EPIC conclusion

So I was updating apps on my phone the other day and generally pissing around when google + did something awesome AUTO AWESOME a name which pretty much does what it says it takes similar photographs and links them together into video giving you this.

 unfortunately the random blurry one sticks out like a sore thumb and it really could do with a way to adjust the speed but all in all auto awesome.

So CONTEMPTOR(still in capitals,still that epic) is finished tried some modest bits of battle damage,nothing over the top we are the Ultramarines after all and here they are.

not hugely convinced that i'm doing it right, but it doesn't look shit so we'll keep experimenting where I think it's appropriate. I'd intended on much more freehand on him but as I'd done the chapter symbol and his unit number he looked finished so I left it at that.

And the base is done...................

Now this is definitely one of those happy accident moments that I'm going to try to replicate, I'd washed the base and was feeling impatient so tried putting on the next highlight of grey which caused some interesting pooling effects but was to watery, so i dabbed it with kitchen roll to soak it up a bit and then started high lighting making sure each mix had the ink paint wash gunk in and dragged it along with a small flatbrush. Each successive highlight got streakier and gave a nice worn concrete look. Washes used are Nuln oil, agrax earthshade and whatever it's called camo shade with codex gray, then fortress gray then white.

So and finally a non spinning and less annoying version of the completed dreadnought.

 Next time something else I've got two units that have to be painted for the campaign, one thing that has to be made and painted for AGOM and some kingdom death stuff I want to try, must watch OSL tutorials when I can find some I like, I can find lots of OSL I like but no tutorials with an effect that looks anything like them. Essentially i want brush not air brush techniques any suggestions and links would be great(I'm busy I don't have time to trawl youtube)

Even more EPIC Dreadnought

Well in attempt to get my wife to paint her zombies i sat down and did some more work on the CONTEMPTOR, and managed to finish the blue, now whilst doing it I planned on taking a picture at each stage, but upon looking through the camera on my phone realised that there really wasn't that much difference so instead took pictures when I was done and explain how and possibly why(we'll see how this goes)

So even here it's hard to tell what I've done, although the piece of marketing tat has come out well.

 Anyway the base colour is Regal blue and mixed with in varying amounts P3's Frostbite till it's just Frostbite on its own. It's not  really showing on here but I've gone with an attempt at light source blending because of the circular body with some edge highlights instead of just edge. I'm still unsure how successful I've been but I'm used to not knowing how my figures turn out until they're nearly done, I always have a moment of "oh god I've fucked up my toy" before I'm done.

 This picture of the components gives a better idea of how it looks so next the metals which should bring the blues up, and the red and white. The scrolls and freehand will come after that and i'm trying to decide whether to chance my arm at a bit of paint chipping and battle damage.

I've taken the head of the base as I was just keeping it there so I didn't lose it but people seem to think I'd put it there on purpose as some kind of conversion kick in progress of a friends blood angels, this is not true the dead blood angels are on my eldar army where they belong. 

I am a planker

And here we are back to the ship, because i cant start my next 300 points for the campaign if the ship doesn't  work. I've done this once already but i painted it black and it didn't look good, so now i want to try ink washing the balsa so i still get the look of wood. tried a couple of different mixes still not completely sold on any. Anyway pictures time

This was the first step, recut the spaces for movement trays this was originally built under 7th edition so the middle section was two single ranks of ten crossbow men one on a step that I've cut out but as we can now fire in two ranks that formation is a bit pointless. So I have swapped it to two two ranks of five units as you can see from the debris this took some fiddling. I've then set up all bases in movement trays and made sure they slide out easily( more hacky/slashy) and put glue on them.

Now I've planked the main deck (this did involve an amount of fucking around and swearing but not a large amount) and started cutting lines around the unit with a scalpel. This is a fiddly job and delicate because if you snap the balsa you have to replace the plank.

As you can see the units now slide out, these are at the moment just cut at ranks not bases, we'll see how well it works then. I've started planking the side and will add photos of that next time.

