The Art of War

Night Goblin Spear Chukka´s

2012-02-11T23:48:00.000+02:00

Hello! I decided it´s time to improve the firepower of my Orcs & Goblins army. Rock Lobba is the only war machine I usually use in my armylist... but now I´m gonna add some chukkas to the battle field. I remembered having some old Ring of Rule, "Artillery of the Cursed Legion" minis in the cupboard, so I dusted them off, and started to work with hobby knife and glue...

I discovered that I had sprues to build five chukka´s... But I tought I´d only have use for four of them. I have rather large rank&file units, the O&G being cheap in points, so having too much chukka´s would only make the deployment harder than it allready is. And 140 points is enough cost for these unstable gobbo machinery things :) (180 pts if you would have the bullys too...)

Here´s the 25 bits to build one "Chukka". I was happy to see that they´re high quality stuff... The joints are so precise, that the main frame of the Ballista can be built practically without any glue. And there was next to nothing to clean up in the casting job. Me likes...

Here´s the first one assembled. It´s abit too fancy engineering and carpenting for Orcy hands... So I have to come up with some "looted from Bretonnians" fluff with these :) Anyways... I left some of the parts without glue, as they hinted in the instructions... and this is cool:

Now I can actually move the lever beneath the ballista to adjust it for short or...

long range fire. I´m gonna raise the geekyness of the tabletop battle games to a new level, as I start my shooting phase by adjusting the Chukkas for the right position :) "This is just gonna take a minute guys... only two more to go now." I can´t wait to see the smoke coming out of the opponents ears by round three. Remember... angry opponent makes lot of mistakes!

Here´s four of the beauties done. Im working on the bases now, and pimping the ballistas with Orcy bitz to make them more Chukka like. I´ll be back soon... Bye now!

Snotling Pump Wagon ready

2012-02-09T19:18:00.001+02:00

Here´s few pics of the Pump Wagon I finished last night. Paint job is pretty sloppy, cause I kept myself working fast as possible... Otherwise, if I would have painted all the details in my best possible quality, this would have taken forever (or worse, I´d never finished it), for I´m usually very slow painter. Anyways... Here´s the pics :)

Descent Props and Pumping Action

2012-01-29T14:13:00.000+02:00

Hello! Not much hobby progress recently... I´ve been working on my Descent Dark Priest minis, and they´re almost ready. I also got some WHFB minis on the painting table, wich is nice :)

Here´s some Descent dungeon rubble, that I made for our last session... They´re Army Painter range. I´ve added some cork pieces and sand on 25mm bases. Good sculpting, I think and they painted up really nicely.

I found this old classic from my mini cupboard... and decided to give it a go. I like this old Pump Wagon way more than the new one. The snotlings are also really good looking. I´m gonna need another pump wagon for my army... I hope they´re still on sale at E-bay :)

I built some cork pieces on a plywood base to make the wagon lean on the right side. It gave the wagon abit unstable, low flying look.

"Pump harder lads"... I specially like the snotty on the roof, giving the finger... The sculptor´s been having some fun :) Won´t see GW doing that anymore... Wonder who actually was the sculptor on this piece. Please leave a comment if you know it!

Some paint job... Army Painters brown spray paint, and wash with Badab Black.

Painted the metal parts with Boltgun Metal, snotty´s with Gretchin Green, leathers with Bestial Brown, abit Red Gore on some clothings and the mushrooms... then washed with Devlan Mud. I still have to make the high lights and basing, before this piece is ready for battle. I´ll be back when it´s done. Bye now!

Descent Miniatures: Captain Jones done

2012-01-11T22:44:00.000+02:00

Captain Jones was fast and fun to paint. I used black undercoat, and made heavy drybrushing with Knarloc green. Next I made few layers of highlighting with same color, always adding little white in the mix. There you have it :)

I painted the base with little bit different colors than I usually do with the Descent minis. I tried to make some greenish "ghostly glow" on the floor tiles, so I used the same green as with the mini. It came out Ok. I think I could make the floor glow abit more... Hmmm.

