Redemption of the Fallen Army Shot

I've painted for three charity armies now, and I this iteration has the nicest army I have seen. I want this army. I want to play this army. I want to own this army. Naturally I cannot have, play, or own this army. You can. (BTW when I say play, I mean I want to imagine playing this army while looking at it through glass in a display cabinet)

The three distinct color schemes for Dark Angels provide a lot of visual interest across units. There are some stand out models in this force.  If you have not seen it, then you should check out Mike Cho's Grand Master. His work is stunning. While I used an airbrush to paint the power swords, he blended his by hand. He even did it faster! The rhino's deserve just praise. The freehand is incredible. I would never run them as razorbacks if I had freehand designs like that.

As primarily an army painter, and not a gamer, It never gets too far from my mind that many people view the models as just tools to play the game. I see models as the ends and not the means. Mike Brandt referred to the painters of the charity army as artists. I had never considered what I do as anything other than hobby, other than a series of techniques that achieve repeatable results. If you want to paint in bulk, it becomes very procedural. I like thinking of my painting as art. I think everyone who paints a miniature should consider it art.


Now, since our art is now in the wild. Does anyone have photos of the devil dogs from Heroes of Armageddon, or the LR from Storm Wardens? I would love to see those models on gaming tables blasting the crap out of other units.

Fulgrim Primarch of the Emperor's Children

After a pleasant day dropping the Redemption of the Fallen miniatures off at Brandt's place, I decided I needed to break the ice on one of the more intimidating project's I've been putting off. So far I've spent half the day painting, and all I've managed to do is give myself a nightmare amount of cleanup work around the gold filigree. The model is wonderful, and I think it will look great as part of the force, but the metal filigree is just too small. That said, I am happy to have started something challenging. I plan to surround the base with Sons of Horus wounded, since light green would go really well with the purple.

Emperor's Children Test Mini #2

Using the same miniature from the last post, I decided to try out adding pink. This is a test mini after all, and is destined for a bath in simple green before too long, so why not try out everything. I created a glaze out of GW screamer pink and spread it around really carefully around the armor plates. I tried to make the paint act like a tint rather than a full blown layer. The previously highlighted purple stayed light, and the darker purple turned a bit more red. I finished the model off by adding some line highlights of EC pink. While some of the previous blending was lost, overall the tinting process seems to work. I am not sure I could control this on a whole army's worth of models, but I like this version of the EC better. Imagine rich red cloaks on all of the special characters. I think the tint warms up the base enough so it would look good.

How does this version compare to the last?

Emperor's Children Test Mini

I painted two test miniatures to practice purple for my upcoming EC army. Only one of them is shown here. The other looks bizarre at the moment. On this mini I  used all VGC paints. I am considering removing the gryphon sepia wash from the gold, and going with a more silver tone. NMM gold may have to come into play, though that will seriously reduce my productivity.

So, should Emperor's children be purple, or should they be pink/purple. My next test mini will go with a more pink reddish purple.

Fiber Optics & 40K

I had planned to take some shots of two more alternate emperor's children test marines, but a package from micromark arrived and stole my attention away. I bought these fiber optics on a lark, and now I don't know what to do with them. My original idea included using these as runway lights for next year's armies on parade, but there are so many uses. Perhaps they could end up in a land raider, or inside some tau aircraft. My top choice is to use them on the display base as part of a runway/landing pad.

What would you use these lights for?

Black Templar Champion Using Latham Medium

Black can be a difficult color to paint. Usually I paint it using a very dark grey, tinted brown for warm or blue for cold. I also almost always use an airbrush to paint black miniatures. Last night I tried painting a black miniature making heavy use of Latham Medium. Instead of wet blending, I used very thin layers. At the very end of base coating, I doused the mini in gloss varnish, and used oil washes selectively. I used a dark brown around the armor plates, and streaking grim on all of the gold areas. I then waited till the oil had become tacky (thanks to a hair dryer it only took a few minutes) and used a clean brush with a tiny dab of white spirit to clean off the portions of the wash I did not like.

I was not happy with the miniature last night, but this morning I can see some promise. Unfortunately this finecast model has terrible surface quality and loss of detail, so it is not worth repainting. The right shoulder pad was pitted so badly that after painting, I had to use a heavy dose of gloss varnish to fill in the the imperfections. I think that worked better than green stuff, so I'll use the method again.

The base just happened to be a reject I had nearby. I will use dusty desert bases so these guys could ally with my tallarn. Also it would allow me to put weathering powder on their feet, which will probably look pretty cool.

GW Medium

So Mike Cho, posted a nice tutorial on how he paints power weapons over on his blog. Since, both of us are working on the Redemption of the Fallen charity project, and both of us have different painting methods, I thought I would try to pick his brain and learn some of his techniques. He's got some games day daemons under his belt(presumably on a shelf somewhere and not actually under his belt).

Now, I usually paint power weapons using an air brush, which I think looks fantastic, and is completed in a couple of minutes. The layering method using 5 paints, thin coats, and latham medium looked much harder to me. Certainly it looked more tedious. On the other hand, sometimes I want to paint  irregularly shaped power weapons such as power axes. To do that I need to learn how to use GW medium, and layer like Mike. I've already painted up a BA model using extreme blending and the medium stuff to great affect, so since Mike was kind enough to put up a tutorial, the least I could do was follow it. I had to make a few alterations, as I do not have Ice Blue, but overall the painting was pretty easy. Like any test piece, this is only painted on one side. Tomorrow I'll try pushing the light colors a bit more, and maybe skip the final regal wash.

(full disclosure--this is the second attempt. The first version was done sans tutorial, and is fortunately hidden by this coat)

Games Day Sons of Horus Command

Games day was really chill this year. No speed painting, noisy games, and thankfully only a single waaaagh. Three redemption of the fallen painters were present, mike cho, Dave Taylor, and myself. It was particularly cool that Dave picked up another demon. Mike continued his painting slacking this year entering nothing. I regret not pulling something from my display shelf, but there is always next year. The quieter atmosphere was really nice for those of us who wanted to focus on the painting.

Memphis is BBQ central, so food and drink are fantastic. I think I may try to arrange an after party next year. My wife and I hung out in the hotel bar with gw staff for a while, but an organized event would be fun.


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Location:Beale St,Memphis,United States