Showing posts with label painting log. Show all posts
Showing posts with label painting log. Show all posts

Wednesday, 14 February 2018

Weekly War Report #2 (Fraction Progress February week 2)


Excuse the drop in picture quality from this morning, its taking me time to work out how to get best results from my best friend's photography set-up (shout out for Matt for the lend of his spot lamp and scenery). So, this past week's hobby: another week of a surprising lot of hobby for a man intentionally taking it easy:

Gaming

Over the weekend I had a couple of games. First, my entrance into Dave J's Necromunda campaign sending my Goliaths to loot the territory of Matt's Inquisitorial Warband. I lost and ended up with about half my gang out of action. Hopefully, this week's game will end with somewhat better results.

I also got to debut my Tyranids on the tabletop, first against Matt's Death Guard in a take and hold scenario where I just about managed to squeak a draw and then against Tom T's Valhallan Imperial Guard where I lost quite conclusively, conceding with a whole four models remaining on the table.

An entire mantlepiece of my finest troops

A big burst of energy over the weekend saw me finish off a lot of the projects I had in progress last time. At time of writing the sand is still drying on the bases so, hopefully, I'll have some, all or less of them finished in the next couple of days. The only things on the shelf not previously showcased last week are these funny little fellas...
a pair of Familiars from the Genestealer Cults Broodcoven set. They were rather fun and quick to paint and I look forward to running them out on the tabletop (I wasn't sure what they were for and left them out of the list last weekend).

Underhive Hustle

For a start there's my Goliath gang. The progress so far is basic and messy and inspired more by a need to get just some sort of paintjob started for my first game than anything else.


The main armour colour for the gang is Stegadon Scale Green because I liked how it looked on the 'Eavy Metal Orlocks in this month's White Dwarf. The rest of the models are giving me some trouble. Surprisingly for big, beefy bastards on 32mm bases these are amongst the most finely detailed and complex models I've ever had to paint. There are so many belts, buckles, metal implants and rivets on them. I mean, I can't argue against the value for money as these ten miniatures account for more than a thousand points and that's whilst pretending the two lads with stubguns and spud-jackers are juves instead of full gangers.

Its A Bug Hunt!

Reinforcements for my Tyranids continue apace with a bunch of units getting their grey layers finished, which isn't terribly visually interesting but here we go...




Its mainly Cults stuff because they were, to me, the surprise breakout characters of the first two games. They were only in there to fill up the 100 power limit but I found them surprisingly fun to use. I've painted their industrial armour using the same method as the flesh on the 'Nids which will probably be the only shared design element between the two armies (except for the models that have carapace).

Now My Watch Begins

Having sent the test model, the Marine Malevolent with the heavy thunder hammer to the basing shelf its time to get to work on the rest of his squad. 
Eagle-eyed readers will notice that one of them has a Chaos Space Marine Raptor head with horns. This is because he's a Black Dragon, a chapter with a geneseed mutation that makes them grow bone protrusions out of their bodies as they age. This team is built around Marines from the shiftier, less trustworthy chapters, the ones other chapters are suspicious of.
They're also joined on the painting table by the Blood Ravens Librarian from the Kill-Team Cassius box set who is probably my favourite sculpt from the unit.

The Big Lad



The Great Unclean One is getting closer and closer to done. There are some small details I'm trying to work out how to do like scabs. I mean, the flesh itself is the darkest grey available from the Citadel paint range so I'm not sure what I could do for scabs since I can't go darker. Skavenblight Dinge, perhaps? Aside from that, progress here has been fractional as I tidy up some of the drybrushing and made a start on the metallics.

Green Energy



Finally, some Death Guard. First off, I'm continuing to progress with the Blight-Hauler which now has a start made on its metallics. The silver that's on there is basically finished sans a little highlighting and the rather flat Balthasar Gold will be worked up to bronze. Looking at the photo I realise I have actually missed an entire bit of trim on the top of the left wheel arch which I'll have to go back to and I do need to fill in some more areas, like the spiked on the weapons, silver.
And, having proved to myself that these methods work on a large scale it was time to apply them to some man-sized models with the Easy Build Plague Marines. These are really cool models but they are so encrusted with details that I keep finding things that I missed like the fly symbol on the champion's right kneepad.

Hell, if nothing else, posting all these pictures really makes me notice the mistakes I've made in time to fix them, eh?

