GW Bad Moons Ork Nob

 Apparently I've never posted this figure directly on my blog. It's one that I'm actually very proud of, despite the fact that it's not necessarily painted to a display standard and I didn't go all-out with him in terms of difficulty of paint job or anything. This was one of the "free figures" that came with an issue of Games Workshop's White Dwarf magazine way back when as a promotion for an upcoming rulebook/figure combo boxed set - Orks versus Space Marines coupled with an intro to the Warhammer 40K 5th Ed. rules. I traded away all the Space Marines in return for a boatload of Orks - my plan is/was to have an Orky mob that was a throwback to Ork-related books and art that GW put out towards the end of the "Rogue Trader" era - several collections of Ork backstory, with awesome art by, well, just about all of the cool GW artists at the time.

 Anyhow, this Ork Nob figure was painted as a test to see if I could do homage to the "bright 'n' blingy" bright yellow armor and clothing of the Bad Moons Ork clan back in the day while: 1) making it grungy and rough looking, and 2) making it easy to paint and replicable across a whole Ork mob for the purposes of cranking a playable tabletop 40K Ork army out.

 I succeeded with my two aims for this figure... it was painted almost completely with washes of thinned paint over white primer. I started with the lightest color, and painted progressively darker wash layers into the shadows and then towards the deepest shaded crevices. I finished off with a layer of "grime" as a wash over the armor and clothing. The metals were painted with a solid basecoat of mixed metallic paint and dark regular paint, and then just bumped up a bit with a minimum of highlights. I tried some new materials (for me) for basing, essentially some innards from a cheap wind-up alarm clock, and cork - the base was painted with basecoats and washes as well, topped off with a few highlights.

 I think the figure turned out excellently for what it was intended to be - a test piece for an easy color scheme to use on cranking out a tabletop army. Unfortunately, when the time came to paint some more friends, I made decent progress on a batch of 5 with the same scheme... and then got sidetracked by some other "new and shiny" release. Ah well.

 You can vote for him here on CoolMiniOrNot!

Something Wicked This Way Comes

 I've gotten back into painting again after another absence (been working a 60hr up-at-4am-every-morning job since last September, but am now laid off) and am motivated to get some sort of 40K army painted, even if a small one, that I can game with. I came to the realization that out of all the half-finished projects, a Necron force I've had shelved since 2008 was the furthest along and, more importantly, the easiest to really get cracking with in terms of cutting corners and just getting them done! I've not really done "army style" painting before, but with these Warriors I did one step at a time on each figure on the batch of 5 until I got 'em done to move on to the next step.

 This current batch of Warriors have now all been painted over the base color with shading, several layers of highlight, and the glow effects more or less fleshed out. I'm normally better at writing down color recipes so I can go back to things after the fact, but for some reason I never jotted notes on doing the glow color or the greenish physical corrosion on these guys. I've had to reinvent a painting recipe and color progression for both of those, and made a few other tweaks besides since I've picked up new colors - and, um, additional painting skills - since I last set brush to these guys almost 4 years ago. I'm planning a replacement for the one hand of the guy with the spiky growths from his upper left body - I decided I just wasn't happy with the closed fist made from the hand sawn off from a gauss glayer stock - I just need to figger out what would look good in its place, since the other arm is angled out slightly.

 Although painted in advance of the rest of the troops, the Necron Lord pretty much follows the same scheme but has had a bit more conversion. I'm aiming to have the wrappings on his staff and his cloak painted to resemble flayed skin. Oh, and he's also magnetized, so I can swap out the Ressurection Orb in his hand and both ends of his staff in case I want to change his equipment for a 40K game. He has has had some revisions recently, primarily since the magnetized hand holding the Resurrection Orb wouldn't stay pinned/glued on and kept snapping off. I drilled deeper/thinner pin holes, swapped out the metal forearm for a plastic Necron one, and then drilled/pinned the other end with the hand as well. I like the end result, because his arm is now slightly exaggerated in length in addition to having the corrupted claws.

 I did pick up the new GW Necron Codex, but haven't really read through it much or done much research on quality/competitive units with which to game. At this point, I'm just going for the basic Lord w/ Res. Orb, Staff of Light and two(?) squads of Warriors. I'd ideally like to hit 500 points, so I can at least start with small games. I'm also working on accompanying Scarabs, but need 3 more finished bases before I can field those as a valid unit under the newest rules.

