Hobby progress - WIP

So, here's a little update from the workbench in Bryn. No points progression in April, but some progress so far in May, and maybe some of these models will be ready for the tabletop in a not far future. One thing learned: Green stuff and the right tools is essential!

I have a lot of ideas when it comes to painting, but I would really appreciate what you think I should do with these four stars, maybe the furry gang in the back as well...

Lord of Change/Daemon Prince:
My idea is not that flower power painting scheme we see too much of, but rather a dark, still tzeentchish feel. My plan is to have some really striking highlight and contrasting colors, but the model in general is going to be dark.

Be'lakor:
This little grand old man is going more in the lines of the GW style, dark black, grey and some light variations. Hopefully I will manage to get this one some nice highlighting and contrasts as well.

Kairos Fateweaver:
Dark blue, some dark purple and the necessary highlights/striking contrasts.

Herald of Khorne on juggernaut:
Dark, dark blood red, maybe brownish black juggernaut highlighted with light red, orange to make it pop. The herald is going from dark brown to highlight. It's important for me that there is a clear distinction between rider and steed.

Any thoughts and ideas highly appreciated! :)

Cheers!

March hobby challenge

Finally finished with my hobby challenge for march. Two squads of Daemonettes, 10 plus 12, plus a herald of Slaanesh. Around 350 points, so maybe not so bad after all.

I started off airbrushing several layers with my Krome, the first few testing with glaze medium to ensure especially the shadows are visible. Difficult, but learning by doing. After some layers I found out that my job with molding lines had been really sloppy, but not much I could do without making even uglier paint lines on the models. So not very satisfied with my preparations. Note to self there.

I got the idea of a slightly warmer skin tone from the tutorials on the excellent and fast shipping UK store Element Games. I had a lot of questions underway - never sure on what do do - what colors to use. I came down to purple/turqouise, which was quite fun. The hair and tentacles on the old models were also difficult to decide on.

I'm quite satisfied with the end result, but there are always a lot of things that irritate me: Mold lines, dots destroying the smoothness of the skin, too hard metals and so on. Not the potentially fantastic shading from airbrushing that could have been.

I think I must have a couple of days to decide what next - so that I can get around with 650 points for the Øvre Ullern weekender in late april. Sounds like it means the Lord of Change that lies in the bottom of a shoe box...

Cheers!
Linus

Escalation part 1

Finally a post from me again and finally some hobby progress.
Since I made up my mind to do another army after necrons I have been back and forth on what to do.
Chaos, nids, eldar..... so when we found out we would do escalation here, I found out this would be the perfect time to do this army thing. So I said I would go with my chaos army only to find out I had no drive and feel for that project. And that big Phantom Titan was staring at me all the time!!! So that gave me no choice, that thing deserves a new army. So Eldar it is! And the plan is to make the new army and while I keep painting the new guys, I can add them to my old eldar and get them faster on the battelfield.
For the first challenge I went with 5 wraithblades and 1 wraithlord. The first months will be a lot off wraiths....
As you can see I only finnished 4 blades, the reasson is that I air brush the first layers, So the last guy is in the next big batch off models to get brushed.

For the next month I will go a bit off the challenge rules, As I try to get 10 gaurdians and 1 wraithkinght done

Word Bearers Forge Fiend - Jørn's (very belated) May Hobby Challenge (Architecture of Aggression XXXV)

I can't believe I've managed to neglect writing this for almost a month now... Bad, baaad hobbyist!

Anyway...

Of the new kits that came out with the6th ed. Codex: Chaos Space Marines, the Forge Fiend kit was easily my favourite. Here, the meld of daemonic beast and engine of destruction works. The design of the model is far better aligned with the design philosophy going from the Defiler through the Soul Grinder than the Hell Drake is. Too bad the latter is the better of the two new models, gameplay wise...

The armoured parts have received the usual two layers of drybrushed metallics, followed by Red Ink. The fleshy parts was basecoated with Vallejo Air Light Brown, drybrushed with Bleached Bone, inked with Purple Ink and drybrushed with Bleached Bone again to tone the purple down a little.

Finally, I added black and Yellow Ochre oil washes (using W&N Artits' Oil Colour) to add rust-effects and weathering, pick out recessed details and define edges.

April & May 2013 Hobby Challenges

The big event past month was the '40K mixer' (if I may borrow a term from The Overlords podcast) at Ørnulv's place, and several of us had been working on new units to take along.

