Sunday 6 December 2015

Five from the fifth.

Good evening. 

Time for another blog post. 
Few things going on this week so hopefully by the end of next week we'll be getting somewhere.  

I have finished work on a combat squad,  not entirely happy with the process I used. It was long winded and didn't yield the results I was after. 
However it's a unit done so I'll take it at this point. 

So these make up half of the 5th, 2nd company.  

The pin washes with the oils I used didn't stand out well. Something to work on. 

Another factor was hand painting the chapter icon. 

This team has a flamer and eventually a missile launcher as well. 

It's not a bad start but I feel I can do loads better.  

However they fit in with the dreadnought from last week real nice. 

In other news, some veterans have dropped by. An assault squad of terminators is going to be handy. And another dreadnought to add to the fold. I hope to have three available by January.

I have made a start on some tanks too. Here's the first two with the rust layers. 

I took the Rhino a little further today

Got the blue and Whites down and I think this will be finished sooner than later. 

The free hand on this, although not amazing,  is a vast improvement. 

So to finish off, I have a few things to get done this week. And hopefully both tanks will be completed.  
I do however have some other projects on the table so I need to plan my time carefully.  



Monday 30 November 2015

Venerable Brother Vipus

Good morning folks. 

I'm late with this post but I finished my first dreadnought last night. 
So we have two units ready to go...
Still seriously lacking in numbers here so tactical marines will be next in line.

So on to the dreadnought, Brother Vipus.  

After a small vote was placed in the groups the dreadnought won out by one vote. 
I made some changes to the base by adding additional detail. This was mostly sand and grit to give it more texture. 
I also dropped the original basing idea of a swamp as this style looked iffy on my scouts. 


I also added a couple of extra details to the legs and body. Parchment seals were added as was a veteran reef.(unsure is that's the right spelling)

I wanted something that looked like it could stop tanks. So I have armed the dread with missiles and a twin linked lascannon.
Pew pew. 

As before I have applied plenty of weathering to the model. 
I'm not a great painter, some folks out there are producing amazing and outstanding paint jobs. 

Here I was placing decals, these are from a forgeworld Death Guard sheet. But the numbers and veteran markings were exactly what I was after. 

Here are some final shots of the model. 

The scorch marks and damage were fun to do. It's mostly sponged on and I used a dental brush to apply pigments from a tamiya weathering master set. These are perfect I fully recommend the burnt metal and oil set. 

I used a quick metallics technique to do the metals on here. It's real simple and easy I'll post a link to the tutorial I made about this. 


As you can see the decals once weathered looked spot on. With a bit of microset and microsol and a dash of gloss they almost look painted on. I distressed them with the tip of a sharp blade. 

I'm really happy with how the scheme turned out 





With the scouts he looks right at home. 


So as I said above I used a technique to get a fast and realistic worn iron sort of look. 
And I made a quick tutorial about it. 
Hopefully this help some folks out as much as it help me out. 
If you have any ideas on other tips you'd like me to film please let me know. 

So...on to the next phase. 
I plan on doing a squad of tactical marines.  I don't know if I'll complete all ten but five is definitely the planned mission. 
It'll be an interesting project though.  

I thought as an extra I'd quickly show how I did the split scheme on the terminator. 

I first primed the model with vallejos grey primer. 


I then preshaded the model with a mix of black/brown

The first colour to go on was dawnstone 

The second was ulthian grey

A shot of white scar was done from above to give a zenithial highlight. 

I masked off the white half with tamiya tape.

I used vallejo signal blue for the shade 

Followed by Macragge blue 

A highlight from above of light blue was applied in the same manner as the white scar. 




Once the tape is removed you should have, hopefully,  a nice clean split.  


So that kinda wraps up this post. 
Please give us some feedback on what you'd like to see and hopefully this has inspired you to have a go at something.  

Cheers James 

Sunday 22 November 2015

Recon

Evening Folks, 

I have been working out my plan of action, and this brought up a few questions for me. 