Well, Captain is ready for fridays game. I hope we´ll get to use it too :) I looked at the oncoming dungeon map, and noticed that I have to make some more 3D props for friday... :O Time is getting tight. Bye now!

Serpents of Hellfire Dread WIP and Descent Captain Jones

2012-01-10T17:55:00.000+02:00

Hello there! My first posting of this year... Just a fast update of what´s going on with the minis. First few pics of Serpents of Hellfire Dreadnought, that´s slowly getting ready for battle...

Base colors done here... I used Pure Red primer from Army Painters range... some Komando Khaki, Tausept Ochre, Boltgun Metal and Knarloc Green.

Here it is after heavy Dev Mud wash... Looks old and dirty :)

Here it is after few highlights... and some flame designs. More dread postings later.

Then some Descent stuff... We´re gonna play some Descent next friday. In the last game session the players were having some R&R in one of Tamalir´s taverns, as they heard a rumor of great treasure of Captain Jones. They went after it. After a long, eventful journey, they found the dungeon at Guardian Hills, and started the descent. I hope we´re gonna hit the third dungeon level this time, so they get to fight with the Captain and he´s minions... Only, I don´t have a mini to represent the old ghostly pirate. So I have to put something together before friday. I found some old skeleton sprues from my mini cupboard, maybe some old WH stuff or something, can´t remember where I got them...

I glued one of them together... not too piraty yet :(

I found my green stuff in the fridge (and some beer)... and started sculpting. It´s really not my thing. I have very little experience with "the stuff", and I always try to avoid using it if possible. But now I had to make something for friday... As you see, it´s not a master piece, but It´s better than nothing :)

Here´s the Captain from behind...

I hope I can make it look better with the paint job... I´m thinking painting it "barrow wight" style. Green ghost with heavy high lights. We´ll see. Bye now!

Happy New Year

2011-12-31T15:44:00.000+02:00

Year has passed again! Thanks for your comments and for fellow bloggers inspiring postings and great ideas..! I had a quite busy year in painting field... and I noticed, that I have made my own record this year, painting just over one hundred minis!!! Can´t believe it. Two orders from Pan-Vision sure helped... in form of Dawn of War and Space Marine projects (later project fell down with some THQ corporate employee changes or sumthin...) But I sure got my own projects going on too... WHFB, WH40K, Descent, and some Rune Quest minis too. This blogging stuff has been the fuel for my miniature hobbying. And, once more, you fellow bloggers have been an inspiration to me and given me the enthusiasm to paint, paint, paint... all year :) Thanks for that! Here´s few pics from this years projects! HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYBODY!!!

Serpents of Hellfire Dreadnought WIP

2011-12-29T16:19:00.001+02:00

Hello! As I wrote in the earlier postings... I´m trying to pull 1500pts WH40K army together from my miniature cupboard... I counted that have all the minis I need for it, but there´s quite a job to assemble all of the marines to playable form. Now I got my old Dreadnought project back to the table again, and continued to build it for a battle to come. It´s the Dread that came inside the brilliant Assault on Black Reach box. So far I have cutted off the multi-melta and replaced it with home made Autocannon. How I made the Autocannon can be seen here.

I got some bitz from Tactical Marines box (the gear/ammo belts), and from Assault marines I took the ammo box.

I cutted the rivets and lids off the gear belts and did some shaping on the ammo box.

Next I glued the belt bitz together to a long autocannon ammobelt...

I made an ammunition hopper out of the Assault Marine ammo box, and attached the belt to it. I also cutted of the tank out of multi-melta, and added one armour plate in the back.

Here´s how it came out...

While checking the bitz box for some ideas, I got one Servo Skull in my hand... and tried it on. I think it looked nice... Like the old veteran inside was taking a peek... "Coming out of the sarcophagus."

I refined the idea with some green stuff...

Here´s how it looks like at the moment... I think it came out pretty nice.

I think I´ll start the painting next... Will be back with this one soon... Bye now!

