Lovely NEW Goods Have Arrived!!!

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Roxanne Evans-Stout is coming to town!

Oregon artist and instructor, Roxanne Evans Stout is coming to Portland to teach a 2-day mixed-media workshop at Archangelo Studio.  Roxanne's workshop "A Book of Windows: Collaging Your World" is scheduled for the weekend of March 7th and 8th.  

We are very excited to be collaborating with Archangelo Studio and Roxanne, they have also scheduled a special party for Roxanne's students on the evening of  Friday March 6th. Students will enjoy a cocktail reception at the studio followed by a "field trip" to collage.
Click HERE for more info.

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How To Make Terrain For Your Miniatures tutorial

As always I want to share this quick tutorial on how to
make nice terrain for your miniatures. The terrain ( hills ) I did here
was designed and painted to look and match the Warmahordes aesthetics.
The Hills was not designed to look realistic and the colors are brighter
than usual.



The finished pieces are posted HERE.



You will need corkboard ( optional ), styropor, wood glue or white glue, texture paint or glue and sand, and paints ( use acrylic paints as toxic lacquer paints will melt away styropor ).



The outline photos below will guide you on how to make a quick terrain piece for your minis.



1. I used a 1/4 inch thick cork board as my main material on top as it is more durable than the usual styropor. You could use the packaging type styropor but I have a hard time cutting it to have a really flat top surface. I cut the cork board and the 1/2 thick styropor to my desired shape and glued them together.

2. Notice the light colored dots on the cork board? I inserted some satay sticks to keep them in place while the wood glue was curing. I then applied texture paint all over the piece to hide the actual texture of the styropor. You could apply the texture paints around the styropor only and retain the nice consistent texture of the cork board ( I know I will next time ). I also glued some aquarium pebbles all over to give it an additional texture.

The photo below shows the cured texture paint ( overnight curing ). Vallejo texture paints usually cure to a hard rubbery to rocky finish. Great stuff to produce those irregular textures on the sides of this hill. Now your hills is ready for painting!

3. Zenithal Priming as usual! I primed the whole piece with Russian Green primer ( preferably black ) and shot Vallejo White Surface Primer directly 90 degrees on top. Now I have a nice base coat that will affect the transparent paints on top later.

4. Base Coat - I sprayed some nice loud colors before the washes. Washes will always darken your work. So painting lighter base colors than the actual colors is highly recommended. Unless you like really dark toned pieces.

5. Dry brushed the main colors of the aquarium pebbles and the highlights. The photo below shows the pieces with highlights. The pieces are now ready for the washes.

6. Last step was to do the washes and a Matt Varnish topcoat. I wanted to finish these pieces already, so I discovered something! Instead of doing washes, I loaded my Vallejo Inks into my airbrush and did some post shading! Damn it worked like the old Tamiya Smoke, only better!



Why better you ask? Better because I have so many Vallejo Inks and Washes in different colors! lol

I hope you find this post helpful. Thanks as always for dropping by! Until next post guys! Just enjoy the hobby! :)

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Warmachine Terrain - Hills by DC23

Just want to share a quick terrain I did for my Warmachine and Hordes miniatures. A ton of thanks to Kim Navarro ( local vetaran Warmahordes player ) for answering all my queries on the nuisance of hills in actual game play and the standard tournament measurements as well.



The tutorial on how I made this is HERE.



I tried to compliment the design aesthetics of Warmachine and Hordes with these hills. The rock formations are more edgy and cartoony unlike usual dioramas. The painting is also high contrast and the colors are brighter than usual. I feel the finish and the design fits the look of my Warmahordes or Warmahordes in general.



I usually play a scaled down version ( no focus or fury points ) of the game with my 8 year old son during weekends. We agreed +2DEF to the RAT of characters on top of the hills. I had fun shooting out his Khador Infantry with my Khador Widowmaker Marksman. I ended up with a dead Sorscha anyways. No hill could help my Sorscha at the end of the game.



Hope you like my simple hill terrain... will do a few linear obstacles and a couple of forests soon! Thanks as always for dropping by! Until next post guys! Just enjoy the hobby! :)

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DC23_mecharts hits 6K at Instagram!

 EDIT: renamed my Instagram to my real name as I do not exclusively do Mecha these days anymore. I mostly paint and do whatever I like. So my Instagram name is now...

@don_suratos

A TON of Thanks to all my followers at Instagram! Woke up with a little more than 6,000 followers today! Thank You so much! I hope the Instagram featured models and modelers are getting exposure as well.



I have to apologize for not following back though. As much as I want to see all your awesome works, I might have a hard time focusing on the stuffs I keep track on. I specially keep track of everything tagged as #DC23PPC as those are work in progress photos and final entry photos of our ongoing Pilot Painting Contest.



Rest assured I see all your works, I might even feature them if the photography is really nice. Joining our group page...

DC23mecharts FB Group Page

 and posting with good photos at Facebook will give you a chance of getting featured at my Instagram as well. I might also feature awesome works  if you tag your  Privateer Press miniatures ( WarmaHordes ) or Gunpla  with my hashtag...

#DC23mecharts

I will be posting a " Thank You " post at Instagram with a list of all the consistent people who uses my hashtag. Again, I cannot thank you enough guys! Thanks as always for dropping by! Just enjoy the hobby! :)

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Sen-Ti-Nel Yotsuba and ! Ma.K. Danboard Unboxing

I just want to share my new Sen-Ti-Nel  figure I got from GreatToysOnline.com. I am not a manga or anime person ( more of a Lord of The Rings guy ) but I like this figure so much! I am also going to get some Figma figures as I am really digging the Anime design and the quality of the figures.



This is a Ma.K. version of Danboard of Yotsuba and !. The box also has Duralumin, the cute little teddy bear figure. The box contains 3 awesome figures, a transparent stand, 4 thrusters, a set of hands and a Bazooka of sorts. The coolest part of the Danboard figure is that the head opens to show a very detailed cockpit! I can't put into words how much I love this figure, I am off to GreatToysOnline.com to order a few figures after this post!



Check out the awesome photos of this Sen-Ti-Nel  figure and see for yourself! Thanks as always for dropping by! Until next post! :)

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