Wow, I knew my life had been crazy, but didn't realise how crazy until I saw its been practically a year since my last post! The worst part is, that's how long it's been since I've been hobbying too!
Oh well, no time like the present to kick things back off. After moving into a house that actually fits my painting gear into it, I've had three sessions in a week. Not much to show for it thus far, but it's a start.
Before the long break I had just finished putting my Company Master and command squad together. His name is Ecanus, so the squad will be referred to as Command Squad Ecanus from now on.
Before my break I was just starting out into the big scary land of airbrushing - I had managed to lay down base costs of one colour successfully, but not much else. My plan is to practice until I'm adept enough to replicate some of the amazing work I've seen from Yaroslaw on his YouTube channel BuyPainted. The guy is an absolute master of airbrush control, delivering inspiring results in both time savings and smooth colour transitions.
For me to come anywhere near that I need a lot of patience, a load of experimentation and practice, practice, practice. I also need to resolve the matter of colour schemes I was struggling with a year ago, since the brainiacs as Games Workshop Money Printing Inc abandoned the line of paint I was using on my Dark Angels, including the cornerstone colour for my army, Dark Angels Green. They claim they replaced it, but in my opinion Caliban Green lacks the warmth and rich depths of DA Green and I was so annoyed I abandoned GW paints altogether. I've collected a fair amount of Vallejo Game Color and Model Air paints since and will be working exclusively with them moving forward, but I still need to figure out which paints to use where.
Ok, so in summary, my challenges are thus:
1) Determine the paint scheme for DA green armour
2) Determine the paint scheme for bone armour (Deathwing + trim colours)
3) Figure out how to use my AB's effectively
I'm now running an Iwata Eclipse HP-C 0.35mm for base coats, and the beautiful Harder & Steenbeck Evolution Silverline with a 0.2mm needle for detail work.
According to BuyPainted, the latter is capable of painting the shadows in a cloak with a single smooth-transitioned stroke so that's my goal in terms of skill and effectiveness.
I just need to figure out how to do it!
More very soon.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone
Tuesday, 16 July 2013
Tuesday, 17 July 2012
5th Company Command
Sooooo... what a crazy few months! With my beautiful fiance moving into my apartment, along with her very sick mother, kitten and puppy, life's been a bit hectic of late. Thankfully things are settling into a rhythm quite quickly, and whilst I'm not spending four hour blocks at the painting desk like I used to, I found my first hour-long snippet of time to sit down and get some work done.
With my soon to be mother-in-law as ill as she is, and living in our loungeroom (it's a 1 bedroom apartment), I can't exactly crank out the airbrush for a while, which kind of puts the kibosh on finishing my Land Raider painting experiments. It's a very small sacrifice to make for her (she's a beautiful lady, and it's an honour to have her stay), and in the true spirit of making lemonade from lemons, I've shifted my plans slightly.
With the new GW paints released, and the appalling coverage of Vallejo's DA Green paint, this is actually a good opportunity to change up my colour scheme slightly to try to match the old DAG I've used thus far.
Reading a crap-tonne of forums and articles, I'm going to try replacing DAG with Caliban Green with a Waywatcher Green glaze BEFORE I start highlighting. I know glazes are supposed to integrate highlight shades back down into the base colour for a smooth tonal transition, but I'm happy with my old highlighting colours and technique and don't really want to mess with it. What I do want to do, however, is add back the lovely warmth the old Dark Angels Green possessed, but sadly the Caliban Green lacks. The forums seem to indicate this is the best way to do it.
So, where to now then? In my hour of fun I sat down and starting building the Command Squad for my 5th Company deployment. I've actually got almost all of the 5th Company in boxes now, minus most of the transport units, so I really need to get the ball rolling with cranking out painted units.
It's a pretty typical Command Unit, complete with Apothecary, Standarad Bearer, Company Master and Company Champion. The only item of note is some minor conversion work for the Standard Bearer. I clipped the cross-pole off my Brother Bethor who was fully painted for the last couple of years but without a banner, and I've used the moulded banner from the Command Squad box instead. It fits nicely on Bethor's existing pole, but given he'll be carrying the Dark Angels Chapter Standard, I though it could use some tarting up.
To that end, I've pinned a DA angel from the Chapter Upgrade sprue to the top, added a sconce and DA pendant on rope to the top of the banner itself, and I've attached some large clusters of purity seals from the FW Purity Seal pack to the front and back of banner, along with a long scroll on the back.