 I'd greatly appreciate feedback, in that I'm thinking the (unfinished) Lord looks a little bland - maybe I need to do something more with the claw arm to play it up a bit? The Orb and Staff of Light are going to get a green glowy effect so I'm not so worried about those, but he otherwise just seems kinda "flat" to me and I don't know what to do about it.

Inducted Space Wolves Berzerker (and a Friend)

I kicked around a couple of ideas for the Aquila color on the inducted Space Wolves Berzerker, and in the end decided I'd see what would happen with taking one of my usual bone basecoat color and adding metallic medium to it. A little bit of highlighting, a wash or two of the same blood colors I'm using for the Berzerker armor, basecoating the brass trim, and some tidying/clarifying of the beard brings things to this point:

Specifically, I used 1:1 GW Vomit Brown/VMC Metallic Medium as a basecoat for the SW chest decoration, shaded a bit with GW Gryphonne Sepia, and then brushed on a few shading washes of the dried blood color I'm using on the non-grey parts of his armor.

The other Berzerker has his armor painted (not highlighted) and the basecoat applied on the brass trim. I'd ideally like to do something for the clawed hand along the color of this guy's face: http://www.coolminiornot.com/202765

I'm having a hard time trying to figure out the actual colors of the face on the Bloodletter CMON link I posted - it's an older paintjob, so I'm assuming some sort of grey/Bleached Bone mixture highlighted up to white. If I were to replicate it, maybe GW Dheneb Stone/grey highlighted up through Bleached Bone > Skull White, or do you all suppose that would that look a little wonky?

Wow... A Work-In-Progress Converted Khorne Berzerker

 Well, I've been out of the hobby awhile. Lack of motivation, poor mental outlook, a lot of personal stuff going on, etc. I've not painted any figures from my Chaos Warband since, oh, October? One big thing contributing to my general lack of motivation was my belief that I had my Kroot Hound (the one that won Honorable Mention at the 2008 Chicago GD) stolen from a Military & Historical Collectible show in November of last year that I took some figures to when I went along with a local painting club - turns out I found it last week buried in an underlying area of my figure case... restored some of my faith in painting/humanity.

 I put brush to figure last night with one Khorne Berzerker conversion I had the sudden urge to paint - my painting area's been in disarray since a basement renovation but I decided to ignore the clutter and take a stab at painting again. Man, I feel rusty and out of practice!

 The color looks quite a bit off compared to the figure on my end, unfortunately, because my photo setup is dismantled and I need to get things back together. I also forgot how I used to edit and balance my photos, it's been so long... I was aiming for a lighter Space Wolves Chapter color scheme, like the near-white they used to use way back when (1992 or so?). I settled on a halfway point between the current primarily GW Shadow Grey scheme and a mixture of GW Space Wolves Grey and GW Skull White.

 I'm not sure what color to paint the decoration on the chest armor - gold? copper? bronze? Suggestions would be appreciated, because I'm not sure what the current standard is (this is a 3rd Ed. chest piece and I don't see any of this style in the recent Codex). Thanks!

My First Finished Berzerkers

 I finished these last night to serve as part of the advance guard of my Chaos Space Marine Warband (I also finished a "vanilla" Ultramarine Missile Launcher trooper from the Macragge set, but he was taken out back by these guys and shot or something).

 The first one is an inducted Ultramarine, and so I'm using a split scheme where he still has defiled Ultramarine colors, gear in the accent color of my Disciples of the Four Warband, and red armor that's been overpainted on his original coloration so as to signify his role as a Berzerker.

 The second is an outright Khorne Berzerker, but I decided I wanted to go with a darker blood-red coloration than the brighter red that many seem fond of using. Posing-wise, there's no conversion - about the main difference between this and any other trooper (aside from the stock Berzerker signifiers) is the shoulder pad panels painted with a background in the accent color of my Warband.


