Weekly WIP: Stave of the Guild Ball Brewers
Guild Ball Brewers Stave by Steamforged Games.
Compared to Friday Stave is already looking like a more interesting miniature to paint at the flatting stage. There are nice big folds in his toga plus interesting muscles to have some fun with.
Guild Ball Brewers Stave by Steamforged Games.
In what will become a bit of a pattern I spent more time on the skin than I planned. At least the skin is a large part of the miniature and it looks decent. It isn’t my best quality and most of the extra time was due to having too much contrast in the shadows. I wanted Stave to look pale as his pseudo-Scottish heritage would indicate. I do plan to go back and add some reddish glazing to indicate his heavy drinking. There are also some cuts which will need attention.
Guild Ball Brewers Stave by Steamforged Games.
I spent an enjoyable evening painting the folds of Stave’s toga. It wasn’t quite the full attention I would spend on one of my Batman Miniature Game miniatures but it was much more than I intended for these Guild Ball figures. I will need to be more disciplined if I want to get these done quickly, although it’s hard to feel too bad about a pleasant evening spent painting.
Guild Ball Brewers Stave by SteamForged Games.
Compared to Friday I opened up the tartan pattern to let more of the shading and highlights of the cloth show through. It’s not technically a tartan pattern but the Brewer’s aren’t technically Scottish so I’m not fussing over technical accuracy. If I do ever want to paint a real tartan I’ll be sure to refer to this excellent tutorial on painting tartan.
Guild Ball Brewers Stave by Steamforged Games.
I realized after I had finished the tartan I hadn’t painted the wounds on poor old Stave. In Guild Ball Stave is considered a bit of a punching bag and source of momentum for the other team. Needing a 2+ on a D6 to hit and having no armour means that most enemy players can farm momentum off him at will. Although the other members of the team show similar injuries it feels extra appropriate on Stave.
I also painted the wooden barrel and shoulder pads. A heavily textured wood can be hard to highlight properly and could have used more time. This is the miniature as of Saturday evening and my goal of finishing him Monday is looking out of reach. If I can paint the white bandages on his legs and all the brown straps Sunday night that leaves the boots, metallics, mustache and airbrushing the beer froth Monday. Perhaps I should paint up Scum next for a quick win.
Paint Every Night
This week I realized that I was well into a painting groove when faced with the decision between trying to find an opponent to play Guild Ball with using Vassal or painting some Guild Ball miniatures. I’ve been dying to play another game but the idea of losing a night of painting bothered me.
Making painting a habit is the best way to improve painting speed. I have lots of tricks to paint faster, some of which I hope to write about soon, but the biggest difference in painting speed is between when I am painting and when I am not.
Playing Guild Ball
I managed to get a game in this week, which is a bit unusual for me. Instead of visiting my FLCS for their weekly Guild Ball night I attempted to introduce the game to a friend. Although not a mniniature wargamer I was hoping that the tight rules and ability to out play your opponent would appeal to his nature. I’m not sure how successful I was as I was really hoping to spark a strong enthusiasm for the game where he’d be asking me for the next game.
This week I tried something a little different by editorializing about speeding up painting. This is an effort to add a little conversation into the blog. I hope people like it, let me know in the comments.
I’m also curious about how useful my WIPs are. Since my images jump from fully completed section to fully completed section I wonder how instructive they are. Theoretically this contains as much how-to-paint information as seeing the original flatted model and the finished piece. Or is the value in following my progress as a form of entertainment? For example, I like watching Youtube videos of people playing video games as a proxy for when I wish I could but don’t have the time or opportunity. Again, let me know in the comments.
