Assembling the Spartan

Thanks to the number of extraordinary painters in my life I have long been infected with the desire to cover stretched canvas with colorful pigment, despite a background in photography. I would be flattering myself to count myself more than a humble student, inspired by their abilities and imaginations and only ever hope to keep myself interested. As the piece I am going to cover with this writing has kept my interest from conception to completion, even inspiring several more, it seemed both a success and natural choice to document.



From my sketchbook, this is one of the many early doodles to come out of the initial brainstorming. My initial vision was of Spartans, coalescing layer by layer from the very mist they moved through. Being a quarter Greek, the Battle of Thermopylae has always been dear to my heart and imagination.








The cartoon, laid down with Sharpie Enamel Paint Markers. Even though I wanted the various layers of the figure’s physiology to show through I find it easier to start with the complete body and then build the interior from there.










The skeleton has been painted in (I can never seem to get enough research material). My initial trials proved that, contrary to logic, it was easiest to build up the figure from as complete an interior as I am capable of. This allows the transparency I strive for to accumulate and develop organically rather than having pieces look placed over the figure.

The muscles and tendons are beginning to take form now and the hand has been fixed. The spear just wasn’t reading as a spear so you can see the new skeletal hand as well as the replacement

sword.

Now the patterns have begun to really wind in from the edges. The hand and sword are coming along although the shield is still in need of attention. The skin is still not in place though the armor has a decent shine to it.











Here is the signed, sealed and finished canvas. I don't know if it is good or even art but I know I like it, find it interesting and am in the process of working on four more variations of the theme. I'll keep painting them as long as I have fun doing so.

Unit in a Day

The KublaCon’s Speed Painting tables answered the problem my refusal to store any more unpainted miniatures had presented. Having picked up a full set of Mantic Skeleton sprues at KublaCon I set myself the challenge of painting them in a day. After three hours of assembly I had a solid block of twenty-two skeletons (one being that of a warhound) and primed them white. The pictured practice figure took between 20-30 minutes.



Here are the first layers going down. I also limited myself to eight colors in order to speed any decision making and force more color mixing (another personal goal). As I intended to finish them off with stains I focused on keeping my application neat to reduce the amount of repainting.



Having primed the unit the night before, I sat down first thing in the morning with my coffee and paintbrush. With limited breaks for snacks and DVD changes the Brotherhood of Widows' Tears was complete in about 7 hours. The white surrounding the tufts of grass is fresh glue as I took the picture as soon as I had completed the work. There is only the matter of a paper standard that has yet to be designed but they are ready to make more 28mm widows and orphans. With the new Horde rules in Warhammer 8th edition my Vampire Counts will be glad for the reinforcements.

This seems as good a place to start as any other. In addition to my miniatures and canvases that I continue to work on I am determined to reduce the amount of clutter in my work spaces. Seen above is my minis painting table as it has reached the halfway point. Yes, it was much worse, much, much worse... but I digress. I hope to share some of my victories, experiments and whatever else falls into the computer on this blog.