How to do icy water

4 May 2019 No re.

I prepared this small vignette a few years ago as a present for couple of good friends, who left the old continent to spend half a year in USA. It represents George Washington’s crossing of the Delaware River during the American Revolutionary War or War of Independence (1776), and is inspired in an amazing painting by Emanuel Leutze (1851). Note that there are some inaccuracies that I replicated here, such as the flag. This would have been the right flag. Furthermore, the boats in this painting are a little bit too crowded, but Designs & Edits released a perhaps more…

Painting 15mm tanks: Steyr tank

22 January 2019 No re.

Once again, it has been a while since I posted last time something here. Since I moved to Helsinki, my painting time has been dramatically reduced to a few hours per week. And some weeks, zero. In spite of this setback, I continue working slowly on several projects such as a new Age of Sigmar army, which I am painting as part of a panting league in Modelbrush.com (a blog I run with my brother and couple of very good friends), or the  new 15mm range from Forged in Battle featuring the Dark Age. In fact, I have been more…

My Ph.D., Replication stress and Damage Tolerance in Mammalian mitochondria

29 September 2018 No re.

During ten years I have shared everything I know about painting and modelling in this blog. Today, I would like to share something else: what I know about mitochondrial DNA. Painting and modelling are two of my major hobbies. But another one is science. In the last four years I have developed a research project in the field of molecular biology, addressing how animal mitochondria produce new copies of mitochondrial DNA (see below). Yesterday, I had my doctoral dissertation or Ph.D defence. 

Working with the terrain III

14 April 2018 No re.

Yes, yes. I am still alive. At least, at the moment. I am in the last step of my PhD, writing the thesis, and these weeks / months are being crazy.  Hopefully everything will be done soon, and then I could continue painting every now and then while continuing working with mitochondria. However, my brushes did not stall completely these days. I have the need to scape a little bit from the reality of the world and I find in this hobby a great valve of scape. Therefore, I bring here a new post addressing how to prepare scenery bases.…

Warhammer 40.000 tanks I

2 August 2017 9 Re.

Today I wanted to share with you a painting guide for a Warhammer 40k tank, a Leman Russ for my Genestealer Cult. Ten years ago I gathered around twelve Imperial Guard tanks. I loved them, those enormous and powerful steel monsters. Especially the Forge World versions, more realistic (less toy-like) and charismatic. However, when I was younger I did not spend much time painting these tanks: just with a brush I tried to simulate a simple camo. And that was all. Lately, I could not help feeling gutted about this, since over the last years I have learnt a lot…

Genestealer Cult, Warhammer 40.0000

8 May 2017 3 Re.

During the short –but amazing- visit of the ModelBrush.com team to Finland, we found a Shadow War: Armageddon box in the local shop. This was a grateful surprise as we thought it was absolutely sold out everywhere. After splitting it among the four of us, I was the lucky guy who obtained the rule book. Since I read the first news about this game I wanted to check it out. And now I had the perfect opportunity. But I needed a warband! At this point I remember that I had plenty of Cultists miniatures at home from the Overkill box,…

Trench and mud

21 April 2017 No re.

I had the great opportunity to prepare a diorama for the cover of Wargames Soldiers and Strategy #90, where I have represented one of the probably most charismatic scenes of the last century wars, a trench raiding. More specifically, a German counter attack to take a trench section back. I wanted to share with you some details addressing the preparation of this diorama, although you will actually find more information inside the magazine. Additionally, in this very same WSS issue I have published a complete step-by-step painting guide of the Spanish 1898 colonial army, using the new miniatures from 1898…

How to paint the 1980 Spanish army

9 April 2017 No re.

Today, I have another painting guide to share with you. If last time we saw how to paint Spanish Tercios, this time we move a bit forward until 1980. I have ad-hoc prepared a painting guide for the new Totentanz Miniatures Kickstarter campaign which covers the 1980 Spanish army in 15mm (perfect to play Team Yankee!). In this guide I show how to paint Spanish infantry in a detailed step-by-step guide, besides a couple of color sheets; one of them dedicated to the AMX-30E tank. This time the painting guide has been prepared in collaboration with Modelbrush. Note that the…

How to paint 28mm Spanish Tercios

24 March 2017 No re.

Today, I wanted to share with you a painting guide I prepared ad-hoc for the Kraken Released’s guys, who recently founded a Kickstarter campaign to produce an entire new range of 28mm Spanish Tercios miniatures (17th century). The painting guide, prepared in collaboration with the PaintingWar magazine’s crew, is divided in two sections. The former contains a step-by-step painting guide showing how to paint a pikeman (how to paint clothes, metal parts, skin, etc); while three sheets or color carts form the latter, covering the colors needed to paint the miniature beside some historical data and painting tips (for instance,…

Painting 15mm tanks: E25 tank hunter

23 January 2017 2 Re.

I painted this German tank –one of my favorites WWII tanks, although it was a prototype– two years ago. It is a E-25 tank, produced in 15mm by Khurasan Miniatures. Although I have already published similar painting guides in my blog, I think that there is always something new to learn. The main topic of this article is the combination of the hairspray technique (or chipping effect fluid) with masks to create worn tritonal camouflage. Step 1 – Preparation We remove all imperfections from the model with a modelling knife and files. Then, glue some parts such as hatches, but…