Terrain: Basalt Columns

One of the most strange rock formations are the Basalt Columns, which are rapidly cooled rock during a volcanic eruption and they get a characteristic hexagonal (usually) form. The most famous is the Giant's Causeway in Ireland and more information can be found HERE, as long with other PLACES where they exist. They can have many colours but I chose to do them in the classic rock grey and dark tones, as they fit better with my SM Chapter homeworld. Let's start, shall we?

We will need some common wooden pencils, nothing expensive. In this terrain piece I used 6 pencils. Ofcourse we will need our usual base, a CD/DVD (preferrably one that is not working anymore). We cut the pencils in different lengths, as we see fit. We do not throw away the wood chips.

Using our hot-glue gun we place the columns. Photos can be used as reference, but usually they follow a rough staircase-formation. We do not care much if they do not interlock properly or if there is excess glue on their base.

With PVA-Wood glue we cover the rest of the base and we pour our left-over trimmings. Hey, free basing material! Plus the smell of the pencils always had a homey feeling for me...

Time to prime the piece! I chose black, as I went for a dark tone but you can use also white, grey or other colours, depending on what you want to achieve.

After we paint the columns and dry-brush the rest. I chose Citadel Dawnstone for this part. If you want to give some texture, you can use a fast brush with Citadel Astrogranite, as I did too.

Remember that ugly glue on the base? Time to cover it up. Again, you can use whatever flock or basing you want, but I wanted a more desolate look and I used rocks. To glue them I used super-glue in gel type and I tapped them with a wooden stick to stick them better. It may need a 2nd round of glue and tapping, depending on the density and the acceptance of the rocks to stick in place.

Now, I did not had grey-hued rocks but I solved it with some Citadel Nuln Oil. Only 2 passes were enough, but again you can adjust to your liking. I also expaned the wash between the columns to give a more natural look. You can use other washes if you want another look or have a different pallette.


Well, there it is. A simple and cost-effective terrain piece. I hope you will enjoy it in your moon or desolate terrain mats. 

Saturday night work

Late Saturday night and I am working in the figures from Deathwatch Overkill. Removing mould lines is not the best sport, but has to be done... Also redying the heads for painting, they look like I prepare them for Khorne!

Cannot have the Iron Hand without a proper helmet, can we?

The helmet is from the Space Marines Tactical Squad, carefully carved hollow.

A better pic, the blue tac is just to hold it in place.

And these are the half of the heads!

An article about plagiarism (harsh language following)

Plagiarism is one of the most serious accusation someone can get. And it is also bad for your profession and bussiness in general, a characterisation that it is very difficult to get off your back when you get it. It can be found in alsmost any profession, from academic papers down to humble artists. It is also an indicator that the creator (of such articles) is someone with limited or no skill and creativity.

The following article is about a guy that does just that. Harsh language follows, especially since the writer is one of the people that loses income because of that.

Buzz Sends Tim Lundmark Packing At Wizard World Minneapolis Comic Con

Tim Lundmark is an artist who goes by the name of The Random Artist. And appears at comic shows, basically, selling work ripped off from other artists as if it were his own.

He’s certainly not alone in that. That might well be the problem, shows seem to have more and more such individuals. And for some, enough is enough.

Aldrin Aw, better known as Buzz, is a comics artist who has worked on Justice League, JSA, Vampirella, Shi, X-Factor and more.

And on Friday, at Wizard World Minneapolis, he lost it.

After a full morning of dealing with sea of print vendors disguised as artists hocking cheap sh-tty prints made from downloaded images, My friend Troy Dontee brought me over to this motherf-cker’s table to check out the artwork he has on display. Every single piece of art was printouts of other artist’s work,He had work from every artist imaginable from Neal Adams, Andy Brase, Bisley , Deodato Jr. Greg Horn, Adi Granov, Romita Jr. to Simone Bianchi.

I went off on the motherfucker with a long string of shaming words and obscenities, and all he can say was it’s fan art.

It took every ounce of strength from me not to twist his f-cking head off.

There is still tomorrow…it may still happen.

And on top of everything, this cockslurper is printing the art on bags,placemats,and all kinds of merchandise.

There were plenty of comments but one from Gary Guzzo was particularly qualified and added history.

When I was heading Publicity at Marvel, one of my jobs was to keep the use of our material in our hands. Between the costumed characters in Times Square, and the blatant rip offs of copyrighted material, the publishers seem to not care, anymore. I guess they figure the money they lose is negligible, but they forget about things like actual comic creators who need the income of doing sketches for fans. In THIS case, aside from kicking this guys ass (which I would love to be in on…), it is time to talk to Convention organizers and get these f-ckers OUT of Artists Alley!!! I comes as no surprise that Wizard would ignore copyrights….they did it all the time when we were at Marvel, but we sued the crap out of them, which is why myself and Sven Patrick Larsen have been blacklisted by Wizard ever since.

So what did happen the next day? We had an update from Buzz…

Update on the thieving assh-le, ripoff artist from yesterday.
so the guy and his wife were going around harassing people who witnessed my verbal spanking to not spread “gossip ” about what happened.
Then I had a run in with them.
The conversation was as followed.

The wife: You should stop spreading this bullsh-t and you don’t know what you’re talking about.

Me: go fuck yourself.

The wife: well, we’re leaving because of you.

Me: Good, good fucking riddance.

Update.
The f-cker has taken down his FB page too.

There were other details from Buzz to share.

This is ripped off from a painting Neal did for his office. Fucker took the image from Neal’s site, printed it and selling as his art.
So, that was a baaaaaad move. Neal is here as a special guest one aisle away.

So be warend, if you are a Tim Lundmark or a Rob Granito exhibiting at a show… Buzz is coming for you!

Tim has removed his Facebook page and made his Tumblr page private.

SOURCE

Some terrain

I am entering my uni exam period and the progress will be very slow, if not halted. For the time being here is some terrain I did the other day.

Ancient Greek Temple ruins. I used wooden rod (the motif is from the factory) and for their bases two 25mm bases from my bits box. Rock slabs are from 1mm cork.

The test base for my Space Marines army. These are real quartz crystals. They are cheap and heavy, so I can add the figures without much fuss over their weight centre. The obsidian rocks are made by melting styrofoam (blue) and painting them black and finishing them with gloss varnish. The soil is made by the Vallejo Lava texture paint.