Meatball on Twitter

Thursday, March 25, 2010

Project Update: Tomb Kings Carrion

This week I got a little free time so I painted up my Carrion. They were pretty interesting models to paint. They are loaded with details and I just loved the muscle and sinew look of the wings. It was a little tricky to paint though but with some experimentation I found what worked for me.

First the models were primed white. I think painted on a watered down layer of Scab Red, 60/40 paint to water. Once that was dry, I dry-brushed a few coats of dwarf flesh, then for my final few layers I dry-brushed on rotting flesh. That finished up all the gory parts. For the feathers I base-coated with black then dry-brushed codex gray. For the bone I used bleached bone with a gryphonne sepia wash.

Over all I am happy with how they turned out. This leaves me just my Ushabti and the Casket of Souls and the Tomb Kings will be complete! As always thanks for reading and any comments are welcome.

-BJ

Saturday, March 20, 2010

Project Update: Sisters Repentia and Mistress

Well I have finished my Sisters Repentia and mistress unit. I must say, I was right in leaving them till last as a unit to paint because they were by far the most difficult of my Sisters of Battle to paint. They have a fair amount of detail combined with some very odd poses which made this a difficult unit to paint. On top of that, they have allot of flesh which is probably my weakest thing to paint. Over all I am very happy with how the unit turned out.

This leave me with about 6 character types models to paint then my vehicles and the Sisters of Battle will become my 3rd completely painted 40K army. Needless to say I am getting fairly excited to get a 3rd army complete. As always thanks for reading my log and all comments/feedback are welcome.

-BJ

Monday, March 15, 2010

GW Woods Project Completed!

I posted a two-part article on how I painted my GW woods. It can be found over on my Warhammer Fantasy Blog at the following links.

GW Woods Project: The Base

GW Woods Project: The Trees

GW Woods Project: The Trees

Yesterday I posted the first part to this article, GW Woods Project: The Base. Today I am following up with how I painted the trees for the bases and will end by showcasing the final product. So I am just gonna jump right in and stop wasting time.

As with the bases I started by cleaning the flash from the models. Once cleaned the trees have to be glued together. There are several locations to glue on branches so I tried my best to randomize the branches on each of the trees. After the trees have been glued together it was time for primer. Unlike the bases it took several coats to get the trees ready. The branches were particularly a pain but after about 3 coats I had the trees primed and ready for painting.






I wanted the trees to match the roots from the bases, so again I started with GW Bestial Brown. I used a heavy dry-brush to cover every part of the tree. Some of the base coat still showed, but this was fine with me as it would just add in as a layer of shadows. I also ensured that I got the roots. I wasn't careful over the rocks as I knew I was going to have to hand paint those later on in the project. Each base holds three trees so after completing nine, I was ready to go back and begin highlighting.








Just like with the roots I did a dry-brush highlight over the entire tree with GW Snakebite Leather. This step really starts to make the bark stand out. I was careful to get more of the elevated highlights leaving the darker brown and black colors in the recesses for base and shadows. Finally I added a dry-brush of GW Codex Grey just like I did with to roots.







The next step was painting on the rocks. Since the roots overlapped the rocks I had to hand paint GW Codex Grey, instead of dry-brushing. Once the rocks were painted, I applied GW's Badab Black wash to give some shadows. Once that was completed I carefully dry-brushed Vallejo Stonewall Grey as the first highlight layer of the rocks. After that was complete I did a light dry-brush of GW Skull White. Finally I painted some small details such as the ropes on the trees.




Since the trees were finished with paint, I used a spray sealant on them and waited for it to dry. Once dry it was time to apply some GW Scorched Grass static flock to the base of the trees. I used the same technique as the bases with a 50/50 mix of PVA glue and water. I applied the flock in-between the roots and on any bare sections of the base.




The final step for completing the tress was attaching some foliage. I chose not to use the plastic leaves that come with the model set. Instead I decided to go with Woodland Scenic's Fall Foliage bag. It had the colors I was looking for and I think it looks more realistic than the plastic leaves that came with the model. I glued clumps of foliage to the branches using straight PVA glue. I tried to be as random as possible about placing the colors and over all i am happy with the result.

Once I added the trees to the bases I added smaller clumps of foliage under the trees to represent fallen leaf piles.

Below is the final picture of the complete project. I know have three sets of woods to use for terrain and they turned out even better than I had hoped for. As always thank you for reading my blog and all feedback is welcome.

