Miniature painting and techniques – Page 3

Slap some paint on!

Well bloody hell, November already? was July really the last time I posted on here? Yikes. I really need to take a little WCF time out here and there a little more regularly.

While I may not post a lot on here, I do still do a lot of painting and gaming (I really hate the term “hobbying” which seems to be the term that GW have made their own). I haven’t picked up a Space Marine in forever, and strangely I haven’t missed it one bit. Instead, I raided the ‘drawers of shame’* and pulled out some miniatures that thought they would never see a bristle or a drop of paint. First up? Cybermen!

cybermen-classic

Classic Tom Baker era Cybermen from Blacktree Miniatures. They’re sort of whimsical, and charming in their own way. The proportions are a little off, but they only took literally minutes to paint. I think the bases took longer! I have some more to do, including some later era (from about the time of Earthshock/Silver Nemesis) which will be getting the treatment shortly.

Staying on the Doctor Who theme, I painted up ‘my’ Doctor, Sylvester McCoy, the 7th Doctor. Now, recently I had molded and cast a TARDIS from the old Dinky Toys die cast metal toy (available from Lord Chaos Creations ) . I cast a bunch up in resin, and thought I’d paint one up, as it’s almost perfect scale wise for wargaming miniatures, check it out:

mccoy1a

I have a bunch of the metal Daleks to paint up as well. I’m thinking of incorporating them into my Judge Dredd game as illegal alien entities. Might be fun to have the judges of Mega City One square off against Daleks and Cybermen!

Speaking of the Judge Dredd game, I picked up a Chronoscope miniature that I thought would be quite good to throw in as a street punk, but as I completed her, I thought she seemed more disciplined than that, and have since decided to use her as a Wally Squad Judge (Wally Squad – under cover cop). Reaper make some beautiful figures and I’ll be picking up some more to add to the denizens of Mega City One:

wally-squad-2

wally-squad-1

And, with us just celebrating Halloween, I painted this cheeky little number up as a gift for my wife:

I’ve also picked up some new units for my late war British forces for Flames of War, a Commando Platoon and an accompanying mortar platoon. No paint on those yet, but I’ll have another update soon (promise!).

I’ve been having a lot of fun just picking random miniatures to paint, it’s bought a little of the excitement back, unlike looking at ranks and ranks of >insert your pain point of choice here< and thinking AARGH! I also recently picked up a Keeper rulebook for Call of Cthulhu too, and have been devouring the contents ever since. I’m going to have my first game very soon. I’ve never been a GM/Keeper before, so this should be interesting… gulp!

Toodle pip for now!

*Drawers of Shame – draw with unpainted miniatures. Not an underwear drawer with speedos in.

ORC Trooper finished!

Super quick post today, just to tell you my first ever Infinity miniature is done! Very pleased with how she turned out. See what you think:

I just picked up the Fusiliers set that is currently under construction, more pictures coming soon, as well as some actual articles lol!

Cheers!

Space Wolves – B&C paint challenge completed!

I just recently (by the skin of my teeth) completed my painting vow for the Bolter and Chainsword painting challenge. Here are my Grey Hunters!

I’m very pleased with how they turned out! let me know what you think!

Black Templar Rhino with xtra armor/armour

This seemed to take waaaaay too long to paint. I’m not too sure why. Maybe because you can’t be as ‘slap happy’ with marine vehicles like you can with say, Imperial Guard vehicles. Well, I guess you can, but it just doesn’t work as well, IMO.

The Forge World armor pieces were pretty much a pain in the arse to work with. Some parts were bent, others ridiculously warped and at least 2 pieces had shrunk, yes shrunk. Making the best of a bad situation, I forged ahead (geddit? Forged? Forge World? never mind…) and this was the finished product:

The Templar cross was masked off and sprayed onto the roof, then weathered to show wear and tear. I’m pleased with the results, I just hope that my other vehicles (i’m looking at you, Vindicator) won’t take as long.

In the meantime, having OB’d (over blacked) i’m going to take a few days off from painting Templars, and having a go with something with a bit more color to it (well, slightly more, I guess). I started one last night. Here is a teaser:

As always, C+C always welcome!

