Getting back to blogging again...

Long time no update.

Not sure why, just didn't feel like posting much, plus I lost a bit of enthusiasm for painting, so it all kind of slipped away, and now it's been over a month since I posted anything.  I've not even posted comments on others blogs and for that I am especially sorry.

So, just a quick update (no new pictures I'm afraid).  I finally finished the Eldar Rangers, and if I do say so myself they look pretty damn good.  In fact it wasn't just me saying it - I entered them into the squad category of the little "Golden Demon" competition they held at the Swindon GW store.  Out of the three entries, they were voted the best, beating the second place squad by one vote.  I entered my Lamenter Sergeant in the single miniature category and he won too - much more competition for that category, and it felt like more of an achievement.

So what's next?  I'm giving Golden Demon a miss this year, I just didn't have the inspiration to do anything.  In the painting station at the moment is the still unfinished Commissar Yarrick, a couple of Orc Warg Riders and the Witch King of Angmar.  What I'm actually working on is the limited edition Space Marine Sergeant from a while back that I'm painting as a Dark Sons marine.  I wanted to try something a bit different, and I've never really painted white before.  Chickened out a bit and went for a quartered colour scheme so the whole marine wasn't white, but hey I had to start somewhere.  Hopefully a WIP picture or two tomorrow.

Future projects fill my head, and it hasn't helped that Forgeworld have started making the different Space Marine Armour variants.  Sheer awesomeness, there's no other way to describe them, and to release the bolter variants, and old style special/heavy weapons too - just fantastic.  I am seriously considering getting some Mk II and Mk III sets and building a pre-heresy Iron Warriors army - as I'm really liking the pre-heresy colour scheme for these guys.

Anyway, that's enough for now, hopefully more tomorrow...

Breviccus Flavus

  OK, that was a really poor attempt at Latin – Breviccus is a poor Latin bastardization of Brevik and Flavus is Latin for Yellow.

No prizes for guessing what this is about, Dverning said he’d be interested in a stage-by-stage thingy on how I painted the Yellow for the Lamenter sergeant I did recently, so here goes…

It’s all yellow…

This is not the bright yellow you’ll see in White Dwarf, it’s a softer tone.  I’ve also highlighted differently – I’ve never liked the way they highlight Space Marine shoulder pads at GW, so I tend to highlight as if there is a light directly above the miniature.  I can’t stress how important it is to water down your paints, especially for the highlighting stages – go for more thin coats than one thick one

 1.  Basecoat – Thinned Tausept Ochre was applied in a series of coats to create a solid block of colour.  It might be worth trying a lighter primer than black here, as it did take a lot of thin coats to get to this point.

2. Shading Wash – One wash of pure Gryphonne Sepia – try not to use too much, as it will darken the overall colour.

  

3. First Highlight – Thinned Tausept Ochre is applied to the whole rim apart the bottom right corner (as you look at the picture) as this is effectively “in shadow” from a top-down perspective.  It’s also applied to the top 2/3 of the inner shoulder pad.

4. Second and Third Highlights – The second highlight is a thinned 50:50 mix of Tausept Ochre and Iyanden Darksun, the third highlight is just tinned Iyanden Darksun.  Hopefully the picture shows that these highlights are graduated towards the top of the inner pad and towards the top edges of the rim.

5. Final Highlight – A thinned 50:50 mix of Iyanden Darksun and Dheneb Stone is applied to the very top edges of the rim and the top 20% or so of the inner pad.

The End.

At some point I’ll do something similar about the battle damage on the sergeant.

As always, comments and criticism always welcome.

Brevik's Lament

Mrs Brevik and I went to see the Moctezuma (apparently "Montezuma" is wrong) exhibit in the British Museum last night - the exhibit was really good, but has the side effect that I now want to do a Lizardmen army in the style of the Mexica (apparently "Aztec" is wrong too...).

I don't need new army ideas right now...

No painting done so far today, but I've been trying out a few new things when taking pictures.  I can't seem to get enough light, so even though these pictures are better, they're still a bit too dark.

Lamenter Sergeant

This guy was painted a month or two ago and was an attempt at "better battle damage". I hadn't got the Modelling Masterclass book then, so I was still trying to paint battle damage on, rather than using the sponge method.

Here I used Scorched Brown as the dark colour, rather than using black, and it's a much subtler effect.  I washed the greaves and feet a couple of times with watered down Devlan Mud to "dirty it up" a bit.

Lamenters are supposed to be a Blood Angels Successor Chapter who follow the Codex Astartes, hence the red helmet.  The bolter was Chaos Black highlighted with Scorched Brown and Codex Grey - it's the paint scheme I'm using on my Legion of the Damned models, rather than the normal black.

Comments and Criticism welcome...