Krombies are coming...

UsThis is one of my favourite units in the new Heretics and Renegades army list, they are great in large numbers and cheap as chips. They maybe poor stat wise, but wow 40 of them will give any unit a bad day.

Oh the other reason I love them, is the fact a regular opponent of mine is a Tau player who has a lot of Kroot. So this had to be done :)

Still a work in progress, but the skin tone is about right, again simple highlighted base coat, with an oil filter, this time I varied the filter a little to get the variance in the squad, and throughout the figure, blue browns and greens. Again anti-dry brushing was used to reveal the hifghlights.

Using oil filters and thinned paints allows the shades to show through, this can be seen on the quills.

Fo a simple head swap I'm very please with the outcome, and it fits with the no vanilla models in m army.

Oh ant you might be able to see the Dark Eldar helms I've added to the trophies, that's another dig at one of my regular opponents :) I love winding them up, lol.

In it for the Money...

Last year I posted a few picture if my Mauraders in their raw kit bashed forms, yesterday I revisited a squad of them, I have three. and started to give them some love and paint :)

The idea for them was to be very distinct from the rest of the army, they are after all hired guns, and not strictly part of the army. So they have a contrasting colour scheme. The actual colours came about organically, but the initial choice of orange was deliberate, as the Alphas have a turquoise theme.

Group Shot

These are obviously still very much WIP, but there are aspects of them that are near completion and that I'm very pleased with.

Squad Leader

Here is the squad leader, he like the rest of the marauder elites, is a meat slab job, of a runaway marine scout, they are bigger than the ordinary squads members. He's stollen some of his armour obviously :)

I am liking the weathering on the chainsword, the danger stripes were a challenge, but I think they are passable.

Snipers

The scouts of the squad. At the last minuet I decided to camo the cloaks, never attempted camo before, but I think it has turned out ok.

Brutes

These two are my brutes, two combat heavies for the squad. A common opponent for me is Tau, so this is just a little jibe at them, there are more, but that's for another post. Poor photo, but it just about shows the weathering, again this is oil washes, anti dry brushing. Then going back to apply worn areas.

 The rest of the squad, catch an base, mordheim and empire kit bashes. I silenced the barrels on the rifles, makes the look a bit more special forces. After the success with the camo cloaks I wanted to incorporate it in the ret of the squad.

Sacrificed and damaged

It's been a while, I have still been working away on my Alpha legion project. I need to take stock and have a look at where I am I the updates, but first I have a few of the latest pieces that I have been working on. I know ther are more but I'm not sure which ones I have posted before, I'll take a look later and follow up with some more WIPs.

As everyone and their wife seems to have been doing an Age of Sigmar conversion post, I thought im light as well be no different :) these are still very much WIPs but they are coming along nicely, I really like the effects on the armour, the turquoise is developing nicely.

/// Fluff Warning ///

These are to be my Devoveo, the sacrificed and the cursed.
They have made the greatest sacrifice and have devoted themselves to Khorne, there will be other devotions in the near future, but one squad a t a time. These few follow the teachings of Omegaron, and let their souls be used by the ruinous powers, casting aside their humanity for the chance to save the souls of others.

/// End of fluff ///


I have also been working on expanding my mechanised decision, but in he spirit of the army so far, they are reclaimed, battle damaged and not in the best of conditions.

There are a number of techniques used on the these models, salt weathering, dry brushing, oil filters and washes, and chalk powders. They are still WIPs and still have a way to go yet, but I'm please with the results so far.

 First up is my ebay rescue land raider, i cant remember the colour scheme, but it needed a dettol bath.

(helpful hint, dont wash the dettol off, until you have scrubbed all the paint away, it jsut turns into a gooey mess)

Close up of the weathering.

I will do a propper description of the techniques used, but in brief, paint the rust on the areas you want it to be revealed in.
Cover those areas in salt.
Spray undercoat colour.
Add more salt.
Spray top colour.
Wait until this is all dry and brush off with a tooth brush.
Continue weathering with oils and powders.

