Competition Winner!

Before we start with the pleasantries I want to start off with a small apology and an advice to everyone, myself included. First I'm sorry that I have been slow in posting this, four days late! And the advice? Never ever ever assume that you get extra time for things over any kind of holiday, it seems like one actually gets less time! Next time I will make sure I synchronize the deadline with some big deadline at work so that I am pumped up to get things done rather than filled with holiday food.

The winner of my little competition is Andy Dahl! You see the entry just below this text. What really got me was how I was thrown for a loop several times. I don't know if the same thing happens to anyone else, but at first I thought I was looking at a Farseer, then slowly it dawned on me that it's a Tau Ethereal, only to land in deamon infested territory. And I who was under the impression that the Tau were safe from such horrors, maybe he's involved in Farsight's destiny?

Andy throw me an email and we'll set it up so I can snail you the prize. Hope you will enjoy the model :)

I also wanted to comment on the runners up. For those with 1337 h4xx0r 5k|llz, I tend to name my files things like one, two, three. It doesn't have any meaning :)

Here we have Dorn the Betrayer. Being an avid painter of yellow I was intrigued by the idea. I think someone has written a story on this topic. What if Dorn betrayed the emperor instead? I like the Nurgle look. I do not know if Nurgle was suppose to be Dorn's chaos god of choice, maybe Slaneesh would have been a fit. Either way, cool idea! Hope you add to Dorn's army Travis. I know I will add to my loyalists :)

Julio wanted to create a Sister of Battle without any actual Sister's parts. I get a mixture of Eldar (neither Dark nor Craftworld) and something Tyranid. Julio, make sure you send me painted pictures too, because I am really curious how she will turn out painted. I look forward to GWs future Sisters release, as it could end up looking quite sweet, and by then my friend Julio here will have a cool and unique looking army already. The big shoulders, the figure, nothing is Sisters of Battle, yet it draws your thoughts that way. Well done!

That's it for tonight. Next up will be Lysander, vehicles (2(!) Land Raiders and 2 Land Speeders, time to pull the airbrush out!) and a debrief on running a little mini competition. I hope you all had a good time and that it led to some interesting hobby moments. Have a good new hobby year, and stay safe!

New fully painted minis and comp update

Feast your eyes on five Assault Terminators. Two with Thunder Hammers and Storm Shields. All fully painted, based, and finalized with a nice coat of Purity Seal. Next up, Danarth Lysander and a Land Raider!

For a list of all my painted Imperial Fists (minus one Tactical Squad that I need to take photos of) head over to: Flekkzo's Imperial Fists.

Also tomorrow I will crown (!) a winner in my little competition, which means one lucky hobby enthusiast will be one box o Eldar death richer.

And to all of you: God Jul!

New brushes

I've tried one of my new brushes today. Painted on a bunch of yellow and grey (decided to first paint Astronomican Grey and to then follow it up with white) using thinned paint and my initial impression is: It's a very different way of painting. The thinned paint worked far better with the Raphaël 8404 size 0 than my GW brush. It kept much more of it and it went on better, painting with the sides of the brush rather than the tip tip. But you really really have to develop a lighter touch. I could be much more raw and rough before, it's almost like I could force the paint onto the mini in the past, and now I am just gentle nudging the surface.

For those curious I use a thinning recipe ripped directly of the intertubes. It's suppose to be Jennifer Haley's. She's damn good so I thought it could be a good start at least:) And it works quite well for me right now. I drop a few drops on my palette and then put some paint next to that and mix it up as I go along. So no magic there, just messy old me :)

For the curious, this is the recipe in question:

• 25% Liquitex Slow-Dri
• 25% Winsor and Newton Flow Improver
• 50% Water

A bad bad picture (an iPhone 3G is *not* a good camera for minis!) but the paint just goes on so much nicer with it thinned properly and a good brush, and the yellow is easily the nicest in my collection already. Hopefully my remaining vehicles will end up real nice with the same way of painting. I am actually starting to wonder if I should bring out the airbrush at all as painting this way is quite quick. At least quick for *me*.

