Leman Russ???

I should be painting my tacticals, or the six Vespid I'm painting for Matt (from the local game store), but the Vespid are getting their bath and, well, I wanted to give Sam's Leman Russ a go. See what I could do :) I thought I should try out the tutorial CVinton posted on painting tanks. So here goes!

The tank came partially primed (black) so I added some white primer. So this is where the journey begins :)

So I airbrushed on some brown.

And some redish, orangish stuff as well. Then I tried to put some masking "goo" on the model. I skipped taking a photo though. And I forgot to spray some matt varnish on it. WOPS! Hope not too much color comes off. That would be, bad...

Fortress Grey. Makes it look all modern military. One could surely leave it at this stage, but I'm going for a different look.

White! Since Sam asked for tiger stripes, I first thought of painting the tank in tiger colors, until I realized that there are black and white tigers :) So the next step is to paint all the metal, and then black stripes. I'm going to go all out and freehand the stripes. Madness you say? We shall see:)

Tacticals, Vespids, Leman Russ. Which will I finish first? Stay tuned :)

Lord Kaldor Draigo

Here's my finished take on a Grey Knight. Interesting but very busy model to paint, bet it's a great army for people who really like to paint and are quite good at it, just like both forms of Eldar. I think my take on it looks OK for putting on the table top. Hope the owner will enjoy fielding him:) I myself is looking forward to a few days of agony as more and more snot(lings?) is created in my nose. Hate being sick, but maybe I'll end up working on a little secret project or two :)

And from a different angle :)

Any comments?

Grey Knights WIP

I always have a bunch of projects in the planning stages. Got my single Tau battle suit that should be painted, my airbrush Alaitoc Eldar project, some Orks, the whole fourth Company of the Imperial Fists, etc. Some models I have, others I plan on buying, but not before I have reduce the pile of miniatures a lot. Even have a few Dark Eldar I want to paint :)

But one way to saturate my need to try things out is to politely ask if I can paint others minis. Not whole armies mind you, but rather just one model. Frank so gracefully let me paint one of his Ultramarines not long ago. I found myself a new victim at the store this week:) So without further introduction let me introduce a Draigo WIP!

Not a number of things left to fix, but I have made some solid progress. Tried a zenithal highlighting with the airbrush, which explains why certain parts looks very dark:)

More will follow, hope you enjoyed the WIP :)

Group Photo

I gave a comment on a blog that I had "given up" trying to build a cohesive looking army. The very awesome Ron Saikowski of From the Warp fame misunderstood me, thinking that I had given up on my Imperial Fists. That couldn't be further from the truth! I did convince Ron that I am indeed continuing with the boys in yellow. Expanding them even! But I thought the whole thing was quite interesting so I thought I should make it into a post.

I have not given up on my Imperial Fists, but what I have done is "given in". I can't for the life of me match the color on them after trying so many different ways of yellow. I have learnt new things, I have tried new techniques. I experiment and the result is an army that looks a bit rag tag. It isn't cohesively based, got different types of highlights, different shades of yellow, different shading, and…

…here it is! 1500 points of yellow Imperial Fists! A bit too tooled up to get to 1500p, but still:)

Here's a closeup on the left side. We got the Assault Marines, one Tactical Squad, the Razorback, and the big man himself with his "bodyguard" of five Assault Terminators.

And on the right side we have Lysander's yellow cab, followed by the other Tactical Squad with Razorback. If you look closely you can see that the Razorbacks got both Assault Cannons and Lascannons. Still need to paint a big arrow on the Rhino hatches:)

Because there are a few things missing. I have to name all vehicles, write the names on them, put a gunner on the other Razorback, a little guy looking out the hatch on the Land Raider, Rhino hatches, and that's it. Then it's time to paint the rest of the IFs I have laying around. A quick list:

Sternguard x 5
Pedro Kantor (should I rename him?:))
Vanguard (Death Company) x 5
4th Company, VIth squad Tacticals (Plasma all the way)
Ironclad Dreadnought
Legion of the Damned

Until next time, enjoy your hobby, and give in to enjoying it rather than following something because you have to :)

Land Raider finished

Only thing left is Purity Seal and some 'Ard Coat on lenses. So feast your eyes on the finished product. Hope you like it, but all (civil) comments are welcome!

Vroom vroom says Lysander's ride :)

To finish it off a higher quality photo of the Ultramarine. Should be possible to see the VIII on top of the Jump Pack this time around.

Finished Ultramarine Assault Marine

Here he is! The glue for the base is still drying so I will remove the excess later. I hope Frank will like him. Maybe I can get him to let me paint some neat Ultra HQ :) Feast your eyes on one of the Assault Marines from the VIIIth squad of the 2nd Company of the Ultramarines:

The transfers were, as usual, hard to get to stick neatly. Doesn't seem to matter what I do, I just don't have the Mojo for it apparently. I do use the nifty special liquids and all. Go figure! I do like having the assault X on top of the jump pack though. Looks awesome.

I also painted the chainsword as the pictures in Codex:Space Marines. Three red bars for the 8th squad. Looks pretty cool if you ask me. Breaks up the big block of black on the weapon. The VIII on top of the jump pack bled out *really* bad in the photo, it is far more readable in real life. Still pretty hard to freehand stuff like that for me. Baby steps, baby steps. I can't actually paint/draw anything so it stands to reason that I might find it a bit hard:)

So what do you guys think? Did I do the wrong thing to go yellow instead of blue? :)

(No I am not switching over, I just enjoyed painting something else once:))

Ultramarines! WIP

I went to the nearest gaming store yesterday (Armored Ogre Games) for 40k day/evening and watched a game between a team of Tau and Ultramarines battle Blood Angels and Tyranids. I asked Frank the Ultramarine player if he had any unpainted minis that I could have a go at and he promptly showed me a bunch. I choose one that I like to paint for him.

It was already primed (a thick black, I really need to push my message of thin thin coats of primer at the store) and the glue work wasn't totally up to snuff. After some surgery (split the jump pack and cut the arms off) and cleanup I glue him back together and went to work with the airbrush. Mordian Blue if anyone is wondering :)

He still needs battle damage, a VIII on top of the jump pack, a base, some scripture to protect him, and maybe some other weathering, but it shouldn't be much more work to get him done.  I really hope Frank likes my little experiment as I think he might have some high expectations. "Sure I'd want a professionally painted mini." or something similar at least, was mentioned. While I won't be ashamed to put down my Imperial Fists on a gaming table, I have no illusions that I'm a professional Painter:)

So what do you people think, will Frank be happy with his Assault Marine?

PS I've actually painted some Imperial Fists since last, but the WIPs hasn't been that interesting. Will return with a group photo of 1500p of fists plus some highlights:)