CONTEMPTOR! (it has to be in capitals it's that epic)

So a lot of stuff is being painted at the moment, this is mainly due to Robyn needing to paint zombies for the campaign and mine first 300 is done (all 12 models,  Robyn has 52 to do) so to show solidarity(not fear) I'm painting stuff as well. The saint got painted over the last two nights and now it's the turn of the COMTEMPTOR DREADNOUGHT and I thought, more actual detail into painting.

It's a well known fact I like my smurfs dark so here is a picture of the beast at base coat.

So this guy is going to be the second dreadnought of the second battle company under Sicarius, Brother Agnathio who is armed differently in the codex but i'm not going to do a faithful reproduction of whats in the codex just the general make up which is full battle company and two dreadnoughts. The first one is the old metal venerable dreadnought so he's in good company.

So the paint the base for the blue is necron abyss, the red mecharite red, the metal is warplock bronze and scrolls and skulls in desert yellow. I don't think at this point I'm going to use any washes on the dread itself but some will get used on the base.

Tomorrow blending! the dirtiest word in Robyn's painting vocabulary,

Finally painted a present

Many years ago I was playing in a GT with my sisters army, this army was filth(you may have encountered this army as after that it's first GT it started appearing as a net list, I did not post it, quick summary 1500 points 9 faith points and no friends, one guy I played didn't actually get a turn 2) so bad was this list that when i played a chap from the studio who sat with Pete Haines the author, he said he was going to tear him a new one one about it monday. I honestly didn't think it was that bad I just wanted a sisters only force without all the eccliasarchy nonsense, seems I was right. Now I'm not completely innocent here once I found out how good it was I didn't tone it down, I just kept on cheerfully mullering my opponents safe in the knowledge that eventually GW would get round to giving me yet another white dwarf codex and relegating me back to the also rans. Anyway moving on and back to this GT I played against this chap who played my mate Darren in an earlier round who also had sisters but with all the toys a thoroughly nice bloke by the name of Richard Dagnall. It did not go well for him, but at no point did he lose his temper or sulk and instead of moaning asked me about sisters tactics and how to get the best out of his force, so we chatted and had a good time and asked about my army and why i didn't have any of the new toys then dissappeared into the hall to go do his own thing as I packed up my toys. He then returned with a little bag with Saint Celestine in for me as a thank you for the game and the advice which is to this day the nicest thing an opponent has ever done for me, so I decided that I'd wait to paint it, so I did the best job I could (this model has been sat in my box for a long time I get it out every so often think about doing it then put it back because I'm not ready yet.
Now it popped up again the other day when I was looking for something else and I couldn't immediatley find all the pieces so I started looking properly and found them all, so it stayed on my desk so the pieces wouldn't get lost, and it stared at me everytime I went in and said "ready yet" and I thought actually yes I am, and here is the result, not as Celestine but as a Saint of the Order of the Bloody Rose.  FEROX PIOUS

 Basecoats

And here's a better picture of the avatar i posted last time  next to the saint to emphasize the difference in blending between now and then.

Richard and I have been good friends ever since and he is still an absolute gentleman, sadly I'm still a cock but he and Darren put up with me, thanks to you both and all the rest of my regular opponents.

Finished first 300 and a look at where I came from

So I finished the first 300 points of my campaign army and started thinking about the next and started going through the dark elf bits box and I came across this fellow.

Some one said to me you should keep your old figures, so you can see how you've improved so here's Khaine who when I painted him in the mid 90's I was bloody impressed with and I'd been painting since the early 80's and had significantly improved in that time and now I look at him and think dear god how bad was I.

Look blending sort of, so to now and these.

And these are not what i consider my best so what will I be capable of in another few years, I'll never be golden demon standard because well wow I mean have you seen the slayer sword winners of the last two years but I'm always going to after that best army nomination and  armies on parade.

More dark dobbins

If you've seen the pictures of the new dark riders you are probably as disappointed with the horse as me(each horse overbite is now being used in bugmans as a bottle opener), and the weird barding thing? dunno, I'm going to put it down to a Friday job. These however aren't what prompted me to make my own, it was the last lot of elven(my little pony may have got at my crack)steeds, especially when viewed next to the glade rider horses, hell the new ones next to the glade rider horses is still a "no your right" moment. The new dark riders themselves are nice but to be honest there wasn't a lot wrong with the last lot apart from the price so glade riders with dark elf torso and green sea dragon stuff cloak(there's a theme here, may have to do a dreadlord with crocodile skin boots) and away you go, bits of delf helmet tat for the horse heads and we're good.

