Emperor's Children the Second

As promised, here are the second - and final - batch of the Emperor's Children commission. I don't mind admitting that I found these hard. They really do not look good until they are finished and it is hard to keep the faith through the batch. But, finished they are and finding things tough is why people pay me money so here they are!

Now, I went through the process for painting these in the previous article, so I shan't belabour the point. Instead I shall talk about the things that are different:

Again I went with different patterns on each to create a chaotic effect but retaining a uniform appearance. The checks above have the unintended effect of showing some details about how I paint them! The harsh light from the camera actually penetrated the corrections! I usually start by painting a grid of black lines to form the squares. The hard part is keeping them regular and curving them over surfaces naturally. Then fill in alternate squares. It is almost impossible to make no mistakes so you then go over any squares that were the wrong size, shape or just untidy and cut in with the original colour. This is a hell of a lot easier if you are using white rather than a five stage pink but ho hum.

This cheery fellow is my favourite of the whole batch. He has replaced great swathes of skull and throat with mechanical apparatus to better sing Slaanesh's praises. This is one of the most disturbing aspects of Chaos for me. That people would willingly subject themselves to this sort of mutilation in praise of their evil deities. Shudder. I decided that a dead, bloodless pallor would be appropriate for the skin as it has been reflected back from the skull and replaced with all kinds of horrible stuff. I imagine a lot of blood vessels went too. The pallor starts from Tallarn Flesh with a Devlan Mud wash. I use Devlan on dead flesh and skins because it lacks that ruddy vitality of Ogryn Flesh. I then built up the highlights with increasing amounts of Fortress Grey added in to the Tallarn Flesh with a final dot of white for the finished highlights.

The runic designs are cribbed from a variety of chaos sources and some occult widgey-whoo (technical term that). It felt right for this guy to have devotional scriptures on him!. Once I had finished him he looked a bit too sterile and servitor-like with the pallor of the skin and the mechanical insertions. It needed a touch of horror to make it chaos-ey. Cue the addition of blood to the gaps and openings. It now appears that using the device splits all of the surgeries and adds agony to the praises to his god. [Ok now Jeff, your brain might be scaring the normal people, wrap it up]

So, another commission down and the fun of a whole commissioned army of Death Korps of Krieg ahead! Hurrah! I will be breaking up the DKK with other commissioned work and my own stuff so I don't go totally crazy but Imperial Guard will be the focus for a while!

TTFN

Jumping on a Motivation Bandwagon

Hi folks!

An idea that has popped up that I really like is the 8th Edition Challenge:

The premise is that a group of people all pledge to create a new Warhammer army especially designed for the eighth edition. The support of the group keeps people going and provides advice. I had already decided to paint a High Elf army (Island of Blood has inspired me more than a little!). A few people of my acquaintance are having problems with motivation so I thought I would throw open invitations to any and all readers to join me in our 8th Edition Challenge. Essentially I am going to do a monthly update on my High Elf progress (above and beyond any how-to painting articles I might throw in!). I invite anyone who wants to get involved and doesn't necessarily have a blog of their own to post in the comments of these posts to join in!

So without further ado. Here is my plan, start off with a 2000 point army:

And gradually expand to the 3500 point monster you see below (btw: if anyone wants this Excel sheet just drop me an email, it autocalculates percentages):

As you can see, the army is built rather heavily around the Island of Blood figures as I just cannot stand the spearmen. I am sure they have redeeming features but their flaws just leap, screaming into my eyes. Instead I am using the glorious Sea Guard fairly heavily, especially with the inspired descision to release an upgrade sprue. The 3500 point army just includes everything I wanted to paint made into a coherent army. You don't have to do a big army like this. Just commit to doing SOMETHING. Resurrect an old army from the "get around to it" box, paint something you've always wanted to, just go for it. Post your lists in the comments and get painting! I'm going to try for about 20 models a month. Cavalry count for 2 models, characters count as 5, monsters/chariots/warmachines also as 5. (So the lord on griffon counts as 10 models, this is an insight into my pricing policy too folks!) This is a representation of the effort required for each model type.

Later today the Emperor's Children commission that I've been working on will be complete, photographed and blogged so watch this space!

TTFN

Alpha Legion Rhino and so. many. scales...

"Yeah, of course I can paint dragon scales on the back of a rhino" I said. Ho ho ho. A hollow laughing. This turned out to be one of those projects that I am really, really happy with but had me tearing out great clods of hair figuring out. The brief was to paint an Alpha Legion rhino (using the lovely, lovely Forgeworld doors) and to add to the Legion paint scheme by painting scales along the top and down the back door. This sounded fairly straightforward. Turns out it is quite tricky to paint convincing scales, but more of that later. First lets look at the tank as a whole!