My count as Chimera, Im not overly keen on the GW model, but this one from Puppets War, is much better in my opinion.

 Last but certainly not least is my battle scarred battle tank.


More work on these is needed to be sure, but soon they will be finished.

These are my first attempts at vehicles, never even owned vehicles before, but I'm loving these dirty hulks, definitely more of them in the future.

Life gets turned upside down...

This might be my last post for a while, we have to move out of our current accommodation quickly, which will mean everything getting packed and put away, an no internet for a while.
I have also been ill, which would normally mean more posts, but vertigo isn't like that... damn it.

So on to this update.
Continuing my experiments in painting, filters and washes here are two brute from the legion army of heretics.

Very simple techniques were employed here, one colour spray undercoat, one in red one in light brown, wash in dark brown acrylic on both, allow to dry. pick out the skin tones, one flat colour, allow to dry. Then add oil based filters, these were applied quite heavily, allowed to dry for a bit, with oils this is a substantial time, and something acrylics wouldn't allow. Then with a damp brush, with some turpentine, reverse dry brush, this removes some of the overly heavy wash/filter, as can been seen on the armour plates quite easily.

Next I picked out the blue sashes, this was done with the filter still 'damp' and allows for wet blending I think, but I'm not sure, the effect achieved was with one thin layer of acrylic, over the oil filter. No acrylic blending was used. I then fixed that layer with a matt varnish, and picked out the metal details and leathers.

Very pleased with the over all effect.

MORDHEIM!!!

Same techniques applied here, washes filters and anti-dry-brushing. Not bad for a mornings work :)

So glad to have a team ready for our groups revisiting of this great game.

(Not biased at all, wasn't a national finalist, nope :D)

Sisters getting ready for Battle.

 This is less of a tutorial more a diary of what I did to get to where I finished up. If you learn anything from this I would be surprised, but anything is possible.

Under-coated with a dark brown ink wash to bring out the details, and help create the shadows.

Faces.

Simple next stage, get all the flesh blocked in.

Clothes.

Again just simple blocking out of colours.

Armour.

A little more thought went into the painting of the armour, this is to be an off white when finished, so a dirty cream for a base block colour.

Armour skirts.

Soft shadows on the scale maile skirts, a mid grey ink wash, helps with the definition of the scales.

Hair.

I used a reference picture from the interwebs, to get the ratio of hair colours, I always struggle to know what colours to use for a unit and it then devolves into just one colour, usually brown...

I used thin paints and used multiple layers in smaller areas until the colour I desired was reached.

Accessories

Browns... lots of different shades of brown, with the new wet palette I was using, this was easy, keep the paint wet, allowing subtle changes almost constantly while painting all the figure in one go.

So a little jump from the last set to, this group, I have highlighted the scales just once up-to, white, washed the tunics in a turquoise blue. I've painted and highlighted the metallics, putting my first attempts of heat damage on these too.

The bases and boots have had the oil filter treatments, and I think this helps them gel quite well.

 Again all WIP and C&C welcome.

Oil Filters?

So in my journey to better my painting skills I have tried filters, these are one with oils and a lot of thinners. The first guys, one of my favourite Ogres from the Old Hammer Club, was over highlighted, to an almost pastel finish, really should have done before an after shots for all these... live and learn.

I will probably strip and re paint, but I love the way the wood and leather have turned out, with just two filters applied.

I passed this figure over many years ago, I guess he wasn't heroic enough, but when I stumbled across him again recently, I just had to have him as a Nurgle infected priest. But he was mainly white, so I applied filters, yup the dirty robe is all one with filters, about 3/4 different brown tones.

  

The base is also just filters, it was white plaster and grey basing stones, now looking more like dirty mud, and effluence...

Definitely something I will continue to experiment with.