Wednesday, 7 February 2018

Weekly War Report #1 (Fractional Progress February week 1)


It makes an awful lot of sense, knowing me, that the moment I decide to take things easy hobby-wise I end up doing more painting in a single week than I managed in the whole first month of the year. If nothing else it proves that shorter, more frequent hobby sessions are doing me more favours than trying to block out an entire evening for this stuff.

Nothing's finished (and I still haven't done the basing on the Hive Tyrant and Tyranid Warriors) but I have got a surprising amount of stuff done:

Hormagaunts and Genestealers

A friend once told me that the two most important attitudes an artist can cultivate are “good enough” and “screw it” and I'm starting to get it with the Hormagaunts. They were an experiment in undercoating with Zandri Dust spray and the finish came out all wrong. The grey flesh took layer after layer, the ink and drybrush didn't take quite as well on the carapace as I'd like... and I'm done trying to fix them. They're Hormagaunts, they're small, there'll be two dozen others and no one is going to look at them as individuals so I'm just going to do a final pass on detail work and call them done. You can see in the singular example how the inking has splodged here and there, especially on the gun. I'll fix what I can but I'm calling time on them and letting them be what they'll be.
The Genestealers, who were undercoated grey, came out a lot better even if it did take a layer or two to get the Zandri Dust to take on the carapace. Between them and the still-incomplete Hive Tyrant and Warriors I feel I've definitely nailed down the colour scheme for Hive Fleet Jormungandr even if my interpretation of the artwork violently disagrees with 'Eavy Metal.

Tervigon
Yes, I know there are some parts missing from the middle legs. I bought this one off eBay and I think that's why I got it for such a discount. As you can see from the base, this one was also undercoated Zandri Dust like the Hormagaunts and somehow the carapace has come out a lot better. I'm genuinely unsure why, especially as I didn't have the trouble with the grey flesh I had on the Hormagaunts, either.

A little more experimentation is due so for the moment I'll try undercoating the small stuff grey and the large stuff Zandri Dust and see how it goes.

Plus, literally all this model needs is some tidying of the grey around the gill things on the legs and I can start basing it.

Deathwatch Kill-Marine

A single test model, this one, as I tried out the methods I'll be applying to the rest of the army and road tested the first of the 3D printed shoulder pads from POP Goes The MONKEY (that is actually how he spells it). This one used a Marines Malevolent shoulder pad which fit perfectly over the shoulder connector, took the undercoat relatively well (it needed a little touching up) and the detail is crisp and easy to follow with a brush. It looks practically indistinguishable, as you can see, from something GW would produce.

I also think I've finally cracked yellow, a colour second only in infamy to me to white itself.

Myphitic Blight-Hauler

This is a pretty typical example of what I'm getting done in spare moments on busy days: getting the larger areas of models blocked out. So the Blight-Hauler now has all its green and flesh areas finished and when I have more time I'll go back and do the more detailed work like the silver metallics and brass trim and so on.

Also, its nice to be working on this model because it is so damn adorable.

Great Unclean One
Significantly less adorable but no less fun to paint is the Great Unclean One, again mainly just having finished the larger areas that I could achieve mainly through drybrushing. Actually, what I really like about the Nurgle Daemons and the Tyranids is how well they take to my drybrush-heavy techniques.

I'm not convinced the Screamer Pink guts work as well against the grey flesh tone as they do on the green-tinged flesh Warhammer TV used in their painting tutorial but I'll wait until I have them inked at least before I decide whether to repaint them or not.

Beast of Nurgle
Finally, and back to the cute side of Nurgle, this has been my favourite model to paint from the whole batch. It was a bit of a nightmare to put together because the connectors are so non-standardised and the manual is no bloody help but the finished product is so very worth it. It was also a good test model for some new methods I wanted to try out to diversify the look of the Nurgle Daemons like the Rakarth Flesh / Reikland Fleshshade / Pallid Wych Flesh method on the underbelly.

Other, less visually interesting, progress
I've built a Goliath gang for a friend's Necromunda campaign and I'll be having my first game this weekend; my Imperial Knight arrived from eBay as well as an alternate head piece for it from Shapeways so I'm going to start working on that conversion in the coming week; and, I undercoated my Adeptus Custodes Captain-General Trajann Valoris and a Furioso Dreadnought.

So, all in all, a successful first week.