Captain Darnath Lysander

Hello dear readers. I've snapped some quick photos of my now finished Captain Darnath Lysander. These are just some quick shots with my iPhone (3GS so not such an awesome camera), I'll snap some better shots in the future. I think I will try to take new photos of all the units in my army.

Went with the classic red cape. It's both a pretty cool mini as well as a very very busy model. Tons of little details.

Which you can kind of see here. Look at the GW page to see how many little things they've ended up getting in there.

You can also see how much brighter he is than the troops. Cheap white primer, then Skull White, then two layers of diluted (see previous posts) Golden yellow. Looks awesome, best yellow I've ever done. All my 1st company is going this way from now on :) Got some Death Company that will turn into vanguard veterans, and I am itching to pick up that box of chaos space marines that will be my sternguard:)

Next up, can I magnetize a Land Raider???

Lysander WIP

Found myself a local gaming store to hang in, but I feel the need to actually game too, so I've been hard at work lately on my HQ, the big guy himself, Darnath Lysander. What looks like dark blue is going to be almost black curtesy of Badab Black. First time I paint Golden Yellow directly over a white primer (with a little extra Skull White added for a basecoat) and I should have been doing this the whole time. Far far better than any of my other "Recipes". I think all of my 1st Company Fists are going to get this treatment in the future :)

(Or to be more precise, Death Company as Vanguard Veterans and Chaos Space Marines as Sternguard. Fixed up to be properly pure Imperial Fists, no stupid emo vampire marines or spikey marines here:))

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!

:)