Finished test Terminator, Assault Terminators WIP, and Brushes

I tried a few different things with this test model (the last test!) and I think that I need to add an extra highlight above sunburst yellow. Thinking of bleached bone.

I also tried Gryphonne Sepia on the white. Nope, didn't really turn out that well. Looks off. Going to go for a very thin astronomicon grey on the real deal. At least I am planning to do so, never know if I will change my mind :) I do know that I am done with building up yellow for quite a while, white base is the way to go. And nicely thinned paints which I will get back to after this message:

I paint very randomly. I see something I want to paint on the model and I go for that. There's a lot of detail on these guys so it will take some time it seems. Going to go for painting all of them to the step before washes and then probably finish them one by one. I am happy with the shields which are turning out quite nice. I am also going for a kind of red tone for the gold which we will see how it will pan out. Lysander got quite a lot of gold on him so I better get some practice in :)

I now thin my paints with something else than just pure water. I found Jennifer Haley's recipe here and there on the web and copied that as a starting point. I got a fairly large empty bottle as well to mix it up in, which turned out quite meh as it is very hard to pour from. So mostly I pour some of the liquid into my palette and mix the color and thinning medium right there and then. Works quite well and it is a lot easier to paint, slowly starting to get the hang of it (I hope) and I really get while people want to start out with a white primer as thinned paints are hard to paint on top of black (for me).

In minor news, I got the Dark Eldar codex, awesome, and just a few minis because they look so awesome that I want to paint some. I ordered some real brushes (sorry GW) so I will probably give some thoughts on them when they arrive and I can try them out. I have also gotten 0(!) contributions to the painting competition. I think I need to promote it a bit more soon! So anyone wanting to enter will not have a lot of competition, at least not yet.

Happy Halloween

WAAAGH!

:)

1st Company tests

I've done some previous tests but this will be the final test model before I go "live". I intend for this to be the new look of my Imperial Fists, with the 1st Company being the firsts to get it and then it is vehicle painting time™.

So my plans were pretty grand, I would being with a wash, so I would go from this (I got some poor coverage on the white, more on that later. I am also trying out a new primer which can be seen in the picture below):

To these:

 

I tried six different washes. From left to right, top to bottom: Leviathan Purple, Ogryn Flesh, Gryphonne Sepia, Badab Black, Devlan Mud, and Baal Red. I can really see why there are people who can get really cool results with Inks and Washes as they hug the mini quite well in many ways and help with showing off details. My idea was that I could paint over the already shaded mini with yellow and get a nice looking effect. This is what happened:

Thinned down Golden Yellow, with I think three layers. What do you all think? I can tell you what I though, "By Dorn's dirty underwear, this will never fly!". Yes, didn't quite work out as well as I thought. I don't want to pin my hopes on my airbrush either (which is what I am using on the vehicles later on) so I decided to put some more Krylon white primer on the mini. It was at this point I realized that I really should put more primer on as I really need the good white to paint on top of. I will give my Assault Terminators an extra bath in white before they get painted.

So I tried painting with a thinned down 50/50 mix of Iyanden Darksun and Golden Yellow instead which worked well. Covered nicely over the white as well. So I base coated the rest of the mini as well and here's the result!

The plan is to wash everything that isn't yellow the normal way, and use a good brush to careful apply Gryphonne Sepia only in select spots. Then give the yellow a coat or two of Golden Yellow and finish it up with some highlighting and the likes. I think this will be my recipe and I am starting to like the 1st company so I want to paint up some more of them. Like Vanguard Veterans and some Sternguard Veterans. Planning on some conversion for those as well.

Stay tuned for more and don't forget the competition!

Paint to win an Eldar Fire Prism/Night Spinner!

