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…

Warhammer 40.000 tanks II

22 April 2019 4 Re.

After couple of years, I finally manage to finish the second Leman Russ tank for my Genestealer Cult army. This is another beautiful model from Forge World. It is a Leman Russ Destroyer, a tank hunter. To maintain certain coherence with the previous Leman Russ Mars I painted, I added air filters and the rear extension to cross trenches from another Forge World kit, as well as some track armour pieces. Choosing the painting scheme was not easy. I did not want to exactly repeat the same green color I previously used. After asking around and checking different sources for…

How to paint WWII Germans in winter gear

24 March 2019 1 Re.

I have recently prepared a painting guide featuring couple of WWII German soldiers in winter attire from 1-48 TACTIC (Baueda Miniatures). This is a WWII skirmish game using 1:48 miniatures (36 mm), which are nicely 3D-modeled. If you do not know it, I recommend you to have a look at its webpage (note that the rules are free!). With the support of Baueda miniatures, now you can also download for free this painting guide; where I explained how to paint step-by-step a German soldier. From the priming to the basing. Furthermore, I explain in detail how to paint the famous…

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.…

How to make flags

27 August 2017 3 Re.

In this tutorial I would like to share with you the method I use to make flags for our wargame armies. Although paper-printed flags are much easier and quicker to use, and basically we can find any design we need on the internet, the final effect is not the same. In my humble opinion, printed-flags lack charisma; and most of the times, they do not reflect the same [painting] style our miniatures have. They look like a part of a toy. When I see one, I immediately think: it does not belong here. Therefore, I prefer to hand-paint my own…

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…

War in the Middle-East

26 June 2017 No re.

Over the last years I have been commissioned to paint plenty of miniatures featuring the Middle-East conflicts we have sadly seen in the TV lately. I am the first one who consider that there might be something wrong with this… when these conflicts are very close in time and space. But let be honest. As wargamers we do not require much motivation to start collecting and painting tiny miniatures. Just a book, a movie…or the BBC channel. We like to simulate any conflict and play one of our “chess games”. And this has nothing to do either with the war…

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,…