All posts filed under: Articles

Painting Harvey Walters of Mansions of Madness

Published by Joe B

What is an old man doing running around a creepy old mansion? Don’t underestimate the Prof! This week brings a tutorial on painting Harvey Walters, an investigator in the Mansions of Madness game. Harvey’s use in the game is to solve puzzles and has a relatively high sanity – ideal for when the monsters start to show up. He offsets his frailty with a magic staff that allows him to reduce any damage down to one, yup even a Shaggoth can’t swallow the old man whole. Painting wise, I wanted to give Professor Walters a classic suite, but with a hit of color. A white shirt, royal purple vest, and a black jacket it is. And to set off the vest, a bright yellow hanky. Color List As with the rest of the set, I’ve stuck to mostly the Vallejo range as I like their dropper bottles. All the Model Colors used are from the Painting Skin Set. Skintones: Model Color Light Brown Model Color Medium Fleshtone Model Color Basic Skintone Model Color Light Flesh …

How-To: Adding LEDs to 40k Tanks

Published by Andrew Dart

When I go into my local Games Workshop store, people can’t stop talking about my models. Why? It’s because they light up! And I want to show you how easy adding LEDs to your 40k tanks, vehicles, and terrain can be. Guest post from Andrew Dart, originally posted on his blog, which he is phasing out. Instead, find him on Instagram as @hobbyvices. This post is helpful for me because I’ve been trying to add LED lighting to my Knight Titan and Stompa as I build them. Shine on! My land raider was the first time I’ve ever used LED wiring components in my entire life, and it was ridiculously easy. Â Much easier than I anticipated. Â I’ve repeated the process on a Rhino transport for my Berserkers to do a step-by-step for anyone curious or scared at the idea of dealing with LEDs. Ordering the Supplies All materials for wiring and lighting came from Evans Design. Â I find them to be the best quality, and alarmingly straightforward – they come pre-wired! Make sure you match …

Site Updates and Why it is Important to do

Published by Joe B

If you visited Broken Paintbrush over the last week, you might have noticed a bunch of server errors, dead robots, or broken pictures. The reason is simple: I have been attempting to upgrade my blog services with site updates. For many of you this article will be a bit more boring as you may not care about server performance and what not, but I’ve always tried to be as transparent as possible with Broken Paintbrush and my hobby blogging journey. So below I’m going to share what I changed, why, and what’s still on my to-do list. Perhaps this is a bit of a self-reflection post, but I hope that you might also glean something off for your blog. At least give you something to think about as you grow. The Background Ten months ago I had declared I was making some changes to Broken Paintbrush. In summary: I was focusing on your experience on my site, adding more tutorials, and improving the articles provided to you. While I have been working on the articles …

Oldhammer â€“ What it is and how to get involved

Published by Sean Squires

If you’ve been in the hobby for awhile you know what Warhammer is and probably have an opinion on the company that designs and markets the miniatures and the current state of the game. You may have heard of Oldhammer or seen various references to it on the net, but what exactly is it? This is one person’s opinion, so take it for what it’s worth. I want to welcome another new author on Broken Paintbrush, SeanÂ Squires from Sean’s Wargamer Corner. While blogging since 2011, his main focus lately is on Oldhammer and igniting the passion in other hobbyists. This is Oldhammer! At its core, Oldhammer is a nostalgia for the days when many of its adherents got started in the hobby. We saved our money to buy miniatures, drooled over the battle reports and Eavy Metal painting team’s work. We even occasionally threw dice with reckless abandon and trash talked with our friends while having a great time. There are almost as many interpretations of Oldhammer as there are Oldhammerers, and while there are …

Painting guide for the Mi-Go from Mansions of Madness

Painting the Mi-gos from Mansions of Madness

Published by Joe B

Back to another monster from Mansions of Madness. This week I have the Mi-Go models – odd looking fly/bat/mosquito creatures that like to eat brains. I went for an other-worldly look with pink and purple skin and blue carapace, and of course, blood. I used two main techniques on the Mi-Go: drybrush and wash. This allowed them to be done relatively quickly while still pulling out the details. Step 1: Base Colors After a white primer, I painted all the base colors to get a sense of where each would go. This has been particularly hard for the Mi-GoÂ as they were going to be pinks and blues – which can get a bit garish if not balanced well. Step 2: Dry Brush Electric Blue The first layer was doing the carapace. I chose to do dry brush from this model for two reasons: it would be quick, and it has lots of textures that work well with dry brushing. So grabbing my small dry brush, I applied a layer of Electric Blue over all the …

Painting Tutorial for Mansions of Madness Cultists

Cultists – Painting Mansions of Madness

Published by Joe B

Ready for another Mansions of Madness painting tutorial? This week I have the Cultists adorned in their fancy robes. While these guys are nearly worthless by themselves in the game, they have a habit of sacrificing each other to turn into monsters – which is awesome! Painting the Cultists When I started painting the cultists, I decided to mix them up a bit. While this messes with the game’s concept of each character having slightly different abilities, it does make them more interesting to look at. So I split the six cultistsÂ models and painted half of the robes black with red trim and half red with black. They were then also divided into three different skin tones: light, ‘yellow’ and dark. I started with painting all the base colors to block in each area. You might notice I wasn’t too concerned about getting a perfect coverage on the robes as I will later add additional layers and washes. This is an excellent example of how to speed up some of your painting. Since I am …