It's time to bring out the bitz box, the bartering skills, and your painting tools of choice! I'm holding my first ever painting/modeling competition. Let's start with the prize. A brand new, still in plastic wrap, Eldar Fire Prism/Night Spinner. Shipped for free to the winner. Sounds pretty good doesn't it? If you are an Eldar player you sure could use it, if you just like to paint it is one awesome looking model (I have one myself that I am going to paint in the future), and if you don't want anything to do with the Pointy Ears you should be able to trade it with someone who does for something you fancy more. If you win and do paint it up yourself, please post photos so I can see the result.

What do you need to do to win this prize then you ask? You need to impress me with your enthusiasm, skill, ingenuity, and ability to finish a project. To be eligible to win you need to follow these rules:

• Send me
• Three WIP photos from various stages of modeling/painting.
• Three photos of the final entry.
• Follow the theme. The theme is loosely "Mirror world". Model and paint something like something else. Turn good guys to bad guys, one race/codex to look like another another. Go wild, be funny, slick, clever, cool, different, or surprising. Be subtle or obvious. Give someone an evil beard like Evil Spock or Flexo from Futurama. Have fun!
• The final entry needs to be painted. Anything from base coated (with a dip perhaps?) to golden deamon will be accepted.
• Email me the photos by the 20th of December and include contact information. I will repeat that last one, contact information. I will have the email you sent from, but I need to get hold of you so make sure it's an email you check often enough. If I can't reach you by the end of the first week of January 2011 the prize will go to a new winner.
• Any and all contributions to the competition can and will be posted on this blog by me. I will do my best to comment on all the entries but I will not give criticism. All entries are welcome and you have nothing to fear.
• I will select one winner from all entries. So what do you need to do to win? I will simply select the entry that I like best and upholds the spirit of the theme the best. If the criteria seems a bit murky, the best thing to do is to create an entry that you yourself really would like to see.
• The winner will be announced, on this blog, on the 23rd of December. I will be the high Inquisitor and my judgement is final.
• If you are too lazy to look up my email address: flekkzo at gmail dot com.

If you have any questions just comment on this post and I will answer it promptly. I hope that this will be a chance for you to get away from painting squads of ten, twenty, thirty models and use some colors you don't use so often.

Most importantly, have fun and enjoy yourself. I will be looking forward to the entries coming in!

Getting ready for Halloween, WAAAGH! style :)

Carved my first ever pumpkin today. I don't yet have a candle to put into it but I did a quick dry-run with a flashlight and it looks far more awesome with the light on.

So what do you guys think, should I make this into a tradition and have Ork themed pumpkins carved every Halloween?

Stay tune for something awesome coming up soon on the blog!

Imperial Fists army update

I've updated my Army page with the "final" version of the Assault Marine squad. I write "final" because there are a few more things I want to do, but they will have to wait until I've finished more of the army.

Here's a link or you can press the link at the top of the page.

I'm back (again!)

Hello everybody!

I'm back! I wonder how many blogs have exclaimed that at the top of its lungs only to be silenced again shortly after. I've been slowly getting back to my hobby after moving (yay house!) and now I finally felt that I had done enough to warrant a post and a glorious return to the painting-but-not-playing-yet scene. I'm sure my list will have both gone in and out of the metagame several times over before it will be all done. But first things first!

This is my painting table. Or this was what was going to be my painting table. It ended up being the home of our two pet rats (Skaven!) instead. For those of you who are pet inclined, the white one is called QT Pie and the black one Koko Puff. Sure wasn't me who did the naming! We've got three more coming in at the next of the month, so maybe I can get some better naming going :)

I am going to let the table double as my airbrush table though, so sometimes the little pets will have to move to the dining room table while I spray yellow (or maybe grey blue since I now own a Space Wolves battleforce!). I still wonder if I need more ventilation / something to cover my mouth when airbrushing. Anyone with advice please write a comment. There is a window just next by which I plan on having open at least.

This is my painting table! Look at all the crap on it! I was entertaining the idea of clearing it up before taking a photo, but that would be cheating. So there it is, my painting station version 1.0. I'll snap shots when I start upgrading it with more nifty stuff. Right now it's a cheap Wal-mart plastic table with a lot of stuff on it :) See if you can spot anything interesting :)

And now to my lovely Assault Marines.

