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40k

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Dark Eldar – Test Model

Posted on December 10, 2011

So, I was at the Throne of Skulls tournament this summer in Las Vegas. Some of you may recall that the Canadian/US dollar was quite favourable at the time for us using CAD. I was weak. I have a rule that I don’t buy models that I’m not immediately going to work on. But…it was such a good deal. >.<

So I have most of a Dark Eldar army sitting in my room. So, so lonely.

This is the first model I’ve painted, trying to find out what I wanted to do for a colour scheme. I’m pretty happy with it! (macro photography, less happy with).

I got the idea for the colour scheme from the book, it’s one of the non-blue, non-purple schemes in there. I know, you have to search to find it.

The red parts are 50/50 Scab Red and Chaos Black, Scab Red (watered), Blood Red (watered) and then Vomit Brown (watered). The non-red black bits are 50/50 Codex Gray and Chaos Black and Codex Gray. The biegey bits are Bleached bone (watered), Devlan Mud (best colour on the planet) then Bleached bone. The base is (really I’m listing these so I can remember for later!) Chainmail then Badab Black, with some gray drybrushed on the rubble nearby.

I know that there’s a hair on his face. I’ve scraped it off since I took the photos…I couldn’t see it at all. One of the challenges of living with two cats. 😛

I think the photos look good, until you open up the larger versions. I feel like the larger versions show imperfection that I can’t do anything about. Maybe I need to get a little further away…oh photography.

Later!

 

Work-in-progress

Terrain: Orky Lander 1

Posted on October 1, 2011

I’ve been thinking about this blog since I got my new camera. One of the things I wanted when I started it, was to purchase a macro lens so I could take some better close-up model photos. I still don’t have the macro, but I do have some models…

I’ve been working on a piece of terrain. Started with a piece of “hardboard”/MDF and used my Dremel to cut it out to shape. Glued down a piece of construction foam to serve as a core. Added wood filler, hot glue, and plasticard to create the shape you see below. Then a few select pieces from my never-shrinking box of bitz, and voila, you have something that resembles a crashed Ork lander.


Painting started with a drybrush Codex Gray+Fortress Gray. They’re my Ork base colours. Regal Blue on the Space Marine tank parts (again, to match my army). Then…I got an airbrush. And started to use it :P. Airbrushed on the metal, then a couple layers of different grays, then the black.

A few things I’m not happy about right now: the black isn’t scorched enough, the hot glue needs to be something, and the entire piece is really just a big gray lump on the table, and the lighting of my photography…

Ah well. Better than nothing, right? 🙂

Work-in-progress

Ork Warboss 1

Posted on January 7, 2011

I’m re-jigging my Ork army a little bit in the face of Derrick having played and provided input on it.

Prepare yourself…for Dug’s latest creation!

I’m going to take one of these…and put a warboss in it. I don’t quite know how yet, but that’s usually the best part of being an Ork. 😀

WAAAAAAGGHHHH!!!!

(also the Kroxigors are making fine progress, just haven’t posted any photos recently – I should make time to do that, since they have several layers on them now).

Work-in-progress

Ork Battlewagon 4

Posted on July 26, 2010

Yesterday, I referred to having a plan to offset the boring drybrushing I painted myself into.

You can see the start of it here – Shadow Grey and Scab Red panels. I’m going to try painting metal chips on the edges of these and seeing how it looks.

Next up is a watered down wash of Graveyard Earth and then another of Scorched Brown as the Battlewagon guide suggests. Lets see what that looks like!

(I like that the carnosaur is visible in the background of these pictures…I took him out of the case after my tournament so I could try the Slann in 8th ed :))

Work-in-progress

Ork Battlewagon 3

Posted on July 25, 2010

A quick priming and we’re ready to put some paint on this thing.

I think I regret doing this now, but first I dry brushed the entire thing Boltgun Metal. It’s been my standby metal dry brushing for years, and it’s only after reading that Battlewagon guide I posted last post that I realized there were other options. Talk about a mindset. I’ve got plans to offset the boring nature of this though, so not all is lost.

