Kahl-Agul - a vampire bust by Karol Rudyk Art

Hi, fellow hobbyists!

Today I will show you the latest addition to my pile of shame. I was very excited about this bust because it has a unique look and shape!

Karol Rudyk Art is a company from Poland, founded by Karol Rudyk who himself is a sculptor and award winning painter. Browsing his website, you will currently find dragons and vampires of the highest quality. He has two very large dragon models, both with a rider and a large scenic base. He also has some vampire busts for sale.

And I got my hands on one of them...

Kahl-Agul is a heavily deformed vampire, more bat than man. There is no back story for him so that is totally up to you. He could be transforming into or from his bat form, or he could be a feral vampire, feeding on himself and rodents (bats and rats), mutating him to this state.

Side view of this resin bust, take note of the hunched over
pose of the vampire.

This resin bust, sculpted by Luke Starkie, has a really scary feel and looks like it stepped straight out of a horror movie. For a bust, it has a bit of a strange pose, leaning forward and his arms/wings slightly forward and outward. The bottom is also completely flat, so you can't just stick it to a standard bust plinth cut on an angle. This means it needs a slightly more creative solution and this can be hard for some people, and me. 😜

The flat bottom of this bust makes it hard to for to think of a
suitable plinth. But maybe an oval shape can work!

This bust is about 6,5cm high...

... but almost 9cm wide!

This monster has some awesome details. The prominent ones are in the face. The wrinkles and wide open mouth, but there are also the muscles on his back and shoulders, the muscle fibers on the chest and the veins running under his skin!

This will keep you up at night!

Very cool facial features!

The model comes in three pieces, the body and two separate jaws that need to be glued into the mouth. The vents from pouring the resin can be easily removed by cutting them off and using some fine sanding stick to smooth them down. Be careful with the ears, however, they are fragile. Behind the ears, you will most likely find some flash and holes. this is because it's a multi part mold and the back of the head is where the pieces come together. I was a little disappointed at first, but it's not something a little putty and some precision sanding can't fix.

The problem behind the ears

The price of this bust is €59, which, in my opinion, is a bit high. Yes, it is a unique bust and you can see the time and dedication that has gone into designing it but for that price, I would have liked to see the mold problem behind the ears fixed. Luckily, Karol often has discounts on his models or combo deals, where you can buy multiple busts at a discount.

All and all I think that this is a really cool bust with great potential! It just needs to end up in the right hands. Karol himself is starting to paint one of these himself, so keep a close eye out on his Facebook for pictures.

That's it for this article. If I had to rate the bust I would give it an 8,5/10, with the only downsides the price and the holes behind the ears. Other than that, if you are a fan of vampires or monstrous busts, this is definitely something for you!

If you reached this point, thank you for reading through my ramblings, and I hope to see you next time!

Katsumoto - by Mitches Military Models

Hi everybody,

I want to apologize for my lack of recent posts but I've been busy with everything except painting. I did paint a few small project or made very little progress on current projects but nothing worth posting or writing about.

At the moment, my hobby seems more to be a collector of models and busts instead of being a painter.

My most recent purchase is a bust portraying Katsumoto from the movie The Last Samurai by Mitches Military Models. They have a large assortment of 120mm, 200mm resin figures, and busts. They range from historical models to modern day soldiers.

Some of the movie inspired pieces immediately caught my eye, and some of them were on sale as well! Lucky me!

The bust comes in 3 pieces. the head
and body, and 2 pieces that might be
ornamental or added armor

The bust is cast in light, yellowish resin. I believe this resin is toxic when inhaled so be sure to wear a dust mask when sanding or sawing! That being said, it is good practice to always wear a dust mask when sanding resin, to prevent Pneumoconiosis.

The model does require some cleanup, there is a pretty nasty mold line on the back of the model, running across the back and the back of his head. There are also some little blobs of resin between his collar and neck. The obvious flash should also be removed.

The blue-green dot is a part of the
silicon mold

Okay so it's obvious that this bust needs some serious cleaning up, but I'm still pretty excited about it! The bust is a perfect resemblance of the actor and character in the movie and it has some beautiful details! I'm definitely adding this one a little higher on the to do list for future projects!