There are now ten (!!!) of them. Only order of business left is letting the decals dry. Spray some Purity Seal on them, and repaint the eyes with 'ard coat. Done and done! (Yes, I am still thinking of adding something on top of the jump packs. A VII or a 7 or assault Xs or something. Just don't have any decals in green :(

Pretty sure WAAC min-max players will hate on me when I show up with these guys, but I've determined that I will gain more from loosing at first and really learn to play well with interesting units rather than point and click winning.

So what does the future of this blog hold? I've started on another test termie model to try out a completely different way of painting yellow. If it turns out it should be far far faster, hopefully look at least as good, and be the new look for all 1st company marines/vehicles/captains. And what I have in the pipe is five termies, Lysander, Land Raider, and two Land Speeders (with rokkits!). So clearly painting the rest of my army is part of what is next.

I also have some for fun models, for instance my Eldar (blue and yellow!), the Legion of the dead (BDay gift) and also a box of death company which I have mixed feelings for. Should I paint them as the death company or mod the crap out of them to be Vanguards. *hmm*

I don't own it yet, but I have thoughts of konvering a boxed set of chaos space marines into Sternguards for my Imperial Fists. Could be fun! Also have a dread to assembled and wreck havoc with :)

Any games my IFs will play will also be retold. Win or loss. I've got a number of people around these parts I'd like to get it touch with and play some games. None of them know me (might read my blog though, are you?:)) but they have blogs and have spilled their beans about being Minnesotan:)

Oh, and the two most interesting things coming up. First a way for me to get tons of Ragnar's company plastic shoulder pads (two per box of ten wolves, what gives???) that could be profitable for a donor, and to top that one off a competition!

See you all in my next entry :)

Jump packs and the first company

Time for some opinions again. Let's start with the point, I like Jump Pack marines. They are cool looking with their Jump Packs. Trouble is, they don't seem that terribly good to play. I really don't get why Jump Packs are so expensive points wise in 5th edition Warhammer 40,000. For example the standard Assault Marines. 100 points for five marines with a discount of one rhino or drop pod. That makes them 25 points cheaper than a five man tactical squad, if they don't take the Jump Packs. In this case we talk 5p per pack. 1.5p for a ten man squad funny enough.

A vanguard squad gets to pay 10p per model for Jump Packs, which gives us a 100p premium per 10 man unit. HQs gets the packs for 25p or 15p, those that can take them that is. The command squad gets to walk or drive bikes.

With that out of the way I can almost hear some of you scream: "Of course you pay for them, they are extra equipment. You can move 12" and deep strike to boot!". Yes that is very true, but the Jump Packs are a trade off, they say: We give you these two new awesome rules, but we can't allow you to ride in a transport (sans the Storm Raven). So my point is this, you loose the ability to be transported so the upgrade should be free. It's an either or choice.

So with transports being "better" than footslogging, even with a 12" move I feel hard pressed to claim that Jump Pack marines are competitive now. But since they are cool I am going to try to make the best out of them anyways. Nothing cool with trying to play it like everyone else:)

Which brings me to my next point on today's agenda. Why can't I play a 1st company Elite army? I know this is a speciality of the Dark Angels, with their Deathwing, and to a lesser degree with the Space Wolves with their so called Loganwing. But what about vanilla marines?

I think that it would be really nifty to use Vangard/Sterngard veterans (why are there no devastator veterans?) and Terminators only in an army. Sure it would be very Elite and probably hard to play, but the veteran models are very cool looking and it could be a very cool future project to make my own.

Just a little rant:) Let me know if anyone has any opinions about this.

Tactical squad and Razorback

Hi all,

here comes a picture of one of my tactical squads, complete with hand painted tactical arrows and a roman 2 on each right shoulder pad. Only thing missing is doing something cooler with the sword. Sometime in the future I will give it a go:) I'm thinking of lightning, power sword and all.

