Upgrading my armour

So the time has come for another competition entry. This time the theme was vehicles/armour, so I did a heavily weathered Hellhound to sit with my (very slowly) growing IG force.

This time I went to town with some mud type effects (Stirland Mud texture paint, washed with Agrax Earthshade and then drybrushed with Karak Stone). Here are some pictures...I think I may have overcooked it in a few places, but overall I'm pretty happy with the results.

Whilst I was in the mood for tanks, I got some of my old armour out and improved them a bit. There's something satisfying about upgrading a model...it shows you how far your skills have come along. Here I added some weathering, redid the carbon staining from the exhausts, added some tonal variation on the reds and did the edge highlights on the black areas. Still to do is the transfer in the front of the hull, and at some point, some freehand designs on the top of the hull.

And here are my two 'Speed painted' rhinos...with a small amount more weathering as well.

Command Squad finished

Finished Command Squad (finally)! I am not sure what it is I'm not happy with on these guys, but there is something I can't put my finger on...

The helmets were supposed to look like battered brass, but are probably a bit rougher than I would have liked...I have run out of time to touch them up again, but I am going to do some my sanguinary guard squad soon so plenty of time to practice.

I really enjoyed doing the banner, but didn't really leave myself enough time to do the freehand on the combat shield, so the design is very simple. I may come back to these at a later time to pick up on some of the details, but for now they have to go into the store for the competition! Wish me luck!

Command Squad WIP 2

So I learnt a lesson this morning. The Blood Angels chapter banner is not easy to do, and shouldn't be left until the last minute! I have been impressed with how good the details are on it, but boy does it take a long time to get right.

A started off with a white bordered banner, but after a while realised that it was a bit too bright for the rest of the squad.

I have moved to a purple border now, and I'm much happier with it.

So here are a few photos of the miniatures on their bases, although there is still quite a bit of work left to go. Hopefully I will find time to finish them before they are due to be judged in 2 weeks time!

Command Squad WIP

So I've been making some progress with my Blood Angels Command Squad. I know they're not super competitive, but they are great looking units with tons of scope for cool paint jobs. The ones I have are a kitbashed from assault squad, sanguinary guard and tactical squad bits and pieces.

So far the whole gang have base colours on and washes done...so I'm just starting to highlight them up. This morning I did all the reds on the company champion, and first stage red on the sanguinary novitiate:

I'm going to get them all to the stage of the champion before I do the final highlight...just so I can get the colouration and the depth consistent.  I am really pleased with how smooth the transitions are on the champion; I don't have an airbrush and find it hard to get that smooth tone change right with the brush.

I'm looking forward to painting the company standard; it's the one from the sanguinary guard set, and looks really great fun to do. I'm also going to try and do some kind of freehand design on the champions shield if I have the time...suggestions for designs welcome as always!

That's it for now.

Assault marine finally complete!

So here it is, my entry is pretty much done. I am experimenting with photography a bit here too...I'm not sure the white background is the way to go, but it's all I had to hand!  I'm waiting on some grey cards and a tripod for my SLR so I can stop having to take pictures on my phone (although the quality isn't too bad...it often hides a multitude of painting sins!).

I hope you like it. Unfortunately GW has got me good and proper by putting on a two week Silver Tower painting challenge. I'm just now awaiting delivery of my Knight Questor to make my entry.

I am trying to decide whether to go for the traditional gold look, and if so whether to try NMM, or whether to go completely nuts on it. I have seen a really good Stormcast Eternal painted to look like the armour is made of porcelain...sounds weird, but looks great...and I am tempted to impersonate the look. I'd love to know people's thoughts on alternative sigmarine colour schemes, if you have seen anything interesting please let me know!

That's all for now...Silver Tower Knight to follow...

Competition WIP

So I tried to have a productive early morning with some Nine Inch Nails and higlighting.  I'm still not done with the loin cloth, and there are a couple of touch ups to do still. Otherwise I'm pretty happy with how it's progressing: 

If anyone has any inspiration for the freehand design on the shoulder, please comment! Also I'm not sure about doing a chevron on the right knee pad...again comments welcome!

Competition entry updates!

I am carrying on entering my local GW painting competitions...I am convinced that it is a great way to improve my painting, and I feel like I am getting better and better results each time. I recently entered my heavily weathered chimera into the vehicles class, where I posted a respectable 2nd place! 

The winning unit was a Space Wolves Contemptor that was frankly stunning, so I don't feel too bad about missing out on top spot!

The next competition is a single unit hero class, so I am going to enter one of my assault marines, the guy at the front here:

I have tried to do some freehand on the right shoulder, and will post my experiences when it's a bit more complete.

After that is going to be the next squad competition, and I  going to enter these guys:

They are my new Blood Angels command squad, with jump packs. I love these guys as they are pretty much kitbashed from sanguinary guard, death company, tactical squads and assault marine jump packs. I am really looking forward to doing the banner, and might try out some more free handing, depending on how my current guy goes! Better pictures will follow, of course.

The month after that is a vehicle competition, so I am just now awaiting delivery of my first land raider crusader to paint up. I've got big plans to take the top spot with that one...if anyone has any ideas or suggestions for how to make it great, please let me know!