Linus was first out the gate with his Heldrake. He was also the only one to get around to post pics before the event itself. (Several other pics, including detail shots, in Linus' blog post from a few weeks back.)
It's good to see you back in the saddle again, old chap!

I dug out half a dozen miniatures from my 40K 3rd/4th ed. Emperor's Children army, stripped and repainted them to be able to include a small squad of Noise Marines in my Word Bearers army. Time and the next few games will tell if I'll be expanding or shelving the squad.

Tom-Erik produced not just one, but two units for April. His list at Ørnulv's event included both a new Triarch Stalker and the unit of Deathmarks above. (Pics of the Stalker in the previous post.)

- + - + -

Pledges for this month's projects in the comments, as usual.
Can't wait to see what May'll bring!!!

Tom-Erik`s April Hobby Challenge

This month I chose to get some new units done for the "hunker in the bunker" gaming event, the plan was to get a Monolith or Doomsday Ark for my 2000 point list, but I ended up with going for a second Stalker. I feel like i can get more from these spider things that can move around the table and stil get their deadly shoots off. Had some mixed experience with them so far, but they sure take a lot off heat from every one that has faced them, and the heavy gauss cannon give me some needed longe range fire power.

The second unite I have finished is the Deathmarks, and I love these robots! I all games when they have deep striked the right way, and not into close combat with a Defiler or 45 orks they have been great!

So need some more off these!

Their hit on 3+ and wound on 2+ against a marked unit is a killer, and they have rending...

That`s it for April, in May I think it might be a Necron break, and time to digg out some pointy ears stuff called the Void Dragons...

Word Bearers 'Noise Marines' II - Jørn's April Hobby Challenge (Architecture of Aggression XXXIV)

After a week of prodding old miniatures sitting around in the closest thing to Simple Green we've got and a week of too short evening painting sessions, I managed to finish a unit of Sonic Blaster wielding Noise Marines just in time for this past weekend's 'Hunker in the Bunker'. (More on that later, I'm sure.)

I was holding off on posting until after this weekend, but now that the cat's out of the bag anyway there's no point in putting it off any longer. I'll have to test them out in a few games before I decide if they're getting shelved (or 'foamed' rather) or if I'll be fleshing the unit out to ten - or even twelve, to be fluffy.

Chaos Spawn - Jørn's March Hobby Challenge

A week into April, and I'm finally done with my pledges for March.

Playing a Chaos Space Marines army, you never know when the Gods turn their backs to your champions, and you're called upon to have a Spawn model ready. I've had the two models below lying around since... Since they were released probably. It's about time then that they finally received some paint.

I've been playing around with all sorts of new tool while painting these two. The base colours were airbrushed on, enabling me to experiment with colour gradients on their extremities and between the different parts of their bodies. A number of different oil washes was then applied, to tone down the most extreme colour variations and to bring out the texture. A bit of light dry-brushing here and there, followed by more wash... Back and forth a few times until they reached the stage you can see above.

March Hobby challenges

Finally some time to write about this months hobby challenge, 2 days late.
It has been a very busy March with work and familly, but i manged to get some hobby stuff done!

First, I have almost finished my second building, need some more work on the base, and there wil be some statue in front of this building. Painting buildings is not my favorite thing to do....

I had to change some planes this month as I want to try some new necron stuff in games, which ment I needed to paint some new necrons, the deathmarks! The plan is to have a unit of 10, or 2 units of 6, depending on the game. Deep striking snipers that wounds a selected squad on 2, sounds good if I can use them the right way! I am also thinking about a monolith in my 2000 point army for the gaming weekend, any thoughts on that?
Anyhoooo here are the first 4 deathmarks, the rest is only primed.

March & April 2013 Hobby Challenges

It's really April already, isn't it? Spring may actually be here at last, and I have the feeling our activity level is starting to pick up a little with the return of daylight and the (ever so slowly) rising temperatures.

So... Last month's challenges first.

I pledged two Hell Blade Chaos Fighterst from Forge World and a couple of old Chaos Spawn I had lying around. I finished the flyers around the middle of the month, but didn't get around to finishing the Spawn models during the week before Easter holiday so I'll have to get those done before pledging anything for April.

Linus finished his Chaos Chosen from the Dark Vengeance box set a few days after the fighter pictures went up, and the Helbrute from the same set a few days ago. Linus has started using his airbrush kit rather extensively lately, so I'm sure he'll be joining Ørn in shaming the rest of us for not being nearly as productive before long. ;)

Other than that, there's no other completed challenges for March. We have been getting a healthy number of games in though, so here's hoping we'll be able to keep that up - or even increase the frequency a little.