Sunday, March 14, 2010

GW Woods Project: The Base

I was planning on getting some of my terrain finished so I thought it would be a perfect project to do a step-by-step project post on. So below I will show pictures and describe how I painted and finished my GW woods. This will be a 2-part article with the first part dealing specifically with the base of the woods model.

As with any modeling project I started off with cleaning off any flash or odd looking bits I didn't want on my model. Luckily for the bases there isn't much cleaning required. Once cleaned I then primed the entire base with a black primer. I wasn't as picky about the primer as I am with an army model, I just did one nice even coat and that was good enough for me.


Now with the base primed it was time to start painting in the details. I decided the rocks were the best place to start. I used GW Codex Grey and began picking out all of the rocks on the base. I used a heavy dry brush technique and was not overly careful as I knew I would be using other colors to fill in the grass and roots. I just made sure I got a good base on all the rocks.


Once the rocks had a good base-coat of Codex Grey I then did a lighter dry brush of Vallejo Stonewall Grey. I used this as my first highlight to really bring out the edge details in the rocks. Once that was finished I used an even lighter dry brush of  GW Skull White for a final detail layer. At this point the rocks really start to come to life.


Ok with the rocks done I then moved onto the roots. I chose GW Bestial Brown to use as the base coat. Since the roots were a little more detailed than the rocks and ran through much more of the terrain, I carefully painted them. I paid extra attention when crossing over other details such as the rocks.

Now that the roots were painted I used a light dry brush of snakebite leather to bring out some of the details in the roots. Once that layer was finished I went over each root with a dry brush of codex gray. I know this seems like a weird color but after looking closely at trees around my house, their bark was brown but at the highest level the bark definitely had gray tones to it so I thought I would add this detail to my model.

I had all the details finished so now it was time to start painting the ground. I chose to use Vallejo Yellow Olive. I used a pretty watered down mix probably around 50/50 and when applying the paint I used more of a stippling effect. The watered down paint easily went into the space between the roots without getting onto the roots themselves. I used this technique until the entire base was done.

The next step was some green highlights. I dry brushed Vallejo Camouflage Green over all of the grassy details to bring in some highlights to these areas. I was careful not to get any green on the rocks or roots. I continued this process until I had highlighted the entire base.



Now came the final painting step. I used a stippling technique and proceeded to stipple first Vallejo Gory Red, then Vallejo Scrofulous Brown, followed by Vallejo Parasite Brown. I stippled small areas of each color over the entire base. I did this because I am going for a fall look to my woods and the colors gave the appearance of fallen leaves on the ground.

Next I moved onto clear-coating now that the painting was complete. Once the clear-coat was dry I then got ready to flock the base. I used GW Scorched Grass. To apply it I used a watered-down PVA glue. I have found the watered down glue holds just as well as straight PVA glue but it allows much more control over where the glue actually goes. Once the glue was in place I just sprinkled down the flock and all was done.

Well this concludes The first part of this project. I will be posting part two, GW Woods Project: The Trees, tomorrow. As always thank you for reading my blog and any feedback is welcome.

Wednesday, March 10, 2010

That Sinking Feeling

I am not usually one to complain when a new codex comes out and I am posting this without first hand knowledge of the new Blood Angel Codex so I may just be panicking without cause.

My friend who is the GW rep for my FLGS got his copy of the Blood Angels codex and the new sprues of blood angels. The good news is he says the new Blood Angel sprues are amazing. The bad news came to some of the things he was reading me out of the book. It just seems with every new codex that is released my two main armies, Black Templars and Sisters of Battle are falling deeper and deeper into obscurity.

Don't get me wrong, I am happy for Blood Angel players, they needed a real codex. It is just that when I hear they are getting things like fast Baal Predators with scout ability for 115 points I start to get frustrated and debate if I should just shelf my armies until they get a new proper codex.

This isn't a rant about Blood Angels but more of a rant on lack of rules updates for older armies. I mean I would be completely satisfied if they made a FAQ that just gave my Templars the same points cost for things like Rhinos, Command Squads, Speeders etc. I mean I am fine with the new armies becoming more powerful and cheaper, but some where GW needs to realize how this effects other armies as we have a less effective force that cost more play.

I have other armies to turn too, I am building an Imperil Fists army and I own Orks, I just would like to field my favorite armies without feeling like I lost before even showing up. Anyway I don't want this to turn into a long winded rant so I just pose this question to all of you other players using dated codices. How are you dealing with the new armies as they come out? Any advice for my Templars or Sisters of Battle?

As always all comments are welcome and thank you for taking the time to read my blog.

-BJ