Miniature Preparation and Basing

View on my workbench while cleaning and basing Dark Elf Warriors and Executioners

I spent quite some time in the preparition for some new 4th/5th Edition Dark Elves units. I will take the chance to speak about some of my basic steps in front of painting a miniature. The general miniature preparation comprised the removal of mold lines and sanding. The basing I describe here will focus on joint bases able to display a scenery while also consisting of individual bases for each miniature.

Dark Elves Cold One Knight unit with a consistent basing

Miniature Preparation
I use three tools for the miniature preparation, a pliers for removing a miniature from the casting frame, a pincer, a sharp knife to remove the mold line and sanding paper (graining size 400-600) to get everything smooth and even.

Tools I use for cleaning miniatures

First I remove bigger crap like casted inflow and air channels from the miniature using the pincer. The pincer should have one flat side to get as close to the miniature as possible. Additionally a good pincer has a pointy tip that helps to get into the last corner of the miniature.
Next I clean the mold line useing a sharp knife. For my painting technique it is important to remove it  as completely as possible as the very thin paint layer allows to see irregularities in the surface easily. Therefore, I took a lot of time to clean the miniature properly. You should know that the mold line goes one time around the whole model. There is need to remove it everywhere. Always check the mold line from different angles as I can become invisible when you start to reduce it. Also clean the whole area and try to reestablish the area you are carving on. Be sure that you use a sharp blade. If your blade is damaged if can add a lot of scratches to your surface, sometimes even more worse than the mold line.
Then I use the sanding paper to smoothen the surface and to get rid of smaller scratches. The sanding also help to see if the mold line was removed properly. If the mold line is very small or in case of newer plastics sanding only can be sufficient to clean the miniature.


Assembling

After all parts are cleaned I glue most of the miniature together. It always helps to realize a stringent light situation on a miniature when it is in one piece and based. However, sometimes an assembled miniature can be difficult to paint as some areas can’t be reached for painting. Therefore I keep riders and mounts as well as shields separately in the majority of cases. In the other Hand I try to assemble a miniature as complete as possible.






Basing
Most of my bases start the same way. To leave the given base surface I add an irregular 2 mm cork layer which allow me to enlarge the base surface when needed and to get an irregular surface. The Cork layer also helps to link different bases as I do often to cover the individual bases in a unit.

Bases with cork layer get an Milliput layer for closing the surface

I use cork because of its irregular edge looking like a stony structure. Because I need only the edge and do not want the surface structure I close the latter by adding a thin layer of miliput. I also add this layer of putty on the remaining areas of the original base. I let everything dry and the start to structure the base. For the high elf ruins I created here I add different structures:

Temple ground

Here I used ready to use plates from Juweela. These were glued using PVA glue on the surface. Make sure to put them in a diagonal way or with some angle and avoid an orientation at the original base. When everything is dried use a pincer to remove the overlaying parts of the plates. Then I add bird sand to cover edges and remaining plain areas.






Stone path
Here I used some bigger structures based on GW basing material. You can use these in their original form or make a mold of these and cast them with gypsum. Here I used the latter. I enlarged the stone path pattern by adding a layer of miliput. As soon as the smooth layer starts drying I carved the stone structure into it using sculpting tools and a needle. Before completely dried I smoothed the whole sculpting to give it its finish look. Again I used bird sand to cover the edges and remaining areas.




Bigger ruins

For the General on Cold One as well as for the Warhydra base I created a scenic base of a fallen high elf architecture. On one hand I used casted gypsum copies of GW architecture and on the other hand I created some own architecture by carving it completely by myself from a bit of gypsum. For the latter I do a design on paper first which is transferred on styrofoam sheets which I used to create a mold. I cut out the shape to create the rough negative which is then casted with gypsum. Then the details are carved into the still humid gypsum using sculpting and carving tools.
In parallel I created the rough shape and final surface of the base using cork layers. Then the bigger pieces were glued on this armature. I used Juweela stones to create more wall fragments and used them for wall debris. After the stones were glued in place I filled the gaps and covered the surface with Milliput. Again I glued birdsand on the surface for creation of finer structures. I used a birdsand mix with more bigger stones around bigger stones and debris. An other mix with more sand amount I used for the plain and free areas.