 I'd appreciate any feedback or suggestions on these guys, as I'm making a definite attempt to paint to more of a "tabletop" painting standard than a "display" standard as is my usual:

   

 

Hobby Tip - Painting Aged Parchment

Step 1:

 Apply a basecoat of 1 part Vallejo Model Color Russian Uniform (although Games Workshop Catachan Green might do in a pinch) and 3 parts GW Bleached Bone at a 1:1 paint/thinner concentration


Step 2:

 Layer on 1:4 GW Bleached Bone/thinner, leaving the shaded areas and deepest depressions uncovered


Step 3:

 Apply a wash (or two) of GW Devlan Mud over the whole of the area to be painted as parchment, paying extra attention to the depressions and shaded areas


Step 4:

 Layer on a first step of highlighting with 1:4 GW Bleached Bone/thinner, making sure to only brighten up the most raised and/or light-facing areas


Step 5:

 Apply extreme highlights to the edges and most raised areas as finely as possible, paying close attention to sharp edges and corners


Step 6:

 Using a mixture of 1:1 Scorched Brown and Black Ink (or Chaos Black and Badab Black, by preference) thinned down to at least a 1:4 paint/thinner ratio, carefully paint the lines of your letters on the parchment. You might want to practice on some scratch paper beforehand, as it really comes down to getting a feel for the hand movements when putting the brush to figure. It would be a good idea to do the first, last, and middle letters all in the same relative size to get the spacing correct, and then fill in the rest of your lettering as you can subtly adjust the sizing of your letters to accommodate how much room you have left.

 It might sound like an oxymoron, but the thinner you have your paints when doing fine detail like this, the more control you will have.


Step 7 (The All-Important One):

 Inevitably, you may need to go back and touch up things a little. Again, thin your paints by a decent margin so as to be able to get it to flow easily. You want to have as sharp a point on the tip of your brush as possible and be applying little to no pressure, simply letting the brush do all the work and allowing the paint to wick off onto your figure.

 In this case, I wanted to neaten up the letters a little bit, and add a slightly lighter "highlighted" black to the right-most lettering. I increased the size of the image, too, so that you can see it's not all smoke-and-mirrors, but generally a case of "if it looks about right in close detail then it'll look very close to right at regular scale."

Happy painting!

Hobby Tip - Painting 40K Shoulder Pads

 Now I'm not sure about anyone else (mainly because I don't know many other painters), but I prefer to paint and prime the shoulder pads (and backpacks) separate from the figure, primarily because I like to make sure the figure itself gets as much paint and primer coverage right from the get go. Maybe I'm finicky, but it kind of bothers me if I know that I don't have at least a shade coat in the areas that aren't very visible - since I don't use black primer, this is maybe more relevant, because white primer glinting out brightly from crevices is a little jarring.

 Anyways, I paint shoulder pads separately, and a while back I settled on a good way to paint the pads after priming without them touching or resting on anything and thus not getting good coverage themselves. When priming, I use two-sided masking tape and stick them to a paper plate on an angle. It lets me turn the plate 360° and get the pads from all sides, and get both bottom and back edges after a quick flip over once the first coat's dry.

For applying actual paint, I use the following method:


 I attach the back of the pads to a coffee stirrer or something similar with poster putty (in the case of the image, they're stuck to the end of plungers from the 1mL syringes I use for measuring out paint ratios, using UHU-Tac reuseable putty) so that way I get 360° access to them when I'm painting, and can simply set the whole thing down to dry - post, pad, and all, when I'm done applying a color. I can do a bunch of 'em assembly-line style, as they don't take up a lot of room, and by the time I get done applying color to the end of the row, the ones from the beginning of the row will be dry. Two of these will be going on the Berzerker from my Disciples of the Four warband, as seen in the top-right of the picture, while the other two are saved for his friend, the inducted Ultramarine Berzerker I showed some while back - they're both nearly done, and should be getting pictures posted "soonish".

One Lonely Khorne Berzerker Revisited

 I first posted a picture of the solid-color Berzerker in a post last week. Well, I've started in on outright painting, mostly because I'm using this guy as a color test for another commission figure. The red armor is partially shaded at this point, and the brass is simply basecoated with a shade color. (Man, I wish metallics covered better, but I guess I can't complain with only two thinned coats of a brass-brown mixture doing the job.)

Here he is in all his blood red Berzerker glory:

 I'm aiming for more of a dried blood color with the Berzerkers in my warband, just because everything else is likely going to be bright colors (like inducted Loyalists) or faded and/or pastel colored (like any generic "Lesser Daemons," maybe, one of which my recently-posted Plaguebearer might eventually become).

