Arvus Lighter WIP 1

My Imperial Lightening fighter needed something to escort on in, so I decided to paint up the Arvus Lighter that my wife gave me for Christmas. Originally I had intended to paint the whole ship dark red, using grey pre-shading to help the color transition. However after getting the pre-shading on, there was something about the color that made me want to stick with it. Star wars has conditioned me to think of grey and orange as good starship colors, so my inner-inner geek had to go with it. The weathering on the model is just starting, but I think some character is already coming through. '

I still have landing gear, cockpit, stains, weathering powders, and the obligatory nose are to put on this thing before I try to mount it on its flying base. When the Imperial Navy is not using it, my Astral Claws will be. (of course that would require me to paint more than 1 squad of the tyrants legion)

Imperial Lightening Bolt WIP 1

Seeing as how this summer is the summer of flyers, I thought I should get a jump start on the whole thing by painting up the Imperial Lightening Bolt that I purchased to provide air cover for my arvus transport. I decided to paint this guy up using minty greens and grey-blue. Each panel on the aircraft is shaded with an air brush, with most of the colors blocked in now. I still have quite a bit to paint, but I wanted to share my progress. This model has been a joy to paint, even though the casting was iffy. I used magnets drilled into the flaps to allow me to raise or lower them, as well as on the undercarriage weapons. The insignia will match my DKoK, and will be that dark red/maroon/brown color that comes on the FW transfers. Once all of the colors are finished, I will spray the model with sealant prior to weathering. I am going to use a light grey for paint chips on the surfaces. The paint chips should really blend the model together. a very light wash of browns will go in between panels. The kit comes with clear plastic that the builder is supposed to try and cut to fit in the cockpit window. That looks like an impossible task, but who knows, I might get lucky.

So the big question. Does anyone know what the two round solid air vent things on the nose of the aircraft are supposed to be? I am tempted to paint them up like two blue gems, but have no idea what they are.

Forgeworld Heresy Era Blood Angels Squad

I have been painting a load of miniatures for the Armies on Parade contest, and decided to take a break and paint an all forgeworld squad as a reward for painting so much. first off, I am not happy with my work here. I am not sure where things started going wrong, but I struggled with every phase of the build. The resin on some of them was really molded poorly. Some of them were so badly aligned that I had to toss them aside and cherry pick from the units I bought. Some of the shoulder pads were not even fully cast. In terms of painting, I think I need to go back to pre-shading with grey before I put any red on the miniatures. Since blood red is semi-translucent, it works really well, and may help me avoid putting on too many layers of paint.

So the things I like:

• The squad is split between running guys for the close combat squad, and standing for the missile squad.
• I love the older mark armors.
• Some of the red gradients turned out really good.

Things I plan to do to improve these models:

• Line the armor plates with black/darkflesh wash in order to increase contrast
• use weathering powders on their legs to blend them into their bases.

Lastly, I am not sure I want to sponge on a grey color to simulate scratches and battle damage. I am just not sure it would look good on these minis. I suppose that means a throw away test miniature is in order!

Three Blood Angels Chaplains

I have been pondering how I paint black these days. All of these miniatures were painted using a similar air brush shading technique. The goal was to make the base armor grey enough that black wash would shade the details well. They look black situationally. When put next to my red BA, or other miniatures they appear black even though they are not. I think they work well, but I am still a bit undecided on the technique. I have a death company dread to paint, and wanted to make sure I had this down before I tackled it. I will probably weather the force at the same time in order to make it consistent, so the chipping and weathering powders will have to wait. I am trying really hard to resist working on them until the whole force is done, but since weathering is my favorite part it is a little hard!

Ron has been posting a lot of red miniatures these days, so I thought I would paint up the fabric on the walking chaplains cloth with my old red technique. I think it works well in this context, distinguishing it from the red I use on the regular troops.

A two by two display board is beginning to look a little small to me. Is it better to fill the thing with as many vehicles and troops as possible, or to let the board help tell a story?

I tried to post the pictures a little differently this time. Is this better than the individual pics?

