Saturday 22 August 2009

Warhounds - Test painting

So, I finnished one of my Warhounds yesterday.
It's the first time I try to make that "glowing eyes effect", any tips as to how I'm to improve is very much welcome! I'm not sure if it'd be better with red eyes, as the model gets very... icy and blue with the colours I've chosen for this one.
Any thoughts?

Thursday 20 August 2009

ToFP - Painting shedule

Judging by my assembling-, converting- and painting speed, I've come up with a plan for the Tale of Fantasy Painters, and thought I'd share it here:

August: 10 Marauders of Slaanesh & 5 Warhounds
September: 5 Marauder Horsemen of Slaanesh
October: 3 Dragon Ogres
November: 10 Warriors of Slaanesh (w/ Halberds and Shields)
December: will be my first joker (a.k.a. a free month of painting, as I'm headed for Norway for the Christmas holidays, and I also got my exams come January, so will be busy enough)
January: 5 Knights of Slaanesh
February: Hellcannon
March: 5 Marauder Horsemen of Slaanesh & 5 Warhounds
...

And, frankly, that's all the models I got at the moment, so I really don't know what the next couple of months shall be used to. Maybe a character or two? I think my regiment of Marauders could use a few more ranks, if they're to be of any use at all... Also, I think I might fancy a Giant for my army at some point, to fill in the last Rare slot. Or maybe a couple of Chaos Spawns?
Truth to be told, I really don't know what more I want for my warband. I guess I like the concept of both the Warshrine and the various beasts beside the Dragon Ogres, and Chaos Dragons are simply raw awesomeness. But mnyeh, can't seem to make up my mind as to what comes next, apart from more Marauders.

Any suggestions are very much welcome! Seen from a tactical view, but also if there are any wishes as to what I should make and paint next, please feel free to speak your minds!


As to my progress, I've near to completed my Warhounds, but sculpting tails for them is more time consuming and difficult than I had initially thought. Anyways, I hope to have them done by the weekend, monday at the latest. After that I'll break into my first box of Marauder Horsemen, and assemble them, so they're ready for painting come September. I have to admit I'm looking forward to that, as I find the new Horsemen wonderfully sculpted, full of nice little details, and they got such an amount of character! If only GW had let the same person sculpt the Warhounds...

Tuesday 18 August 2009

Marauders of Slaanesh - Finished

The first 10 are done!
In the end, I went for white leather armour, black plate for the gauntlets, greaves and shields, aswell as black cloth for their skirts.
I finnished the bases late yesternight, and must say I'm very happy with them. A good thing with Denmark, is its high quantity of flint stones, so I merely took a trip with my bike, found some sand with small flint pebbles, and there you go; small rocks with sharp edges, jutting up from the lifeless barren earth.
I wanted to capture the barren and lifeless aspect of the Chaos Wastes - a land torn asunder by magic and warfare. So I googled for pictures of stone deserts and barren wastelands, and with some help from friends, picked a theme to go for.
Base painting recipe:
Chaos Black base coat
Shadow Grey all over, except for deepest cracks/fissures
Codex Grey drybrushed on pebbles
Gryphone Sephia washed all over
Bleached Bone / Astronomican Grey mix drybrushed over it all

(just so I don't forget how to paint the bases for the rest of my army) *winks*

Anyways, hope you like them as much as I do! *beams with pride*
I'll be working on converting my Warhounds this evening, hopefully getting an update with them uploaded soon.

Thursday 13 August 2009

The Tale of Fantasy Painters 2009-2010

I have, as Elazar prompted me to do, signed up for the Tale of Fantasy Painters, which is run at the Warseer forums.

For those who're unfamiliar with it, it's sort of a community on those forums, and those who've joined it, have commited themself to paint 200 pts of models, each month, for a year. We're allowed 2 "jokers", which is free cards, for months where exams or whatever interfere with our painting schedule. Thus, with 2 jokers played, one should have an army of 2000 pts, painted and all done, by the end of the coming year.

Not only is the community a great motivating factor, when it comes to getting your models painted, with deadlines and all, but also, it serves as a great arena to give and get feedback - which not only might be motivating by itself, but also can enhance your own, and others abilities, skills and painting techniques.

It should be said, however, that those who are soft, and don't think they can make the 200 pts per month, can still join, and stick to only 100 pts per month, but are then entitled as "Boys" (eventually "Girls", I'm sure, for those of the strongest sex who've joined).
And well *coughs* it turns out I'm in the Boys' division.
In the past, I've mostly only painted during holidays, and never as much as 2000 pts in a year, not sure I've painted 1000 pts, even. Or, if we don't count characters, that is. So, this will mainly be an experiment, to see how long I can keep myself going, and really how much I'm able to paint in a month, with studies and work stealing my time.



The Tale aside, my Marauders are finally taking shape - or, they're getting some colours on them; shape I say they got when I was done assembling them...
I've scrapped the first test-mini's choice of paint, and after two other variations, I've settled on the third.
My convertions, were well recieved at Games Workshop here in Copenhagen, and I've promised to have them finnished for next tuesday's painting- and gaming-evening, and I think I'll make it! Got monday off from work, so I'll see if I can't find some beach or something, to get some sand for the bases...
I'll post pictures when the whole regiment is done!

Friday 7 August 2009

Marauders of Slaanesh - Test painting

Right, as I wrote yesterday, my plan was to head down to the local GW for some test painting, and thus I did.

