I want to let you know about a blog which really deserves your attention. It's the personal website of fellow countryman Jan 'tuxit' Van Sweevelt. He's a very technical painter, drawing a lot of techniques from material like the miniature painting dvd by Jeremie Bonamant. Another source of inspiration for him are historical miniatures. He once told me the fantasy scene lags behind technique-wise, I can completely agree with him. But it's also true that only a few of us study the art of historical miniature painting to learn new techniques. Jan is one of those few.

Enjoy the blog and Jan, keep those updates coming, and maybe a tutorial sooner or later? :)

Blog address: http://tuxitsminiatures.blogspot.com/

Nice to see some of my work featured there (http://www.manticblog.com/?p=1569)

EDIT: just found out my vignette made it to the master gallery :) http://www.manticgames.com/Hobby/Galleries/Masters.html

Some of you might know Chest of Colors as the homepage of some top painters from Poland. But behind the green facade of the front page lies an international community of artists of which I'm a proud member.

In my opinion it's the best forum around if you want to take your painting to a certain level. Of course there are lots of other forums out there, but these are usually oriented towards gamers (with all respect) and if you post something of a higher quality level there the usual response is "wow man, that looks great!". At Chest of Colors all pieces will receive constructive comments, even if it's a golden demon winner. Miniature painting is all about getting better and improving your techniques, but how can you achieve this without someone who points at your mistakes?

The heart of the message board are undoubtedly the Showcase and WIP (work in progress) forums. There are also separate forums to do brainstorming or ask for specific painting techniques. In the new releases forum we talk about new releases of all possible manufacturers. And there's much more!

I invite you over to introduce yourself in the introduction forum, post some of your stuff and get some comments on your work. It would be nice if you mention my blog in your introduction so that I can give you a warm welcome there :)

If you have never visited a real painting forum before, don't expect it to turn you into a Golden Demon winner in an instant. You will however get great feedback and this will improve your painting, that's for sure. The more you put in it (posting images of your own work), the more you will get out of it.

Click the image below or follow this link: http://www.chestofcolors.com/forum/

It's been about two months since I touched a paintbrush for the last time, as well as writing on this blog. I planned to take a short pause, something like two weeks, after finishing my Deathwing Terminators. But the pause turned into a two month hiatus because of some private things I had to take care of. First of all I bought a new house; we don't have the keys yet, but there's a lot of things to take care of. The plan is to move in this summer. And yes, there will be a dedicated painting room :) On top of that my kids have been ill most of the time. Nothing serious, just some seasonal colds, but it really soaks up your energy. Because of this I was having some problems getting into the painting mood again.

But the last week I have been gathering some inspiration and motivation again and decided I will soon return to the painting desk. As usual the Massive Voodo blog was a great source for inspiration. Remember the ball-painting competition I mentioned some time ago? Well both the entries and winners have been announced last week. Some great stuff there, very creative.

I also returned to my usual second home on the web: the Chest of Colors forums. I didn't really have time to catch up with all the recent posts, but one thing that drew my attention was Scibor's Dwarf king painted by YellowOne. This is one epic piece of painting and probably one of my favorite pieces so far.

This is what my desk looks like at the moment... empty, except for those two packages. I'll reveal what's in them very soon. They're most likely going to be my next projects.

The guys at Massive Voodoo are hosting which is probably the craziest online painting comp ever. The requirement? Sculpt and paint a ball!

No I will not participate :) but I'm really looking forward to some end results. I guess we'll probably see some super blending and special effects. Oh yeah the first prize is a crate of beer :)

A couple of years ago I experimented with this technique to make small rivets. The results were quite good, so I want to use them for larger objects too. I've been looking for some more information and there are some very good resources on the internet about this.

• Green Stuff Molds on Youtube (part 1 of 3)
• A Guide to Green Stuff Casting on Warseer
• Green Stuff Mold-Making on Heresy-Online

My plan is to decorate some of my Space Marines with additional heraldry, and to avoid buying a load of Command/Dark Angels/Black Templars upgrade sprues this technique might come in handy.

Check here for a nice picture report of the event.

Finally there are some pictures of painted Mortebrume models. I was really looking forward to the figures and the game, but after seeing the pictures my enthusiasm has dimmed. I don't like the figures at all, they look bulky and do not match the high standard of the other French games (Alkémy, Hell Dorado and of course Rackham). Also the starter kit which contains all the figures costs 130 euros. One figure costs 13 euro. No thanks!