Now updated with pics of the un-painted squad ready for priming (though I've since added a DA icon to the Champion's backpack just to make him stand out a bit more).
With my soon to be mother-in-law as ill as she is, and living in our loungeroom (it's a 1 bedroom apartment), I can't exactly crank out the airbrush for a while, which kind of puts the kibosh on finishing my Land Raider painting experiments. It's a very small sacrifice to make for her (she's a beautiful lady, and it's an honour to have her stay), and in the true spirit of making lemonade from lemons, I've shifted my plans slightly.
With the new GW paints released, and the appalling coverage of Vallejo's DA Green paint, this is actually a good opportunity to change up my colour scheme slightly to try to match the old DAG I've used thus far.
Reading a crap-tonne of forums and articles, I'm going to try replacing DAG with Caliban Green with a Waywatcher Green glaze BEFORE I start highlighting. I know glazes are supposed to integrate highlight shades back down into the base colour for a smooth tonal transition, but I'm happy with my old highlighting colours and technique and don't really want to mess with it. What I do want to do, however, is add back the lovely warmth the old Dark Angels Green possessed, but sadly the Caliban Green lacks. The forums seem to indicate this is the best way to do it.
So, where to now then? In my hour of fun I sat down and starting building the Command Squad for my 5th Company deployment. I've actually got almost all of the 5th Company in boxes now, minus most of the transport units, so I really need to get the ball rolling with cranking out painted units.
It's a pretty typical Command Unit, complete with Apothecary, Standarad Bearer, Company Master and Company Champion. The only item of note is some minor conversion work for the Standard Bearer. I clipped the cross-pole off my Brother Bethor who was fully painted for the last couple of years but without a banner, and I've used the moulded banner from the Command Squad box instead. It fits nicely on Bethor's existing pole, but given he'll be carrying the Dark Angels Chapter Standard, I though it could use some tarting up.
To that end, I've pinned a DA angel from the Chapter Upgrade sprue to the top, added a sconce and DA pendant on rope to the top of the banner itself, and I've attached some large clusters of purity seals from the FW Purity Seal pack to the front and back of banner, along with a long scroll on the back.
Now updated with pics of the un-painted squad ready for priming (though I've since added a DA icon to the Champion's backpack just to make him stand out a bit more).
Friday, 1 June 2012
The Army Grows
Whilst I haven't managed to find time to progress my experiment over the last few days, I haven't been idle either. Maybe it's just my mild OCD, but one thing I love about 40k is planning and putting together an army. Sure, my painting time investment often falls well short of my intents, but it's still fun and it's something I can do from work, or half an hour at home between other stuff preventing me from painting.
So this week I took a look at my army list (published on this site), compared it to what's in my "ready to be painted cabinet" and the bazillion bits boxes lying around the house, and managed to scrimp together a whole bunch of units with almost no further investment required.
So, in the painting queue I have:
2 DA Ven Dreads
Warhound Titan
Thunderhawk
2 x 10 man Tac Squads with Rhinos
1 x 10 man Tac Squad waiting for FW bits for their Rhino
1 x 10 man Assault Squad
1 x 5 man combat unit to bolster my Dev squad to 10
Company Master, Command Squad and Razorback
Azrael
Land Raider w/DA doors and extra armour
Land Raider Ares
Land Raider Promethius
Land Raider Terminus Ultra
Ravening Attack Squadron w/ Land Speeder (full 10man squad)
Half of a Techmarine squad (need 2 more servitors)
Deathwing Terminator Squad
That's a pretty big backlog of painting! I better hop to it and figure out vehicle painting soon! :)
So this week I took a look at my army list (published on this site), compared it to what's in my "ready to be painted cabinet" and the bazillion bits boxes lying around the house, and managed to scrimp together a whole bunch of units with almost no further investment required.
