Blue Power Weapons

For 20+ years I have not liked blue power weapons. I may associate painting swords blue as something from my childhood, and that the more gritty realistic approach to painting is the adult way to paint. (if such a thing is possible when talking about painting toys!) However with the blood angels release, fantasy like poses, and over the top style, I could not resist. So may I present My Sanguinary guard with bright blue patterned weapons!

My honor guard have dry brushed blueish weapons, but for these guys a went with a very bright layered scheme. To get the fine white edge highlighting I just put some tamiya thinner on one of my detail brushes and just erased the painting along the edge. I used the thinner to try and soften the blends a bit by just painting the thinner on the blades and allowing the blue to run together.

It is going to be weird to paint flesh tearers after this, since they have a much different appearance.

Sanguinary Guard WIP 2: Now with wings!

Even though I haven't painted Dante's axe yet, I've moved on to the SG. I painted the wings astro-gray, washed black, and then dry brushed astro grey again followed by two white dry brushes. I was planning on layering the feathers, but I just did not enjoy the task, and figured that the chalky texture from dry brushing would not be bad on things that are supposed to look like wings.

In other news, I finally received my GW blood angels order yesterday, and have been reading through the codex and figuring out how to equip the assault squad to accompany Chapter master Seth. Like my IG, I decided to build up a multi-chapter BA force. I think the mix of units is fluffy as well as interesting to paint.

I've also decided to rebase my entire army. Hopefully this will tie in the different paint styles a little better.

And yet another bit of news. A FW order from ages past just arrived. I just have too many projects going on at the same time!

DANTE: WIP

I've made more progress on Dante and thought I should share. I tried out the color for the BA wings on him prior to giving it a shot on nicer Sanguinary Guard models. Isn't it weird to view the metal model, as the test mini? The plastic models have such better detail that I figured I would risk it on this old iffy sculpt. It seems it would be better to just create a new Dante out of SG bits.

Sanguinary Guard: WIP Metallic

I see all of these non metallic SG posts out there and thought I would do something a little different. I chose to paint mine with metallic paints. I only have around 3 hours of time into these, but I am really enjoying how they are turning out. My recipe is as follows:

1. base coat white
2. mix a watery tin bits/shining gold mixture and paint all areas
3. gryphonne sepia wash
4. shining gold watered down on larger plates
5. burnished gold on edges
6. burnished gold + mithril silver on edges

That's all it has taken so far. I figured I had better document this since, I have two more boxes of these guys coming in!

Death Company Rhino Gets Its Passengers

Since my GW order is perpetually help up(forgot to split the order), I've had some time to work off some old models. After my first DC marine, I changed my black formula and removed the badab black wash and the fortress grey hard lining from the equation. I think the subtle color shift from the air brush is just enough to make these guys stand out. I've got a little shading left to do on the red, and still have to paint their eyes, but I am comfortable placing them next to the assault squad painted earlier awaiting basing. Shall I mist snakebite leather on their legs so they match the rhino? I know I said I would do it, but now I am hedging.

In other news, I played in a narrative IG versus unlimited Tyranid game this weekend, and captured some video and stills. If the video works I might try to record a painting session. There a plenty of good sites online for tutorials already, but it would give me the change to experiment with my Mac a bit.

Anyone else excited about the big anniversary game at the springfield GW store?

WIP Death Company

It turns out my advance order is not going to arrive until next week, since I put some items on it that were not released yet. That leaves me plenty of time to learn how to paint black. When I did my ravenwing I used dry brushing as my technique of choice. I am trying to paint these guys up without relying on it. So I started these old swap meet death company marines the same way as my inquisitional and death company rhinos. Then I tried hard lining them. I used too light a gray for this, and had to go back with badab black wash to soften the color. There are a lot of different tonal areas on the mini now, and I am thinking about painting on battle damage. The squad is going to get the same snakebite leather/bleached bone dusting around their legs as the rhino so they will match. I think that will make them stand out more. I plan to mount the minis on an old paint pot and spray at the base rather than their legs proper.

However before I get back to painting today, I have a big game. Tyranids versus Imperial Guard played on the actual amphelion base! My 1750 pt list is tank heavy, with just enough guard to enter the base and get wiped out before a mechanized fighting retreat. I have no doubts my tanks can take the nids, especially since the table is so large, but once inside the base everything changes. I hope we get a few Aliens moments out of this game.

BA Assault Squad

Just to get back into the groove of things, I built a sergeant using some sanguinary guard parts to add to a horribly glued pack of 4 salvage minis from a swap meet. I made the horrible mistake using Armory grey primer again, and managing to dull what detail was present on the minis after the original builder's glue had melted half of the detail!

So, with some rather chunky primer in place I tried out shading the unit using an air brush. My wife took one look at the orangish-red guys and said she preferred my painting style from two years ago! Despite the detail obfuscation I decided to press on and see what I could do. Overall I am actually kind of happy with these guys. They let me experiment with some new techniques and fail, and then try again without much worry. In the worst case these guys took a little over three hours from start to finish, so the painting time is not bad. A few heavy washes of baal red, and these guys are not quite so jarring as they were next to my old troops.

Death Company Rhino PT3: Let there be dust

I think this think is good enough to see some action now. I am not sure I like the dust as much as the pre-dusted version, but it does serve to tie the painted areas together. I guess it works like a wash in that sense. I was nervous about starting some of these models because they have FW parts and it was easier to justify waiting to paint them until I was a little better. I'll never get better unless I paint right.

So will this ever see battle? Are death company worth fielding? I can't think of any other way to field them than drop pods or rhinos. I think they look cool, so that's good enough for me.