Tinkerbell - Blacksmith Miniatures

Hi friends,

In november 2019 i finished another commission, sculpted by my friend Patrick Masson for Blacksmith Miniatures, the Tinkerbell. This piece helped me and forced me to touch the brushes again, great feelings.

This probably isnt my most technical piece, but it has been a challenge as the sculpture is so delicate. Patrick did such an amazing job on it! The bird is so smooth and so real, it's amazing what this guy can do with some Fimo. The cast has a lot of very small and fragile parts that are easy to break (i broke the wings of the fairy twice while painting) and require some experience and lots of delicacy, but painting something difficult is a good way to come back in the hobby i think.

For the colors choices and as a starting point, i looked for nice birds on the internet and decided to take inspiration from this wonderful Tree swallow :

So i started painting the bird with this picture as a guideline, but allowing me to take some liberties regarding the colors. Then, the rest of the piece almost painted itself! ;)

 

I envoyed a lot painting it and i hope you like it! If you have any questions about it, feel free to ask. Cheers!

Radwulf the Lone Wolf - Mproyec

Hey hey hey!

Time to give some life to this blog! 

You may have noticed, the painting motivation has been very low since quite a long time, and i kinda disappeard from the miniatures scene. I'm not sure exactly why, but certainly a mix of different factors that i still need to identify clearly. Maybe one day i'll write something about it when it's clearer in my head.

I've only painted a few commission pieces during the last years and i just realised that all my last personnal projects are at least 2 years old (see below). Time flies so fast when you have kids (always easy to blame the kids) !

Fact is, i'm actually fighting hard to get some motivation back. I wish to find a way to enjoy this hobby again, to simply have fun playing with colors without thinking too much. With this idea in my head, i tried to finish a little conversion of the Radwulf, sculpted by Raul Garcia Latorre, that i started more than a year ago...

So i tried to find the fun in the process, using different techniques without focusing to much on the smoothness or the purely technical aspects that often kill the painting fun. I also wanted to use true metallic paints, simply because i think that in hands, well painted true metallics will always look better than a NMM effect. I've always been disappointed with NMM effects in reality, but it surely looks cool on the pictures and it's really fashion actually. In the end, it's just a personnal preference, i dont want to offend my spanish friends :D

Finally and it's the most important, with this project i felt back some of the fun i've had in the past, i enjoyed tasting the colors again, filling my rusty wet palette with water, colors, and hearing the sweet compressor noise for some airbrushed finitions.

I wouldnt say my fight is over, but this is the kind of fun and personnal projects that, i hope, will wake the sleeping painter up.

Martin

PS: Maybe this will also wake my blog partner up!

Highlander bust

I finally found some time to post my last sculpture here. It was a 1/12e scale bust of a Jacobite highlander at the Battle of Culloden in 1746. Initially the face was just an exercise ... as the result suited me, I continued on a historical theme that reminded me of my recent journey in family in the beautiful scenery of Scotland ... nothing more. This is my second bust and I am happy with the progress made since the first ... more dynamic and thinner ... still a lot of work to progress but it advances despite the short time available to sculpt.

"Scottish Highlander 1746"

1/12e bust

Sculpted with Fimo putty

Cheers!

-Matthieu-

Lah-Saa - Lands of Arran Kickstarter

Quite a long time has passed without anything new on the blog. Both Matthieu and i are quite busy, between our families and our jobs. But, i somehow managed to finish another work, the third one for the Lands of Arran, Elves & Dwarves kickstarter.

This time it was a very big piece, the biggest i have ever painted in fact. I named Lah-Saa, the polar bear rider! I had to take some shortcuts to avoid spending 150 hours on it, but i'm happy with the final result.

This paintjob will be detailed in a step by step for the backers of the kickstarter. Hope you like it and i wish to see some other versions in the future ;) !

Martin