One Lonely Khorne Berzerker

 This was only supposed to be just a picture of the inducted Ultramarine Berzerker in my Disciples of the Four Chaos warband, but in true 'zerker style a friend muscled his way into the photo shoot:

 I'm hoping I've got the red down reasonably well - I'm a little ambivalent about a slog through the reds-into-oranges on these guys (all future 'zerkers included) as I've been there before with an all-red squad (Vior'la Tau), but the biggest part of the work was taken care of with the airbrush. Now I just need to add highlights and details.

 The red look about right? (It's roughly an accurate match from my monitor to my figures this time around, surprisingly!) I'm not necessarily aiming for a garish bright red, but more for the color of blood. I used a mixture of Red Gore, Scorched Brown, and Mechrite Red to try and get good coverage - I figger it should be somewhat of a darker mid-range basecoat color.

The Disciples of the Four and The Shriven (It's All Dan Abnett's Fault)

 Here's something a little different that's not specifically about painting and modeling! Although I've taken a few stabs at trying to crank out an army for 40K in the past, most of which are now relegated to work-in-progress status and many of those linked to in the Gallery of my painting website, I haven't really had any fully realized army lists or troop rosters in mind to work towards - more often just vague half-formed plans. With the goal of keeping myself on track (as well as possibly getting feedback on the validity/combat-worthiness of my forces), I've been busy the past few weeks in spare moments trying to narrow down selections for two completely different army lists for forces I'd like to field in the hopefully near future - one is fairly straightforward from the current Games Workshop Chaos Space Marines Codex and the other has been planned out more from a modeling, conversion, and back story standpoint over the past several years and just lately been pigeonholed into one of the army lists from Forge World's three Siege of Vraks Imperial Armour books. The more convoluted army list of the two is now a Nurgle-biased force using the Renegades and Heretics list out of Imperial Armour Vol. VII, and is serving as my starting point for representing a force of The Shriven as taken from Dan Abnett's First and Only novel in the Gaunt's Ghosts series - for anyone who's already read in past entries about my unwholesome fascination with them as described in the book, I apologize in advance.

 Bear in mind that I hardly have any tabletop 40K play experience under my belt as I've consistently been more of a painter and converter than a gamer since getting back into the hobby about 4 years ago, but I'm looking to make a serious attempt at planning, assembling and painting up a few small armies (500 points or so each) with several goals in mind: 1) I'd like to actually play 40K for once with a fully painted and game-legal army of my own, 2) I want to complete a starting force of Chaos Space Marines in a loose, non-Legion-specific Warband of my own design for the sake of getting something playable "soonish" while still allowing for some conversion and variety in painting, and 3) I'd like to finally be able to put a force on the table as allies of my CSM Warband so as to represent remnants of The Shriven from First and Only - an army composed of the former workers, administrators, disciplinarians, and leftover general populace of the Forge World of Fortis Binary who were corrupted by Chaos, went rogue, and overtook the planet itself.

 My first army list has been easier to wrap my head around, as I'm more familiar with the Chaos Space Marine Codex, their troop types, and the overall concept of how the Chaos Marines theoretically handle themselves on the tabletop. This first list represents a smallish beginning force of troops from my self-designed Warband, The Disciples of the Four, that I've been kicking around ideas for in my head ever since Games Workshop released the latest CSM Codex:

=HQ=
Undivided Chaos Lord
- Daemon Weapon
- Combi-melta
140 pts.

=Troops=
5 Khorne Berzerkers (w/ Chaos Lord attached to these guys in game-play)
- Skull Champion
-- Power Fist
Rhino w/ pintle-mount twin bolter
185 pts.

8 Chaos Marines
- Icon of Chaos Glory
- Meltagun
Rhino
175 pts.

Total: 500 pts.

