As you may recall, I promised that I was going to start on a bust this week and well, I did try but it did not go well. I’ll talk more about that in a bit but we’ll start with something more positive. After spending 3-4 days on the bust, I was struggling to think of something that I could paint and get finished by the weekend so that I could still provide you with the usual weekly update. Its funny how motivating that weekend deadline can be.
Luckily, I did have something that would be fairly easy to paint and has been sitting on my desk for too long now waiting for its turn. The Johann priority marker is the last thing I need to be able to use him in-game so it was great to finally knock this out. After I painted the normal mini, I was kind of excited to see if I could improve on the bust and truthfully, I’m not sure I really did. Johann is just a tough mini to paint and I’m lucky in some ways it looks as good as it does. There’s almost too much room to work with on the bigger version and I couldn’t find any ways to improve the paint job. That isn’t to say I’m disappointed in how it looks, many parts look nice, its just that it didn’t quite go the way I thought it would.
Here’s a look at all of the Johann pieces together. There’s the normal mini you use in the game on the left, the priority tracker bust, a special marker to show where Johann leaves his empty suit behind to become a ghost, and then a miniature to represent his spiritual form. The last two were a special upgrade kit that is not easy to get your hands on so I’m very glad to have them in the collection.
Unless I’m mistaken, that’s the last major Hellboy investigator I had left to finish. There are other investigators who are more or less no-name humans still to be painted but they are just a single miniature and they are less powerful overall so not quite as exciting. I did realize when I looked back at how I painted some of the earlier investigators, you can see how much better I am at these minis now. It surprised me how much I was able to improve.
Take for example the buttons on Abe which do not look nearly as good as the ones on Johann. Its subtle stuff but it all adds up over time.
So that brings us to the bust. I worked on it for a good amount of time and I’m not happy with how it looks and I wasn’t enjoying painting it at all. As I’ve said before, I believe that owning your mistakes is important and so I’m not embarrassed to show what it looks like. Its not that it looks terrible (though I wouldn’t say it looks great either), its more than it wasn’t fun at all to even get it in this state and I was demoralized thinking about trying to paint the rest of this thing. I’m going to set it aside for now but its hard to say if I’ll ever come back to it. There just wasn’t much joy to be found working on this one, unfortunately.
Getting the blends smooth on this was a nightmare and painting cloth with round folds in it like this can be an absolute nightmare. I’ve said it before and this miniature is proof of that fact, its really hard to paint that surface/shape well. I learned that with old metal LOTR minis and nothing has changed my mind since then. It takes enormous patience and mine just wasn’t there on this project.
That got me thinking, I’ve tried to paint four busts now and only one of those was successfully completed. I’ve tried to paint three different 75mm miniatures and only one of those was successfully completed. That is not a good success ratio and it means I’ve spent time on things that ended up going nowhere which is obviously never good and in fact, its quite sobering. I’ve been thinking about why I’m struggling with these larger “canvasses” and I think I’ve unwittingly been too ambitious for my own good. Part of that is because a bust and large scale miniature offers more room to go from light to dark with your paint colors so I feel a bit more pressure to really go for it on these models. Another part of it is that these miniatures are in many ways more wide open and you can go in any direction you want while painting them.
To illustrate what I mean, take this Space Marine photo I dug up from the archives. This guy is an Ultramarine and we can tell this because Ultramarines are blue in Games Workshop canon. Of course, there are a lot of different shades of blue you can choose to paint a miniature, though some like neon blue, are not great choices for this one because they won’t match the style of Ultramarines that everyone is used to seeing (there’s also about a million variations of space marines so neon blue probably looks like some other chapter too!). The point I’m making is that if I decide that I’m going to paint an Ultramarine, I know what shades of blue I can work with to pull off that paint job and that makes my job as a painter, inherently easier. Its much less of a blank canvas that can be anything I want it to be. That doesn’t mean that this style of painting is easier, its harder to paint stuff in a way that stands out but I am pretty used to that.
I think at this point, it is very possible, if not likely, that I do better with this style of painting than I do with a completely blank canvas. The best miniature I’ve ever painted remains the Stormcast Eternal pictured below and its in this scale and style of painting. I think I do have more experience painting in this style and scale of miniature as well. I wouldn’t dare guess how many miniatures I’ve painted at this point in my life but its got to be at least 300, if not close to 500 and only a couple of those are larger scale. So all this is to say, perhaps I’m better at painting gaming scales at this point in my life. I’ve certainly got way more experience in that scale and maybe its time to play to my strengths a bit more and go back to it.
