Sonic Dreadnought

Hello to one and all. Today we have probably the loudest vehicle in all the multiverse:

An Emperor's Children Sonic Dreadnought! This badass lump of resin is a complete kit from Forgeworld (and haven't we seen a lot of them lately?) that I've painted for the same client that commisioned the purple chaos marines we've been seeing on the blog lately. For those who might be unfamiliar with the lore concerning these things, some of Slaanesh's chaos marines are so plumbed in to sensation that they modify their senses to perceive everything in terms of art and music. To them a sunset and the screams of the dying are the same. To further enhance this experiance they use musical weapons that use harmonics and resonant frequencies to burst and shatter their victims while adding to the music of battle that they are addicted to. This thing is a Noise Marine champion interred in the walking life support mechanism of a dreadnought but still attacking with his favourite weapon:

from the excellent Order of the Stick.

Following some painful painting experiances recently I decided to paint the gold first. Normally "inside out" sums up most of my proceedure decisions but the liquid gold is easier to apply in broad strokes. I then washed the Liquid Old Gold with Agrax Earthshade and got to cutting in the purple.

Just like the others gloss black weapons give a classy contrast to the rich purple and golds and the green gem spot colours provide a bit of visual interest. I resisted painting the Twiddly Bits that have featured on the other models in this commission because it is already a very, very busy figure. The clean purple plates are some of the only relief that the eye gets!

To try and reduce the "toy-like" appearance of such a bold model I rusted up the exhaust pipes (always cheap metal) and added plenty of oil around the joints and pistons. This created a really nice contrast between the grungy workings and the gleaming armour plates. The rusting was done with a new product for me: AK Interactives Rust Streaks. This is an enamel paint that means that you can mess about with it using white spirit that won't hurt the acrylics. In this case I just thinned it down and glazed it over the pipes and exhaust vents. It is translucent and created a lovely rusty not rusted look.

For the base I just used lumps of cork rubble, modelling sand and a few Secret Weapon bricks (I won some Secret Weapon stuff in a contest recently so picked up some of the bricks and the snow I used on santa). To my mind the bricks are a little thin but they help make the dreadnought look bigger so that works. The heap of tanks that I showed you in an earlier post are underway and will be finished over the next couple of weeks. Not next week though because Pirate Viking Painting is going TO WAR!

You might remember last year that I went off to the Beard Bunker in Oxford for a paintathon? Well, I'm going back for the campaign week this time! I'm just 21 half painted Dwarfs from a 3000 point horde of the little dudes and I intend to do some grudge filled harm. To top it off, the week of awesome begins tomorrow with our - sort of - annual pilgrimage up to GW HQ in Nottingham for the mad apocalypse events that we call Nerd Thunder! This time it is four 1st founding Space Marine armies facing off against a huge Ork horde in Nerd Thunder IV: Guns of Nuvverork! Pictures will, of course, be up here and on the Beard Bunker for all to enjoy. As this is one of my holiday weeks there will of course be not a whole bunch of progress on current projects but come March we will see the second titan stride forth and a host of purple tanks try to avoid his feet! See you soon folks.

TTFN

We're gonna need a bigger strait jacket....

Hey folks, been a manic week here at PVP HQ but I have been able to squeeze in a quick figure, a Death Company Dreadnought:

Remember these lunatics? Well, just as regular Blood Angels can turn crazy and need to be destroyed in the white hot fires of combat so can their Dreadnoughts. Oops. This fellow is one such lunatic, as a result his compassionate bretheren tool him up with lethal close combat weapons and hurl him at the enemy hoping that eventually some of them will take him out and save them the task!

I deliberately kept the paint scheme very simple, I don't intend to use this chap all the time (in truth, there was a dreadnought shaped space in the figure case. I had the spare parts from the Furioso and an old dreadnought lying around and one thing led to another...) so didn't want to spend ages on him. I wanted the red saltires to be the focus of attention and wrapped them around the shoulder plates to help him look his best from any angle. I also refined my black painting method mentioned in the Chaplain article by adding a few drops of black ink to the Badab Black wash to intensify the colour and help avoid the greying effect of the drybrushing. I am really considering a quick black Space Marine army just because this technique is so very fast.

A view that Games Workshop don't show of this kit. I can't understand why?! The detailing on the Magna Grapple is cool! It's got little wheels to guide the cable, cable reels to store the tethers and the grapples themselves are pretty cool too.

Well, that is it for this post, for those keeping track there are only two models left to paint for my 4000 points of Blood Angels, another Sanguinary Priest and the last Drop Pod. I am really going to have to nail down what the next big project for me will be. Might have to do some "gang sized" projects to cool down from the 4000 point paint fest that the Blood Angels have been. Until next time everyone

TTFN

Ancients of Baal!