Michael Holzapfel did a fantastic job taking pictures of the Golden Demon painting competition at last weekend's Games Day Germany. Check out his picture report here: http://www.darklined.com/specials/golden-demon-2009/

The last month I've been quite active on the Jenova Project Message Board. If you want to show your minis to get some decent feedback, it's the place to be. Besides that there's also plenty of other chat going on: discussions about painting techniques, opinions on new releases, reviews, community news, etc.

Ever since Jenova got back at painting people have started using the forum again, but it could benefit from some more users and posts. So I invite you all to the forums.

Check out AwesomePaintjob.com, a site run by Lester Bursley, a gamer and painter. His work is quite solid, but what really got my attention is the series of videos he has posted on YouTube. The high speed playback of his paintwork is really inspiring and fun to watch. For example this Ultraforge Plague Demon. Check out the video:

It's been quite a while since I posted my last 'CMON Favorites', here's a selection of the highlights of the past few months:

• Empire Amethys Wizard by Mr F - Smooth, clean painting and perfect up to the finest details.
• Boss Snikrot by camelson - Nice paintjob with a muted colorscheme but at the same time a lot of contrast.
• Terezinya and Familiar by Ickthorne - The black rocks together with the dead leaves and grass offer a lot of contrast. Good idea!
• Nurgle Blight Drone by akaranseth - Gruesome piece of work with some great effects.
• Legion Commander by Bobinator - Best flame painting ever.
• Daemon Hunter Inquisitor Lord by RAFFY10 - Nicely done armour and great metallics.
• Krieg Command Squad by Arsies - Gold in the 40K unit category of Golden Demon Spain 2009.
• Red Karnagh by Landreth - The base is great but the painting is even better.
• ORCombinator by Artur - An Orc in Terminator armor.
• Assassin Fiday by Random Factory - One of my favorite Infinity miniatures in a splendid paintjob.
• Tanath by Kurts - Great way to honor this classic Rackham mini.
• The Explorer by paloji - Another GD Spain winner, great setting.
• The Headhunter by Crackpot - One more figure with a great setting, remember Cadwallon?
• Cadian Navy Valkyrie by Hortwerth - This is why the base of the Valkyrie is so big.
  

I would like to conclude this post with a list of amazing paintjobs on my favorite miniature of the past few months: the Chaos Lord on Juggernaut by Games Workshop:

• by oxotnikkot
• by Bohun
• by Akaranseth
• by Kai
  

I've been considering to paint this figure since the day it came out, but I think it's too much monotonous work to paint it in one go. Maybe when I finish my Valkyrie I should take it in consideration once again.

Inge Mygind Jensen , better known by her nickname 'Jenova' is back. Her site has been inactive for last 4 years, but for some reason I kept coming back, waiting for an update. Yesterday evening I visited her site to check out an old tutorial I wanted to read and I noticed there were some updates.

She's running a blog now too, actually it's where most of the action happens. Quite appropriately it's called Jenova's Revival. I'm really amazed by the amount of miniatures she has painted, and the quality level she manages to achieve. It's great to see someone making a comeback like this.

Anyway I'm very glad to see someone from the old gang picking up the brushes again. Inge, good luck with your comeback!

Finally a tutorial about green stuff that makes me think "hey, maybe I can do this too". Head over to the DakkaDakka forums and read this post. Some of the topics covered are robes, ropes and purity seals.

It's the winner of their recent tutorial competition. You can see the other winners here.

Coming in September: the new Warmachine faction called Retribution. A while ago the first concept arts appeared and I was very curious about how Privateer Press would fit the more sci-fi and angelic theme into the existing universe. Today the first pictures of painted figures are released: Tabletop Gaming news has a good overview of all of them.

The design is a mix of the existing warjacks (the proportions) together with some Eldar and PanOceania (army from Infinity) influences (the armour). I think the overall look is right, but some pieces of armour are just too bulky and look very plain. Also, the white color scheme is very boring if you ask me. The characters look ok, but don't really fit into the theme of the warjacks.

To be honest I expected a bit more from Privateer Press, but I think it's very brave of them to introduce a completely new faction into a game which is a few years old.

There are a lot of pictures of painted Valkyries out there, but only a few of them of showcase quality.

Recently I found those two links:

First of all a step by step guide on painting the Valkyrie with the help of some oil paints: http://akaranseth.over-blog.com/pages/Step_by_Step__Valkyrie_Imperial_Guard-1335315.html

The second link are some high quality photos of a finished Valkyrie which I really liked: http://forums.ttgamers.com/forums/yaf_postst1370_Finished-Valkyrie.aspx

After a 5 month hiatus this feature is back. I'm going to try to catch up with all the great entries I've missed since my last my last CMON Favorites post. Actually I haven't been on CMON ever since, so I'll have to do a lot of catching up. To make things easier I only browsed images with scores between 9 and 10.

