Curse of the "W"s

Wow! Well it seems that work, wife, wall climbing and WoW (World of Warcraft) have stollen me away from my models for a very long time! Very little work has been completed since I last worked on that dreadnought which is such a shame!
So... I vow that before the end of the month, not only will there be another post on my blog but that it will contain some freshly painted models, though I can't guarantee that they will be complete. I had sooo many plans and have so many models, it's time some of them got some tender lovin'!

Time to dust off the models, paint brushes and table and get back to work!

Dreadnought progress

So... progress has been slow. Wedding stuff and my addiction to Everquest plus all the usual distractions have kept me from this guy but I'm feeling the painting bug and will be plugging away at hime some more. The model has been primed and basecoated with a mix of black and brown as I will be highlighting him brown for a more worn/dirty look than the cold look you get when using blue or grey.
I also learned yet again that close up digital photography can be very dangerous and one shot can make things look like progress and then next can show just how many mistakes you've made or how horrible one first coat of paint can look (dont' worry, there are more to come!!)

 

Dreadnaughty goodness

Well it seems the only way I am able to force myself to make time for painting these days is by accepting challenges so once again I have thrown my name into the hat with the boys over at 40KOnline.
As such this big boy is going to be getting a lot of attention over the next little while.

Now before I get an earful, I know Marine Dreadnoughts can' t have plasma cannons but it fit when I was designing him... I've made that arm interchangeable (gotta love magnets!) and he will get a nice little lascannon for when he hits the table like his big pewter brother

Bases!

With my next Legion of the damned Dreadnought well underway (construction wise that is), I decided that I wanted a bit more flavour to the skull base I am planning to use. I am using the resin skull bases from Epicast for my Legion of the Damned army. Now while there is nothing wrong with the bases themselves, I find that not only is it very difficult to actually stand a model on the skulls (one would think that someone with the size and bulk of a Space Marine would crush the bones) so I have decided to fire up the trusty dremel tool and cut off some of the skulls. I will be filling in the gaps with pieces of cork for rocks which will not only break up the monotonous colour on the bases but also provide at least one flat foothold for the figures.

So last night I cut away part of the large base for the Dreadnought and glued on some cork, adding some extra bones and some glue/sand mixture to again add a little bit of life to the base.


And with a little more sand it's ready for the big guy.

Now to do it 10 times on my small bases for the marines I "finished" over Christmas. 8)

Lack of news...

Yes I know. I've been positively horrible about updating my blog recently but my dear fiancée borrowed my digital camera for her business trip to Down Under. The camera and more importantly she are back now so some shots of my slow progress on both my Librarian and my next entry in the Deep Space painting comp will be up soon. Haven't started painting either but construction is moving along well on both projects despite my having returned to the world of MMORPGs (online computer games for short). Add wall climbing and wedding planning to the mix and my evenings and weekends are beyond nuts these days. Weeeeee!

Master Molder!

So with my project to turn my Chaplain in Terminator armour into a Legion of the Damned Librarian, I decided that I was going to need to add some of their symbols to him. With this in mind I have turned to mold making using some of the bone markings on the LotD marines in hopes of being able to reproduce good copies. As you can see below it was rather success ful so I'm now trying to do the skull from ForgeWorld and I hope to affix one to the Librarian's shoulderpad and I need a softer medium (softer than resin) to bend it over the curve of the shoulderpad. As soon as I have a couple more bits cast and I figure out how to reproduce the flames on the models as I like them raised instead of simply painted on, I will be moving forward on this project.

Of course having a sinus infection is taking a lot of my drive away and not much modeling has taken place during the last week.

Stay tuned for more!!


Forgeworld skull that comes with the purity seals.
Librarian skull with horns.
Legion of the damned belt buckle that some marines sport.
Bone decoration taken from the leg of a LotD marine

And for my next trick!

Many of you out there may cringe at the thought of what I am going to be doing to the model below by my goal is to turn this amazing Chaplain in Terminator armor into an amazing Librarian in Terminator armory. I have picked up the bitz I am going to need and am trying my hand at a bit of greenstuff casting to copy over some of the standard Legion of the Damned Iconography to affix to this bad boy. According to the fluff, no Chaplains survived their time lost in the warp and there was just no way I could resist a skull helmeted terminator such as this to be the leader of my Legio Damno.

 

So grab your teddy bears and boxes of Kleenex and watch as I bring my Dremel tool to bear on this gorgeous model... 

The Legion of the Damned

While I have improved my technique for these guys greatly, even over the past few weeks while painting up the troops, I figured I should show my humble beginnings with regards to my Legion of the Damned army.

This was my first piece (notice the undrilled gun barrels). It's been around for a while so please disregard the smudges in the dust on it...

Nex to come was my first SM Dreadnought. Wanting to keep to the "dead" theme, I found a shield off a fallen paladin from Reaper that made a perfect cover for the sarcophagus/face to the warmachine. I recently tore off the arm and put this new one on (old one was the basic metal twin-linked las cannons without drilled out cannons). I used the barrel from the LotD lascannon to replace the top most one of the arm to keep the theme going (see my predator below). The powerfist is from Screaming Skull Catapult from the Tomb Kings line.

