Guess what...

While "slow and unsteady" would be the attributes I'd describe my current painting progress with...

... some cheap ass perks arrived on my hobby table today, for further examination concerning their usability for a special project of mine.

 

Can you guess what it is?

Seriously, those Noise Marines sure are a challange in terms of the time I want to waste on my infantry, but it feels like it'll be worth it, so I force myself to stick to da plan. At the moment, I tend to do all of my initial infantry in a single assembly line (that's 18 Noise Marines) to get it over with AFAP, as soon as the initial "filler five" are done. It'll hurt, but they'll look great once finished. On the other hand, I find myself really craving to paint some fast and simple Star Phantoms again. My current plan would be to finish the above stuff until the 14th, and start building all my Chaos infantry then in order to have them done by month's end. While doing this, I might be able to finally start painting my Marine Attack Bikes. Will this plan survive conctact with reality?

I'll keep you updated. Ithmaril, out.

WIGDTM: January 2011 Edition

Welcome to the first episode of the monthly "What I've Gotten Done This Month" feature (I've just made that up). Let's get straight to the beef.

1. Five Noise Marine test models: Assembly + 75% painting

click to enlarge

I'm happy to have finally made some real painting progress, but those still need to be properly finished off. Scroll down for a list of steps already done on them, and what I have yet to do. By the way, the alibi basing was done for the Custodes Motivational Challange 2011, and they'll be stripped off as soon as I get my Dragonforge ones.




2. Vindicare Assassin Assembly, Basecoat

click to enlarge

I found was a badly mauled Micro Art warmachine skull base, which fit him well for the ork skull that is part of the sculpt. So I hacked and filed away the remaining borders and did some GSing where the base was already broken, and, ta-dah, here he is. Got a black basecoat in the meantime, nothing special.



And here's a quick breakdown of steps for the Noise Marine scheme above. As a rule, I apply 2 thinned down coats of the respective colors per step.

1. Basecoats, pre-wash highlights

1a) GW Black Primer + thinned down GW Chaos Black
1b) Foundation Dheneb Stone as a basecoat for the pink, bone/leather/wood and blue
1c) GW Skull White highlights for bone/leather/wood - the parts that are supposed to remain boney.
1d) Vallejo Squid Pink and Electric Blue for pink/blue surfaces
1e) Vallejo Silver for the metals and golds, GW Burnished Gold afterwards
1f) highlight the blue with a mix of Electric Blue and Dheneb Stone, 3 steps (20:80/40:60/20:80), a touch of pure Dheneb Stone as a finish

1g) Dheneb Stone basecoat for the bases
1h) slight Skull White drybrush on the sand

2. Washes

2a) massive layer of slightly thinned Vallejo Red Shade for the pink, manual flow control for larger surfaces, overspill is okay.
2b) thin GW Badab Black wash to dull down the golds
2c) thin GW Asurmen Blue wash on the silver and blue
2d) some brush tips of unthinned GW Asurmen Blue on the more contrasting metal/blue parts (like surface transitions, deep cracks...)
2e) quite thin GW Devlan Mud wash on the bone/leather/wood

2f) Devlan Mud wash for the sand on the base
2g) Dheneb Stone touchup for the base trim
2h) glue patches of grass on the base

3) What I still have to do

- steps 1e) to 2d) on the models yet missing them
- touch up bone and pink with slight drybrushing where the washes misfired, using 1-3 shades mixed with the respective washes
- highlight the pink with pure Squid Pink, clean up the eyes, highlight with dots of lit up electric blue
- finish highlighting metals and golds with their pure respective base colors
- clean up the black, highlight up to Vallejo Wolf Grey on the sharpest edges, dull down with thinned Badab Black where neccessary
- if needed, re-wash transitions between pink and black with Red Shade to give it a good glowing look
- varnish
- order, paint, and apply Dragonforge bases


Thanks for tuning in! 

Back to Blogging

A very belated happy new year to you all!

Before you ask or you don't: I've had a crazy busy first half of January, a very conservative New Year's Eve, a quite relaxed Christmas Season, and that's enough in terms of irrelevant catchup stuff. Time to get back to hobby work.