From the mighty halls of Asaheim

‘Come my brothers, come walk with me
to the new worlds across the Great Sea
In Asaheim our destinies lie
as warriors at The Emperors side…’

I decided to take a step out of my current projects and do something completely different. I have some odds and sods that I picked up off Ebay, like Deamonettes, Chaos Warriors and whatnot, just odd minis, not whole units, so I could change things up once in a while. I Also thought it would be a good way to push myself in terms of techniques and strive to get me up to a higher standard. So, reaching into my drawers (hehe) I pulled out this chap and set to work.

I’ve always had a bit of a soft spot for Space Wolves, being a frustrated viking myself, so I was pretty intrigued as to how he was going to turn out. I debated at first whether or not to go with dark grey armor, or the lighter ice blue/grey armor. I settled on the latter, as so much of my other stuff is supergrimdark so the change of pace was quite satisfying.

I spent 10 hours (roughly) on this chap, but I’m very pleased with the results. I have to pick up some of this adhesive stuff to apply the decal to the shoulder pad. I’d forgotten how much I hated water slide decals, especially for shoulder pads. Trying to apply a flat surface to a rounded one will ineveitably lead to frustrating creases. I remember Dethtron telling me about this stuff you paint over the decal which basically fuses the membrane to the surface of the mini.

This was the recipe I used for my Space Wolf:

Armor:

Basecoat with a 1:2:1 mix of Space Wolf Grey, Shadow Grey and Codex Grey. Wash with Devlan Mud in the armor recesses. Don’t worry about being tidy! The add progressivley more Space Wolf Grey to the base mix and paint the armor plates, concentrating more on the outer edges to get that defined edging.

Bones:

Base coat of snakebite leather. Devlan mud wash over the basecoat. Re-apply snakebite leather on the higher parts to begin your highlights. Add bleached bone to this for your highlights. Take this all the way up to bleached bone, or even skull white, depending on how ‘bright’ you want it.

Yellow areas:

Base coat of Tausept Ochre, add some skull white to this and paint a layer on. Wash with devlan mud and gryphonne sepia (concentrate more on the edges). Add skull white for highlights.

Eagle/helm trim:

Base coat is a 1:1 mix of shining gold and scorched brown. Wash with devlan mud. Add layer of shining gold on the high points. Add mithril silver to this for highlights.

Jewels:

Scab red base coat, followed by blood red, add vomit brown to the blood red for highlights finished with a dot of skull white.

Shoulder pad rims:

Base coat of Bolt Gun Metal, washed with devlan mud. Mithril silver to give worn look to the very edges.

As always, comments and criticisms are always welcomed!

When Cannons Fade is rapidly approaching its 2nd birthday (seriously, where has the time gone?) and there may be a few changes going on around here. I’ll reveal more on or around November 7th, along with some self indulgent ‘looking back’ at WCF since it’s inception.

Cheers!

Paul

Weathering my Chimera APC

After reading a rather informative article from my buddy Colin, or as he is known in other circles, ‘Dethtron’, I decided to try out his technique for weathering vehicles. I thought I would try this out on my Chimera, and although I was missing one paint that Colin recommended, P3 Umbral Umber, I figured I would just do the dozer blade and see how it would turn out.

I think weathering works for nearly all tanks, and works well. There are some others that I feel probably would benefit from not having as much, if any, of these weathering effects as I feel it may detract from the paint job. I think that this works well for Guard stuff. The jury is still out, for me, on whether I want to do this on my Sisters or Marine vehicles. We’ll see.

Anyhoo, its pretty simple After I had painted my hazard stripes on the dozer blade, I took an old sponge from one of the mini blister packs and ripped a piece off. I first used black and stippled it on all over, to show where the wear and tear had taken the paint down to the undercoat. I was already excited at how this was turning out, so I eagerly busted out the boltgun metal and repeated the process. I concentrated more on the edges to show where general use had taken the paint down to the metal.

