Warlock Engineer

 Warlock Engineers (and Grey Seers) are my favorite Skaven characters. I guess I have a sweat spot for the guys:) The crazy contraptions, the weird tech, the magic, the green warpstone. They are awesome. Unfortunately I don't think I can pay the points for all his gear (15p for the musket is a bit much in a 500p army, and since he will already be 120p :)). Looks quite menacing in this pose doesn't he?

 You might wonder what the odd white thing is. It's a High Elf shield. Not that I do it justice at all, I just painted the whole thing white :)

I used a three color scheme for each color. Base, highlight, and finish it with a wash. Except for the metal, which is boltgun metal or dwarven bronze with a Thraka Green wash on top.

Tallarn Flesh for the skin, with Elf as a highlight and Vermin Brown as a "highlight" for the fur with Ogryn Flesh for a wash. Bestial Brown, Bleached Bone, and Devlan Mud for the wood. Snakebite  Leather, Bubonic Brown, and Ogryn for the leather. Black and Boltgun for highlight (no wash).

The red is just Mechrite Red with Blood Red and a Delan Mud wash. Plus some greens and voila this is what you get.

Not sure what to do with the base. I ended up repainting it after this but I thought it turned out too bright. I want kind of a muddy feeling, and the Chinchilla Sand seems to work out OK. Might need a little more sand though, roughen it up a bit. Going to finish it off with some static grass.

Next step, 40 Clanrats and two weapon teams :) And two 5x5 movement trays.

Skaven!

My sneaky ratty plan is to paint up what you see below and to use everything but the chieftain/warlord for my 500p army. Possibly add a few extra clanrats (yes, I need an extra IoB Skaven set:) Two ain't enough!). We'll see how I'll expand after that. Slaves, ratogres, something :) Jezzails looks awesome but *wow* pricy!

40 Clanrats and two weapon teams! Too me around 3 1/2 minute per rat to clean up. Not a fan of this stage. I also found it hard to build the movement trays. Hard to make them neat. Time to break out the green stuff before I put sand on the sides and prime.

My new cheap grey (light) primer turned out to be pretty neat. I'm also trying out Chinchilla sand as a basing material. I wanted the base to look like it wasn't filled with big rocks :)

And here with some color on. Not all basecoats are on yet. Then some highlights (you might notice that I highlight the black with boltgun metal, looks pretty sweet!) and I will finish up with washes. I hope to get it really fast in the end so that I can speed paint all the guys. Plus it will make them look darker and grittier. Plus the clanrats will get rust on their metal. A Warlock Engineer is liable to have means to avoid rust :)

So what do you guys think of the rats? Think it can work out?

Valkyrie/Vendetta WIP, again!

A little more work has been done on the flying contraption of orange. I elected to give the engines a wash of badab black and that was as far as washes went. Didn't feel that it would be worth it going over it with oil paints. Might just make it worse :)

Then I grabbed the last of my boltgun metal and using a sponge (from an old blister) I wiped most of the point off and simply dabbed, dragged, and messed around in different ways to get a worn look. Still looks fairly clean, i.e. not grime and dirt, but well used. The next step is adding a bunch of details such as crew, radar monitor, canopy, the light on the side, etc. It should break up the massive orange blocks even more :)

A side view for your viewing pleasure!

Coming at you. Probably will look a lot scarier on a flight stand with a full set of "blowing you out of the sky" weapons :)

Weathering on the tail. You really need to look at the zoomed in image to see it properly.

And some wear and tear on the engines!

I now have the carrot at home. A very awesome forge world exalted vermin lord. Looking like this! Now I just have to finish the IG rides and my 1000p Skaven army, and updates to my IF army, THEN I can paint this fantastic and totally awesome dude :) I'm probably going to use it primarily as a display model (when can I play with a 775p monster?) and it is going to be dedicated to my late pet rat who are now with the great horned rat.

Valkyrie WIP

Cue Richard Wagner, Ride of the Valkyries. Go on, go find it on youtube or Spotify before you continue. Found it yet? Listen to it while you direct your peepers on the following:

White primer, white airbrushed, then hit it with red (you'll see why later). One of the markings is a bit off though, might fix that later:)

My home made stencil. Painters take isn't, well, it isn't made for this really…

Here's my paper stencil that I use to cut out the wings in the tape.