Regal Blue is the base coat for all of my Rhinos, so that went on here as well. I usually do two watered down coats of the Regal, to prevent paint clumping since I’m applying vast quantities of it all at once.

That’s the update for today – later!

Work-in-progress

Ork Battlewagon 2

Posted on July 25, 2010

This part was less heartbreaking, and more difficult – how to fit the GW add-on kit deffrolla onto the Rhino. The deffrolla fits perfectly onto the stock cab of the battlewagon…no attachment points on the Rhino!

When I started out, I was fiddling around with placement, and I found a spot that looked like it was almost as if GW had intended on the deffrolla being attached to a Rhino in this way. The spots where I glued it – if the Rhino had been a quarter inch higher on the trukk bed, and the deffrolla been a quarter inch thinner, it would have been absolutely perfect.

As it was, I had to shim. Cut a door in half and stick it under the rolla attachment points. Cut up some sprue and glue it beside the attachment to add extra stability.

Added an Ork glyph or two to each side door, and voila! It’s done.

I will be adding on extra grots and orks and things later. I learned that lesson from the last trukk I assembled – don’t glue things inside until you have them painted, or they will look like ass!

Painting

I read this GW article on painting a battlewagon. Pretty good, with some good tips on rusting/corrosion. I have a different paint scheme in mind, but that article will be sitting in a Firefox tab for the next few weeks.

The Rhino will be my standard Regal Blue, with Space Marine Blue highlights. Not certain what other colours to use, but I think I’ll be using the technique mentioned in that article on some darker grays or reds.

Work-in-progress

Ork Battlewagon 1

Posted on July 23, 2010

With the last of my Fantasy tournaments for the summer over with, it’s time to change focus to my Orks again. I have some dethkoptas and a battlewagon to finish. I’m prioritizing the battlewagon for a couple reasons:

  1. If it goes no further than it is right now, it isn’t playable. The dethkoptas are playable, and look mostly done.
  2. For some reason I’ve constructed a barrier of fear around the dethkoptas. I really don’t want to paint them anymore.
  3. Battlewagon == AWESOME.

With that decision made, we pick up the project where I last left it – mostly assembled.

The Dilemma

Most of my trukks are Space Marine Rhinos that have been caved in, sawed in half, guns glued on randomly, etc. It’s a lot of fun. However, for this model I won a Battlewagon model and so wanted to use it instead of the Land Raider that I would have used otherwise.

I started to assemble it a couple months ago. I was amazed at the quality of the construction. Everything fit together perfectly. The instructions were complete and useful. The model was beautiful. It was a work of a divine being, and not the Games Workshop that I’ve come to know and love.

Which left me with an issue – how can you cut/carve/slice/scratch the work of the divine?! I didn’t want to convert it. I wanted to put it together in its pristine beauty and leave it for all the world to admire.

But…that would go against my theme. I asked a bunch of my gaming friends what I should do, and none of them could truely understand the nature of my problem – they all said (paraphrasing) “carve it up!” They thought I was asking for conversion advice, and not looking for permission to leave it as it was “no, it’s ok Craig, you don’t have to follow your theme this time…my that’s a beautiful tank you have there.”

The Solution

Time. I left it for a month. It’s still a brilliant model, but I don’t feel so bad about slicing it up. woot! Lets get cutting!

The primary conversion on this thing was to take a hack saw and slice a Rhino into 2/3rds, then glue it where the cab of the Battlewagon usually sits. For this stage, everything else is stock Battlewagon.

The Next Steps

  1. Figure out where to place a couple guns. The stock tank has gun turrets on top of the cab, but that won’t work out perfectly anymore.
  2. Figure out how to attach the deffrolla. Yeah, this bad boy needs a rolling pin.
  3. Decide what options I’m going to give it standard, and provide magnet attachment points for those. Think about future options and see if I can’t provide attachment points for those as well. This is hard, since it requires reading the future and I’m not so awesome at that.
  4. Orkify the cab.
  5. See if the Animosity Orks will fit in the trunk. gwahaha.