Alpha Legion colours are a dark blue and a turquoise-y green. The colours have been muted a little by the photography but you should still be able to see what I am on about. The blue was fairly straightforward, a basecoat of Necron Abyss highlighted with the addition of Enchanted Blue (not my usual blue highlight but I wanted a "warmer" blue than the usual grey-blue) and sequential drybrushing to pick up the edges. Then I shaded the whole tank with what the 1:35 modelling community call a "filter" essentially a wash glazed over the surface to alter the tone of the colour scheme and add shading. In this case I wanted to add a little hint of green to the blue in order to bind the blue and green areas visually. This was achieved with a 2:1 mix of Asurman Blue and Thraka Green washes carefully glazed over the blue avoiding any pooling.

Once this was dry I turned my attention to the green areas. The trick was making a blue-green that wasn't bright turquoise, Orkhide Shade and Hawk Turquoise came to my rescue (roughly a 3:2 mix). This was highlighted with the same shade mixed with a little bleached bone. Finally the area was given a filter of 1:1 mixed Asurman Blue and Thrake Green wash. While this all dried off I painted all the metallic areas in Jeff Rust (see the glossary - The Book of Jeff - for common methods I use). The icons of the Hydra on the doors and glacis plate were also painted with Orkhide shade. Try to do this if you want multiple discrete areas of colour on a model. Use the same base shades and just shade and highlight differently. It will tie the look of the model together and keep it from looking gaudy. The heads were highlighted with Goblin Green and shaded with Thraka Green. The tongues also had a thin glaze of Thraka Green, this prevented them from standing out from the green field too much.

It was now time for markings, the first was placed on the forward left quarter - as it looked a bit plain - and features an alternative Alpha Legion symbol. The Legion use a variety of markings to identify themselves to their various cults and insurgencies in order to obfuscate their presence. The chained 'A' is one such identifier and looks pretty spanky so that livened up the panel! For anyone who struggles with freehand painting and wants to replicate this: start with the cross bar chain, paint a dash followed by an equals sign followed by a dash etc: -=-=- with the dashes in between the equals bars. Then round off the edges of the equals signs. Finally paint a chevron on the top of the chain and extend the lines below. Thicken up the lines and add serifs as they look all kinds of fancy.

Now it got tricky. The main feature the client wanted was those scales. I'm really glad he did as they look ace and forced me to solve a problem I never knew I'd need! Initially I tried painting the scales on individually over the blue. That looked terrible. So I blanked out the area with Orkhide shade (see, that green again) and tried painting tessalated irregular scales (see the cape on Vulkan He'Estan). Turns out that works on a miniature in 3D sculpting but not in painting. So I blanked it out again and started laying out regular patterns of overlapping 'V' shapes. Too regular. It looked like a green tiled floor. Cue some growling and chewing of paintbrushes. Blank out again. This time a less regular pattern. Finally, it was looking right, but each scale looked too flat. I realised that I would have to individually highlight every, single, scale. That actually turned out to be a fairly quick job and I am so glad I did it as it made the paint job. Check out the results on the next two shots:

The colours are Base: Orkhide Shade; Outline: Orkhide and Black; Highlight: Orkhide, Knarloc and Gretchin Greens in a 2:1:1 ratio.

The irregularity is what gives it its natural feel. Precious little organic matter grows in a straight line so neither should this! I firmed up the line of the doors as they connect to prevent the model's details from disappearing under freehand painting. I also blended in the edges of the scales to the blue by stippling Necron Abyss along the edge of the pattern. This prevented the design from looking too "painted on" and sank it into the scheme of the rest of the tank. Finally I painted in all the bone sections and turned my attention to the tank commander:

A few things worth noting. The insides of tanks are generally painted a different colour to the outside. Use a fairly neutral colour and generally pale. This will add a nice touch of contrast to your paint scheme. Also, the cables running from the marine have all been painted differently. There is no real reason for this but it adds another touch of reality ("step 3: Attach green and yellow live cable to socket B..." etc). Finally I got on with some fun weathering - reasonably light, I see the Alpha Legion as professional soldiers who would care for their vehicles - using my usual methods to achieve a nice "in use" look. And there you have it! One finished Alpha Legion transport and my second post in two days. Looks like the mojo is back with a vengeance. Now then, on with those Emperor's Children and then a treat, a whole army of Death Korps of Krieg, I love those guys, glee!

TTFN

Mojo Returns! Death Company and a Wizard!