Lastly, my Predator Annihilator was finished shortly before christmas. The sponson-mounted lascannons are attached with magnets so I can swap them out for Heavy Bolters though these have not been painted yet. Again I painfully cut up LotD lascannons to replace the barrels on those on the tank and I used a zombie head on the gunner to add to the whole "we're living dead marines" fluff. I put the turret towards the back of the tank and found tha the barrels were going to hit front exhaust vents so I used a second turret base that I cut down to fit over top the first and then green stuffed in the gaps. Not my best green stuff job but it did the job.

The dangers of digital photography

So here they are. Just about done and yet, now that I've seen close up pictures, I'm seeing little things that my eyes missed. Ah well, once the couple gems are painted and a couple touch-ups are done between some bones where some white paint crept in, they will be done, minus basing and a very very much needed blast of matt coat to get rid of the shine that the chestnut wash left behind. They will be moved onto skull bases from Epicast that are in the works right now.

Here's all 9 of them. The flames turned out really well I think and they really help to give these guys a spark that was lacking with only black and bleached bone before.

My special weapon Marine armed with by far the best looking pose in the squad and a meltagun.

A good look at the flame pattern that turned out so well. I based in white then did 2 glazes of each yellow, orange and red.

These guys were not only my first Marines, but my first shot at using glazes and all in all, I like the result. I also tried emulating GW's suggested way of doing the lenses on the helmets, trying to add some depths to them and the pictures work even though to the naked eye they don't look quite right yet. More practice!! You can also see around the "mouthpiece" where my brushstrokes got a littles sloppy. Even after going over these guys closely, one at a time to check for oopses, it would seem that some snuck through. Good enough for the table-top though I think!

I now have all the piece I need for the Heavy Weapon Marine for the squad so he will be appearing shortly, hopefully sooner rather than later.

Marines Progress

Progress has been slow on these guys with my return to work but I'm still poking away at them. I still have to do a bunch of work on this guy but they are starting to come together. They eyes still need to be finished and cleaned up, some touch ups on the armour and accessories and then the final highlights on the entire model.

 

Symptoms of ADD...

Now almost 2 weeks of time off, even with the families visiting should have allowed me enough time to paint up my 10 (*cough*9*cough) marines but other than spending an entire day rebuilding my wife's computer, cooking a turkey and a cipaille (huge multi-layer meat casserole that my wife's familly eats at Xmas), organizing 2 Xmas dinners and breakfast, etc..... I was unable, as usual to focus on only one painting project...

I managed to spend a bit more time poking at what is to be the first of MANY Skaven Plague Monks, trying not only to get some paint on them in a pleasing way, but also to find a good quick way to paint many, many more of them without going insane. So the 20 are in various states of readiness as I have been experimenting with glazing (visit Brushthralls for more info)...
I must mention though that the Vallejo Model Color "Smoke" is a wonderful, wonderful thing. Like a black wash but has a grittier finish which I have found invaluable mixing with the green and brown (staff) glazes I've been trying out.

And of course, because I will soon be working on some converted Eldar Warp Spiders, I decided that I should at least paint up the old ones that have been hiding in my bitz box for at least 3 years... I figure I need the practice if nothing else... Like everything else, they are far from done, but are starting to take shape...

And of course, as if this wasn't enough, I also started work on a Confrontation model that my wife really likes that I'll be doing up for her at some point soon.... I think if I were half as good at finishing projects as I am at starting them, I'd have no room left for models in my basement...

Where I am shackled...

Well before Christmas, I accepted a challenge with the boys over at DeepSpace to paint up a 10 man squad of models by January 2nd. Well I failed to meet the deadline but it did do the job and get me painting...

This is where I have been living whenever I was able to sneak away from the families (we had both with us this year) and obligations...

Now what have I been working on all this time?! The main push has been on my first squad of Legion of the Damned Space Marines. The squad is a man short because I have misplaced the body for the heavy weapon gunner... It was a rather ambitions project for me as they are my first marines and I was using old bodies and guns with the new arms so a lot of messing around and pinning had to be done to get the boys together. Also, since they cost so much (points) there are not going to be lots of them in the army so I decided that drybrushing was not going to do it for these "base troops".

Here are the 3 first stages for the bone portions. (2-3 more remain). I am also going for a dirty black look so highlighted the armour with a succession of brown tones but I was having trouble making it visible. I asked my wife what she thought and I got "they're still black"... grumble... The Chestnut wash over the entire model (last on the right) helped bring out the edging on the rest of the model for which I'm grateful...

Here they all are as of tonight.

I figure I still need another 20-40 hours of work on these guys to have them finished, including bases so they are going to be haunting me for a while yet.

Welcome to my mess

I have been collecting and painting Warhammer (Fantasy and 40K) models off and on for close to 8 years. Like many other painters, I suffer from terrible "painting ADD" and end up with tons of unfinished models lying around while I work on whatever project my brain has pushed to the front, either by new model excitement or a stray thought that turned into something I didn't have all the pieces for or simply got pushed back by yet another "great idea".

My current projects consist of an undending number of Skaven models (I have a rat fetish), an Eldar army that has been sporatically added to since I first picked up a brush and a Space Marine Legion of the Damned force that will one day also have a small Imperial Guard force to "rescue".

Enjoy your visit!