And my homies needs to ride in style, so five of them rides in this sweet Razorback with assault cannon. I am pretty happy with it except the color. Still having some trouble figuring out my airbrush and yellow color and all. Hopefully I will get it pat down in the future so I can get a nice smooth yellow on my Land Raider and Land Speeders.

I've decided to try to collect pictures of all my armies so I have started with my Imperial Fists on this page. I will update it as I paint and will have every single painted Imperial Fists unit I have. I hope to get a better light setup and a better camera in the future and if I do I will update all the pictures. Hope you like it :)

Tactical squad Sergeant

Time for my second squad fifth company Imperial Fists chapter tactical sergeant. That's quite a mouthful:) It's quite a quick and dirty tutorial but I hope it can be inspiration rather than a step by step professional tutorial. It's the first time I've leaned a bit more towards a tutorial format rather than a series of WIPs. So, let's get started!

This is the victim. Magnetized banner and armed with a power sword. I've got one power fist sergeant as well (not fully painted though) and I am entertaining the idea of have a PF for each squad if I want to go that route at some point. I'm also considering painting up all special weapon options I have models for. But that is for later. Onwards with the plastic!

After a white basecoat (black works too. I prefer to paint on white, but I must say that black is better for when you can't reach/miss something. It is far more forgiving.) I paint the marine Tausept Ochre, the eyes Blood Red, the Aquila, banner, and "loin-cloth" orange, sword handle Vermin Brown, the metal parts Boltgun Metal, skulls and seals Dheneb Stone, and finally the weapon black and the soft parts of the armor. I used to always paint the black parts late but it was a pretty good idea getting it done early. Made things easier and cleaner:)

Time to go nuts with the washes. Blue Asurmen for sword. Gryphonne Sepia for armor, skulls, and seals, Baal Red for everything orange, Badab Black for the bolter, and Ogryn Flesh for the sword handle.

Now we clean up the armor with. Iyanden Darksun? Nope! See that cap of that foundation pot is painted. That's my 50/50 Golden Yellow / Iyanden Darksun mix. I did my best not to get any paint in recesses and such to keep the darker color there to give the model some more depth.

Here things went wrong wrong wrong. But it ended up not being too bad. I grabbed the wrong yellow and painted along happy and woah, what did I just do? If you want to go with my "normal" recipe go for Golden Yellow, or if you want it brighter go for Sunburst Yellow. Paint just about the same as the 50/50 mix before but leave a little extra at strategic places if possible. Also note that the shoulder guards are now glued on.

Highlighting with Necron Abyss on black (hard to see, but gives kind of a neat highlight for black, try it out and see what you think), Bleached Bone on the yellow (or sunburst if you can separate your paint pots), some cleanup with black, drybrush of Bleach Bone on bone details. I think I used some red or orange (my mind is foggy) as well to spiffy things up:)

Gluing the loin-cloth and extra purity seal on. I don't have any pictures after this, but I've added some minor things like Mithril Silver on the studs on the weapon and based the guy. I also painted a black pointing upwards Arrow on the whole squad, plus squad markings, plus transfers (which I still suck at!). I will take a group photo with both tactical squads soon to give you all an idea of what they look like as an army.

That's it! Not really a fully fledged tutorial but I did get the question if I could make one :) Now we know. If there is an interest/I do it anyways there might be something similar but more detailed in the future. If you can't wait or want other views on how to paint an Imperial Fist check these out:

Games Workshop

CB Studios

Awesome Painting Job

...and to round it off a guy who writes *awesome* tutorials you always should read!

Master Darksol

Hope you all enjoyed this post. If you really super enjoyed it send me an Eldar Nightspinner (because I want that kit but I can't motivate it to the wife:)).

50th post and Gretchin Marine

I just noticed before I started to write the post that this will be my 50th post. I am a bit impressed by myself and quite happy that I am staying with this blog even if the frequency sometimes are quite uneven. The time for hobby related activities vary quite a bit but I hope I will get more time over at the end of next month when my wife and I move. I will live closer to work which will shave off my commuting time. Fifty miles a day has been exhausting!