BA Painting Update

I decided to paint up 5 death company troops with jump packs along with lemartes as an excuse to use a new wash mixture. When the wash dried it seemed to crystalize in all of the crevices on the models. I was able to cover this up by applying a heavy wash of pure badab black, but I would have rather not had to do so. The Death Company are all WIP, so there are a lot of details to figure out. I am looking forward to applying battle damage and weathering powders to them. I am going to damage them similarly to the DC rhino/back I painted a while ago, except for the use of powders instead of paint for the dust weathering.

Asteroth and Mephiston really look like one was the replacement model for the other. The designs are just so similar. Mephiston's details are repeated on Asteroth. Maybe they are in some kids of post Black Rage kind of fraternity.

I had the same crystalizing wash problem on these miniatures, with most of the visible problem areas near Asteroth's face and arms. I am fairly disappointed how Asteroth turned out, but I am not going to simple green him yet.

I was really loving Mephiston's power sword, but if you look closely you can see where the paint chipped away when I dropped him. One of the problems of air brushing is that when stuff like this happens it is really hard to figure out what color to use for touch ups. His sword may need a respray.

Corbulo WIP

Corbulo is a bit more gore red than blood red due to carelessness with my airbrush. Ron mentioned his techniques for shading red using tans instead of orange over on his studio blog. I think there is something to that. I plan on giving it a run with my airbrush at some point. I am committed to my current recipe for this army though!

In these photos he is a little wet, with some washes not dry, but I am pretty happy overall. I've found that I am not interested in painting chainswords these days, so I am going to have to do something to make painting them interesting again. When I think about what they represent, they should be amazingly cool, full of armor bits, blood, and bone. Mine look a little meh.

I reread the rules for Armies on Parade, and notice that forge world models are not allowed. That rules out the tactical squad I wanted to do using older mk armor. I love painting resin, and was really hoping to be able to paint a squad up for the new army.

Blood Angels Terminators, Death Company, and Astorath

The pictures did not make it in order as I uploaded them, so bare with me! I have a load of details still to paint, but I love the way the terminators are turning out. I've had so much fun with them that I painted a bunch of units to accompany them, but more on that later. The unit consists of 3 space hulk terminators, three regular terminators, and a chaplain model that I have just started. The key element of this whole process has been the use of my air brush for armor shading. Basically, I prime the models black, and then layer on small amounts of paint, working from dark to light top down. Not everything has been easy though. I have found it difficult to paint the crux terminatus, and the storm shield. I don't have a clue why it seems so difficult to me, but those items are just not up to par with the rest of the painting. On the terminator above I have not even attempted the SS yet!

I used the air brush for more than just shading the armor. I am shading all power weapons using it, which is producing such a rich color on the models. It seems to help tie them into the librarian as well which is helpful. Lightning claws are really difficult to air brush though, so I am going to have to go back and look up softening some of the blends. The problem is that I am not sure how to do that, since the paint is so thin each time I touch it I damage it a little.

I added little details on the non space hulk terminators in order to BA-ify them a bit. It isn't much, but it does distinguish them a little bit from the regular models.

This photo is out of order, but the shading on the power claws can be seen pretty clearly, including the left claw that is slightly sup-par. Since I had one unit in the can and I wanted to paint a bunch of other units using the air brush I decided to batch paint all of my black models. I painted lemartes, a foot slogging chaplain, a terminator chaplain, Asteroth's wings, and 5 death company. Most of the minis are in the pre-wash but shaded state, but I think the airbrush is going to end up being the MVP here.

The final step for all of the black models is going to be a diluted black wash with a little flow aid mixed in. I tried this on a test model, and it toned down the grey shading quite nicely, while also shading the details. I am trying to paint all of the details that could benefit from a black wash first, and will then go back and finish those remaining.

I could not resist a shot of the mostly completed death star!

Red is where the air brush shading is really having an effect. Since I had shaded Asteroth's wings dark grey, I had to paint his red torso. Since I batch paint when using the air brush I threw mephiston and corbulo into the mix as well. If you look at brother Corbulo's legs, the shading is really evident.

I am thrilled with the way the wings turned out. By angling the air brush so the paint stream hit the raised edges of the feathers. This provided instant shading. Throw in a slowly lightening up of the color and I had the wings shown below.