[W.I.P] - Tzolk'in: The Mayan Calendar - Cog Project

[Jynks]

I used to pain as a kid, but haven't done so for a LONG time.. I tried to revive the habbit about 5 years ago, and got some new paints and stuff but I couldn't find the time.. Still I have been holding off assembling my Tzolk'in for years now so.. I think it is about time to try!

Tzolk'in if you do not know is a boardgame, I'm mainly a boardgame player, most high quality boardgames have miniatures now that would put GW to shame.

and so it begins.. no turning back now!



Ok... just going to drink my coffee and get into this!
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my plan is pretty strait forward... just going to paint the main cog following the lines, but I want to do the outer cogs in the board colours for their sections... this means the centre cog needs to be a different colour, I'm going with black / dark grey.

I'm a little worried about how to dry brush such huge areas, so if any one has any tips please let me know.

I got the canvas from Bunnings, it is canvas with a plastic under sheet attached.. it is "supposed" top be able to have a bucket of house paint just poured on it and not let anything through so I hope my table will be ok!!

You can see all my old school gear.. the white tile as mixer pad, eye dropper, gen 1 GW Paints lol.. probably all dried up and worthless! Also I picked up form ebay this magnifier light... I'm not exactly as young as i used to be! Finally I got some larger brushed than I used to have on the minis.

• Here is a Google Image Search of what other do when they know what they are3 doing!

Now the large centre cog has all the detail...



but it looks like it could be a good beginner project as while it is large, it is really just tracing the patterns on the cog...

 

[Jynks]

Quick dry brush to pop the detail and make it easier for me to see.



All my brushes are sorta broken and look like a snakes tongue. hard to paint in the lines, I either have to use a very fine brush and have it take forever or a correct size brush, but the forked tongue makes it hard to not accidentally go outside the line!



I have decided to restart, this time I'm going to go out and buy some new brushes. There is not much done yet, just a quick re-spray with the base colour and then I'll repeat the dry bush and go form there.

 

[Jynks]

Ok.... so after respraying it and then going out to buy new brushes and general procrastination I finally did the initial steps again and a little of the actual detail.



I think I made a mistake using a black primer, all the colours are a little dull and muted. If I used a white base they would have popped more and then maybe a light black wash to bring the deeper detail back.

I could probably respray it, but I am not going to. I think I will just move along. I can get a nice colouring by doing a few coats, just means there is more room for brush errors!

Anyway, I feel like this is possible. Now I have don the first animal I am confident that the thing will not be a disaster.

You will find new brushes a godsend after using those ones. =D

OMG so much better!!

 

[Jynks]

Ok... so I managed to get a little work on this in the morning and decided that the detail is just to full on for me. I'll be at this for a year at this rate!!

So I am going to start looking at "block colour" sections I have have done in blue here. This is not final yet, I'll deep wash and highlight it still so the detail should nice... but it should save hours of work.

I'm particularly happy with the bear and one of the snake heads... the other "inside" patterns look like a mess to me, I can not really work out a shape in it.. so I am going to google and see what other people have done.



So far I think it is coming along well. I have been having to do a lot of "touch up" as I paint "outside the lines" a lot... Also there are a number of points that I have painted white, in prep for GOLD to be put onto it.

Also, the paint gets really streaky, so I found if I mixed a little water into it, it painted on a lot smoother, but also with less control. So I am mixing the two together.. raw paint fort super fine stuff, and a little water for larger flat surfaces.

 

[KruleBear]

Welcome back to the hobby. This is a pretty cool project to get back into the swing.

Some brush soap might bring a couple of thise brushes back to a usable state.

 

[Jynks]

So the going has been slow.. I meant to do a large session this weekend but didn't get around to it... now the regular game day on Thursday has been moved to Wednesday so I need to clean the table up early as I was panning a Wednesday painting day! Still I did manage to nearly complete the next ring.

This ring was exceedingly hard to do and frustrating. I think they are actually the smallest detail objects on the wheel, and I probably should have done them as a silver or gold "section" rather than try to colour them. The paint is all thick as I had to re-black them a bunch of times and in truth I am not that happy with it. Even so they do not look "to bad".

I'm defiantly going to start using the "all colour" idea for the next ring but also all the stuff gets larger from now on apart form a few small sections.



About the "not getting to it". I was making fun of a mate of mine because he plays computer games all the time. I actually play now and then Paradox Strategy games like Europa Universalis and Stellaris and was being all snobby to him 9in a joking fun way) as he plays literally all the time these, what I consider to be silly action kind of games.

Anyway, he bet me that I would really love one of those "stupid kids games" and dared me to play a game called "Mass Effect". It is a scifi adventure game thing and I have to say I got pretty wrapped up in it lol and it sucked all the time I I planned to use for the wheel this weekend! haha.

I totally lost the best : )