Hello all, first, let me thank everyone who sent messages of support to my Grandfather. He really appreciated them. The good news is that he is out of the hospital and doing much better, this plus a weekend of fun and giggles has recovered my hobby mojo considerably. Last night I was able to finish off two "drying time" projects and I am deeply chuffed with how both of them turned out. For those unfamiliar with bulk painting strategies a "drying time" project is something you do during the times when the models you are working on need some time to let washes dry or glue on bases set etc. In order to prevent distraction setting in you work on another model. Keeps the discipline going. So, here are two drying projects: the first of the Death Company and the Island of Blood High Elf Mage.

Kicking off with the Death Company; given how fiddly they are and how few there are in the army I decided to paint them all as individual characters. The models are a hybrid of Sanguinary Guard legs and Death Company torsos. The other legs and torsos are combined to form the honour guard. The painting is reletively simple. The red, gold, bone and gems are all as per previous Blood Angel posts. The black armour is painted using my favoured method of mixing increasing amounts of Fenris Grey into black and then edge highlighting with pure Fenris. I like the blue/grey black highlights for armour, gives a natural progression. I tend to use Khemri Brown for cloth instead. When the highlighting is finished I paint in the metallic colours and then wash the whole thing in Badab Black to tone down the blue.

Unlike the gemstones on the normal Blood Angels (purple in hue) I painted the Death Company's gemstones red to increase the percentage of red on the model. Basecoat the gems in scab red, shade the top corner with a mix of scab red and black; then blend scab red and blood red sequentially across the gem. Highlight the bottom edge with first a blood red/blazing orange mix, then blazing orange and finally dwarf flesh. Yes, really dwarf flesh. Try it sometime. It is the perfect finishing colour for the gems and makes them look slightly different to the vomit brown highlighted red armour.

EDIT: Damnit, I have just noticed that I misspelled Forsaken on the model. Curses. Lesson to be learned there, check the damn spelling, even on simple words. Grrr.

I had an idea that when repainting their armour black that the Death Company rename themselves. Divorcing themselves from their former lives and accepting their doom. The name "forsaken" seemed appropriate, the scrappy style seemed appropriate given the frenzied thrashings of a marine in the grip of the Black Rage. Some servitor trying to hold him still to repaint a name suggested a shakey style!

Secondly we have the next part of Project Island of Blood: The mage. I cannot stress enough how brilliant this model is. I painted it in two parts; leaving the cloak detatched to allow me to get at all the little details. Keeping with the bone and red feel I decided to paint the majority of the model in bone but have the sash and cloak lining in red to make him stand out from the troops around him.

Speaking of the cloak lining, I wanted to paint a subtle design on the red. I was looking for abstract, repeating patterns. Eventually I hit on Japanese art. The High Elves have a slightly Japanese feel to them anyway and so I figured that it would work. Using a plum red would mean that it would only be obvious close-up, from futher away the cloth would just appear red. The design is a repeated cloud pattern comprised of triple arcs overlapping and forming a bank of cloud. If I had kept this going all the way up the cloak it would have been far too busy. So I broke the pattern and painted individual abstract clouds all the way up.

 

When you have a paint scheme like this, with similar colours in close proximity the areas of detail can blend together and make your painting look messy. To avoid this I used a technique called black lining to divide the seperate areas of detail into discrete colours. This is well illustrated in the photograph below, while the finished product looks crude in this high magnification take a look at the long shot above to see how crisp the effect makes areas of detail. The technique was also used around the face, hair and helmet to give deep shadows.

 

I was agonising over what colour to paint the ball of energy for some time. It needed to contrast or compliment the paint scheme so far. For a while I contemplated purple, green was a possibility but would have been too remeniscent of Skaven magic. Finally I settled on a light blue which would have the right High Elf feel, contrast the paint scheme and lift the model further from the rank and file soldiers around him. The blue started from a basecoat of Enchanted Blue over a layer of Necron Abyss. I highlighted it with increasing amounts of white until it was almost white, I then washed the area with Asurman Blue and re-highlighted the pale areas. I then washed the areas that I wanted lit by the magical energies with a very, very dilute Enchanted Blue and white mix. The same wash was finally applied to the basing, a highlight of a lighter blue finished off the lighting effects.

With the descision taken to paint the magic blue the colour of the crystal ball was easy. It needed to be blue as well to balance the colour scheme. Basecoated with Necron Abyss the ball was painted in stripes of Enchanted Blue and darker Necron Abyss (mixed with a little black). A couple of lighter highlights of Enchanted and White and a gloss varnish later and the crystal was finished.

Well, both of these models have been a lot of fun and I am really happy with the results. The mojo is back with a vengence and the commission work is back on track. Hope you all like them and as usual any questions or comments are welcome and actively solicited.