So, what am I working on right now? On the Deepstrike Radio Custodes 2011 Motivational Challange, that's what. My effort for the challange will be a combination of work on my existing and ever-expanding Star Phantoms (Codex: Space Marines) force- or whatever I'll call them soon because FW ruined my chapter (more on that later on... maybe.), and my upcoming Emperor's Children (Codex: CSM) army.

For January, I'll keep it stupid and simple. 5 Noise Marines without the sonic weapons as a color scheme assembly lining test, mostly made out of parts not quite good enough for the sonic-armed ones to come. If they come out well in the end, I might use them as fillers whenerver I need to boost my model count, because in the initial 1000 pts. list, there's no such thing as a bolter.
Now, my girl left for Vienna last morning. Gave me a boost to prep some models for painting right away, also for the fact that my metal shoulderpads were finally delivered yesterday. I'll have 7-10 days of no cooking, household work, and daily rituals after all... so much more hobby time. So I did just that, and then realized that she took our camera with her. Obviously.

That means you'll get my next few progress pics shot with my laptop's crappy webcam. Enjoy.

That's it for now. Despite all the shortcomings and the fact that I'm quite late, I think it's a good start into a new hobby year with new hobby-related resolutions. (Again: More on that later. Again: maybe.)

Cheers and thanks for sticking around,
Ithmaril

First Blood... Or Rather Paint.

No. Don't worry, don't panic, don't delete my harmless little blog. I'm definitly not gonna annoy you to death by posting each and every time I get some paint down on a model in the future. Just... bear with me, people. It's been more than nine months since I've last touched a paintbrush. (Sounds like pregnancy was involved, but no) So this is kind of a big step towards getting back into the hobby for me, because we all know how much of an obstacle the sheer act of getting it over with can be. (Or rather, getting over yourself.)

Speaking of obstacles, I've realized two things doing those few parts. First of all, I'll have much more fun painting my Phantoms in the future for the sheer ease of the techniques. Second, I need lots of practice again. The metals turned out terrible, my brush control sucks (party because my old brushes aren't quite up to it, seems like I'm gonna sink even more money into materials *le sigh*), my workspace and lighting are still sub-par, aaand so on. Yeah, not quite like riding a bike. Those first brush strokes were a terrible experience. Time to get back into painting shape.

And, by the gods, I will. On another lighter note, I think I can very well live with the scheme I've settled on so far. Let's see how the model turns out in the end.

Ithmaril out.

And The Children Shall Lead

Yeah, crazy week. No details, again, but let's just say that up until the 23rd, life has me by the balls right and proper. Also, I'm in the process of getting leisure-time drunk right now for a change, and on my way to chill with some friends who intend to do the same. But having had another tour of shopping today, and after getting in an hour of hobby time, I figured that a small update would be in place. So, here it is.

Test model time! I've spent some spare time here and there over the past 2-3 weeks to nail down the bits mix and general style of my up and coming EC project. This guy will serve as the test model for my initial scheme. I decided to stick to the basic plastic CSM bodies (meaning a close selection of bits, stay tuned for more on that) while using a set of old Noise Marine guns, and several of the new. That's the first baby steps I'm taking towards building the army. Not seen on the pic: I replaced his left arm with a plastic one in order to leave the shoulder unpadded, as I intend to do something special for their left shoulderpads, army-wide. Not hard to figure out: I'm gonna use the actual GW metal cast EC pads.

So, here's how far I've gotten with the scheme itself:

It's basically an inversion of the current "official" Noise Marine scheme, with some blue added in for certain icons, details, and the eyes, for a contrast to the pink. Also, gold in unusual places.

Now, I've put loads of thinking into upcoming conversions, style, bits to use, further gimmicks, and the list itself, but I'll save them up for a more focused post. In the meantime, thanks for putting up with busy me, it'll all get better next year. Bah. Also, I've also prepared some Star Phantoms for painting, I just gotta find the time to do the prep and get at it: Sorting through paint pots, checking my primer cans, setting up a workspace, painting. I'm sure this will happen soon... -ish. It's another important step of getting back into the whole thing. More on that at another point in time.

Ithmaril out.

The Shape Of Things To Come

"Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away."