Nearly got two finnished in the roughly three and a half hours I stayed there, which I'd say ain't too bad, as I did quite the bit of testing in the beginning, as to what colours I should use. The remaining shouldn't take much time!
I'm still not sure if I'm happy with the armour, though...
I've been debating wether I should paint it all black, and just paint the edges Mithril Silver; it'll be easier to spot the details then. Eventually, I could paint it Mithril Silver or maybe Chainmail, again to bring out the details of the armour.
I've also been thinking of maybe giving the armour a wash of blue, as well I like blue, heh.
I particularily happy with the shield, should leave no doubt as to whom of the Great Four this regiment is sworn to.
The shield is kinda what pulls me in the direction of painting the armours black, with very thin mithril borders, instead of the Boltgun Metal 1 : 1 Chaos Black - mix I've used as a base colour for the armour.

Any comments, critisism and/or advise, would be most welcome!

Thursday 6 August 2009

Marauders of Slaanesh - Assembled

After many many hours, my heavily converted regiment of Marauders is finally assembled. Hopefully, the painting should take less time.

My fingers are itching to get them painted; I've planned a sort of black and white colour-theme for my warband, although I'm tempted to mix in some blue here and there. Yes, that means I'm steering clear of the pink/purple Slaanesh look - I'm thinking something along the lines of how the old (6th ed) metal Daemonettes were painted by the 'Eavy Metal team (not my picture).

So, for these models, I've planned to paint the cloth white, armour will be black/dark blue iron, hair will be black and weapons normal steel. I have, however, not decided how I'm to paint their skin, I'm leaning towards a whitened Elf Flesh, but I got little experience with painting flesh, and I'm unsure whether this will conflict with the white cloth.

An alternative, would be to paint cloth black, armour and weapons as steel, and the skin very light, but I'm leaning towards the first scheme at the moment.

I'll undercoat them tomorrow morning, and after work I'll head down to the local GW store, as fridays are free for all painting nights, so I'll be able to test out all the paints in the GW range, for free. I'll test the first scheme out to begin with, and we'll simply have to see how it fits.

Sunday 2 August 2009

What's next?

So, the Stegadon is all done; what's next?

I do believe that I - in my first post - mentioned my plans for a warband of Slaanesh worshipping warriors, and creating that still stands as my main goal, when it comes to Warhammer armies, at the moment.

To that end, I've been shopping:
1x Warriors of Chaos regiment
1x Chaos Knights regiment
2x Chaos Marauder Horsemen regiments
1x Chaos Warhounds
1x Chaos Lord on Daemonic Mount
1x Lord of Slaanesh
1x Hellcannon of Chaos (white mystery box on picture...)
1x Black Orcs regiment
1x Dark Elf Cold One Knights regiment

Inspired as I was by Elazar's wonderful Dragon Ogres (bottom of the page), I'm going to make mine in a similar fashion, thus the Black Orcs and Cold One Knights. I havn't peeked much inside the boxes, as of yet, but hopefully they should both yield other bits and pieces that in one way or another should fit in with the Slaaneshi theme. I am slightly worried that I shan't be able to use the Black Orcs for much, though, maybe their weapons can be fashioned into Halberds or something? In either case, it's great models by themself, and if nothing else, they'll serve as just "something different to paint", sometime!

Not included in the list above is a second regiment of Chaos Knights, as they're not going to be part of my Slaaneshi warband; I bought, assembled and started painting them on a whim earlier this spring, but as they're not really converted anything, and not really that special, I'll wait 'til I've finnished the last two of them, before I take some photoes of them.
The two unfinnished ones might be spotable in the small box on the far right of the picture above, where they currently reside along with the first part of my Slaanesh-project, namely my Marauders!

My Marauders of Slaanesh are converted out of this edition's plastic Daemonettes, using plenty of spare bits from Warriors of Chaos and Dark Elves, among others and lots of green stuff!
I'm getting more and more pleased with them as the days go and the progress advances, but they're still very much a work in progress, so no more info about them just now.
I do hope to have the first ten assembled and ready for paint in a couple of days, though, so that should be my next post!

Saturday 1 August 2009

Ancient Stegadon (5)

'Tis been some time, but now I'm back!
The Stegadon is all finnished now, and has been given to my happy brother - although late!
Despite all my efforts, I was unable to finnish it on time, and as a result I got really demotivated and zapped of energy to finnish what was left:
- 2 Skinks (basecoats done)
- Skink Priest
- Most of the largest howda-piece

When I finally got hold of myself, and picked up the pencil again, I got only minor stuff done, then other plans sorta came rushing on, and I found myself off in another part of Norway, visiting my mother's branch of the family, and then when I got back to my parents house, Stegadon waiting impatiently, mmy head was filled with other things I wanted to do, and so I spent the next couple of weeks running a DnD campaign, playing volleyball, computer games and seeing friends - usual summer stuff, I guess...

I did manage to get something done, though, forced myself up (relativly) early, and worked on it while I waited for my brother and/or friends to wake up, so we could hang out.
So eventually I finnished it (four days ago), and now that I have returned to Denmark, I have decided to return from my self-imposed exile, upload pictures of the finnished Stegadon, and move on!

The pictures' ain't the best, the day I took them was all rainy and grey, and so I tried to use some lamps and stuff, so most of the pictures are rather dark, and those with decent lighting are totally out of focus, due to my crappy skills at photographing...
Observant people, might notice that there's only one banner pole on the howda, and yes that's correct. Sadly the other one broke off during the trip to Norway, and despite repeated tries to glue it back on, it simply wouldn't sit.
Nevertheless, and to my great relief, my brother seemed really happy with it, although I've gotten my share of him telling me I'm a slacker, and that the gift's late etc.
I really can't see why, his birthday being the 17th of april... Owh right, nevermind.

I know I'm happy with it at least, although having to quit my NMM-plans, and on top of it not finnish it on time, sorta stings. On the other hand, I think the model turned out beautiful in the end, and so far it's the biggest and meanest model I've completed, and I feel I've learnt a lot when it comes to painting skin and blending colours.

Now, onto other projects!