TTFN

Heavy Metal

Greetings all, this week has been something of a hobby non-entity. Family matters have kinda killed my hobby mojo (get better soon Grandad!) and while I have got stuff done; nothing is finished for photography. So I present an older army, my Imperial Guard, the glorious Gethsemanite XVth! This time we will focus on my favourite element of the guard. Their armoured vehicles. So here are the tanks of the third company:

The colour scheme for the army is Charadon Granite and olive drab green (Catachan Green with a Badab Black wash). The tanks add black and a thin Khemri Brown stripe to the mix. The painting starts with a mix of black and Catachan Green drybrushed up through Catachan Green and then a Catachan and Rotting Flesh final highlight. The broad bands of Charadon Granite are painted on and drybrush highlighted with Charadon
and Khemri Brown mix. Next comes a thin stripe of Khemri Brown to break up the quite similar green and brown. Finally thin short bands of black (with a little Scorched Brown added to soften the colour) are painted following the line of the Khemri Brown. The metalwork is painted with Jeff-rust. The weapons are painted the same way as the rest of the army. I wanted to achieve a black anodised look to the guns - imitating the look of modern firearms. This was achieved by painting the gun barrels black and adding thin edge highlights of chainmail to the edges of the metalwork. Once dry a quick gloss varnish brought up the shine and finished off the effect.

Once the painting was finished the weathering - my favourite part - could begin! Now I talked at length about tank weathering in a previous article. These models take the process much, much further. Instead of running the wash into the panel lines I sloshed a very thin Scorched Brown wash over the entire tank. Gravity takes care of pulling the wash to the lower reaches of the tank, it really does look dreadful until it dries! Have faith! I then used the same dust drybrushing as on the Blood Angels razorback. The main difference between the two methods comes before the wash stage. When doing the chips and dings there are some large areas of scoured metalwork (noticably the dozer blades and track guards) that are painted with streaky drybrushing of Jeff-rust.

This old model Hellhound showcases the dozer blade scoured metal quite nicely. I intend to be replacing these with the gorgeous, gorgeous new versions eventually. This design will become a Banewolf as the external tanks seem a good idea when you have filled them with corrosive man-dissolving chemicals.

EDIT: Totally forgot! The tracks also have a wash of Forgeworld's masterclass oil wash (brown ink and gloss varnish) which gives them that nice "heavy machinery" look.

The Chimera below has had quite a lot of small conversion jobs performed on it. The first is the track guards, ordinarily the GW track guards only cover the first quarter of a chimera's tracks. This seemed a trifle silly so I cut the slanted edges off the long "angled" track guard and attached it behind the others.

The second small conversion is on the lasgun ports:

I don't like the lasgun "hedgehog" on the unaltered kit. I know that the idea is to show that the chimera interior is a sealed unit but I prefer to show the squad using their own lasguns to fire out. I decided to make shutters that the unit would open to fire out of. This was achieved with a couple of small bevelled pieces of plastic-card per opening. These were glued behind the opening before assembly.

The pintle-mounted heavy stubber showcases the black anodised effect on the weapons nicely.

Finally some sentinels! These show the squadron markings quite nicely: the coloured triangle denotes the platoon that the squad is attached to, the squad is identified by a greek letter (in this case sigma) and a number to show the position in the squad. For anyone thinking of playing Imperial Guard consider a squadron of sentinels with autocannons. They are fast and manouverable and can get behind other armoured vehicles easily enough. An autocannon is fine for dealing with thin rear armour and scares infantry a lot more than the single shot lascannon. Well, that's all for the armoured showcase! Hopefully my mojo will return soon so that the next update will have shiny new models!

TTFN

Children of the Emperor

Here's some shots of the latest commission work! These Emperor's Children were painted with the brief of "classic pink and black". Now pink is one of those colours. It is as difficult as white or yellow to get a smooth coat and is really hard to cover mistakes. This pink was produced with a basecoat of several thin layers of Warlock Purple. The pink was then built up with sequential layers of Warlock Purple and Skull White mixes.

The layers were then blended together with a couple of thin glazes of a Baal Red and Leviathan Purple mixed wash. The recesses were then deepened with the addition of more Leviathan Purple. At this point the models looked more like Barbie's First Space Marine, the pink needed breaking up. I decided to do this with individual patterns of black over the pink. Flames, dags, stripes, thorns, lots of different options for decoration. All of the detail shots below show the patterns I chose for the first five. Weirdly, the models looked fine to the naked eye but the camera shows lots of areas where I will have to go over again with the pink!