That isn’t to say it was a mistake to paint larger scales either. I learned a lot in the process and I think that is actually what’s made me a better smaller scale painter here lately. Large scale minis are all about texture. You want cloth, armor, hair, and skin to all look like they should. With that extra space its possible to do that. Its harder with small miniatures to accomplish this task but the best painters can do it and I think I’m getting better at it, so I think I’ll go back to the smaller scales for future display projects and we’ll see how I get on. I had very valid reasons for dipping into larger scales like how they look on display and I’m sure I’ll talk more about that in the nearish future. For now, I need to figure out what kind of projects would be fun to work on. There’s so much Warhammer out there these days, it takes a while to figure out what to focus on and what tickles your fancy the most.
There’s other interesting hobby things going on at the moment but I think I’ll save that for next week as this post is long enough. What I’m working on next will be a bit of a surprise to both you and me. There’s a couple of different routes I can go down so we’ll have to see where I end up but neither one is one of the usual suspects (i.e. Hellboy or Fallout).
Kuribo's Painting 
The bust you completed looks excellent Jeff, and there is nothing wrong with your work on Abe either, but as you say it’s a learning process.
The display bust has some great progress on it, but if you are not enjoying it, probably best to leave it alone for now, and pick it back up, when the muse descends, or seeing something else inspire you. I actually enjoy blank canvases, it allows a lot more freedom of expression ( probably why most of my GW armies don’t follow GW color schemes ! LOL), but it can be daunting at the same time. Playing to your strengths for a while, is a good idea, and hopefully will inspire you further.
Look forward to seeing what you are working on next.
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Thank you, Dave and many parts of Abe are well done. The skin and badge, for example. Its just easy to spot where I might have done things differently now that time has passed.
I completely agree with you on setting the bust aside. I was very surprised how quickly it sapped my motivation. You do a great job of being creative with your color schemes and I tend to mix things up a little bit from what GW does myself. Painting by numbers can be a bit boring, after all.
The reality is that I’m still trying to figure out what my exact path is in the hobby and various experiences shape what I’m interested in and what I think I’m best at too. I’m sure I’ll get there eventually with time and further experimentation.
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Really like the Johan marker Jeff, looks excellent. The reflections on the helmet(??) look fantastic.
Interesting to read your thoughts on the larger scale figures, I have to assume to some extent they’re a different skill set than 28-32mm. The only larger models I’ve done have been vehicles which are completely different to normal figures so no help there. I have a few inquisitor models I’ve been putting off painting for many many years and they’re 54mm so much less daunting than 75mm. At the end of the day, you have to enjoy what you’re doing, and if the larger scale stuff isn’t doing it for you then pivoting back to smaller scales makes a lot of sense.
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Thanks, Nic! Johann’s “helmet” is kind of like an upside down fish bowl but with ghost inside of it, so very tricky to paint! This was the best I could come up with and so I’m glad to hear you like it.
I meant to talk a bit about what the differences between the two are and forgot. Not that the article needed to be any longer! 54mm isn’t too different than 32mm, in my experience. 75mm has some slight differences compared to 32mm but it isn’t too bad and you’d hardly be lost with that scale. Busts are definitely a bit different and things like the eyes and hair require some different painting processes. Its not hard to learn but it helps reference some guides before you get started.
The biggest surprise for me is that GW has made it easy to paint their miniatures. Get a painting handle, slap the miniature on a base and you’re good to go. I don’t love attaching busts to a display base and then holding that instead of a paint handle. They’re not as comfortable and you have to be careful that you don’t “damage” the display base too. It is more awkward and different than I expected it to be and that’s one of the biggest things I missed about painting Warhammer. I know there are some people who use specially handles for busts but I never looked into getting one and probably should have honestly. It might have solved this problem for me.
I think your last sentence is what’s guiding me. I don’t like trying and failing at things (who does!?) and if I’m more successful at starting projects at smaller scales and completing them then ultimately, that’s probably where I’ll land. The nice thing about our hobby is there are no shortage of things to paint and many different tastes are catered to as well!