Priming
I used a two component undercoat for priming. For that I prime first with black primer and second with white primer. this way of priming combines the advantage of a light undercoat helping to intensify colour saturation with a rough surface helping to work with thinned colours needed for qualitative blending.  

The black undercoat should be a thin but closed layer. If necessary use thinned Chaos or Abbadon Black and a brush to get a closed layer. When everything is dried use white primer to add a kind of dusty second layer. It is importat that this layer is not closed as the first one. The miniature appears greyish and dusty.

So far my way to prepare miniatures for painting. Let me know what you think in the comments.

Kind Regards,
GeOrc 

Tutorial for painting Freehands on Shields

Today something more technically. I made a lot of thoughts how to paint reproducibly symbols on my Dark Elves Shields. As I am not a great fan of Water Transfer Decals there was need paint my desired symbols with freehands. But, the main problem with everything handmade is that it is sensitive for faults and errors. Typically, the symbols can vary in position and size or worser in the design itself. The Dark Elves Army contains a lot of units carrying shields like e.g. Swordmen, Spearmen and the Cold One Knights. This makes it necessary to use a method, which allows you to paint the desired symbole with high reproducibility on your shields. Therefore, sheets with masks can be used. Here I show you how this will work:

1.) You need some masking tape as it is used for painting works. Put at least 3 layers or more of this tape on top of each other. Try to put them as accurate as possible on each other. Then use the tape to stick your desired symbol on top of it. There is need that the shape of your shield is contained in your design, either by the design itseld or painted around your symbol by yourself.

2.) Use some needles and mark the edges of your shield shape. The resulting holes serve later as position markers. Use a sharp knife and cut out the symbol.

3.) There is need that you also have markers in the design itself. Therefore I cut out the eye and nose holes as well. Try to work as accurat as possible, especially in the corners. Sometimes it is needed to cut by stinging. Try to hold your knife vertical to avoid to cut over a corner!

4.) Time to remove your template. You can see here the cut out I produced and used later. Carefully remove your tape layer. Avoid to pull on the tape because the tape can stretch and then distort your design. Use a spatula or something else to carefully remove your mask in one piece without damage. In a second step, remove the cut out the same way. You will need that too.

5.) Use some Patafix or Blu Tack to fix your prepared and coated shield on your working place. Then use the position holes as a guiding to fix your mask on your shield. Have in mind that in this case shown here the shield is slightly bigger, as my image didn´t take the round shape of it into account. Therefore, I had to middle it as best as I could, but the holes helped a lot. Work as accurat as possible here because the later centering depends on this step. Sometimes you have to try many time to get a perfect result. Then use your basic colours to paint the inlay. You can do this by brush or using an Airbrush. Both works fine but the latter works better as it doesn´t produce paint accumulations on the edges.

6.) Now use the inlay template to correct the position and add the details of your symbol. Therefore, put the inlay template centered on your painted symbol. Use the background colour to paint the rest of the shield. Then use the right colour to paint the details, here the eye and nose holes.

7. Here you can see the preliminary result after the transfer of your symbol on the shield. Now you have correctly positioned outlines and details which help you to create a proper freehand.

8.) In the next steps you need to sharpen and detail your symbol. Use the background and foreground colours to sharpen the edges of the symbol. Then add additional details which help you to proportion the different areas inside of the symbol. Here I added additional lines between the skull and horns, between the teeth and around the eye sockets. Additionally, I corrected the eye and nose holes. 

9.) Finally, you have to do the whole detail work. There is need to shade and highlight each area. I also highlighted the shield area in general. Because the basic shape of the shield is cylindric, the light distribution is a vertical light reflection in the middle. For additional detail work I added a gold edge around the shield and some scratches on the shield surface.







I hope this Tutorial helps you to create your own freehand shield designs. I did not go into detail in case of the detail work as the amount of detailing depends individually on the effort each one wants to put into his result. In my case I used a lot of blending techniques to achive the final result. As my Blending technique can not be discussed shortly this topic will be perhaps part of further Tutorials in the future. I hope you like this Tutorial. If you have questions, do not hesitate to ask me in the comments.
Kind Regards,
GeOrc