I am, so far, very pleased with the result:

I won’t be doing as much with the rest of the vehicle. I went a little overboard on this as I figured it probably gets the brunt of the hard work. I’ll probably put a couple of bullet marks on there as well.

Thats it! Thanks to Colin, who, under the moniker of Dethtron, can be found with his rapier wit over at his blog ‘Dick Move’ (yes really!) for showing me this stupidly simple, but effective method of weathering. I’ll be sure to put more pics of this APC up as I get more done on it.

Cheers!

Paul

Painting Black Templar marines

I just finished up a couple of articles (over there, in the ‘pages’ section ==>) on painting Black Templars. There is also a separate page for painting the robes, as I have had numerous requests as to how to do it. Hopefully it will give you all a helping hand to get your loyalist zealots on the field quicker! I may add a couple more pictures up in the article, but my camera seems to be acting up, so I want to get that sorted out. Grrr!

You can clicky on this linky right here to get to the article.

Let me know what you think!

Cheers

Paul

Sisters ‘Angels of Deliverance’ Seraphim.

Well, I finally finished my Seraphim squad for my Sisters army. I had one casualty while I was painting these, one of them fell over and the backpack pinged off. After an outburst of cursing it was taken care of, but this goes to show how unbalanced these minis are. Very top heavy. Take into account this was also on a flat surface. As anyone who has played against my sisters at Colins place will attest, they fall about all over the place as though the were drunk off their asses. I have noticed, since taking these pictures last night and uploading them this morning, that there are a couple of touch ups I need to do, but anyway, here they are:

And there we have it. As I had mentioned in previous posts, I hope that we SoB players won’t have to wait too much longer for some updates, and new minis. With the recent Blood Angels release, with the fast attack squad having some pretty sweet ‘feathered’ wings, could this be a pointer for what else is in store…? Plastics are definitely the way forward, its just unfortunate that some of us are being held back.

C+C welcome!

Paul

Black Templars Chaplain completed!

Ah, it feels good, doesn’t it? that feeling you get when you’ve finished yet another mini, especially when you are super pleased with the results. On my forum, Chamber Militant, I had set a painting challenge for December. I pledged that I would paint up my zealous Chaplain who often heads up my Templar army. There is about 8 hours work in him, and I still have to base him. I have to say that I have really enjoyed painting him. The mini is pretty bad ass all round (the casting I mean). The pose is awesome and he looks thoroughly imposing, and pissed off! You may notice that I also added one of my fave items from the Black Templar armory – the Holy Orb of Antioch. Then thoust shall count to 3…

I give you – Chaplain Vargo of 2nd Company:

I may try and get my Emperors Champion done as well, although I do have a landspeeder thats half-finished, so I should probably go with that….

Impending international campaign coming up, which I am really looking forward to. The forces of Chaos have attacked Imperial Compliant worlds, so now the gloves are off! more on that to come!

Cheers

Paul

Forces of the Imperium – Ave Imperator!

I have, indeed, been working behind the scenes, and I wanted to post some finished pieces instead of all the WIP posts that have peppered WCF recently. I have set myself monthly goals, with certain minis to be completed in one month. This is the minimum, and if I can get more done, well, thats obviously a bonus. If I can complete my quota per month, then I reward myself by taking me and my long suffering girlfriend out for a sushi dinner. A fair trade, methinks? 🙂

This month’s objective was to complete any 3 Sisters of Battle and 5 random Cadian troops which are to be inducted Imperial Guard in my SoB forces. I decided against the usual green/brown scheme for the Cadians, and opted for an urban camoflage scheme that befitted the cityscapes that me and the lads usually fight across. They will get insignia on the shoulder pads, but i’m waiting for the new Imperial Guard Codex this weekend before deciding on what to have. As we have already seen with my other Battle Sister, the colors for The Ancient Order of the Exalted Saint Boudicea is purple and cream. I completed 2 heavy weapons and one bolter Sister. I decided on this self imposed monthly ‘quest’ a couple of weeks ago, so I had limited time to complete them. Hopefully in the upcoming months I will be able to finally knock some sizeable holes in my ‘to do’ list. See what you think, and, as always, c+c are welcome!