Tag: Space Wolves

I’m still here!! honest! Crusader Full Length Album in the Works!

Crusader - August 2012
Crusader tearing it up at Glenwood Arts Festival

OK, i’ve been a bad blogger… but in my defense, work, school and prepping for a destination wedding have taken up my life. Things are levelling out a bit now, so I can get back to the blogosphere. I have lots of things to share with you all, but it’s going to take a few posts to bring it all up to speed, which I intend to do over the upcoming holiday weekend.

I would, however, like to bring your attention to my band, Crusader. We are currently starting work on recording our full length album ‘Onward To Battle’. Now, as most of you will realize, recording is a lengthy, and costly process. If I remember correctly, the final cost of recording/artwork/pressing our debut EP “Rise of the Templars” ended up being about $3000, and that was for four songs… so, needless to say a full length album may well be a tad more expensive.

This is where I humbly reach out to you, dear readers and fans of Crusader, to reach into your pocket and see if you have a little that you can donate to our Kickstarter fund to help us get this album done! We have been saving all our money from the shows we have played but have fallen short of the amount needed.

Dethtron, or Colin to those in the inner circle, has jumped through all the necessary legal hoops to get us our very own Kickstarter page, which can be found here: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1475857858/crusader-onward-to-battle

There are different tiers of contributions, and what you get for them. Donations start at a mere $2! I may even look into a WCF exclusive gift for those that donate as a result of this blog post…

So, for those that need a soundtrack to the 41st Millenium (Thunderkill?? Asgard’s Fire???) those who need a theme tune while you’re beating the piss out of a horde of greenskins or Eldar, please help out some fellow gamer metal heads… we will indeed salute you!

In battle there is no law…

Hoagy.

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!

How to… Paint Space Wolves Quickly, AKA…

I seem to have snapped out of the hobby funk I had been languishing in recently. Helped in part by our move from the desolate wastelands of the Southside suburbs back to the North of the city, and familiar territories. While it is only a temporary set up, a measure of inner peace has been restored, and with it, my painting mojo.

I am, and was, quite literally getting sick of looking at unpainted miniatures and decided I wanted to do something about it, so I set about working a test mini for a recipe to paint my Sons of Russ. Now I have been agonizing for months on what shade of grey to paint them.  I see a lot of the really dark grey, which is great, but actually is a color that was used by the Wolves pre-heresy. Now I like the dark grey, and don’t get me wrong, there are some super wicked paint jobs out there, like Space Wolves Grey  (one of my fave SW resources) but I feel I wanted to stray a bit from that, as the plastic the minis are made in are a dark grey too.

I was never a fan of the ‘uber blue-grey’ that seemed to dominate GW’s later paint jobs (you know, when they were painting practically everything red?). Some of you may (or may not) have seen the Terminator and Wolf Guard that I had already tried out. Well, I liked the color I had achieved here, but did not want to spend 8+ hours on each miniature.  I wanted to get a decent looking, fully painted force on the table, with as little painting time as is legally possible.

So, while on vacation over the Thanksgiving holiday, I thought ‘frack it’, sat down and just started painting to see what would happen…

I had picked up a can of the ‘Army Painter’ Wolf Grey Primer, which looked like a pretty sweet starting point. I had already sprayed a Rhino in it, and was pleased with the result, so I blasted a couple of primered figures with it too, to test it out. Now while with tanks, you can get away with weathering and not really doing anything to the base color, it’s not really the case (IMO) with troops. While I liked the color of the primer, I felt that highlighting up from that color would make them look to ‘bright’.

So, I slathered the minis in a head-to-toe wash of Devlan Mud (which I admit is my best friend in my paints). Then, for good measure, once this layer had dried, I went over them again with another wash, just to make sure that the Devlan Mud was EVERYWHERE.

Now, earlier in the day, I had been at my FLGS and picked up a pot of Vallejo Blue Grey paint, which is nearly a perfect match to the primer coat. So, over the primer/Devlan Mud base I simply painted over the armor plates, leaving the darker base in all the cracks and nooks. The pigment in the Vallejo paint was incredible, and took in one (thinned) coat. Already I was beginning to like how this was coming together.  I decided I was only going to do a harsh line-edge highlight, completely stepping away from my usual 3 or 4 layer blending I normally do. So I took Space Wolves Grey (GW), which is almost a grey/white and used that to highlight armor plates. POW!

I was really pleasantly surprised at the results, and that was when I knew I had found my groove with my new fledgling army.

The beauty about this way of doing the armor is that if you get some paint where it shouldn’t be, it takes literally seconds to correct it, as you’re not having to re-blend etc etc.