Work-in-progress

Deth Koptas 1

Posted on June 8, 2010

This is another “oh, I’m mostly done” sort of post. I promise this is the last one – I’ve run out of projects that I’ve been meaning to finish! Everything from here on will be from the start (except for my battlewagon…which is partly assembled)

Paint Scheme

  • Bloooooo. These guys follow my Ork vehicle paint scheme of Regal Blue base, Space Marine Blue highlight. It’s a Space Marine theme’d Ork army.
  • The metal is just Boltgun Metal with a Chaos Black wash (remember, my Badab fails).

Conversion

  • I was trying for a long while before assembling them to figure out some awesome conversion I could do. In the end, I just added some extra metal plates and called it a day. They are like…6 piece models, almost snap together, and there wasn’t a lot of room for cutting and pasting.

I’m honestly not to certain where I need to go from here. It looks like there are a lot of little details on the models that need finishing – the straps on their hats, a highlight on the green meters, some extra colour on some of the little knick-knacks around the model. Little things.

Then the bases. Need a little bit of flock, since that’s the thing I’m doing for the Orks.

Lastly, the rotor blades need some colour. Likely a blue colour. I could also do that yellow/black hazard striping, since I put that on some of my vehicles as a strong contrasting colour, to ensure that they weren’t entirely blue. Slightly unnecessary here, as the orks themselves (and the large amount of metal) keep it from being a sea of blue, but it is nice to be consistent.

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Tyranid Hive Guard 3

Posted on June 3, 2010

Last post on this guy, since I’m calling him done.

Since the last post I added:

  • A 1:3 mixture of Hawk Turqoise and Scaly Green to the top edges of his skin, and every opening.
  • Goblin Green base rim, and some flock on top of the grey gravel.

It’s funny…looking at the photos, the pink and the green highlight are really stark. But sitting at my desk, while I’m painting them, they are relatively calm.

I’m wondering if next time I should paint the HT+SG highlight directly over the original SG base, and then wash over that. I worry that the highlight will get muted by the wash, and also that the skin will be ridiculously shiny (it will be – just a question of whether it’s bad or good ridiculous).

Looking at it now, I’m pretty happy with the green rim. When I was painting it I was thinking “Oh god…goblin green rims…how old is this army anyway?” It’s been years since I painted with the goblin green. But I think it’s a nice colour to go with the yellow and green of the model itself.

I’m really happy with how his armour turned out. More of that in the future.

Links to the other two posts, for ease of reference:

My next 40k project is to finish the Deff Koptas! That will be another project where I start writing when I’m already 3/4s of the way through, but there’s still some work to be done.

Work-in-progress

Tyranid Hive Guard 2

Posted on June 2, 2010

I worked on the Hive Guard weapon a little bit. I’m not 100% on it right now. It looks pretty good…but it’s too much…bone. Too plain. Probably good, but not my usual style :P.

  • Bleached Bone base coat.
  • Devlan Mud all over.
  • Bleached Bone effectively dry-brushed over raised areas. Protrusions on the left, all of the holes on the shaft of the gun. This is a really light coat, subtle is the name of the game.
  • Solid Bleached Bone on the “spears” that it shoots, followed by a very watery coat of Skull White. Watery mostly because my White is almost dry…but also so it’s more subtle. Looking at this photo…maybe to subtle.
  • Dwarf Flesh on the cables, followed by a light touch of Tentacle Pink. Interestingly, it’s a lot more of a “light touch” in reality than it is in this photo :P.

I also (not photographed) brought the Bubonic Brown further up on the top-most ridge of his back armour. I realized that it was silly to have a highlight that didn’t start at both ends of the scale. Looks a lot better now.

The skin is next and then it’s done! (oh, and a little work on the base…)