Greetings all, and for your delification and delight I present the most ancient of heroes the Blood Angels have to offer, their dreadnoughts:

For those who aren't in the know: Dreadnoughts are a form of walking tank that contains a life-support sarcophagus to keep alive a greviously wounded Space Marine hero to continue to fight for the chapter. They are functionally immortal as long as battle does not claim them and many represent the memory of their chapter's history and legends. Oh, and Ms. Funnymoney is about to demonstrate, they are big!

The larger of the pair is Abraxus, the Furioso Dreadnought:

With a frag cannon strapped to his left arm and that fist of doom on the left he will be a nasty prospect for anyone to face, particularly as he will be dropping out of the sky in his very own drop pod. Painting for these fellows started with a nice heavy metal basecoat starting from Tin Bitz and working all the way up through Boltgun Metal and Chainmail to Mithril Silver on the hard edges. Then the usual Blood Angels red basecoat (see Book of Jeff) and highlights drybrushed on.

I gave the frag cannons shell belt a rubberised feel as the metal that I had painted it in just wasn't doing it for me. Looked too inflexible, there aren't any joins in the belt to indicate chain feeds or anything. I figured rubber would distend neatly to spit out the shell casings and would grip the coke can sized bullets nicely. My usual mix of Charadon Granite with a couple of layers of Badab Black sorted out the effect pleasantly.

I decided to really scratch and ding up the paintwork on the fists of both dreadnoughts as, lets face it, they are huge lumps of metal designed to punch other lumps of metal. The effect is simple to achieve. Just get a bit of sponge, load it up with the top highlight colour of the paint you are using and then stipple and drag chips and dings randomly around the area. Then paint in the largest chips and scratches with a 1:1:1 mix of Chaos Black, Scorched Brown and Boltgun Metal. Creates a lovely effect. I go into lots more detail on this technique here.

Smaller, but still huge, is Helios a standard Blood Angels Dreadnought. This chap is the dread that is contained in the Assault on Black Reach kit. I chose him primarily for his weaponry, multi-melta plus drop pod = lots of sad tanks.

Speaking of the multi-melta, I am really happy with how the burnt nozzle effect came out on this kit. To replicate this effect you start with a fairly liberal drybrush of Bestial Brown, avoid having the drybrush end in a regular stripe around the gun. Next drybrush Scorched Brown around the same area taking care to fade out the colour to leave some Bestial Brown showing. Finally Chaos Black is drybrushed around the nozzles themselves. Quick, simple, effective. My favourite type of painting!

To make the generic dreadnought a bit more Blood Angel-ey I nicked a shoulder pad wing from the death company box, filed it flat and glued it on. Little details like that can help to lift a model and make it fit with the army better.

So that brings us ever closer to the end of project Blood Angels. Though the planner above is for a 3k arny I am just 30 models away from hitting 4000 points and that is where the project will stop, end, finito, no more. The next image shows the 4k plan:

It is designed to represent the moment that Tycho turned at Armageddon and was replaced by Machiavi. With the options in the 4k list I can create pretty much any Blood Angels army I please and can replace Tycho with Machiavi if anyone is grumpy about special characters. I think I'll have a drop pod session next, get that big job out of the way! Till then:

TTFN

Slaaneshi Soul Grinder

While visiting friends this week I found one of my earliest commissions still in their collection! The Soul Grinder of Slaanesh was created to be used in a game of Inquisitor (yup, if you want your players terrified for their character's lives then this is a good way to go!). The brief was for very pallid flesh and a real appearance of fused flesh and machinery. The Slaaneshi colouring was to tie the daemon engine in to the main bad guy of the campaign.

The skin was painted in the same way as the Berserkers from the previous post. Instead of stopping at a fleshy colour I continued to highlight up through bleached bone to almost white at some points.

All of the flesh to metal interfaces were painted with the blood mix from the Berserkers and then glazed in with a mix of brown ink and gloss varnish to simulate oily fluids. This is one of the tips from the Forgeworld Masterclass book and I really, really cannot recommend this enough.

The sword is painted with the rusting technique discussed in the Ork trukk article. The only change is the addition of the sharp scratches along the edge to simulate a sharpened blade on that plank of a sword!

The purple sections were base coated in Liche Purple and highlighted by adding Bleached Bone to the Liche Purple. The lightning flashes were taken up higher with the addition of more Bleached Bone and white to the mix.The entire area was then glazed down with Leviathan Purple. The highest points were re-highlighted to add vibrancy.

So there he is! Should have the other Thousand Sons finished by the middle of next week with the Sorcerer getting some special attention (they are really lovely models) followed by the last five World Eaters as a bit of a treat, then who knows, I might even paint something for me if no other commission stuff has arrived ;).

TTFN