My Gretchin konversion begun with a post by Woroxon (http://bit.ly/azEnDi). If you don't follow his blog I recommend taking a peak at it. I have seldom had the pleasure to read a blog by a guy who loves the hobby more than him and approach it with more joy and glee, or should I say WAAAGH! :) His awesome Ork konversions are more than worth checking out. Oh, and that contest, you'd be a fool not to enter it. I have:)

The konversation started out with some choppin' of the hand and gun and some good old glueing. Later the hand holding the sword fell off and I ended up pulling on my Dok gloves and pinned it. Should hold better after that! I also gave the backpack and shoulder pad some battle damage courtesy of a file. I wanted to have two shoulder pads but there was no way I could get it on the little bugger:)

And here we have him all painted up. With quite a light toned skin. I wanted him to stand out among the Orks and Nobz. I also painted the Imperial Fists colors far brighter than what I normally do (the second squad Sergeant is just about done and stage by stage pictures should come up soon) just for fun. It turned out quite well and it was quite quick.

Prime white, add watered down bubonic brown, then sunburst yellow and highlight with bleached bone. Mordian blue gave me the blue trims and blood red + wash the reds. The green I did with a bright green sprayed on with my airbrush (first use of it) and then added Thrakka Green.

The blue trim was chosen to represent the 9th Reserve Company that consists of devastators, hence the devastator symbol as well. I also chose a plastic looking color instead of metal for the battle damage. Does a space marine's armor really have a metal color? Thought I'd play around and try something else :)

Click on this one to make it WAAAGH! sized and get a look from different sides. Also note the base, painted in Warboss Woroxon style with brown and dark green. It was a lot harder getting straight triangles than I thought. Live and learn!

And until next time, and another 50th posts, WAAAGH!

Terminators and seer councils.

First, if you have ever thought of getting a seer council, check this out: http://www.thehogsofwar.com/2010/05/eldar-seer-council-jetbike-conversion.html

I might just go that route and screw the hard to do conversions. Just make some small stuff :)

Here's a new revision of the test terminator, plus an older model I painted some time ago that I repainted parts of (and forgot a black wash on the red! Gotta do that!). I painted the Iyanden Darksun / Golden Yellow - 50/50 mix directly on the shoulderpad and, lo and behold, it looked great from the get go. I might just change the formula to white, the mix, wash, highlight. That will make my painting far faster. Maybe I'll give the model a good black wash before the mix tough. Damn, I feel another test coming up :)

The white shield is done with Necronomican Grey, a watery wash of Chardonite Granite, followed by a N. Grey and a Skull White drybrush. Good bad? Let me know!

Don't know if it shows up but the "bumps" on the powerfist have little gold "blobs" on them. Just like you would do rivets on a weapon with mithril I thought gold would look interesting on an Imperial Fist. YMMV.

The old model also have a different paint scheme for the crux terminatus. My personal preference is the newer one :)

I decided to paint hard edges in white on the shoulder pads only. Brightens them up a bit :) Also the side guards are grey with white edges. I am still unsure about that. Maybe I should go red to really light it up?

The shoulder pads also needs a good old black fist, to look the part.

Shows how different the helmet looks in yellow vs white, and also how the black wash helps the red looks better (remember, I forgot...). They sure look like they mean business :)

If there is a reader out there that has a right shoulder pad for a terminator and wants to donate it to me, well, let me know :) I am one short for an assault cannon terminator. I wouldn't mind a "shoulder rocket launcher thing" as well. Yes, got an empty head and am too lazy to go check the Space Marine codex:)

Terminator test

As I have previously mentioned I have 5 assault terminators primed and ready to be painted. I wanted to paint a test terminator first though, to figure out what works and doesn't work. I did want to work in white somewhere as the first company's color is white but I think that the shoulders guards in white, well, that is too much white and white is quite hard to paint well it seems. At least for me:)

I do like how the white helmet turned out though. More rough and grimy. I did all the red details with foundation red and a black wash. Darker than what the rest of the army has, but it sets them apart which was the point.