 In terms of a back story, The Disciples of the Four are an extra-zealous splinter group from the post-Heresy Word Bearers Legion, some time after the Legion's retreat to the Eye of Terror. Essentially, the originators of The Disciples split away from the Word Bearers Legion due to a difference in ideology: they felt their former comrades were somewhat lacking in "enthusiasm" - outside of converting whole populaces to worship of the Chaos Powers, building unholy monuments that stretch up into the stratosphere, and dogmatically enforcing their religious will on the conquered, they felt that the Word Bearers Legion's somewhat "distanced" spiritual approach didn't go nearly far enough. The Disciples of the Four want to demonstrate the might and the glory of the Gods of Chaos to the rest of the galaxy physically as well as from a "spiritual" standpoint. My Warband essentially will be marked with rampant mutation and corruption of the body and soul (from a "sane" 40K perspective) as a sign of their devotion to the Fell Powers, and the higher one progresses in the overall hierarchy within The Disciples, the more marked and favored they will be by the 4 Chaos Gods (read: rife with physical perversion and deviation from the semblance of their former appearance).

 I'm keeping with an Undivided belief approach in the Warband's adoration of the Chaos Powers (ideally for the most variety in painting, conversion and gameplay), and from a "fluff" standpoint, so long as any potential new members or allies likewise show complete devotion to the Ruinous Powers (both spiritual and corporeal), then The Disciples of the Four would be accepting of whoever (or whatever) wishes to join up with them in their efforts. I more or less adopted this "theme" for the sake of not getting stagnant or bored painting-wise, meaning I'll be able to incorporate Games Workshop's canonical Chaos Marine Legions' color schemes and styles of appearance that I've always liked directly into my force as well as (suitably corrupted) Loyalist Marine Chapter paint schemes and insignia; so long as I maintain certain specific elements from figure to figure such as iconography or particular armor panels in set colors, I'm thinking things won't look too motley.


 My second army list is a first stab at getting some models on the tabletop so as to represent a playable force of The Shriven - I have no experience whatsoever playing Imperial Guard or even against IG, so this is more an attempt to combine the ideas I want to get across with something that will hopefully be effective in-game. Compared to my planned Chaos Marine force, I'm expecting more or less every figure of my Shriven army to be converted from original base models/parts in some way - in other words I'm planning to get my Disciples of the Four troops painted up to a reasonable standard using whatever shortcuts and repetitive batch painting I can tolerate, so as to be able to actually play a game with my own figures, while The Shriven troops will be a bit more involved in creation and can be worked on in the background. So far as a back story goes in terms of their alliance with my Warband, they're intended to be leftovers of The Shriven forces in First and Only after the involvement by Gaunt's Ghosts on the Forge World of Fortis Binary. In the book (without ruining a great read) they are allied with the Iron Warriors and have a leaning towards long range bombardment, trench fighting, self-mutilation (former work-related protective gear sewn directly into their flesh, for example) and the use of, um, poisonous chemicals and daemonic rituals. Here's my planned army list for The Shriven as a separate small force to complement my initial Chaos Space Marine troops:

=HQ=
Renegade Company Command Platoon
Company Command Squad (more or less comparable to the Troop Platoon Command Squad from the newest GW Imperial Guard Codex)
1 Champion, 4 Renegades
(Champion has laspistol/CC weapon, 2 have lasguns, 2 have autoguns)
- Vox-caster
- Chaos banner

Mortar Squad (part of Platoon)
3 Heavy Weapons teams
- Lasgun & mortar each team
- Chemical shells (poisoning of bombardment targets on a 2+, and Marine-killing AP)
125 pts.

Apostate Preacher of Nurgle (comparable to the Ministorum Priest from the latest IG Codex)
- Bolt Pistol
- Eviscerator
67 pts.

=Elites=
5 Plague Marines (same as in the GW Chaos Space Marine Codex)
- Plasma Gun
130 pts.

=Troops=
Mutant Rabble (more or less comparable to a squad of IG Conscripts, and will have the Preacher attached in game-play)
20 Mutants
- 2 Flamers
92 pts.

Mutant Rabble
20 Mutants
- Flamer
86 pts.

Total: 500 pts.

 Given the unfolding of the story in First and Only, this force represents The Shriven "in exile" finding a welcome home as allies amongst The Disciples of the Four, as well as a following of mutants and degenerates trailing in their wake as The Shriven recouped their numbers and sought refuge on a number of worlds following an abrupt separation from their previous "protectors." I'm blaming the current lack of tanks and other fun means of mass slaughter on my difficulty in cramming heavy armor and warm bodies into the same 500 point army list, but I could also say that in their departure from Fortis Binary they were forced to leave a majority of their heavy guns behind but still have a leaning towards trench warfare tactics, heavy fire support. and long-range bombardment as learned from their time with the Iron Warriors.

