DA Veterans with Heresy Era Backpacks

I tried a bunch on new techniques on these guys, and the jury is still out. I started with a white primer and then washed the armor black. The goal was to then use the gradations in color to let the airbrush naturally shade the miniature. I did not want the green all over the robes, so I carefully wrapped the DA up in little tape coats before spraying. In the first WIP shot you can see the nice shading the airbrush was giving the minis. I went overboard and put too much green on rather than stop while I was ahead. Now I have to go back and black wash the crevices, and then re-highlight with scorpion green. I have quite a ways to go with these guys, but I could not resist putting a photo up. I love this pre-heresy dark angels backpacks. They came with the chaos needle harness thing for chaos apothecaries.

Dark Angles Squad: Weathering Powders

I could not wait to have a DA powered armored squad to ride in the new rhino, so rather than fiddle with all of the pieces needed to put one together I decided to grab and extra AoBR plastic set and just paint them up as DA. This allowed me a stress free way to try out some new techniques as well.

I used an airbrush to base coat these guys, and have done very little highlighting, focussing instead on blending them into the background. I threw together some dirt bases, and since I was working with test models, I went ahead and tried the forge world earth colored powder around each of the models legs. I did this once before basing them which was a mistake since the powder came off while trying to hold them down for the glue to dry. I am really liking the powders. I recommend that everyone goes out and gives them a try. You can always grind up pastels found at local art supply stores if you don't want to mess with international shipping.

I now have a force containing GW, DW, and RW! Which means if I ever get around to playing the game, I have a very colorful and characterful army. Should I go back and paint the full 10 man tac squad I have ready to go? Should I paint up another rhino while I remember the recipe?

Dark Angels Rhino Chasis WIP 1

I was having a tau-ible time painting the...tau, so I thought I should go back to my roots as a Space Marine player and paint up a Rhino for my Dark Angels force. I don't have any powered armored DA painted yet, but I really like the look of the PA, the DW, and RW together. So far I am really happy with how this is turning out. My dust spray along the skirt is a little sloppy because I did not feel like cleaning my air brush even though I felt it getting gooey. My least favorite part of this model is the matte varnish. Once again, it has left a strange texture on the surface of the vehicle. I still have scratches to add to this, as well as forge world powders. I will use the rust colored powder instead of diluted orange paint this time because I think the orange would just not cover the green properly. I haven't decided just how dirt to make this thing yet.

I plan to paint the top hatch with the tactical squad symbol using the airbrush and some painters tape. I haven't decided how to weather the arrow symbol yet. I could steal a little of my wife's hairspray and sprinkle some sand on it prior to air brushing. I think that would give a nice chipped affect. The easy path is just to use a sponge to add some DA green back over the top.

Bad Devlan Mud? Tortured Tau?

So I am back to white primer, and I am loving every minute of it. So long grey blobby primer, nice knowing you. So the great part was that my paint coverage was ultra smooth, but I forgot to adjust my colors to reflect a white base. This means I have one very red/orange fire warrior. The same bottle of dev mud that might have made my pervious painting test shiny, did it again. I don't know what is going on with the stuff, but here are some WIP shots so you can see what I am talking about.

I am not sure I like the color scheme, but will do some layering on the legs, and maybe paint some sept markings followed by some darker washes to see how it turns out.

Tau Test

I am not sure why my primer looks lumpy, but I wonder if that affected these test paint jobs. I used a grey primer and then air brushed red and then red/orange onto the armor bits. I tried the technique called under shading prior to air brushing the red to see if it would work on a miniature. At the end phase I tried sponging battle damage on one mini and using a brush with the other. I am not sure how I feel about these. Part of me likes the damages look, but part of me thinks they would look really sloppy on the table top. I put a matte coat on them after the dev mud wash, but I can't get the gloss to go away. That is a first.

Tau or BA Test

This is not my first post of the day, but I needed something to work! I tried the grey primer again, on a tank turret. This time I used an air brush to apply black to the recesses, followed by an overall airbrushing of pure blood red. I followed it up with a blood red/blazing orange mix. The damage inducing sponge hit it next and behold, the big blood red barrel of doom was born. So what do you think about using this paint scheme for my new Tau. Imagine some dark grey, and bright orange Tau writing on the barrel.

Painting Mojo

I spent a large portion of yesterday building a tau army. This means very little painting was done, but loads of drill work instead. After my 100th magnet I decided to try out some grey primer. Rather than waste a 40k mini, I picked up a bunch of random fantasy dudes from my bits box. Since orcs are basically fantasy I tossed one of them in as well. What did I learn?

1. Just like priming with white, grey requires me to relearn my paint recipes.
2. Washes do not instantly shade the way they do over a white base coat. Unlike white basing, grey requires build up of lights rather than building down to shadow. For me this means I use more paint. More Paint=Bad.
3. I would much prefer a very light grey or white base coat to the Armory Gray Primer I used.
4. Some days painting mojo just fails!

Since I am determined to get some work in today I also tried to produce snow bases again. This is my third attempt at this. Like before I think I am close, but the bases do not feel right to me. I think the base looks better without the snow effects. I am looking for some dark bases to tie into my Tau army, which is leaning towards a turquoise, bone, dark grey color scheme. Sept markings will be bright orange. On the other scale of things, I feel like a white base coat, airbrush of blood red, some orange highlights and lots of battle damage might be better.

Tyranids

So it is my birthday tomorrow, and on a whim I purchased a macro lens for my cannon XSI. This is my first time using it, so I took some shots of my WIP nids. I have 16 of these little guys painted up and ready for basing. The carnifex still needs his bone treatment but I could not resist a photo. My mycetic spore got some blood painted on just to see if I could do it. I am going to have to do a better job painting now that all of the flaws are so readily apparent. This camera might do wonders to my technique!