So, in the painting queue I have:
2 DA Ven Dreads
Warhound Titan
Thunderhawk
2 x 10 man Tac Squads with Rhinos
1 x 10 man Tac Squad waiting for FW bits for their Rhino
1 x 10 man Assault Squad
1 x 5 man combat unit to bolster my Dev squad to 10
Company Master, Command Squad and Razorback
Azrael
Land Raider w/DA doors and extra armour
Land Raider Ares
Land Raider Promethius
Land Raider Terminus Ultra
Ravening Attack Squadron w/ Land Speeder (full 10man squad)
Half of a Techmarine squad (need 2 more servitors)
Deathwing Terminator Squad
That's a pretty big backlog of painting! I better hop to it and figure out vehicle painting soon! :)
Tuesday, 29 May 2012
An experiment: Pre-shading Dark Angels
So, after looking around the net at various airbrushing techniques, I stumbled across the idea of pre-shading. The concept is to paint your shadows (panel lines, recesses, etc.) onto a vehicle in a darker shade of the undercoat before mist-coating in your chosen colour. Assuming you apply a number of thin layers of base-coat, your pre-shading should just be visible as a darker shade of your base-coat, essentially shading your vehicle very rapidly and effectively.
Great concept, but how the heck do I do it with Dark Angels Green? I need something that's going to match the way I paint my troops, else the vehicles just won't look contiguous with the rest of the army. My normal colour process for the armour on Dark Angel troops is as follows:
1) Black undercoat
2) 1:1 mix of Black and Dark Angels Green
3) pure Dark Angels Green, leaving the previous colour in the recesses
4) highlight with Snot Green (blend, edge highlights, etc. - depends on the detail-level I want)
So, given I start with a black undercoat, it's kinda difficult to paint a darker colour to pre-shade on a vehicle...What happens if I use a medium grey undercoat? That solves the pre-shade problem, but will it result in a brighter Dark Angels Green than my normal troops? Is there an alternative that will work instead?
Time for an experiment :)
I've used an old Rhino as a test vehicle, primarily because it has non-Chapter doors glued on and I've decided all of my vehicles will have DA doors from FW. I intend to compare the following:
1) A pre-shade using medium grey as the undercoat colour
2) Use my troops process on the vehicle to compare results
Without further ado, here's where I got to in a few hours of messing around last night. All paint is Vallejo Game Color and thinned with Windex. Numbers in brackets are droplet count for mixing.
1) Base-coat Cold Grey:Windex (60:20) at 20psi
Great concept, but how the heck do I do it with Dark Angels Green? I need something that's going to match the way I paint my troops, else the vehicles just won't look contiguous with the rest of the army. My normal colour process for the armour on Dark Angel troops is as follows:
1) Black undercoat
2) 1:1 mix of Black and Dark Angels Green
3) pure Dark Angels Green, leaving the previous colour in the recesses
4) highlight with Snot Green (blend, edge highlights, etc. - depends on the detail-level I want)
So, given I start with a black undercoat, it's kinda difficult to paint a darker colour to pre-shade on a vehicle...What happens if I use a medium grey undercoat? That solves the pre-shade problem, but will it result in a brighter Dark Angels Green than my normal troops? Is there an alternative that will work instead?
Time for an experiment :)
I've used an old Rhino as a test vehicle, primarily because it has non-Chapter doors glued on and I've decided all of my vehicles will have DA doors from FW. I intend to compare the following:
1) A pre-shade using medium grey as the undercoat colour
2) Use my troops process on the vehicle to compare results
Without further ado, here's where I got to in a few hours of messing around last night. All paint is Vallejo Game Color and thinned with Windex. Numbers in brackets are droplet count for mixing.
1) Base-coat Cold Grey:Windex (60:20) at 20psi
2) Pre-shade Black:Windex (60:20) at 5psi
I noted here that pressure was too high at 10psi so I lowered it to 5, but still found it too high (it was blowing wet paint around). Not sure if this is a pressure issue or the paint was too thin, will need to research.
3) Light coat of Dark Green:Windex (60:15) at 15psi
I noted here the paint was waaaaay too thin!
4) Light coat of Dark Green:Windex (60:5) at 15psi
I noted here it was a little better, maybe even a bit too thick, but I didn't wait long enough between coats (I'm impatient!)
This is where I left it so it had a chance to dry completely. It probably needs two more really light coats, probably thinned somewhere between the two previous tests. Will post updates as I progress.
-----------------------------
In the other corner, the progress is a lot harder to see, and not as far down the path. I managed to get one coat of the darker green colour over a black undercoat. The colour I mixed was absolutely perfect to match the first stage I use on my troops, so I'm pretty happy, but it needs a second coat of this mix before I proceed to DA Green.
You can't really see the colour from the photo, but here it is anyway :P
All in all, a good night of experimentation, certainly learned a little about my airbrush. You can see from the last photo I was also messing around with thin lines - I am far from perfecting this, but I at least have a starting point of knowledge to build on now (5psi, about half an inch or so from the object renders a line about double the thickness of a felt tip pen, which is good for a start).