Well tonight was more colour primarily armour. I've used P3 bighted gold on just about everything of late and decided to move away from that even though the colour would work, and i didn't want just steel, dark elfs are colder and sterner than there kin, nut they are still elves and elves love bling. i decided i wanted to do a nice beaten brass look and this is one of the few time were the picture in my head  was replicated on the figure worked a treat and made the horses look menacing, so heres some pictures

So delf horse without the dwayne dibblies or the crack pipe win, i even did the horse for the master in the next points jum

got the purple and green mix i wanted to so now thats one thing gone. All I'm really struggling with is leather colour, and the cobbles, can't decide how to do the hooves either. Well i'm falling asleep whilst typing so night.

Here come the pirates, yaaaarrrrrggghhh

So a couple of years ago I started a dark elf pirate ship for a campaign weekend that had some event created units so i made half a pirate ship so you could see below decks to the slave pens(slave units which were essentially human shields were one of the units). So half a ship got built  lots of units were built, a quay side was built for the dark riders and shades to sit on and a lot of sea dragon cloaks were sculpted(everyone in the army has one)and then it got left on the top of a cabinet to be pulled down and looked at occasionally. So now I'm running a slow army building campaign based in Lustria, I'm Lustria but I already have a huge amount of painted lizardmen, so what we need is an agent of disruption and an excuse to paint my Lokhir Fellheart army and maybe do an armies on parade board, I'm not sold on the idea of doing it again yet but I do like the shiny medal from the store and I'll probably go to gamesday again if it keeps to this structure.
Here is a link to what I did several years ago.
http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.324869727096.157331.613752096&type=1&l=b978c4fb1bh
I even remembered to make the album public this time go me.
What we have is dark riders kit bashed from glade riders, cold one knights, repeater crossbows and glade guard with green stuff sea dragon cloaks(everyone could have a sea dragon cloak in the campaign)
Shades using metal corsairs with crossbows attached
Corsairs obviously
Crossbow men kit bashed corsairs and crossbow men
Kraken(Hydra) heavily converted beasty and handlers (these now need to go on the base with the new book)
BSB converted metal corsair champion
Lokhir Fellheart
And repeater bolt throwers, the crew of these remain but the bolt throwers have been changed to the original metal ones, because they'll look better on the ship.
Talkng of the ship all the rigging works(I don't know i was having a moment or something).

Anyway back to the plot, when the players face me they roll a D6 which chooses one of 5 different lizardman patrols that are wandering round the jungle, unless you roll a 1. if you roll a 1, your camp is being raided for slaves by those dirty dark elves and you have to play a special scenario. So as my intrepid explorers have already started posting pictures of their finished figures I finally stirred my stumps and started painting here's last night progress.

 So this was mainly done using a bizarre hybrid of wet blending and drybrushing I use that gives a nice graduation from one colour to the next whilst picking out detail without spending two days on just horses. Most of my painting technique comes from impatience, the hobby is split into several groups really the two most diametrically opposed being gamers who don't paint(commission painters bread and butter) and painters who don't game(these will never buy a regiment box unless it's for a diorama), and then in between are the rest of us who lean to one of these extremes or the other, I am mainly a gamer I just happen to be able to paint, and I find it a good way to relax as I do just get absorbed by what ever has my attention to the exclusion of all else( Robyn will now be grumbling about how true and bleeding annoying this is), anyway the trick is to be quick between coats don't let anything fully dry and minimal amounts of paint on your brush, with lots of light flicking  to bring up detail and precise line for highlights then smudged with thumb to fade them in, less is most definitely more in this situation. So next will be leather and armour on the horses which I'm trying to decide on colour and the cobbles which again i'm trying to decide on colour.

Below is the rest of the 300 pt force for the first section of the campaign
7 shades with full command and great weapons(yes they can have a whistle and flag now)
5 darkrider with full command crossbows and shields( they can now have shield without losing fast cavalry)

so the next points jump will be in January to 600pts which will see a master added on dark steed( 5pts short of getting him into the first 300 and even then he would have just been bloke on horse no toys) and obviously some corsairs need to come out. I army yet redo the bases with green stuff rather than plasticard as i did some for Robyn's zombies and it looks a million times better.