hand painting! The mediums work like magic!