Sunday 26 April 2015

Salute Winners Mini Post

Hi all.

I'll put together a more in depth post in the next few days, but I thought that people would like to see the winners from this year's Salute Painting Competition.
The photos below are all of the winners, in no particular order and I'll freely admit that some shots are a lot better than others, as I had to do a fair bit of leaning over and crowd elbowing to get these pics. The photos were taken just before the announcments too, so at that stage no one knew who had won what (i.e. 1st or 2nd place), and certainly not best of show at that point either.
For the record, I was fortunate enough to pic up 1st place in the Fantasy Single Miniature class, which was my first 1st at Salute, so I was very pleased indeed ^_^

























And the Best of Show went to David Soper with this little beaut...



It was a great day, and nice to catch up with friends new and old. But, like I said, I'll go a little more into that in the next post.

So I'll sign off with a big CONGRATULATIONS to all of the winners (and also to the finalists, which include a few friends ;) ), and I hope that you enjoy the pics.

Cheers,

Scott

Monday 13 April 2015

We have a winner!

Hi all,

Been a little off grid for a couple of days, largely just weekend stuff, little bit of commission works too, but also a bit of recharging the batteries before the push towards Salute. I haven't produced anything this year that I have done specifically for competition, but I do feel pleased to have a decent varied body of work to take along this year. I expect to enter a few categories, but have no real expectation. I'm just pleased to show support for a couple of companies that have been generous and supportive to me. I have received one commission to present to a new company actually at the show, which will be shown here after the event, so I need to push on with that, and once that is done I'll get the Hasslefree girl done, maybe to a standard where I'm prepared to enter her at the event, but equally I may put her in the display case on the HF stand on the day with a few others.

Enough preamble though. What we want to know is what did you lovely people come up with for the Arnold Schwarzenegger/Lionel Richie mash up...?

Well, I am pleased to say that we had a few really fun entries which all raised a smile, as follows...

An Arnold Richie sketch by Roman Lappat was the first one and got an instant chuckle. He does look a LOT like former footballer and TV pundit, Chris Kamara too!


Conny Carlsson's weirdly necked photoshoppery raised a titter



 Ian Pursey's snappy lyric brought on a smile
  
"he's once, twice, three times a Termie"


 Normski Ealand's two entries of 'shoppery were at first grin worthy, then utterly terrifying! That second one looks like Michael Jackson on steroids! O_O




Jack Crowe gets a spot prize of a cookie, or an empty pot noodle pot (lol) for his commitment to the cause with a full rewriting of "Stuck on You"...

"Here is a little unknown cover song, originally by Lionel Richie, serenaded to our hero Arnie by the Predator as he was stalking him through the jungle. Link at the bottom so you can sing along...
I'm Hunting you, by Arnie Richie
I'm Hunting You I've got this feeling deep down in my soul that I'm gonna kill you You'll be in so much pain. Needed a friend and the way I feel now I guess I'm going to cut off your head You'll be in so much pain When I skin your face
I'm hunting you
I've been invisible too long, it's time to reveal myself
You'll be in so much pain.
So hard to see, my chameleon skin in the jungle whilst I'm stalking you
You'll be in so much pain
when I skin your face

Oh, you think you're leaving on that chopper tomorrow
but I know just where you're going
You think you've packed up all your troubles and thrown them away
But trust me, little Arnie
I'm going to rip off your face.

I'm hunting you
I've got this feeling deep down in my soul that I'm gonna kill you
You'll be in so much pain.
Needed a friend
and the way I feel now I guess I'm going to cut off your head
You'll be in so much pain
When I skin your face


https://www.youtube.com/watch…


But, the winner and the one that made me splutter a bit of tea had to be Lone Skeleton's fine photoshop effort that started cool, went dark and finally hit with a triple combo of film poster, lyrical slogan plus the addition of Emma Thompson in one of the most obscure films that I never knew Arnie (let alone Lionel) even starred in!


Congratulations to Lone Skeleton! You get the Kingdom Death Chosen/Arnel Schwarzenichie model to mash up yourself, or paint beautifully, of course! Please email/PM me your details and I'll get him out in the post to you

(The previous random winners - my apologies, I've not made it down to the post office yet with your prizes, due to lots of random excuses that I won't bore you with! I WILL absolutely get your packages out this week. I am a naughty man...)

Thanks to the rest of you for taking part. It was great to have you join in with the silliness that inhabits my head a lot of the time!

Lets see if we can make it to 1000 likes so that I can dream up another daft competition! ^_^

Catch you soon,

Scott

Tuesday 7 April 2015

Skipping Ahead

I'm going to keep my powder dry with regards to the Clio & Erato piece that I recently completed and showed on the Facebook page, except for a couple of close up shots...



There's a couple of reasons for this, but the main reason is that I want to add a couple of bits to the back of the plinth and maybe just sharpen a couple of details here and there in order to take them to Salute later this month.
I will also be able to let you know how they got on in the Blacksmith Miniatures competition too, which closed on Sunday night (the 5th).

I have a couple of commissions to start shortly, one of which is for a new company that will be showing this model off for the first time at Salute too. I hope to have said model in hand before the end of the week, and will show more once I have permission to do so. The other is one of those rare commissions where the client says "I've got this model..." and you say YES! before you even read the rest of the message! On this occasion it is one of the Ilyad barbarians, Vorag, and I'm really looking forward to working on him for two reasons - The first being that the sculpt itself is just awesome; the second is that I have his female companion, Virago, sat in my unpainted pile, so this could be the ideal opportunity/excuse to paint her too!


While I wait for one and plan the other, I have decided to do a fun piece, and they don't come more fun for me than Hasslefree minis. I had a couple of newish sculpts that I picked up at last year's Salute (if you have read the blog recently, this mentioning of previous Salute events is bordering on obsessional! I seem to be under some weird self obligation to paint models picked up at the previous event. I think that it stems from one particular visit in 2011 where I still have a load of minis in the pile picked up from that day. I have no chance of reducing the grey pile, but I feel less guilty about it when I do this kind of thing...) and I do love a bit of experimentation. I had the skin tones still in the palette from Clio & Erato, so I painted the face and hair in a spare hour on Saturday. The hair was the bit of experimentation on this occasion, as I wanted to try out dip dyed effect hair. It's a really simple technique, but quite effective.
The armour then took a few hours to do with mostly Panzer Aces paint. Next I'll sharpen it all up and do the soft armour parts.


I'm really happy with the shine on the hair and the face. The armour is in that "meh" stage, but I'll add a little bit of wear and tear plus some kind of unit markings/insignia, probably to the chest and top of her back. Then I ought to work out a setting for her too! lol

Finally, don't forget the Kingdom Death Chosen competition that I announced previously will close this Friday (the 10th), so get your Arnie/Lionel mashups in for your chance to win.

Cheers,

Scott ^_^