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I agree that if the bust wasn’t working for you then put it aside. But I confess that we have very different approaches to painting. I paint as a necessary chore in a workmanship manner: and even when the painting becomes a grind I know that if I keep at it, it’ll eventually result in an adequately painted miniature for the table top. I don’t know what it’s like to paint and try to improve the skills like you do. I’m not saying that one way is better than the other: the hobby has a big roof. But I am saying that if the entire project seems frustrating then it’s fine to ditch it and do something you enjoy. 😀
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You are wise and full of hobby wisdom, Stew! You have the advantage that each Quar takes probably 2-4 hours to paint, I’d guess, so there is an end that is easy to keep in sight. For a bust like this. I spent 6-8 hours on just what I painted in the picture and I don’t like how it looks, nor did I have fun working on it which sapped my motivation. I wouldn’t dare guess how long the bust would take overall but I think it might be literally impossible for someone to power through 150-200 hours of work that they weren’t enjoying. All this is to say, I completely agree and I’ll even go so far as to say that I’d be surprised if I manage to pick this project up again.
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The helmet on Johann is quite impressive, and as you said, nice improvement on the buttons.
I hadn’t really thought about how you hold a larger bust to paint it, that would be a challenge. A quick search really didn’t find anything helpful either.
My projects tend to not get completed due to my shiny object syndrome vs frustration at progress. 😂
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Thank you! The things I’ve seen are round shaped a rod that you can stick a bust on top of. So they’re more comfortable to hold than something square but also you don’t have to worry about spilling paint on it as well. I can’t figure out how you would easily take the bust on and off something like this. That is why I just mounted them on the display base at the beginning and tried to protect the base from getting any paint on it.
We all suffer from that problem, truthfully. You just have to hope that whatever you’re working on is fun enough that it holds your attention 🙂
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Whether you like it or not, I’m really impressed with that bust of Kraus. The implied shininess of his hat/mask is just really nice.
It’s a shame that you aren’t inspired by the current bust but I always figure that this is a hobby so if it’s not bringing you joy (or at least achieving some meaningful objective for you) then you might as well move on and do something fun. The world is full of stuff that is a chore, there isn’t any point in making your hobby a chore too!
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I don’t dislike the bust, though I thought I might be able to do even better than I did on the regular miniature but it was not to be. I’m glad that so many of you like it too. Johann is not an easy one to paint.
If nothing else, I’ve been doing a lot of reflecting on what I’ve enjoyed working on in the past and what hasn’t been working so well and that is positive if nothing else. Its like being the Manager of Team ArgentBadger in MCP. I enjoy doing it, it keeps me young, so I keep at it 😉
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Your management has been the key to success for both of us 😉
Good luck on the journey of winnowing down the stuff you do to just the stuff you actually enjoy.
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Maybe its keeping us both young after all, mate haha! And thanks!
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The mini-bust of Johann looks really good. I don’t have anything negative to say about it. Thanks to your posts, I went looking for my Hellboy stuff, but one of the boxes (Big Box of Evil, I think it was) is missing and neither myself nor “the bloodhound” could find it. Which kinda killed my enthusiasm for Hellboy.
Your bust’s sleeve looks good to me, but given you weren’t enjoying it and don’t need it for anything, I can agree with putitng it to one side. I’m struggling to get through a load of zombies and not enoying those, but they’re a big chunk of models for the next expansion of a game we actively play, so it’s got “project” and “use” to make me force my way through.
Perhaps the bust has a future down the road as a practice model for smooth blends with an airbrush, then get the whole bust done to “good enough” and then give it away as a gift to someone who will be happy with it? Don’t forget that a big part of improvement in a skill is simply getting the reps in!
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Thanks, mate. It isn’t my best work but its certainly good enough considering the sculpt and purpose. I’m sorry to hear about the missing Big Box of Evil as well. I just looked it up on BGG and that contains two expansions and some Kickstarter exclusives. If you’re looking to get started on Hellboy, its no sweat that you’re missing that one for now. The base game is the place to get going. If you’ve got the Kickstarter version of the base game, that’s a big box full of minis as well. I’ve got roughly half of the contents painted up in mine after several years of off and on work. I was starting to prep some models last week and I remembered how bad the mold lines can be on Hellboy stuff. That has temporarily sapped my motivation myself.
Sorry to hear about the zombie rut! I lose motivation on gaming pieces if there isn’t enough variety but I lose motivation on a display piece if I don’t like the results I’m getting. Its funny how different kinds of painting can satisfy different things and present different challenges.
I’ve still got the bust in my closet and so hopefully motivation will strike and I’ll pick her back up. I still want to paint a display miniature in white so I’m sure that goal will resurface one of these days!
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