Tuesday, 22 May 2012
9 Months of Nothing!
Soooooooo....
It's been a long, long time since my last post, and even then it was getting pretty slow. Why? Lots of reasons - priorities in RL taking over, new girlfriend, two kittens that seemed to demand my attention whenever I tried to paint, and to be honest, the painting of my first LR in tiny components was taking its toll too - I know it sounds lame, but painting the same colours on 8 intricate Lascannon's was getting really boring. Thus, I took a 9 month break!
But here I am, back again! Not sure how much time I'm going to get to hobby, I now have a fiance who's about to move in and add a third kitten! But we'll see what happens.
I wasn't completely idle though - I bought a new fiance-friendly painting workstation, and I'm slowly getting that all set up and organized. I've built three Apoc army lists to focus my work (you can see them in the tabs on this site), I've built23 of 3 Force Organization Charts to clearly show the companies everything belongs to, and I've ordered some bits and pieces from Forgeworld to set me up for my next project.
So, the workplan:
- Finish the LR Terminus Ultra...I've never airbrushed before (beyond some testing on internal components of the same tank), I've never painted a tank before (well, I've never finished one), and I'm still not confident on using weathering powders effectively, especially after my mess when I varnished over the mud inside the LR and turned it into ash. But you know what? The best way to gain confidence in all those areas is to bite the bullet and do it!
- Start building 5th Company! I'm going to start with the Chapter Master and Command Squad with their Razorback, and move straight onto 1st Tactical with their Rhino. I've ordered everything I need, and by the time I finish the LR it'll all be in my hot little hands and ready to go.
- Paint something different. I have a squad of Termies, 2 FW DA Ven Dreads, a Thunderhawk, a Warhound, 6 10-man squads of various types, LR's, LRC's, so much to choose from! But I will probably paint the Termies first, along with their LR Crusader, and go from there.
Keep your eyes peeled, there'll be more updates shortly.
To avoid the pic-less post, here's a happy-snap of my new painting workstation - it's a computer desk with doors so I can hide everything away from the kittens (and the fiance!) when I'm not using it. The keyboard tray currently houses my Alienware M17x so it is actually used as a computer workstation too. Neat eh? Now I just need to figure out where I can get some custom-built painting shelves :)
It's been a long, long time since my last post, and even then it was getting pretty slow. Why? Lots of reasons - priorities in RL taking over, new girlfriend, two kittens that seemed to demand my attention whenever I tried to paint, and to be honest, the painting of my first LR in tiny components was taking its toll too - I know it sounds lame, but painting the same colours on 8 intricate Lascannon's was getting really boring. Thus, I took a 9 month break!
But here I am, back again! Not sure how much time I'm going to get to hobby, I now have a fiance who's about to move in and add a third kitten! But we'll see what happens.
I wasn't completely idle though - I bought a new fiance-friendly painting workstation, and I'm slowly getting that all set up and organized. I've built three Apoc army lists to focus my work (you can see them in the tabs on this site), I've built
So, the workplan:
- Finish the LR Terminus Ultra...I've never airbrushed before (beyond some testing on internal components of the same tank), I've never painted a tank before (well, I've never finished one), and I'm still not confident on using weathering powders effectively, especially after my mess when I varnished over the mud inside the LR and turned it into ash. But you know what? The best way to gain confidence in all those areas is to bite the bullet and do it!
- Start building 5th Company! I'm going to start with the Chapter Master and Command Squad with their Razorback, and move straight onto 1st Tactical with their Rhino. I've ordered everything I need, and by the time I finish the LR it'll all be in my hot little hands and ready to go.
- Paint something different. I have a squad of Termies, 2 FW DA Ven Dreads, a Thunderhawk, a Warhound, 6 10-man squads of various types, LR's, LRC's, so much to choose from! But I will probably paint the Termies first, along with their LR Crusader, and go from there.
Keep your eyes peeled, there'll be more updates shortly.
To avoid the pic-less post, here's a happy-snap of my new painting workstation - it's a computer desk with doors so I can hide everything away from the kittens (and the fiance!) when I'm not using it. The keyboard tray currently houses my Alienware M17x so it is actually used as a computer workstation too. Neat eh? Now I just need to figure out where I can get some custom-built painting shelves :)
Friday, 19 August 2011
I'm not dead, just busy!