A comparison between the bust and the original

So we have reached the end of this article. I will try to write more in the coming months. I have some interesting projects on the shelf so I hope I can find the time to start and finish them and write about it.

Thank you for reading and until next time!

Small animals on bases and models

Hello there highly regarded friends, readers and followers! (even the haters get some love from me!)

Today I would very much like to share a product with you that I recently purchased. It is the Small Animals set made by Busch Modelbau. (special link for dutch readers) It is a German product and according to them the animals are in scale 1:87. At this scale a 6 foot or 1.80 meter human at this scale would be 20mm. This makes them small-ish for hero scale miniatures which are commonly between 28-32mm. 

They work fine however. For me they are meant to set a scene on the base or give people some little extra details to look at while looking at my models. 

The set contains 8 butterflies, frogs, rats, snakes bugs and fishes, 4 salamanders and squirrels and 2 rabbits hedgehogs, crows, woodpeckers and owls. That's well over 50 animals! 

Okay time for some pictures! 

The small animals set comes with 6 sprue's

This sprue contains the rats, snakes, bugs, fish and frogs

This spue contains the birds, hedgehog and rabbits

 So that is everything you get for a RRP of about €8 - $10 - £6. I would personally say that is good value. Painting these little critters can be hard so the manufacturer suggests painting them on sprue. In most cases I recommend you follow these instructions because some of these animals (like the frogs and salamanders) are really, really small! 

After painting you simply glue your animal where you want it. Wanna see what that looks like? Here are some pictures!

Owl sitting on a tree branch

Little green critter performing an excellent wall walk

Little mouse/rat just minding his business

Okay so that is it for now. I find this set to be very useful as it can be used for a wide variety in model and base building.

I hope you guys liked this little article and if you did (or didn't) feel free to write a comment in the section below. If you have seen other products you would like me to cover you can also let me know through the comments.

Thank you all for reading and enjoy your hobby!

Comparing miniature skulls

Hi guys and girls! (I'm still convinced there are girls reading this blog, at least I like to think that...)

Today I bring you sort of a review.

Reason for this is that I treated myself on some Secret Weapon Miniatures goodies. I'm more then sure that most of them will be mentioned in this blog in the future.

For now I would like to talk about skulls. One of the items I bought is the famed Sack O' Skulls. The product description says it contains 2.5 grams of loose cast resin skulls selected from five different sculpts. This means you will receive about 50 small resin skulls! Joy!

In this hobby we enjoy so much we often try to recreate a setting in a grimdark future, scary caves, old battlefields or planes littered with bones. This little bag filled with little skulls helps you to make just that!

I've used quite a few skulls in my 3-4 year career being a figure builder and painter. I usually add them to bases to create a darker setting, but you could also make a necklace out of them to make a monstrous creature even more monstrous.

On with the comparison. I selected a few of the skulls currently in my possession. I took some of the different skulls from the Secret Weapon Miniatures Sack 'O Skulls but I couldn't find the five different sculpts. I also found one of my plastic skulls from a Games Workshop Vampire Counts kit, and a skull from a Chinese caster.

Lets start by talking about how to acquire these skulls.

• The Sack 'O Skulls can be bought from the Secret Weapon Miniatures website or from retailers. The Sack 'O Skulls will set you back $15 or less if they are having a sale.
• The Games Workshop skulls are by far the most expensive. They are not sold separately (which is a shame because its a beautiful sculpt!) so you will need to buy several kits to get a bunch of skulls. There are some bits sites that sell individual bits but skulls are almost always sold out. 
•  The Chinese skulls in my possession are only sold online. I won't link to the site because I honestly don't know if he sculpted them himself or just recast them. They are the cheapest in this comparison because they cost like $1.50 for ten skulls.

Picture time! 

the skulls side by side

So the Secret Weapon Miniatures skulls gives you about 50 skulls from five different designs. They are slightly bigger then the GW and China cast skulls. The Games Workshop skulls come in different shapes as well. It all depends on the kit you bought. The China skulls are all the same. It is a nice sculpt though. The resin used is very hard and a bit brittle, this makes this a major downside to this product, since it makes it harder to use for conversions. 

So that's it I guess, I don't really know what else to tell you about these skulls. If you feel I left anything out, forgot about anything of if you have a question please just leave a comment down in the comment section. 

