AoS progress day 2

So I put some more work into my Knight Questor today. I'm having a blast painting this miniature, it's one of the best I have ever seen. That Stormcast army is starting to look very tempting indeed!

Still to do is the remainder of the Cape  (white is going to be tricky, then some freehand on that), the helmet plume, finishing the accessories and the shield, and doing the sword. I'm also going to do some touch up depth work with the gold in places (burnt umber in the recesses and light silver on the tips).

I've got a base picked out, it's a 50mm bike base and looks like some old temple ruins so fits with the dungeon crawl narrative.

My squad for next months Battle of the Brush is coming along (albeit much more slowly with the sigmarine on the scene), and I'm starting to put some thoughts together for the vehicle entry...

Enough for now, hoping to get a finished mini sometime this weekend!

'Speed' painting Sigmar

So my Knight Questor arrived! I couldn't resist cracking on with him as I've been waiting ages to paint something from Age of Sigmar (although this model is from the Silver Tower game). Here are some WIP shots of my evening:

Primed in black, then base coated in Hashut Copper:

Next a liberal drybrush of Gehannas Gold:

Followed by a slightly more conservative Runefang Steel drybrush, with a bit of extra Runefang highlighting on the very exposed tips:

And now a Seraphim Sepia wash, the astute will notice I have started blocking in some of the Kantor Blue here as well :

Followed by an Agrax Earthshade wash (sorry the picture is a bit blurry...its getting dark!):

So I'm pretty happy with how things are going so far. The sculpt on this figure is astonishing, and next to no mould lines or flashing. I love the pose too, and the level of detail is brilliant. I hope this doesn't mean a new addiction to Stormcast Eternals!

I'll get some better pictures next time I paint so that you can see the progress a bit more clearly!

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!

Chimera Conversion part 4 - Finished!

So I think I am finally happy with the Chimera.  The only steps that were left were to finalise the track work and add some minor 'dirt wear' to the bottom portion and the track sides.  So here it is, any feedback is most welcome, bear in mind it was my first go at doing major weathering!

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.