Legalized Mischief Productions: S'erum from Rackham Confrontation

What a fantastic miniature to work with! This project started from the bottom up, literally. I bought Painting Buddha's 'Basing Alchemy - Earth' DVD because I wanted to start doing more of these kind of projects in between commissions. I haven't done scenic bases before, so it was a huge learning experience. There are, of course, many things I can improve on for the next base; but as it is I'm very happy with it. After I built and painted the base, I needed a miniature for it! Digging through my boxes of shame I came upon S'erum from Rackham's Confrontation line of miniatures. I'm proud to say that I have many of their miniatures waiting for my brush, some of which are already prepped and ready to go!

I really wanted to experiment with new techniques and materials. I keep trying to push my understanding of color theory and contrast, but each time I feel like I come up short. I look at it and think it needs more contrast, more definition, etc. etc. Such is our pursuit. I also have to point out that I painted S'erum over maybe 10-20 hours. I don't have the will or the patience to spend hundreds of hours on a single mini; so I'm very happy with the results for the time I spent painting.

One of the new materials I used is an artists' acrylic from Golden. I used Titanium White for Ben Komet's "Loaded Brush Blending" technique. It's life changing. Really. I tried using Vallejo/GW/Scale75 white for the technique but it never worked. They're all too thin! The travel up the belly of the brush! The artists' acrylic is very very thick, and thus sits on the tip of the brush and acts as a barrier for the rest of the paint!!! I nearly fell out of my chair. I won't use it when just painting armies and such, of course, as it's incredibly delicate and time consuming, but I can't wait to practice more on future one-off projects such as S'erum.

Also, the new Scale75 Metal 'N Alchemy - Copper series of paints is beyond amazing. I wish I had done more with the howdah, but that's life. The gun, however, turned out better than I could have imagined. It looks exactly like the polished copper you find with cookware and jewelry. I have another fun project on deck that will make great use of the copper, so that's exciting!

These one off projects really help to cleanse the palette (forgive the pun) after doing a bunch of commission work. When I have a longer break I'll start painting my own armies: Skitarii/AdMech/Knights for 40k (about 4,000 points worth), and soon a return to 30k with Word Bearers accompanied by a Daemonic Menagerie (which will be insanely fun to collect and paint).

On to the photos!