Thank you all for reading and see ya next time. 

Filling small gaps on miniatures

Hi everybody!

You know that feeling right, when you have this really cool new miniature but there are those seams and gaps in view that really don't make sense and make it look like a plastic toy rather then the high-end model it is supposed to be. 

Well in this article I will share the method I use to fill these little gaps on models.

To follow this tutorial you will need:

• Model with gaps
• Standard yellow-grey Milliput 
• an old brush

For this tutorial I used a Chaos Lord from Warhammer Fantasy. A model I really love and which is in general a really good model. Most of the contact points are hidden behind armor or the cape. There are two gaps however, that are really visible on this model and they really bug me. I circled these with red. 

Ugly gaps on the WFB Chaos Lord

Time to fix this! I can imagine if you got this model for gaming purposes you don't really care about little details like this but I bought this model because I want to paint it up really nice so I want to make the model as good as I possibly can. 

I got out my Milliput, which is a two-part, cold setting, non shrinking epoxy putty, and mixed a little bit together. Once the two parts where mixed into a homogeneous ball I used the back of a brush to make a small dent in the ball, shaping it into a cup. 

Mixed Milliput cup

Next, dip your brush into clean water and transfer it to the Milliput cup. Using the brush mix the water with the Milliput to create a Milliput "wash". 

Milliput wash

Now, using a brush, apply this wash to the gap. It might take several passes. You can use a blow-dryer or blow on the gap to make the wash dry faster before adding an other layer of milliput wash.

Once you are satisfied let the whole thing dry for about 3 hours. The blow-dryer can speed up this process. When it is completely dry you can  use a fine sandpaper or sanding stick to smooth out the surface. 

Filled gaps

That's it for today! 

I really hope this article helps you make your models look nicer by filling those nasty gaps. Feel free to share your results with me or if you have any questions to post those in the comments.  

If you like this tutorial feel free to subscribe to this blog to see when I publish a new article or to share it with your friends via Google+, Facebook or Twitter.

See you next time! 

Airbrush 101: looking for an airbrush

Hello my friends and newcomers,

Today I want to tell you about airbrushes. I personally currently own two airbrushes and I have worked with four different models. In this article I would like to show you and explain some general aspects and features of the airbrush itself, as well as personal preferences. I will cover things like compressors, techniques and cleaning in future articles.

Let's start by answering the the most general question when people talk about airbrushes.
'What is the best airbrush?'
I can answer that really easy, there is none! There might be the best airbrush for a specific paintjob, but then again, 99% of this is personal preference.

My two airbrushes

The airbrush I use the most is the Badger Krome. The reason for this is that is has a really wide cup and it's really easy to access the needle through the cup making it super easy to clean for me. For the really fine details (eyes, subtle OSL or glow effects a.o.) I prefer to use my Harder&Steenbeck Ultra. This is their most basic dual-action, gravity fed airbrush. the craftsmanship is more refined resulting in better control and smoother handling. (in my opinion ofcourse) I also really like the ball-jointed trigger on the Harder&Steenbeck. This all comes at a price though as Harder&Steenbeck is more expensive, especially if you don't live in Europe.

So you want to buy your first airbrush. What to look for. Well if it is for anything more then just basecoating entire armies at a time, make sure to get a gravity-fed, dual-action airbrush. The bottom and side fed airbrushes need higher pressure to spray the paint so you won't be able to use it for single models or details as well. Other then that all the extra features are just that, extra's. Both of my airbrushes have a distinct feature. The Krome has a nut on the back of the handle that can be set to restrict how far you can pull the needle back, limiting the amount of paint coming out of the airbrush. This can be useful when painting super small details like a subtle glow on a miniature's eyes.
My H&S Ultra has a removable cup. This can be useful when I want to preserve some of the paint still in the cup. It can also be useful when cleaning.

My Krome with the handle removed.
Note the little nut on the end of the handle as described above.

The removable cup of the Harder&Steenbeck Ultra

Other things you need to consider when getting an airbrush are things like nozzle and needle size. Both my airbrushes are around 0.2mm in size. For priming or basecoating I would personally recommend something a little bigger like 0.3 or 0.4mm. On a side note, when cleaning your airbrush, handle the needle and nozzle with care, if you bend or break them, you can't just fix them.