What shall do for the bases? 
....At first I got my ideas together, one of the main ones I considered was a diamond plate interior look. This would have fitted in with the history of void combat.However most gaming boards are earthy mud and rocks...So I played it safe and went with a boggy marsh look. 

Shall I alter my style and push it further? 
.....I tend to weather the heck out of my models. This can go way too far though so I'm going to tone it down a touch. But ultimately I'll be having a beaten gritty look. 

What units should I tackle first? 
.....I have a rough list on the go but nothing solid yet. So I'll be looking to get the bare minimum off the ground first and build on that. 

And should I have a plan, for every five standard troops I get to do something fun, tanks characters?
.....Fellow amigo Rob Grizzly Bearup uses this method to great effect. So I'm going to take a leaf out of his book here and do the same. 
Basically for every 5 standard troop type I'll reward myself something fun to do. 
So I'll drop a tank or HQ choice in. 
I'm hoping this will keep me motivated......if not the deadline of a game will certainly push me. 

So with that in mind I have completed my first unit for the Eagle Warriors


Scout Squad, 1st Recon and Covert ops. 

The look for them was going to need some tweaking, how to do the shoulders and split scheme. 


Again a chat with fellow painter Rob we came up with a good plan of attack.

The shoulder guards would display the scheme. the fatigues would be khaki, and the bulk of the scouts armour would be grey. 

The shoulder guards would display the Chapter colours. I decided on a  white stripe over blue instead of half and half. 

My aim was to make it believable that they were first in and covering recon and covert ops. 
Having them all white and blue would have made them stick out. 

Hopefully these guys do the Chapter justice.


So now I have my first five under my belt, what shall I do next ? 
Here's my choices:

                              *Rhino/Razorback
                              *Dreadnought
                              *Landraider
                              *Storm Talon

Be great if you can help me decide. 

Cheers for reading this, and please follow me on Facebook or Instagram for more photos and updates. 

James 






Friday 20 November 2015

From the Old the New were forged - Pt1 My Chapter is planned.


Hi Folks!

For a while, well around a year and 4 months, I have been back into the Warhammer Universe.
After a very loooong break (17+ years) I returned by painting in my spare time for a bit of fun, as we all know this leads to a serious kit addiction.
For the past year I have started two groups on Facebook;
The Warhammer Group and Artificers & Artisans , Both real good places to share and chat about the hobby. Please check em out and join us.
It's the latter group where the urge to play the game again has arisen.
A friend on there has a set up a Warhammer World meeting for a few games and a get together.
This is set up for the end of January.

  I have agreed to attend.......
    I have no army....................
      I have just over 2 months....

So first step is to pick a Chapter.
I was and still am a fan of the Ultramarines, first army I owned way back when that quality 2nd edition starter dropped in my lap Christmas95.
But I have sensed a touch of hostility towards them, and they seem over done .
So I have toyed with the idea of doing something that isn't done much these days and go with a 2nd founding army.
So of course I looked into it, I asked one of the groups for help in finding the Chapter I was after....I knew the colours just not the name.
Like the good folks they are I had my answer in minutes.

The Eagle Warriors, 2nd founded from the Ultramarines 20th company.

With that information in hand I started to work on a tester model and work out what colours to use and how to do the split scheme some justice.


I chose to do a Veteran Sergeant in Terminator armour

I painted the whites first, I then masked it off and painted the blues in. 



It was actually really good fun to paint and I look forward to doing more. 


So now I have to sort out an army list up to 2000 points.
And I have been drafting this out via Battlescribe. And it has shown me how much work I have ahead of me.
2 months feels like a very short amount of time to get it done and get it done to the level I want them to be.

So I that brings me here........

I wanted to share the process with everyone , the highs and lows of fitting a day job ,day today life ,and aspiring war hero of the grim dark future that is Warhammer 40,000.

Cheers and here's to the next 2 months of serious painting....oh and Christmas =D

Many Thnaks James.