Update 2020

Wow, it’s been almost a year since I updated the blog! I’m really sorry about that, but between moving and my social life for the last year, I haven’t had as much time to blog as I would like. At least it’s been for good reasons. But since I’m #socialdistancing and staying home this weekend, it seemed like a good time for an update.

I haven’t been completely unproductive. I have been working hard on a two-part article on a mermaid piece I finished last year, which won best in show at KublaCon 2019. The first part focuses on the water, which came out really well, and I hope readers will find it interesting and potentially useful. Expect to see that within the next week.

In the meantime, I thought I would share a quick little primaris marine I painted.

The inspiration was the “three-color rule” that some tournaments use to judge when an army is “fully painted”. Some people seem to regard this as a challenge, rules-lawyering a legally “fully painted” army with the minimum amount of effort.

I decided to tackle the reverse challenge: how can I get a good looking result with only two colors, so it’s still not legally “fully painted”. I used only two colors, black and white, with no blending, and I even tried to apply the paint as opaquely as possible so there’s not even the slight blending effect you get when translucent layers overlap.

I think it’s interesting what sorts of effects you can get with miniatures when you decide to depart from the usual style. The model looks really interesting in person, almost like a three-dimensional pen-and-ink sketch. I had planned to incorporate this marine into a joke diorama to enter into the US Golden Demon at Adepticon, but alas that is not to be. I’ll just have to satisfy myself with sharing him online instead.