Pledges for this month in Comments, as usually and when March's challenges are completed, please...


JørnN

Linus' february/march hobby challenge part II

Finally I got this dude finished. Sorry for the bad picture...

At least I think I will put him into some army lists, something that is not the case with the stupid Chosen. I'm not very satisfied with this one, which has been a model I have used to try out airbrushing techniques a little more. Some of the colours are inspired by the excellent painter at Buypainted.com.



I started out clogging the Krome after five seconds, resulting in a terrible mess and total disassembling and cleaning. But that was interesting. Since then I have found out how to adjust the air pressure and set the paint flow somewhat correct for different painting purposes. I've only been using the ,21 needle for detailing, but will switch to the 0,3 needle when I start basing the models for my April hobby challenge.

And in april I hope I can finish these two machines. One of them with probably 30 magnets... ugh

And here is a little glimpse into the near future...

Linus' february/march hobby challenge

 

So I finally finished these bastards, this insanely detailed unit of Chosen, a unit I most probably wont use (but still have to) because of their high points cost and far from optimal default choice of weapons. But they are very fine models, I've tried out my airbrush both with several of the priming and highlighting layers, as well as varnishing the finished models. I have tried out several painting techniques, with much use of layering and highlighting and almost no drybrushing at all.

This has been a steep uphill voyage for me, with some intense painting hours the last couple of weeks. And that's my problem. It has been far too time consuming. I felt I had to learn painting from scratch after more than three years not touching a brush.

Please comment, and give me feedback on what you would have done different. The bases as you can see lack some fun detaling.

Next project is some engines. And then there is something very fast and scary :)

Hell Blade Chaos Fighters - Jørn's March Hobby Challenge (Architecture of Aggression XXXIII)

I Thought I'd do my Primary objective first this month, and finish the Hell Blades before I let the Spawns and the airbrush distract me.

These were relatively simple kits - at least compared to the Warhound I started on last month - so they went together pretty easily. Mostly supergrue, and only very minor pinning was required. The biggest challenge turned out to be mounting them on the flying stand. The 'box' with the cross-shaped slot does not really fit underneath the model, so I scrapped it altogether and found an aluminium rod from an old printer and sawed it in two. These rods wer fixed to the base with a screw, a washer and a healthy helping of super glue. I drilled holes underneath the models, and filled the cockpit with Milliput.

After allowing a couple of days for glue to set properly, the models received the usual black primer coat, followed by drybrush layers of Warplock Bronze and Leadbelcher. A little more of my now dwindling supply of Red Ink went onto the fuselage before I went back over some of the details with Leadbelcher again. To finish off the models, I played around with oil paints (Winsor and Newton Perylene Black and Burnt Umber) and white spirits and tried for a worn and battered look.

I may still be going back over these to add tactical and kill markings later, but for now I'll just add a coat of varnish and try them out properly on the tabletop.

Shrine of the Aquila (and battle field terrain) – Ørnulv´s March 2013 hobby challenge – end report

Greetings!

I had completely forgotten how long it takes to paint a large building! Dry brush, wash, dry brush – wash – and so on. Time consuming and a “lonely atmosphere”. When I started out in December, my goal was to finish two gaming tables and terrain to go with it, by the end of February. Did not manage that, but now I am finally finished:)

First out – pictures of the Shrine of Aquila:

Second – pictures of the bridge, tank traps (one remake and one new) and finally, two new craters:

When it comes to the craters and the tank traps most people know I like to try to “improve” on the basic design of the GW kits. So I crumbled up “jacko foam” and used my concrete/sand/glue mix (and spare parts) in order to blend it all in with the fixed craters etc on my new “City of death” gaming table. Finally, pictures of the finished board with finished terrain:

I am so much looking forward to my game Saturday. An all day / all evening game with Inger Helene initiating the gaming table and new terrain (3000p Orks vs Ultramarines)! Inger Helene - WELCOME (chilli, vine, rome and coke and a of corse - a great game)!

As fore the future… Well, I have only managed 4 games of 40K so fare in 2013, so I opt to game more. Also, after spending almost 4 months of building terrain, I need a break from terrain building (not very social). I still have to make one more gaming table, but I have to wait until June when I will be able to clear out my storage room. I have plans fore more DE as well as re-re-re-re-revisiting my Ultramarines in an attempt to make them darker (more gloomy) and add more detail (including new bases). But I need a break. Therefore I will revert to work on my WOC army, also focusing on Warhammer Fantasy gaming, and not join in on the monthly hobby challenge on TSB for quite some time. However, I would love to play more 40K, so do not hesitate to challenge me to a battle:) The battle bunker is ready, with two brand new gaming tables to play on (and I will of course also travel).