I did some more this evening on the single miniature entry I have going, and made a start on the dreaded yellow helmet. Everyone says yellow is tough to get right, and I agree! I have gone for a grimdark feel again, not the hyper highlighted look from the codex. I've also tried to wetblend up from the shaded areas up to the highlights. I don't think it's too bad for a first go, I may come back to it again later on..

Averland Sunset washed with Seraphim Sepia and Agrax right in the crevasses. Then highlighted up through Averland and to almost pure Flash Gitz yellow.

Sorry for the short post...work is killer, so I'm not getting as much hobby time as I would like...any comments about the stuff I'm working on, let me know...I would love to hear them!

Painting Gold

So painting gold is hard...really hard.  I have talked in another post about how I do small areas (chest plates, decorations etc) but when you want to do a whole mini that system breaks down.

I have to say, I can claim no responsibility for this way of painting gold...its pinched from someone else. Big props to Kenny Boucher at Next Level Painting for his guide, which I have modified to work with brushes not an airbrush.

So I used to have a metal Dante figure. I didn't really paint him that well, and the years have not been kind to him: 

Sad Dante

That horrible yellow-gold colour was achieved with a bright gold followed by a flesh wash (don't ask me how I remember the technique from over 20 years ago!). I don't really like that look, and I want my Dante to look like he's wearing some ancient aged brass armour. Kenny's method does this well, with a little modification.

So first things first, I stripped him off in Dettol. Then reattached his gun arm. The axe was problematic as it had snapped in the mid shaft. Basically I filed both ends off, drilled a 0.8mm hole in the dead centre of either end (with a pin vice) and then pinned it with a cut paperclip (my favourite pinning trick). I then pinned his foot onto a nice resin base I had lying around: 

Also primed in black

It turns out that the old metal sculps are a bit lacking on the detail front, and dont have the same depth of features as resin or plastic. This meant painstakingly hand painting in the details like abdomimal musculature to enhance their depth. Painful. 

So the next step was to paint the miniature in a bright silver (I used Runefang Steel) and apply a coat of Vallejo Model Air Copper (with a brush). In this context Copper is going to act as a 'dark gold', and the silver Base coat is to provide a really bright starting point.

The next step is to drybrush (quite liberally) Vallejo Model Air Bright Brass. As you can see I quite like these Vallejo metallics, and it was Kenny's tutorials that really turned me on to them. They are designed for airbrush, so are beautifully thinned and have great depth of coverage and pigment density. Another thing you will notice is that I never actually use a gold paint whilst painting this gold...

Next up is to try and increase the depth of darker tones, and this is done with a very delicate series of washes. The GW washes are ace, and carefully going from Seraphim Sepia to Agrax Earthshade and then down to Nuln oil gives an amazing result.  I then did a light drybrush of Bright Brass to re-establish the high tones.

The next step was the most important I think, and that is to reinforce the deeper tones with a very thin almost wash of burnt umber (vallejo model air range is my favourite...again). You need to be precise, it's almost like painting a very fine lowlight into the recesses. This took a while and a whole bunch of practice going up and down in tones until I reached this stage: 

Now clearly I have also painted some other details on at this stage as well. I have tried to keep a full on gold look, with as much variety of gold tones as possible (for practice as much as anything). I decided not to go with the white wings look, I don't think it matches the rest of my force.

So there it is, he still needs the finishing touches put on but is basically finished. I really enjoyed painting the gold tones, but it was much more time consuming than I had figured. Maybe down the line I will get some sanguinary guardsman...who knows.

Competition Entries

Loads of people say that entering a competitive painting event is a good way to improve your skills....so that's what I did!

This was my entry for the local Konversion Kompetition, where I placed a respectable 4th:

Here is entry for the local Battle of the Brush competition. It is a Librarian Turmiel which I have removed the Dark Angel icons from and painted in a scheme to match my Blood Angels. I really like the model, it's a great sculpt and I like the pose. This was my first go at glazing, you can see that the cape is a bit rough around the transitions, but it still looks pretty cool. I also glazed the patterns on the force sword...I'm not sure I am totally happy with the way they came out, but they demonstrate the technique really well.

Either way, it was good enough to win 1st place! Hopefully more competitions to come, I may submit my converted chimera to something soon if the paint job comes out ok. Thanks for reading...I hope to be better at posting more regularly from now on!

Update works in progress

So I haven't had much time to write anything lately, or do any painting! I thought I'd just share a few photos of my current works in progress...

First up is my Predator; getting a weathering job done now. I'm pretty pleased with how it has come out...For my first vehicle! I am planning to seal coat it when the weather improves and then play with some weathering pigments to finish the job.

Next is my tactical squad captain...coming along slowly. I dread to think how long the whole squad will take! The most obvious defect is the cloth. I had one go and hated the effect so I'm going to repaint it and then have a go with some glazing.

Lastly is my Dante salvage figure. I will put a post on in a bit with how he got from this:

To this:

I'm really pleased with how the gold is looking, after a lot of going back and forth. I just need to finish up with the base and do a couple of final flourishes and he will be done.

Oh and here are a couple of warriors I am doing too...busy times!