That's all for this update. Tossing a coin now to decide whether to paint the next five of these or to launch into the Alpha Legion rhino I have got on the workbench for the same client. Hmm. Choices, choices!

TTFN

Librarian Conversion

Hi all, the Blood Angels army rumbles ever, ever on (although the Dark Eldar are pulling at my hobby magpie so hard that I have issued edicts to my missus that if I even look like buying them I am to be hit with sticks). This time it is the turn of the Librarian of the 3rd company. For those unfamiliar with Space Marine terminology, Librarians are the psychic warriors of the chapter, they are also responsible for cataloging the chapter's history and accomplishments, hence, Librarian. Think of them as space wizards and you won't go far wrong! As always choosing a model for a character that you will only have one of is a lengthy process. I like most of the current Librarian models - love the terminator one, have to find an excuse to use him - but each has something that I wanted to change. Finally I settled on this one.

Trouble is, there's something on him I don't like as well. The book in his hand is very nice but seems to defy gravity, the pages are stiff, the bookmark wrong somehow. Despite that he is a gorgeous model with just the right stern, calm feel that someone who feels the laws of physics are better off as guidelines should have. I decided that swapping that arm out would give me my own unique model and give me a chance to personalise him with blood angel heraldry. A quick search on "let the dice decide" yielded the parts I needed (for the curious, a left handed bolt pistol arm, the "wait signal" scout sniper hand, a blood angel shoulder pad and backpack). The bits arrived commendably quickly and I got to work, and here he is!:

I wanted to portrey the Librarian as casting one of his powers, a roilling, coruscating bolt of pure psychic energy, compare and contrast the original model and this conversion to see what a difference this reletively minor alteration makes to the feel and tone of the miniature.

 The proceedure was as follows, first, remove the bolt pistol hand from the arm at the wrist leaving a clean cut at the wrist cuff. Attach the scout sniper hand with plastic glue at about 2/3 up the cuff and at a slight upward angle. Attach backpack and shoulder pad. Leave the glue to cure. Then drill a pilot hole into the cuff at roughly the halfway point, make it a good deep one as it will be supporting all of the rest of the work. In to this pilot hole I inserted a length of wire and superglued it in place. I then chopped the wire to length - eyeballing how long I wanted the energy burst to be. Again, leave to cure, superglue may stick instantly but it needs a good quarter hour for all the chemistry to be over and the bond to be secure.

Next came the sculpting of the energy bolt. I wanted to try out a new product - to me anyhow - Squadron Green Putty. Unlike the "green stuff" I am used to this comes ready mixed in a tube, you just squeeze it out and go! I smeared it along the length of the energy bolt and then went to town with a scalpel blade teasing out tiny threads of the the putty to create lots of small spikey voids. This is one of the strengths of doing your own sculpted parts, you could not cast this effect, too many undercuts. The model would never release cleanly from it's mould. I made sure that the splash covered all of the join between the hand and wrist and also washed back along the wrist. I envisioned the psyker conjouring a ball of energy and then firing it at the foe, some of it would wash back at him. Plus it'll look cool when painted!

You'll note some damage to the wrist cuff, this happened when I removed the hand, slightly careless of me. I could repair it with green stuff but I decided to leave it and paint it as battle damaged. On the subject of Squadron Green Putty, I like it but for only certain jobs I think. It has a texture like milliput - slightly grainy on the blade - and dries very fast. It can be filed and sanded so anywhere that needs a perfectly straight edge would be ideal. Unlike green stuff it has almost no shape memory and so can be pushed around more easily. This however is a double edged sword as when combined with its tackiness means that you can pull it out of position easily. I think I will still be using the green stuff for sculpting additions (pouches, straps, hair, etc) and use this Squadron stuff for quick fixes, gap filling and for things that need a random organic feel like this energy bolt. Seems to cure nicely overnight so not too lengthy a process at all.

Now I'll just need to paint him! Oh, and name him... now unusually I am drawing a total blank here. Usually I am fine with naming but he seems to be causing me problems! Hence I am announcing a "name my Librarian" competition. He's in an army with Tycho and Lemartes so something different to those two would be nice. The winning entry gets fame, prestiege and my eternal thanks! Suggestions in the comments please! Finally this week I would like to clue everyone in to an awesome website: http://demonwinner.free.fr/ this is an archive of every Golden Demon winner from every country that they can find! There is some truly inspirational work on this site from the undisputed best painters in the world, I heartily reccomend perusing it. This sort of thing used to make me jealous of others talent. Now it just spurs and inspires me to improve my own work and to try and achieve effects that they have. Oh, and go back just a few years and see what used to be good enough to win Golden Demon. Food for thought!

TTFN