• Leonardo DiMiragliano - The Great Wyrdstone Collector... Part I of IV by Matt Cexwish - a diorama like you've never seen before. I wonder if there really will be 3 other parts.
• Anima Tactics Kujaku Hime by Bren - Brenda Gosman's winning entry from last year's Crisis, as seen in my picture report.
• Sentinel by automaton - very nice weathering effects, along the lines of Ben Komets.
• Urban Warfare by jarhead - an Infinity miniature and some basic scenery is used to create a very apocalyptic atmosphere.
• Krieg HQ Squad by Kaple - at first I thought the color scheme was a bit odd (because I expected the Krieg to be grayish) but the painting and the subtle weathering on them is actually really well done.
• Limited Edition Sorceress by mrika - a nice color transition on the robe and super-fine details make this figure a winner.
• Psycho! by Bren - Another entry by Brenda.
  

When chatting about miniatures on events like last week's Mini Art Con, a subject that keeps returning is the demise of one of the greatest miniature manufacturers of the past 10 years: Rackham. When I started out with miniature painting, their figures had rapidly become my favorite. I followed their new releases every month, on the lookout of nice figures to suit my painting needs, often for competition entries. I also played their game Confrontation for a short while.

But then news appeared about financial troubles at Rackham. The production of new figures came to a halt and after a long silence they re-emerged with a new game called AT-43, which featured pre-painted plastics. But they promised to keep producing the existing metal miniatures range under the name of Rackham Legends and even introduce some new ones. I think they produced 2 or 3 new ones, all of them extremely limited edition and quite expensive. On top of that they even replaced their existing Confrontation game with a pre-painted equivalent.

I still had some feeble hopes that the company would return with some good quality metals, until I read this forum post. The announcement says:

In the last months, promotions on our webstore have given you the opportunity to purchase miniatures from our metal range at attractive prices.
Our stock of these miniatures has dwindled, but it’s still taking up a lot of space in our new offices. Thus we have decided to dispose of it. We will not commercialize these metal miniatures any more in the future.
The existing stock will not be destroyed; it should be sold to another company, which you will be able to buy the remaining miniatures from at a cost that’s bound to be very attractive.

A few posts down someone asks:

Do you know if this new company are going to have new metal minis commissioned, or jut sell the existing range/parts?

And then the reply:

That is very unlikely. The molds for the metal miniatures don't exist anymore anyway, so they would need to have them remade...

Expect the existing stock to be sold and nothing beyond that.

I think this says enough: "and nothing beyond that".

I still can't believe how this company turned their arse to the fans. I understand the company has had some hard times: financially, designers and sculptors leaving, but on the other hand why do they decide to completely discontinue something like the Confrontation line of miniatures. And then I'm not even talking about their other projects they failed to get off the ground: Hybrid, Cadwallon, the Cry Havoc magazine.

For now I will keep an eye out for Rackham minis I want to paint one day, and buy them while I still can. Fortunately I still have some old catalogues and Cry Havoc magazines to relive the old days :)

In my small Crisis 2008 review post from last October, I mentioned the new French game Okko. Besides the fantastic miniatures the piece of scenery that was used to display the game was breathtaking. Here are two links to forum posts that display some work in progress on similar projects:

http://hazgaard.forumpro.fr/vos-creations-f18/tutorial-decors-et-plateau-3d-t474.htm
http://hazgaard.forumpro.fr/vos-creations-f18/decor-3d-le-fortin-du-col-de-betten-t482.htm

Antenociti's Workshop is an online store selling all kinds of high-quality materials and tools for scenery building. From grass flock to ruins, they have it all at a really good price.

There's also an extensive articles section on the site, and two articles have caught my attention last week because they tackle two common problems when trying to create realistic looking ground.

First there's an article on ground covered by grass and how to make everything look very realistic: http://www.barrule.com/Workshop/Extras/extras%20-%20Groundwork%20-%20The%20Art%20of%20Flor(a).html

The second article is about creating realistic looking dunes and sand cover: http://www.barrule.com/Workshop/Extras/extras%20-%20modeling%20realistic%20sand.htm

I will have to read more of their articles in the future, because the level of realism achieved is fantastic! Of course I will post the links here.

I recently bought some small magnets on eBay to use in my Space Marine army (I'm thinking of magnetizing a dreadnought or maybe some tanks). Last week this article on magnetizing was posted on the official Flames of War website.

It's a good primer on the use of magnets in my opinion.