The glue i have used is Javis superglue (red top) and it's been working fine.

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.

Gamesday

So the day started with a small boy coming in telling me was wet, strip clean get in bed try to sleep a bit more. No that's not going to work so alarm goes off i get my shit together get in the car and go, as i get to knutsford services i realise i've left my wallet(and ticket) at home just missed an exit another ten miles further south next exit, turn round drive 30 odd miles home get wallet(and heckling from 3 year old) on the road again(might be in a bit trouble tomorrow when my tracker tells my boss how fast I was going) and get there for nine on the dot. Two lads in the car pack gave me a hand to get it down the seven floors to the exit and into the hall. Sign in, the staff are very helpful, and help you chill out. The hall is a sports hall in the basement of the NIA it's dark and dingy the lighting is all sodium and only half of it's on. My board looks gray with bits of dark blue here and there.
I went down later and the lights had been switched on and it was better but still discoloured by sodium lights. It was also down eight flights of stairs, with barely any signs you could tell no one knew it was there/couldn't be bothered with the stairs, you could get near all the golden demon cabinets. I can only speak for myself and the people next to me who had entered but our feeling was why should we bother next year, i enjoyed doing the board and it got my army mostly painted but the board is now in the bin the buildings in my terrain box and models on the shelf. I already had next years project picked and sorted but if I'm not going to go down it's not fair take that opportunity from someone else.(yes that is big headed but the idea for next year kicks the shit out of this years.) Pictures are in this facebook album
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10151639860842097&set=a.10151639860542097.1073741827.613752096&type=3&theater
The armies going to get done anyway as it's my campaign army but the ship not so sure, but as I've said on a post today about warhammer forge, if you're going to start something you should finish it so It'll get done but we'll see if it becomes a board.

Standards to maintain

So a couple of weeks ago i went on about the 10th company structure and how there was no command squad as such for the captain just whichever sergeants didn't have squads would form an honour guard, there certainly wasn't a company standard was there?
Then a week before the parade day codex space marines came out i picked mine up on the Thursday two days before parade day, and on page 13 what do i find? A shinny new banner for the 10th company..... ooooh fuckadoodle doo thats not going to get done for parade day. I'll do it after,oh look it's lots of paperwork time, okay thats done right lets get it done. Cue patient zero(Blaise) introducing me to a new and nasty chest infection, more time gone and now finally over the last two evenings it's done.

Yeah too much flash there that banner is white, but not that white. Seeing this has shown me too that I've not cleaned up the edge of the base so that needs doing. Also did this over the last couple of weeks whilst waiting for stuff to dry, quite happy with it.

also way too much flash but looks quite rocking. There are still twenty scouts, fifteen bikes and two storms to paint which have been built, but I'm having a break and now to dark elves. Sometime ago i built a ship that i didn't finish this will be next years armies on parade entry as to my surprise it actually fits on a two foot board(diagonally if you don't mind the prow jutting out a foot, i'll ask the refs this year) but this is also going to be my army in a campaign i'm running over the next three to four years that builds up your army in 300 point chunks, so as the campaign organiser i can't really win, but I can cause trouble. The campaign is set in Lustria but i already have vast amounts of painted lizzies although i will be adding more toys next year, so i'm good for them and the whole point is slowly painting a new army, so Lokhir it's time to star raiding the Lustrian coast, First 300 points 13 models, well until the new book comes out in a week and all the points change. Next time i'll add the pictures of my building the ship  a few years ago and what i plan to do to expand it.

And it's done(nearly)

So at 5am this morning I finally finished the bloody thing enough for the parade day and here it is all its glory

and here in the shop with some more detail

Blaise added an extra command figure for me, which i feel got me the win.

so there were two squads not finished that will get done for  games day and the new marine codex gave me a 10th company banner so that needs doing as well. To finish the entire army i need to do 15 more bikes and 4 more storms of which i have 5 of the bikes and 2 of the storms so getting there.

Next month the pirates are coming.