It's been a while since I've posted, and to be honest, between work and home-life my hobby has suffered a bit for the last 2 weeks. I'd like to say this weekend will see a fair bit of progress on my Terminus Ultra, but the reality is that I'm helping someone move out of my house and selling a bike, so I really have no idea.
The desire is there though, that's the main thing :)
I haven't been completely idle though - after spending several hours painting the interior of the tank and experimenting with FW weathering powders, I was surprised (and very happy) with the effect. There's three different coloured earth powders on the flooring, and I even put two tones of rust on the internal doors I modelled that looked great. Then I made a big mistake! For the most part, I've been making a paste out of the powders using Tamiya Thinner as a base, or applying a heavy GW wash on the model and brushing on dry powder while it's still wet. I finally finished it all and was very happy so I did what I always do - applied a coat of Testor's Matt Varnish. BIG MISTAKE!
In the space of 15 seconds, my gorgeously grainy dirt and mud effect turned into a while, flaky ash POS! After I managed to stop crying I tried applying gloss coat over the top (a good solution to the common "frosting" effect when using matt varnishes). This seemed to solve the problem and I breathed a sigh of relief. Then I applied another matt coat (per normal practice) and it went white again! I can't exactly leave rust and dry mud glossy can I? In the interests of wanting to move on, I've left it imperfect and moved forward with building the tank, and will have to experiment more on a test model to figure out what to do next time.
I've posted some photo's below of the interior detailing, along with one of the distractions I've had the last couple of weeks eating a space marine!
P.S. My titan and thunderhawk arrived Monday, and my 88 pots of Vallejo Game Colour arrived Tuesday. Very happy on both accounts, but incensed by the fact that I ordered the FW kit 2 weeks ago (and they cast the resin upon order and ship from England), but ordered the paint 7 weeks ago...
The desire is there though, that's the main thing :)
I haven't been completely idle though - after spending several hours painting the interior of the tank and experimenting with FW weathering powders, I was surprised (and very happy) with the effect. There's three different coloured earth powders on the flooring, and I even put two tones of rust on the internal doors I modelled that looked great. Then I made a big mistake! For the most part, I've been making a paste out of the powders using Tamiya Thinner as a base, or applying a heavy GW wash on the model and brushing on dry powder while it's still wet. I finally finished it all and was very happy so I did what I always do - applied a coat of Testor's Matt Varnish. BIG MISTAKE!
In the space of 15 seconds, my gorgeously grainy dirt and mud effect turned into a while, flaky ash POS! After I managed to stop crying I tried applying gloss coat over the top (a good solution to the common "frosting" effect when using matt varnishes). This seemed to solve the problem and I breathed a sigh of relief. Then I applied another matt coat (per normal practice) and it went white again! I can't exactly leave rust and dry mud glossy can I? In the interests of wanting to move on, I've left it imperfect and moved forward with building the tank, and will have to experiment more on a test model to figure out what to do next time.
I've posted some photo's below of the interior detailing, along with one of the distractions I've had the last couple of weeks eating a space marine!
Tuesday, 2 August 2011
I raided Forgeworld!
Ok, so not really, but I did just place a pretty massive order (by my standards anyway). Thank you goes to the Australian Tax Office for paying out my dividends on my forced savings account :P
Here's the shopping list:
- Dark Angels Thunderhawk
- 2 x Dark Angels Venerable Dreadnoughts (one with Plasma Cannon and Missile Launcher, the other with TL Autocannons and CCW\Flamer)
- Mars Pattern Warhound Titan w/ Plasma Blastgun and Vulcan Mega-Bolter
In the meantime, I'm still working on weathering the interior of my LR Terminus Ultra. To be honest, this is probably the only non-transport LR I'm going to bother painting inside and out - I could have completed another Land Raider in the same time it's taken me to mess around with weathering the inside so far...
Here's the shopping list:
- Dark Angels Thunderhawk
- 2 x Dark Angels Venerable Dreadnoughts (one with Plasma Cannon and Missile Launcher, the other with TL Autocannons and CCW\Flamer)
- Mars Pattern Warhound Titan w/ Plasma Blastgun and Vulcan Mega-Bolter
In the meantime, I'm still working on weathering the interior of my LR Terminus Ultra. To be honest, this is probably the only non-transport LR I'm going to bother painting inside and out - I could have completed another Land Raider in the same time it's taken me to mess around with weathering the inside so far...
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