I also tried an Ogryn Flesh wash instead of my usual Gryphonne Sepia which looked good. I do think that the legs turned out a smidge too dark though, so I am thinking of lightening it up with some yellow before I wash it next time.

Here's the guy, let me know what you think!

Oh, and I experimented with a "light box" which was just a box with the sides covered in aluminum foil and two pieces of white papers. I took more pictures but the two first I took with the flash on, and lo and behold, it was actually a lot better *with* the flash! Who would have known? We'll see what the future holds! Again, all and any suggestions are welcome. One day I will have to test a red wash on yellow to see how it turns out.

Eldar seer council on bikes

No "hobbying" this weekend. Yup. I am more disappointed than any of you. My plan is to make a step by step guide on how I paint Imperial Fists using a sergeant. First tutorial type posting. I am also planning on trying to make a little "white box" to use when taking photos. Just a cardboard thing I plan on making white somehow.

What I have done is thinking. I do a lot of that stuff:) I have been thinking about making a jetbike seer council. I am far behind on my Eldar and don't expect to have anything playable for quite some time, so I am will just paint models up now and then and not care about lists or anything like that. Maybe I can have a little cache of Eldar for when any future codex hits :)

I have looked around the internet as much as I can to find any good ways to convert farseers and warlocks for jetbikes. I've found some cool looking examples out there, but I haven't found anything that really spoke to me, that really said "that is what you want, that is what is going to be *your* council!" Here's a few really nice examples I've found:

Meandering the dune sea

40k maunderings

moc065

Don't get me wrong, they are awesome, but they don't get me what I want. So what do I want?

* Jetbikes. Don't really plan much here. Maybe a flag or so. Maybe minor GW to make them stand out a bit.

* Farseer. I want a traditionally looking farseer, but I want her to fit on the bike. So robes and runes etc. Should look like it could be an official model. Either a nifty helmet or get an elf head from somewhere.

* Warlocks. Same theme here, but not as elaborate as the farseer.

So what could I do? Weapons seems like I can find in WHFB, but the huge problem is the robes. I can't find any good robed characters I could use that would fit. I don't want leather clothes and a cape/mantel. My thinking is trying to make them with green stuff, and then add some cool details either from other kits or green stuff. Problem is that I am a total noob with the stuff :( Anything I could kit bash would definitely be preferred. I would start with one of the standard riders or a shining spear.

I will put a magnet on the seat of the jetbikes so I can switch out drivers. Just have to solve the handle problem. Either that or remove the handles totally :) And now it strikes me that I could start with any model with good weapons, add the legs from a jetbiker, and have the robes cover the ugly seams. Hmm.

Going with an Alaitoc theme I want to base the bikes in a foundation blue (which I haven't decided) and then try to "stipple" it using an airbrush. Using a few different blue colors and one grey (black might make it look too camo). Paint up the underside in yellow/white, the seat in some other color, use the blue wash in a few places and a thinned out light blue on the edges. Tape off the front for some nice yellow patterns. Freehand/decals might be in it as well.

This is going to be more of a long term project, as the rest of my Eldar, but sometimes it is important to get out of painting the same stuff, and sometimes one has to try new stuff.

Any ideas is *more* than welcome at this point. But before that I have 12 marines and 3 vehicles to finish :)

Finished Meltagun and Sergeant

Here are pictures galore of my newly painted Meltagun Marine and his Sergeant. The banner is magnetized (gives me the option of painting a cooler banner in the future as well as stow it far better in its battle foam case), which I personally think is cool. I intend to give them a good coat of GW Purity Seal and then some 'Ard Coat on the eyes (hoping to make it shine a bit and generally look cool) but other than that they are done.

Notice the white 1 on the side to denote first squad. Also note that if you click to get the larger version you can see what I did to the meltagun. I decided that I wanted a bit more color so I painted it in foundation red and washed it liberally with badab black. Makes an awesome dark red! Maybe I should use that on my termies, together with white (1st company), to break up the yellow. I also plan on adding something dark brown to the wash to darken it more. I don't like a black wash on marines, and I don't like liberal washes on top of yellow (they tend to look kinda brownish and not like shadows on yellow).