Other areas were a snap too. For the flesh, I simply painted a basecoat of Tallarn Flesh, followed by a wash of Gryphonne Sepia, then Ogryn Flesh. When that had dried, I washed Devlan Mud into the eyes and mouth areas to add deeper shading. Paint the teeth with a touch of Bleached Bone and you’re done. That is IT!

Metal areas were base coated with Boltgun Metal, and washed with a coat or two of Devlan Mud (see how this keeps popping up?) then rough highlights on the edges with Boltgun Metal to look like actual wear and not just a pretty sheen on the armor plating.

Gold/Brass areas were painted with a 1-1 base of Scorched Brown and Shining Gold, followed by a wash of –yep, you guessed it- Devlan Mud, then highlighted with one layer of Shining Gold.

Bone/tooth fetishes – base coat of Snakebite Leather, wash of Devlan Mud, then add Bleached Bone to the base color for highlighting.

Runestones – Base coat of Graveyard Earth, washed with Devlan Mud, then a quick highlight with the base color mixed with Skull White.

Furry bits – Choose whatever brown, or grey you want, base coat, wash with DM, then add white to your base for highlights…

You’ll see that I do little more than one highlight after the base color and then the wash. This is the point of this article, to get your army painted, and quickly. Golden Demon winners these ain’t, but with a little TLC, your force will look very nice on the table, and hopefully garner you a few compliments.

I have’nt added the shoulder pad detail yet, as I wanted to do sqauds of them at a time, and also will be having combinations of the different ‘clans’ in my army. Down the road I may add weathering to the armor, but at the moment, I want the armor painted…

Hopefully this will inspire some of you to whip up those undercoated minis and get them on the table…

FOR RUSS! FOR THE WOLFTIME!!!

Battles and Brotherhood! Painting project is GO!

I got together with my cohort Matty in the UK, via email, to put together a buddy project. As this will be a pseudo series over the next couple of weeks, I started it’s own page over there ===========> Or, if you’re too lazy to look, you could always teleport there using this nifty link: http://whencannonsfade.com/the-bro-project-or-i-can-get-by-with-a-little-help-from-my-friends/

So, go check it out, go on!

🙂

A dream of wolves in the snow…

OK, 1,000 extra internet cool points if you can guess the reference in the post title 🙂

I actually finished my Wolf Guard in TDA last night, and boy was I glad. I’m keen to get rolling on some other projects I have lined up. I’m guessing there is about 12 hours of work in this mini, give or take. I’m pleased with the results, although I have to say that the whole waterslide transfer thing on marine shoulder pads is very frustrating. 3 attempts at securing one on this shoulder guard (even with applying Microsol) proved fruitless and saw me wanting to take a hammer to the figure, as the Microsol actually started taking the paint off the mini.

After cooling my jets and repainting the shoulder guard, I though f*ck it, I’ll stick with what I know is a tried and tested method – hand painting the bastard on. So I did. I think it actually turned out pretty well.

I’m still going to have a shot at painting a Space Wolf in darker grey armor, to satisfy my curiosity, but it will have to wait for now.

In other news, my loyal Black Templars have been sorely neglected, but no longer! I bought a couple of torsos from Ebay from the ‘Masters of the Chapter’ set, with the intent of converting them into Castellans or Marshalls or something, to lead my zealous Templars into the fray.

My first selection was the Master of the Arsenal (not the football team!). I chose this basically because of the feet (nothing kinky). The feet look like they are from an old suit of armor, so that sold me straight away.  Over my lunch break yesterday I got to sketching a rough idea of what this chap will look like with some simple additions and converting. I’m still unsure on the power weapon, so that is subject to change. Here is what I have:

You can see my notes there too, as I would’ve probably forgotten which bits I needed.  My son saw this drawing when I took it home last night and wanted it, so I told him I would get a copy and he can color it for Daddy. I told him I’d post it on here before I stick it on the fridge too 🙂 Bless him!

OK, thats it for now. More to come shortly!

WIP update – Wolf Guard in TDA

Hope everyone had a good Thanksgiving!

I decided to jump in and have a go at the December painting challenge over at Bolter & Chainsword to see if I could get this guy done. The deadline is 11.59 tonight, and I think I can do it. No prizes or anything, but I like doing these once in a while to get the firecracker up my arse that I need sometimes. I just need to finish up the gold/bronze areas and put the logo on his shoulder pad, oh and add some snow to the base. I may also add weathering but i’m not too sure i’m confident enough to do this yet.

I’m trying to up my skills, as I would like to submit an entry to Golden Demon when it returns to Chicago next year. I have a Wolf Lord that may well be the candidate for that…

In other news i’m hoping to finish up a couple of other projects so I can post up my epic Nurgle article that i’ve been planning. The end is definitley in sight! It’s actually such a big article, I may have to give it a page, instead of  just a post. We’ll see!

C+C welcome on wolfy up there, thanks for swinging by!

Paul

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