The needle from my Badger Renegade: Krome airbrush

The last thing I will talk about you might want to consider when looking for what airbrush to buy is how easy you can pull it apart en put it together again. Airbrushes like the ones Iwata produces and some cheaper brands usually require a little wrench to remove some parts like the nozzle. These parts are often very small and either damage or get lost easy. My Krome and Ultra don't require tools to get disassemble. The Krome does have a very small nozzle that can fall out if you remove the nozzle cap. Be sure not to drop it because standing on it can damage it!
The Ultra I selected because it has a very large nozzle. This makes handling and cleaning easier for me. It also doesn't require tools to dis- or reassemble. You can chuck the nozzle into the nozzle cap and it will seal when you screw the cap to the body.

Nozzle of the Badger Krome

nozzle of the Harder&Steenbeck Ultra

As you can hopefully see, I don't believe in the best airbrush. What works for me might not work for you. You might have bigger or smaller hands, making these airbrushes uncomfortable to work with.

My advice, don't buy an airbrush because some guy on the internet says it is the best, no matter how good he paints with his airbrush. Buying that airbrush won't make you paint like that. Making sure you have an airbrush you an work with and practice with it a lot does!

See you all next time! 

Painting a Mantic zombie step-by-step

Hello there readers!

I hope you all had a wonderful weekend. 

On this beautiful Monday I would like to share article where I show you how I painted a Mantic zombie. This article is not a tutorial that shows the techniques I use and how to paint, but it gives you an impression how I painted this miniature and I'll explain why I did some of the things the way I did them.

First off let me talk about the Mantic zombie. It is a really easy to put together, plastic model. If you are looking for some amazing zombie models I can really recommend them!

I used a light grey airbrush primer to prime the model. I wanted to make this a quick paintjob using light colors to give it a very undead look. The primer I used is the AMMO grey surface primer. This is a very good primer but it needs 24 hours to really dry and harden.

grey primer

After the primer fully dried I began painting the shadow color. I planned to paint the skin using a technique called zenithal highlighting. This is a technique where you spray increasingly lighter colors from decreasing angles where you spray your lightest color directly from the top. This will create a nice overall highlight. I used a nice moss green as a basecoat. 

moss green basecoat

Next color. I was looking for a color that was obviously lighter to create a strong shadow effect. I used a light brown / greenish looking khaki color. I sprayed it from a 45° angle on the miniature, leaving the moss green in the shadows. 

khaki highlight

For the last color in the zenithal highlight I chose for pure white. I made sure it was diluted enough so it would only tint and not really cover the previous colors. I increased the pressure I was painting at to about 20 PSI and increased the distance from my airbrush to my model to avoid pooling. A few sprays and a little extra focus on the face gave me the desired effect. 

white highlight

Okay so this is the skin tone so far. Time to get some brushpainting done! I chose some basic colors to block in the rags and spikes. For the clothes I picked the good old Ultramarine Blue. It kind of has a denim blue color to it in my opinion. For the spikes I used a medium brown. I painted the highlights on the rags by mixing in a little bit of white in the base color.

basic colors blocked in

Next up is the face. I used the top of my brush to paint in the eyes and teeth with an off-white. try to paint the teeth separately. 

closeup of the face

Looks boring right? Well that will change soon. After filling in all the colors I wanted I sprayed the miniature with gloss varnish. This is to A) protect my work so far and B) help the washes flow nicely. The latter is the most important for the next step. Acrylic washes usually tint the surface they are applied to. Now I don't want to loose the beautiful, undead skin color I worked so hard for. I used a purple wash on the skin. This will create a nice and gruesome effect as purple is a natural shade for green and where it pools it will give a nice dead flesh effect. 

zombie face after purple wash

For the rest of the body and mainly the rags I made a pigment wash out of water and AMMO europe earth pigment powder. This will give the rags some shading but mostly will give them a nice worn, dirty look. When the washes are dry seal in the pigments with a matte varnish. This will also counter the gloss varnish you used earlier. 