Cheers.

Ørnulv

February & March 2013 Hobby Challenges

With February well and truly behind us, it's time to do a little recap before we look at what we're going to get done for March.

So... In order of appearance:

I finished my secondary objective first, by building the legs of my Chaos Warhound Titan before even starting on the models I'd pledged to paint. When I did pick up the paintbrush, however, the biggest 'problem' the Dark Vengeance models presented was their sheer level of detail. Towards the end of the month, I had to stop adding to be able to finish painting the models.

Ørnulv presented his second new gaming table, but didn't manage to finish the Shrine of the Aquila based building he showed us WIP pictures of early in the month. Knowing Ørn, I'm sure there will be pictures of the finished building before long. It's also more than likely there'll be more pictures of the table over the next few weeks as we get to play on it, and battle reports starts appearing.

Tom-Erik tackled severeal projects this month, and had an imposing Bastion terrain piece as well as severeal new models to show for this mont's efforts. I suspect we'll be getting to know both his new Triarch Stalker and the Immortals with Tesla Carbines over the next few weeks. It'll also be interesting to follow the devellopement of the pre-heresy Death Guard we got a glipse of.

Linus practically thundered out the gates this month, but it seems he may have overreached a little. He does have a lot of Real Life on his plate these days, though, and he'll be sure to present his Dark Vengeance models as soon as he's able to finish them. Meanwhile, I understand his (very much post-heresy) Death Guard have been sharpening their Plague Knives and planing to take to the tabletop again very soon.

Trond has been busy making progress as well, even if he's not been posting about it here. A titan kit poses new set of challenges, not only during construction but perhaps especially when it comes to shading/highlighting areas of armour significantly larger than what we find on regular miniatures. The picture to the left here is from a text message conversation I had with Trond a few weeks ago.

...and there you have it. The first montly hobby challenge of 2013 more or less completed. Time for those of us that managed to reach our goals to pledge a unit or two for this month. Those that didn't quite make it will probably want to finish what they've started before adding units. I hope the few that were unable to participate last month will be able to join in now. There's little point pledging progress you can't realistically complete, but getting on-board with something may provide that little bit of pressure to get that ball rolling - figuratively speaking.

Pledges for March in Comments, if you please...


JørnN

Tom-Erik`s February Challenge

A bit delayed, but here is my hobby challenges for February almost all done.

My first challenge was to get one building with basing done, building and painting it. I chose to start my new terrain with a bastion, there will be one more off these coming up soon. This is almost done, just some painting left one the bottom of the bastion.

For my second challenge I chose to get the Necron stalker done, and this is all done now, and with 4 more Imortals to go with it!

As a bonus I felt like doing somthing different one night and painted 2 off my pre heresy Death Guard, still finding a way to get these look dirty and battle worn, but discovering some fun methods with GW shades.

So for the March challenge: I need to get more terrain so I can have some games here soon, so one more building with the base, some defence line and a space marine statue is one the table!

Jørn's February Hobby Challenge - Dark Apostle, Aspiring Champions etc. (Architecture of Aggression XXXII)

There's just a few more hours left in February, so I guess it's high time I posted a few pictures and let you all in on how I got on with my primary objective for this month's Hobby Challenge. I posted about my secondary objective, the Chaos Warhound Titan legs a few days ago.

I figured I'd had the Chosen models from Dark Vengeance lying about without doing anything about them for long enough now, so I pulled them out to figure out what I could use them for. The first one was really easy. With the third eye, cape and of course the mace he's the obvious Dark Apostle.

The two Chosen with Power Axes were obvious choices for new Aspiring Champion models for my Melta squads. The only issue was that I'd rather have them using Power Swords, so I swapped the axes out for a couple of swords from the Chaos Knights set. This also gave me the opportunity to try out the airbrushing power weapons technique you can find all over the net by now.

Finally... If my two Melta-squads were getting new Champions, I didn't feel like leaving the Plasma squad without an upgrade too. One of the Chosen with Boltgun fit the bill.

No doubt, you've noticed that each of the champions above has a buddy. With the Icon of Vengeance not really being worth the points, in my opinion, I needed a regular Legionnaire to replace the icon bearers. Up until now I've been using temps from one of my Havoc squads, but since I was painting up some champions anyway...

Oh, and congratulations to us! This the 400th post on our little corner of the blogosphere..