Christmas stuff

2011-12-29T01:05:00.001+02:00

Hello! Two hobby things from christmas time... First thing is that SC Warhammer give away arrived just before christmas, and it was just great. I had never heard about this "Space Marine Assault" box before I red about it from the SC Warhammer blog... And suddenly, out of the blue I was the lucky one to win they´re "perfect Starter kit"... that included the Space Marine Assault and lots of extra hobby stuff.

In the box was some flock, basing sand, hobby knife, plastic glue, measure, some scenery for 40K, the Space Marine Assault box, Terminator including rules for Assault game, how to make wargame scenery turorials, paint brush and some super glue... Amazing.

And here´s what´s inside the Assault box. Eight Genestealers, five Space Marines, some paints, paint brush, dice and the Game Rules book. After reading the rulebook, I felt that the game seemed very much alike with the Space Hulk or Space Crusade... Meaning very simple rules with fun scenarios. I will try it out with my son. Big thanks for the guys at the Santa Cruz Warhammer!!!

Second thingy is the greatest present of the Christmas... that I bought for my six year old son. (My wife says that I bought it for my self... And she´s 75% right)

Ladies and Gentleman, The one and only... Millenium Falcon!!!
I was lucky to find it in sale, where all Legos were half price. Other wise I never would have bought it, in full price of 180€. That´s a bit salty price for a toy I think... (unless it has something to do with my miniature hobby :)

We were abit surprised by the amount of Lego pieces in the box... "Wow Dad..! That´s a alot of lego bitz!" -"That´s right my son... You´re just gonna have to use the Force to assembly it!"

I think the Lego characters in the box were great! No need to introduce them... I guess.

Nice details were the Darth Vaders face without the helmet... And when you flip the head of Luke Skywalker and put on the helmet, you have the Jedi practice theme going on... How cool is that!

I took lots of WIP pics of the assembly, but I think I just go straight to the finished Millenium Falcon. There you have it... It also has laser turret in the bottom. And you can put Lego dudes sit inside the gun turrets, just like in the movie. Awesome Dude..!

And ofcourse, you can open up the top, so you can get a peek inside the Falcon... There are some guys sitting around the Derijak Game table. "Just let the Wookie win...ok?!"

"Use the Force Luke"

Star Wars geek saying... Bye now!

WH40K Christmas Scenario

2011-12-23T18:00:00.000+02:00

Defence of the Gingerbread House:

Defender can have unlimited forces of Space Marines.They try to defend the Gingerbread House from hungry kids, who have waited Christmas for three (or more) months now... Kids have Feel no Pain, Furious Charge, Stubborn and Hit and Run special rules. Game lasts for six rounds or ends when the objective has been "destroyed".

Here´s turn three... I´m not doing too well... Merry Christmas everybody :)

Descent Miniatures: Deep Elf Assasins

2011-12-19T01:14:00.001+02:00

These silent assasins came out quite nicely... Only three of them in the game, so it was pretty fast job :) I tried to paint the Assasins colors as they are in the Descent books. Nice color theme, I think !

Base colors: Codex Grey to the hair, Astronomican Grey to the skin, cloak with Knarloc Green, and the leather parts with Bestial Brown. I washed with DevMud and highlighted with base colors adding white. There you have it... Bye now!

Serpents of Hellfire: Call to Arms

2011-12-11T00:54:00.000+02:00

Old friend came by last week. As we were talking about hobby stuff (40K mostly), it turned out that he had grown he´s Tyranid army up to respectable 1500 points. I also have some Space Marines laying around, but I have never put them together in a proper army form. I like to paint and convert them, and even have my own successor chapter of Dark Angels called "Serpents of Hellfire" (check out the older postings), but it´s been kind of a background project for a long time now. I´ve allways been more of a WHFB player... but maybe this is gonna change now :). We decided to arrange a game for 1500 points armies in a near future, so every now and then I´ll be posting about what I´ve put together for the Marines.

In inspiration of this, I kitbashed together a Vanguard unit from pieces of Dark Angel veterans, Space Marine Tactical Squad, and Space Wolfs...