Time for some blood effects! Any self respecting zombie needs a good bite of living flesh so every once in a while so some nice blood and gore effects will finish the job. To create the blood I got Tamiya Clear Red and Tamiya Smoke. The clear red is an alcohol based paint (that smells really nice!) that is usually used to tint clear plastic lenses or headlights. It is a really bright so to get some realistic blood effects you need to make them darker. The Tamiya Smoke is a nice dark color for this job. Use different mix ratio's to get different results. I like really dark blood so I use 1 drop of Clear Red on 2 drops Smoke. Place the blood using either an old or a synthetic brush because the alcohol will destroy your sable hair. I placed the blood on the spikes, hands and around the mouth. I made sure the teeth where still visible. 

blood effects done!

closeup of the blood effects and final result

I hope this step-by-step helped you get an insight in how I paint my miniatures. If you have any questions or suggestions please don't hesitate to post them in the comments below.

Thank you for reading and I hope to see you here again!

Basic weathering test

Hi everybody!

Today I want to share with you a step-by-step weathering project I did a little while ago.

For this, I used a 1:32 scale oil drum by Tamiya. They come in a kit with oil drums, jerrycans and buckets. These are great for scenery or display bases but are also great to practice some weathering on!

If you want to reproduce what I did here, you are going to need the following:

• a model to practice on
• rust colored paints (I used these) 
• rust colored pigments (I used this one and this one)
• chipping fluid (I used this) 
• a non-rust colored paint
• some rustcolored, enamel or oil paints (I used this)
• white spirits or odorless thinner

To start with, you need to prime your model and paint it in a nice rust color. You can use different browns, oranges and red to create a nice natural effect. For inspiration you can take a look at pictures of rust to get a good reference of what your going for. Accept for paints you can also use pigments this step to get a nice textured look. Don't put too much effort into it, its gonna get covered up.

Once you are happy with the result, kind of like the picture above, give it a thin coat of gloss or satin varnish. This will protect your progress up to now. When the varnish is dry, spray several thin layers of chipping fluid (or if you can't get this, you can try and use hairspray) and give it like 5 minutes to dry. Then you can paint the model in the color you want to. If you use very thin layers you can use multiple colors to achieve some sort of color modulation or camouflage.

Once the paint is dry to touch get an old brush and some lukewarm water. Dip the brush in the water and stab at the model where you want to chip the paint. make sure to hit the edges as those are the most likely to be damaged.

Don't over do the effect. Chipping is only one stage of weathering so try to pace yourself. For destroyed or abandoned vehicles you can go overboard if you want to, but that is a whole different way of painting and weathering. Once you are satisfied with the amount of chipping you can spray a thin layer of gloss or satin varnish to protect your work and to make sure the chipping fluid won't ruin the effect you achieved so far.

Last but certainly not least, is the streaking and staining.
For this I used pigments and streaking effects but you can also use oil paints instead. Start with streaking. Make little streaks from chips leading down or from places where water would run down. If you are using oil paints you make little dots. You can use different colors  to create a bit of variation. Then take a medium sized, flat, synthetic brush and dampen it using white spirits or (h)odorless thinner. (Game of Thrones joke there, sorry) and drag the lines or dots out and fade them out towards the end. The varnish you sprayed on the model at the end of the previous step protects your paint against the thinner, which can strip your model clean of paint.
Once your streaks are done and dry we can proceed to the pigments. There are several ways to use these but what I did was to make a wash by adding some pigments to water, applying it to the model and later cleaning it with water. That way it will sit nicely in the recesses and it will give a nice effect.

Here you see the finished product. The different colors in the rust give the impression of old and new rust and the overall look has a nice aged finish. 

I hope this step-by-step has helped you in any way. There are many ways to do this so feel free to experiment but this gives you a nice impression of how I achieve this effect.

As always, thank you for reading.  

Preparing metal miniatures to paint

Hi everybody, it's Tutorial Thursday!
No, this won't mean I will post a tutorial every Thursday, but it sounds nice... sorry.

Today I will show you how I prepare metal miniatures before painting.

To follow this tutorial you will need:

• A metal miniature (doh!)
• Some clippers
• Diamond-, or jewelers files
• A rotary tool with a soft, metal brush attachment

For this tutorial, I am using a model from my box of Godslayer Halodynes by Megalith Games. These are metal miniatures resembling ancient Greek hoplites. 