Next should be the step by step of the other sergeant, and then termies, lysander, and five more assault marines. Then vehicles:) I should put something up on the side of my blog to show painted and queue!

Misc Imperial Fist WIPs

Time for some general progress. Here's the Sergeants shoulder guard. Looks pretty close to an AoBR one right? Me and my friend green stuff fixed that :) Sorry for the fuzzy shot.

My Sergeant has had his backpack magnetized and so has the banner. Easier to stow it and I can switch them around if I want to. I chose to go with red as that is a common second color for the Imperial Fists and I use that for the eagle on the chest and any fabric on the marines. This is Macharius Solar Orange plus a liberal amount of Baal Red. I am quite happy with the results. I think I will add some writing and probably a "1" for the Squad number. Maybe I should include Chapter (VI) and Company (5th), hmm.

Here's some WIPs of the sergeant and a Meltagun marine. AoBR comes with a flamer and I thought that it would be better to have a Meltagun instead. It should provide some extra potential killingpower if needed. Hopefully the Ass Cannon will clear any vehicles first though :) On the right side you can see my first attempt at some freehand. A simple "1" as a test. I think I need to fill it in with white again and clean it up a bit with black, but I think I might go with it. This way I have not just the arrow but also a number to show that the are the first squad. I might just go for painting on arrows on the second squad. Only time will tell:)

I will glue on the loincloth when I am done painting. Just too hard to get it good before painting everything that is behind, and the meltagun isn't glued on either (finally I was smart enough:)). If you look closely on the power sword you can see that I have used a blue wash on it. Thought that it could be a good base before I paint anything else on it. Still want some lightning on it!

I also have a secret project visible to the left :)

Tacticals and a little Dreadnought

Putting on decals is really hard. At least on shoulders. Here are "the gang". It is missing a power sword sergeant (I wonder how often someone fields a chainsword and boltgun sergeant) and a meltagun marine. I also realized that I need to fix my lascannon marine so he's got a tactical up arrow as well. I have greenstuffed up arrows for the two new marines (pictures coming in the future when I start to work on them) and it looks pretty nifty all in all.

I like the AoBR tacticals, thinking of getting more of them. Maybe I should have two fourth company squads too :) The downside is needing two more Razorbacks :)

Here's a slightly better view of the decals. And again, how the heck to you get them to conform to the shape of the shoulder? I do have Micro Set and Micro Sol, yet I get wrinkles etc. And there is no way I am freehanding that, it is far too hard for someone with my handling of the brush. Maybe in the future:)

And here we have a little dread! Chose to put the logo on the left weapon arm instead of the leg "plate". Thought that it felt better that way. I have put some basing sand on him, we'll see how that goes. He is getting close to finished, even though he is out of the list. Maybe he will make a comeback :)

In the background we have some sergeants (power fist and power sword, with magnetized banners. Cool huh!). But that is for a future post!

I also popped by The Source this weekend for their Black Crusade 2010. There was a massive amount of people there and series of gigantic Apocalypse games. It was a brief visit and I scoped out the local scene a bit. Some nice looking minis there, and one insanely expensive piece of terrain in the form of a Thunderhawk. Dark Angels Thunderhawk. A freakin' Thunderhawk as a piece of terrain. Awesome:)

I really do need to get some games in (blah blah, don't have my army up and running. Me stupid!), I am getting itchy for some gaming. I also realized that my painting is pretty good. I think I have looked at the works of far too many great painters online and effectively use that as a frame of reference. Stop being so freakin' awesome you internet people! :) But seriously my painting is pretty OK for being me :)

I am very strong!

This is my cutter. Or rather it was, because when I tried to clip some metal Eldar Rangers it...broke! I broke it from my fantastically non-existing hand strength. I find this both amusing and intriguing :) Moral of the story, be careful with your tools.

I got myself a cheap replacement. Hope it survives longer :)