Ragnar is Born...

Following on with my Inquisimunda interest at the moment I have completed, for now: basing still needs doing, but I need materials for that; Ragnar. He is my Void pirate captain, and although he started out as viking inspires he has finished up more Neo-Napoleonic. Not that I mind, I think he looks fine, but it was an unexpected finish. Says more about my 80's musical tastes than I possible would care to admit. :)

I tried something new with the power hammer, I used reverse highlighting. Making the edges darker than the center. I think it manages to evoke a sense of hidden energy in the weapon.

This weeks round up...

I have had a great week doing what I love, modelling and painting and experimenting.

First up, and update to my True Scale Marines. These have been a long time in their making, the first being done close to 10 years ago. Since then I have experimented with colours, construction and different models. Even a Terminator as you can see in the first picture.

The Aspiring champion has a massive sword...I know way to big, I think I will try to replicate the design, in plasticard and replace,as seeing it here in a photo,it looks even more disproportionate.

I have never been a fan of painted guns, but I'm pleased with the white distressed look these guys have. I needed to step away from the all metallic,as the armour is accented with metallics, so it made sense, I think.

You may have noticed the checkers and shoulder markings, along with the sergeants helm here. I have tried to take inspiration from the old Rogue Trader books and artwork. These guys are after all wearing pieced together armour and ancient relics. You can also see the scale comparison here with an Imperial Guard.

A little dark, but the second heavy bolter's paint scheme is a bit clearer.

I love the de-nurglefied helm in the middle, adds a little bit of focus to the figure and a feel of other sourced technology.

Battle damaged and worn is the feel of the armour.

During the experiments I have found the terminator loose shoulders to far superior to the cast on the arm one for re-positioning and final look.

A little more work done on the Khorne sacrificial unit, the Devoveo, mainly washes and oils.

Group shot,as you can see I have moved away from the natural flesh colour, to exaggerate the feel of the sacrificed.

More Marauders in their undercoat, this unit is focussed on close combat. Lead by the dual wielding plasma pistol sergeant. He is made from the new Khone AoS Troops, a few easy snips and swaps, the remainder of the squad sports the rest of the helmets from the Khorne box.

I know not the best statistically, I think he looks great. If I was a power player I would have gone Tau...

My mid-week challenge I set myself was to paint a squad from undercoat to battle ready in a day.

Closer shot, not bad for about 6 hours total. (just the bases to wash and tidy up)

Update on the True Scale Land Raider Proteus. Two tone first layers done. Undercoat, rust, then primer and topcoat. Now the weathering really begins.

Finally, an experiment in skin tones. Not finished yet but I am happy with the progress so far. 

A little clearer to see in this picture, the purple lowlights and yellowing highlights. After the base colours are in,I will begin the weathering and oil washes, this will bring the colour backdown to more healthy colour... well thats the plan.

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.

Where's my paints...

All moved in now, new place is great and work on my plastic addiction will continue shortly, once I've found my paints :)

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.