Guest Post on Broken Paintbrush

Published by Joe B

So I’ve got to a point I want to add guest writers on Broken Paintbrush. In part, this is because I realize that I can’t keep up with everything else going on in my life, but I want to turn this site into something special for all my readers. Why Guest Post? So why would you want to guest post here? I put some common reasons to guest post below, so if you are wondering why you wouldÂ even bother to write on somebody else’s blog (like mine), check them out and perhaps I can convince you to give it a try. 1. You don’t have a blog of your own For those who don’t have your own blog, guest posting is the easiest way to try it out. You can skip trying to build a site and audience and just write something cool. 2. Want to reach a bigger audience For new bloggers, it can be hard to get noticed, even with the great communities we have in our hobby. One way to do this …

Painting Dark Skin Tutorial

Published by Joe B

So as I’ve been painting the Mansions of Madness set lately, I’ve decided to add some diversity to the set. About a third of the humans were painted to look African American (the others were light skin and yellow-brown skin tones). In doing so, I decided to put together a painting dark skin tutorial. I also have a light skin version availible as well. When I started, I looked for some other tutorials and found an interesting one on the CoolMiniOrNot forums where Chrispy looked at different ethnic groups and created a color paletteÂ for each. The Thing to notice about the color pallet is there is noÂ black in the skin, and it even gets up to a relatively pale color for the highlights. Even the pallet for the dark skinned Africans in his example are at mostÂ Black Brown color and still highlight up to the same pink/brown color. Alternatively, I found an article on Perry Miniatures where he painted up aÂ Sudanese warrior. Instead of going the light brown routes, he highlighted with additionsÂ Fortress Grey until …

Painting Guide for the Witches from Mansions of Madness

Painting Witches – Mansions of Madness [May be NSFW]

Published by Joe B

Not all of the enemies in Mansions of Madness are monsters or direct combat combatants. The Witches are more of a horror causing distraction (as hinted at by their, um, clothing choices). I’ve put together a guide to painting witches. As these have lots of exposed flesh, I focussed on painting the flesh tones. One witch was painted in a dark brown skin and a second in a pale skin. To keep the rest simple, both were painted with the same color robe and hair. Step 1: Base Colors As with most of my painting, the first step was to base in all the major colors. I started with the skin tones as they are the ‘lowest’ sections of the model and take up most of the area. The dark skin was based with Mahogany and the light skin with Medium Fleshtone. The purple ‘clothes’ (as much as there is) were based on Royal Purple. And finally, the hair was based in Stonewall Gray to give them a bit of eeriness. Colors Dark Skin: Model …

Painting Kate Winthrop – Mansions of Madness Investigator

Published by Joe B

I’m back with another Mansions of Madness painting tutorial, this week with Kate Winthrop. Kate is a supporting investigator, the scientist who makes uncovering clues and solving puzzles much faster for the investigator team. As I’ve been exploring different skin tone options as well as wanting a diversified investigator team, I decided to paint Kate with a dark skin tone. I also explore some of the shaded basecoat techniqueÂ where you paint a few layers of highlights before washing it back down. Step 1 – Base Coats So the model was prepped by removing the grotesque number of mold lines and attempted to fill in a few seems. She was then primed with white primer spray and let dry. The main color sections were blocked out. This allows me to get a sense of how she will look in the end and rebalance colors if needed. The skin started with the dark Mahagony brown, the dress a nice deep purple, and of course the lab coat with an off-white base. Colors Skin: Model Color Mahagony Brown …

Painting the Maniacs from Mansions of Madness

Published by Joe B

Another painting tutorial for the Mansions of Madness game. This week I have the Maniacs, crazy ax welding office workers who want nothing better than cut you down a few pegs. Before we start, yes these are rough sculpts and I did miss a few mold lines. But, I hope that this painting guide will help with any of your projects. Each set of models I am trying out a few different techniques, both to push my own bounds but also to provide a variation in the painting guides. For the Maniacs, I wanted to see what could be the minimum I do and still have them look good enough for the game. With that said, the main paint is as simple as a solid base coat, dry brush each section and a full-body wash of dark brown. The rest of the model was covered in an obscene amount of blood spatter so it made up for any mistakes along the way as well. Maniacs Base Coat Both maniacs got a solid base coat over …

Orruk Megaboss Unboxing

Published by Joe B

I am probably not alone in wanting the new Orruks when the leaks spread a month back. I mean, they are huge, they look mean as nails, and (to me at least) are the coolest kits released for Age of Sigmar. With that said, I pre-ordered only the Orruk Megaboss (for now!) with the goal of turning him into my 40k Ork Warboss. But as I’m starting to play with video posts, I figured an unboxing video was needed for this beast of a kit. I took the advice from my first video and made this one shorter and improved the audio. The OrrukÂ Megaboss is a Beast! So the big thing to note on this guy is that he is huge! He fills in a 60mm base and wears it well. Height wise, he is a head taller than the Assault on Black Reach Warboss and easily twice as thick. As I’ll mention in the assembly section,Â he’s able to achieve this bulk by being hollow. This allows the model to bulk out without being a …