Metal miniatures often look kind of matt. This is due to the mold release agent used to stop the model sticking to the mold. This is a good thing for the model, but it's a bad thing for painting. Be sure to clean your model by washing in lukewarm, soapy water before priming. 

A metal miniature can have mold-lines and flash. Mold-lines are a visible line where the two (or more) parts of the mold came together and maybe were not 100% aligned. Flash is where some of the casting material, in this case metal, leaked in between those mold parts. You can clean these easily by using a file or clippers.

Sometimes the metal looks really rough. This can be micro-pitting, caused by the metal cooling too fast, or too slow, causing the metal to sometimes even crack. This is bad, and you really want to get rid of this before painting. For this I use a rotary tool with a soft, metal brush. this smooths out the metal of the filler if you already filled the cracks.
It serves two purposes, because it also ever so slightly agitates the metal so the primer will have a better adhesion to it.

This is what the miniature looks before the treatment with the rotary tool:

And this is after:

As you can see the metal looks a lot cleaner, and generally a lot smoother. This will show in your paintjob, so the model will look a lot smoother in general!
In the final picture you can also see I removed the little vent connecting the foot to the little base insert. I did this using clippers and smoothing the foot out with my file. 

I hope this little tutorial helped you in any way. If it did please leave a comment below or share it with your friends.

Future of this blog

Okay so I've been thinking how best to use this blog. I would really like to post regular articles about progress I made building and painting miniatures, to share community projects like kickstarters, to share tutorials and write product reviews.

I still want to completely change the look, feel and layout of this blog. Reason for this is to give it a unique and individual look and with that make it look more professional. 

If you, the reader, have ideas for this blog, suggestions on what I can do or how to improve, please post a comment down below in the comments.

Again, thanks for reading these initial and rather boring posts and I hope I can entertain you with my articles in the near future.

Introductions are in place

Welcome to my new blog, Airbrush & Analog Painting.
My name is Koen, also known as FearGFX and I will be posting tutorials, reviews and my hobby views and experiences on this blog.

I started painting 3 years ago when I fell ill for a long period of time and couldn't leave the house. I asked my dad (I still lived with my parents at the time) to pick me up one of those Games Workshop boxes where you got 5 Space Marines, 5 paints and a paint brush.

I painted one according following the instructions on the box and wasn't happy about it. Not long after I was browsing the internet looking for painting tutorials and not long after I found YouTube as a great source of information. Not long after I bought a webcam to make my own video's.

This really got me going. I discovered a whole new dimension of my hobby! I loved showing stuff off and getting feedback on how to improve. I wanted to give back to the community that practically learned me how to paint. I started doing tutorials and reviews. I really enjoy making these and sharing what knowledge I have to inspire or help improve others.

Seeing the results some painters achieved with airbrushes made me really interested in getting into that as well! I started with a cheap, Chinese knockoff and a semi decent, budget compressor and started playing around. The results where amazing, painting vehicles especially! My advice for everyone that is starting to paint with airbrushes, start with terrain and large vehicles. It might be scary testing this new technique on expensive models, but the larger surface gives you a chance to get a feel for it and the paint coming from an airbrush is so thin that if you mess up you can easily repaint it.

I got in touch with some great youtubers like TemplarsCrusade01, Chung Chow and Lester Bursley and got associated with the Wargamers Consortium. Now being a part of a much larger community I made lots of new friends. With the ability to broadcast live using Google+ Hangouts lots of live shows where sprouting, from a.o, MiniWarGaming and WGC and soon after my friend Spud Tate and myself put our heads together and the Chilling Wargamers where born! This is about 18 months ago and while I stepped down as co-host to make place for the very dedicated Andy2D6 there is still a new episode almost every Thursday at 7pm GMT.

With real life getting busier (the reason why I stepped down as co-host from CWG) I have less and less time to make video's. You must realize, a 4 minute video takes about 4-6 hours to shoot and edit. Looking for a new medium to reach out to people on the internet I ended up at Blogspot, because its easier and less time consuming to write an article and ad a couple of pictures then it is to make a video. This is where you are now, and I thank you for reading this and I hope you stick around.