Some tape so it will be easier to glue the (brown) engines on later. Ended up being a pretty good contrast between orange and brown. Going to be interesting to see how the yellow fares.

It was pretty hard putting the tape on btw, but it looks like it could work though, right?

Blue wings on white with red tips looks kinda cool, doesn't it?

It's quite orange isn't it? I think it will look great when I get some spot colors etc on there. Can't wait to see it on a gaming table fully painted. Hope I won't be the only one liking it though, there's some insanely well painted Valkyries out there on the inter-tubes.

And here we can see wings. Kind of a dark photo though.

And this has too much light instead:) But by combining both you should get a fair idea of how it looks in real life.

So let me have it, does it look good? Bad? Cool? Sucky? What would you do? It's not done, I'm going to add some weathering and such as well. The wings really need it as there was some orange sipping through and I need to make that look more like the white is chipping than a screwy stencil.

I also finished one of the Dark Angels:)

Vendetta WIP

First of all, the iPad 2 does not a good camera have. Just look at this! I hope you guy can get something out of it and see what is up :)

The Vendetta WIP!

Looks odd? Got some odd ideas:) Might pan out, might not, really really hope it will pan out. Need to put some thinned badab black in the recesses on the wings. I would have preferred to use oils, but they dry in, well, forever:)

Next step, secret masking tape sauce, prime the sucker black, and a healthy dose of foundation paints for the whole thing.

What else have I been up to without writing about it? Almost done with a tactical squad, starting painting on a metal 5 man squad of Sternguards (will never see the table, paint chip too easily with metal, I'm done with that), building a 10 mans squad of vanguard (converted death company) and a 10 man squad of Sternguards (converted from chaos marines, it's going to look sweet!), finishing up 5 Dark Angel Veterans, and the three vendettas. Wow. That's a lot. Oh and building two devastator squads too. And I still got plenty of plastic crack left after that :) Sad…

(PS Not starting a guard army:))

Various things

Hi dear blog readers,

I haven't posted for a while so it's time for a quick review of what I have been up to. Here goes!

Painted a daemon Juggernaut of Khorn. Forgot to take pictures. Gave it back to it's owner. Wops:) It looked pretty cool in yellow and brass. I also painted a green Ghoul at my FLGS for Matt. If you're reading this, I want to see how you did painting the rest of them :)

I have also started to play Warhammer 40k, with pretty mixed results. I've found that Razorspam probably works just fine, if you spam them, but two Razorbacks is just too much of a soft target. Same thing with my poor Land Raider. It has a tendency to blow up before it can wreck havoc. My thinking is that I will switch to Rhinos and use the points for a Devastator Squad instead. Five man and four Missile Launchers. And to go up to 1750 points I'm thinking of adding two Vindicators.

Either way since the plan is to build a whole company I should have plenty of options in the future:) Technically two companies since veterans are from the 1st Company :) I'm also thinking that some dreads should be a good idea to own. Three of each kind:) And as a last note about playing, I really am thinking of seeing what you can do with a lot of plasma. S7 AP2 shots would be an interesting thing to throw around :)

I also have been painting. Almost done with Tactical Squad VI for the 4th Company (only IF transfers left) and here's a little green teaser. How's he looking? I'll post again when he's finished :)

Dark Angels green directly on top of a white primer worked really well. Takes a few layers to cover, but you get a free shading in the recesses :)

The painting weekend continues

The Vespids are taking shape. Looking at how they are painted on the box I have to say that these models really are for high end expert painters. I'm in awe of GW's 'eavy metal team!

Imp fists project. Will show a group photo when the plasma team is done :) Think I might have a ride ready for them as well. Need yet another Rhino for the upcoming all melta team :) Q is, combi melta or fist for the sergeant?

Two more shots of the Russ. The paint seems to be drying just fine. What do you guys say, think it's time to seal it with some Purity Seal and ship it off to Sam?