 Feedback on either the army lists or my "fluff" for them would be greatly appreciated, as I'm pretty much a newbie when it comes to army building and actual gaming in 40K - I haven't even played anything in 5th Edition, for example, outside of a single brief run with 500 points' worth of unpainted and borrowed Orks when the Assault on Black Reach set first came out. For anyone interested, I've had a running work-in-progress thread over on the RelicNews Painting & Modeling Forum with both my work on The Shriven and (moreso) the Disciples of the Four for quite a while now. (Barring a few in-progress projects in what free time I have, my planned focus in the near future will ideally be on getting the troops for both these army lists assembled, playable and painted!)


 As an aside, it's nice to see I'm not the only one who has similar opinions about modeling, painting, army building and (eventually) playing using Forge World models and rules as a main focus of an army. Ron over at From the Warp made a post about this regarding his Deathwing Space Marine army: From the Warp: Using Forge World stuff

My Love/Hate Relationship With Army Painting

 Ron over at ++From the Warp++ put up a post on how to "stay motivated" when trying to paint up and finish your 40K army. He had made a request for input several weeks ago from everyone in the From the Warp Bloggers Group, for the purpose of making this particular collaborative post.

 There's a reason I didn't contribute on this one - I have great difficulty in maintaining motivation myself to finish even a 500 point force, and forever seem to get sidetracked. I've "officially" gone through 3 different races/armies (well, I'll hedge and say "at least two") in my efforts to field an army of my own on the tabletop since I got back into painting. I blame this on a number of things: limited time, easily distracted by my environment and new ideas, finding myself doing other things during time I've set aside for painting, and so forth.

 Primarily, though, I think it's my tendency to get thoroughly immersed in whatever project I happen to be working on - I put so much thinking into what I could do that I tend not to get a whole lot done. When I first got back into the hobby and figgered I wanted to play in earnest, I settled on Tau as my "army of choice" and started right in with a Battleforce set. I decided that they would be Fire Warriors from the Vior'la Sept - a group more "fiery-tempered" than most Tau and inclined towards greater numbers of warriors than other Septs. I picked a paint scheme that I thought would be "cool"... and everything went downhil from there. Not being so familiar with the hobby yet, I didn't realize that red acrylic paint generally has poor coverage; I painted with a great many color steps and to a high level of detail; I painted them in a tricky and striking "magma" scheme; and I painted each one individually, not being so familiar with "batch painting."

 Well, the squad I finished looked nice and in taking them in 2007 to my first time at the Golden Demons ever, received an Honorable Mention for them - they didn't work out quite so well as an army, though. I then moved on to Necrons with specific plans on how to speed things up - spraypainted basecoat, use of washes, etc. Silly me, I caught the conversion bug with Necrons! They're still a work in progress... Right now, I've got a collection of Orks from the Assault on Black Reach in progress and being painted up as part of the Bad Moons Clan in an "Old School" style- just 500 points' worth, and they are primarily painted with washes. I'm also working on a Chaos Warband (by way of an initial start with a converted "Shriven" renegade Guard force, now to be allies when I get back around to them with some new ideas). In trying to join in with the "500 Club" at the local GW Hobby Center, where the goal was to assemble & paint up 500 points of troops and accessories in a month, the Chaos Warband I had on the back burner while getting into the Black Reach Bad Moons sort of took preference as it seemed (logically) easier to paint up 500 points of CSM's than to paint up a slew of Boyz to total 500 points.

*raises fist and curses at the sky*
"I'll finish 500 points' worth of a fieldable army that I painted myself, eventually!!!1!1!!"


 I specifically didn't contribute to the collaborative post because I am by no means a role model or a source of advice on this one - more a poster boy for "what not to do." If prepping figures wasn't such a slog for me, maybe I'd get things done quicker, but nobody's ever seemed like they'd be inclined to file and scrape plastic on my behalf. (I'm still holding out hope, though!)


 No, there's a very good reason I seem to focus more on painting single display-quality miniatures and would preferentially accept those as commissions. I just seem to have better luck with 'em, if nothing else!