Dark Sons

Two posts in three days?  I know, it will never last...

I pledge to do more WIP shots, just to show what I'm up to.  This chap really got my enthusiasm back:

Very much WIP, the green and gold are completed, and aside from the leg, the white is pretty much done.   The whole miniature was undercoated grey, which is a change for as I usually undercoat in black, but with so much of the miniature being white I thought it better to use grey.  The white is better shown from the back of the miniature:

Colours used:

• Green - Orkhide shade, Devlan Mud wash, then Orkhide Shade through Knarloc Green, with some Rotting Flesh added to the last highlight.
• Gold - Tin Bitz, Devlan Mud Wash, Dwarf Bronze, Shining Gold, Burnished Gold, Mithril Silver added to the last highlight
• White - Devlan Mud wash on the grey undercoat, Dheneb Stone through to pure Skull White

Lots still to do, and he's taking a while, but he's enjoyable to paint.  I probably won't do an army of these guys, but he'll make a reasonable display piece. Inspiration and motivation is back!

As always comments and criticism welcome.

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...

A quick update, another Berzerker, plus an Empire Soldier

Not much of an update, work, plus World Cup (and the pain of being English), plus a trip to London has eaten into my hobby time these last couple of weeks - off to Hard Rock Calling festival this weekend, but after that I should be back into the swing of things. 

First up is a Khornate Berzerker icon bearer I'd been working on - same colour scheme as the test model from a while back.  

Another reclaimed and stripped job (I think he cost me £2) - I can't stand the icon that came with that miniature, so I replaced it with the Khorne icon from the Chaos Space Marine box.  I think it works pretty well.

Next up is a test Empire militiaman/mercenary, part of my Witch Hunter themed Empire force.  A real quick and dirty paint job, I wanted to hark back to 3rd edition Empire, with a stripey pattern on the trousers.

He won't win any competitions, but if I can get a few more of these guys painted up, he'll look pretty good on the table top.

As always, comments and criticism welcome!

Space (Wood) Elves...

I've been thinking about doing an Eldar army on and off for the last few years, mainly due to the rather cool looking Ranger models.  I bought the Ranger box a while back and got one painted:

The worrying bit is I'm not exactly sure how I painted some of him, so I'm going to need to go through some trial and error - D'Oh!  One thing I might do with this chap is repaint the gun - I'm not entirely happy with the shade of green, and I'm thinking about black highlighted with a dark brown instead.

So this chap got me thinking about an Autumnal/Arboreal themed army.  Yep, "Wood Eldar" - it's probably been done to death, but I like the idea, and I haven't seen anyone do it locally.  The standard Guardian colour can just about be seen on the chap above - brown body and khaki helm with black/green faceplate.

I've knocked up a quick 500 point army list - I very much doubt it's competitive, but it's got a bit of variety in it, and should be good fun to paint.

• Autarch with Power Sword - 70pts
• 5 x Rangers - 95pts
• 6 x Dire Avengers, Exarch, Diresword and Pistol - 94pts
• 6 x Fire Dragons, Exarch, Firepike - 116pts
• 6 x Striking Scorpions, Exarch, Biting Blade - 113pts

So far I have the Rangers (1 painted) and the Autarch - a second hand, soon-to-be-stripped Asurmen model, minus the back banner (I'm not really a fan of back banners to be honest).  I was thinking about a very dark green for the Dire Avengers to tie them into the woodland theme.  The Fire Dragons would be a muted orange with Bestial Brown as the base colour, and the Striking Scorpions would be more of an olive drab shade of green.

This is a "project for the future", so I'll be painting the Rangers occasionally, while I get rid of the backlog...

In other news, I actually got a game in at the local GW store!  For those of you who know me in the analogue world, yes that is the first time in over 12 months... 

750(ish) points of my Crimson Fists joined some Dark Angels and Imperial Guard up against Eldar and Tau in a 3 person and 3,000 points a side battle.  We lost due to the forces of humanity forgetting about objectives, but Brother Captain Mortis did himself proud before falling to some Shining Spears.  I'd forgotten how much I enjoyed the games, so I'm hoping to make it a regular Sunday afternoon thing.

Getting ratty... (Part 1)

I'm going through an "irritable" stage at the moment, it doesn't take too much to annoy me, and there have been more than a  few days these last couple of weeks when I wish I'd never got out of bed.

Painting has been slow this last week or so, I've managed to complete two miniatures.

Just the two.  I've got into a painting rut again, the enthusiasm has died and I'm not sure how to regain it.  Nothing much appeals to me at the moment, and it's a bit worrying.  I'm tempted to just put everything to one side and start a new project, just to get the energies flowing again.

The next source of irritation is my lack of a decent photography set up - I need somewhere permanent, lord only knows where that will be though.

Anyway, just the one photo (i.e. the only one that came out OK in my last session):

Queek Headtaker

Pretty pleased with the paint job, hopefully some better photos should show him off better.  I went for metallic armour rather than red, as I didn't like the bright red armour on the GW paint job - this feels a bit more Chaos ratmen to me, although not quite so distinctive.  The warpstone pendant worked well too, might need a bit of work, but the OSL's not too bad.

The other miniature completed this week was a quick and dirty Warg rider for War of the Ring, 3 more of those to go...

What would people like to see me do next? I'm really open to ideas - my next post will be about an autumnal themed Eldar army that I have an idea for, but after that, who knows?