Mini in the middle is very old stuff... It was in the "Chapter Master" competition early 2000(ish)... And after that I´ve painted my Marines and Terminators with almost the same manner. Now I took a whole new angle to the painting. First of all, I left the dry brushing off. I painted a very dark under coat and made high lighting pretty stong... to the level of blazing orange. Finally I added some flame patterns to the minis armours and cloaks. First I was afraid to make them look like Hot Rod cars... but I think that didn´t happen here :D I´m happy with the new "Hellfires", and they were pretty fast to paint this way.

Here´s a pic of what I got together so far from my mini cupboard... Still lots of stuff in there to glue together :)

Some of the HQ personnel, two tactical squads of ten, 5 Vanguards, 5 Sternguards, 5Terminators (gonna skip the Cyclone I think), 5 Devastators and the Dread... I hope Santa´s gonna get me some heavy support in form of vehicles... And bikers would be nice :) Bye for now!

Descent Miniatures: Hell Hounds bases done

2011-11-30T23:55:00.000+02:00

Hi! Not much to say in this posting... The base job´s done on these flamer dogs. I think it took me longer than to paint the actual minis :D

Coming up next are the Deep Elf assasins and the Dark Priests... Primers done :) Bye now!

Lunar Officer painted

2011-11-20T11:03:00.000+02:00

Here´s another painted soldier to my slowly growing Lunar army :) Well... I´m not really aiming for "army", just skirmish amount of Lunars for RPG use. I really like the skulpting and posing of this lunar officer. I think it looks very threatening and fearless with his sword hanging down, walking decisively towards the enemy line... It has very clear details, so it was easy and fun to paint.

All the metal parts are painted bronze, except the sword and dagger. They are painted to iron, one of the rare and valuable rune metals of Glorantha...

How to make a Cyborg... part 2

2011-11-16T23:28:00.002+02:00

Hello! Another posting about "What´s going on at my work place"... Earlier I wrote about the Sci-fi themed theater play at our City Theatre (Where I work as a metal and wood artesan), that I was making scenery for. One scenery piece was this Cyborg. I haven´t found the time to take any pics of it before this, and these pics suck ass, for the lighting was poor in the scenery storage. I finished the paint job for the Premier over month ago :). It´s basically a human sized Cyborg marionette, made out of metal. If you like to see how I made it, just click here for the earlier posting... On with the pics!

That flashy thing in the chest is a light bulb, that flashes in the same rythm the cyborg speaks :) (It doesn´t actually speak. It´s a playback...Ok?! If I could make it speak, I´d work at NASA :D

Close up of the legs... I personally like the toe nails. They´re funny looking :)

In the background you can see tables made out of old TV-screens. The screens are turned upward, and they actually turn on during the play, showing only snow screen... I liked that "effect" when I went to see the show.

So, these were the only pics that were even little bit decent... sorry. But we have next show on thursday, so I try to sneek up to the stage and take some better pics. I´ll get back with this if I get some shots done :) Bye now!

Open Quest arrived

2011-11-14T17:47:00.008+02:00

Hello! I´m taking a little break from Descent project... which is good for me and the blog, that has come too Descent related. One reason for the break is that I´m very excited about my Open Quest book that arrived from D101 Games.

I´m an old Rune Quest fan and GM, and have played it for years. All the twenty+ Rune Quest/Glorantha related releases (Rule Books and expansions) I own, have quite different and unclear descriptions of some of the rules... For example how the different methods of magic works. So we have made quite many house rules over the years for magic, combat and character creation / improvement. When I stumbled upon this book in the internet, I immediatly new that I just had to have it... and I did. I´m happy now:) Not gonna make a review out of it, but I quote shortly from the D101 Games home page, so you know what I´m talking about: "Open Quest is based on the Mongoose RuneQuest SRD (MRQ SRD), with ideas from previous editions of Chaosium’s RuneQuest and Stormbringer 5th, mixed in with some common sense house rulings from the author’s twenty years of experience with the D100 system" So if you´re RQ (or any other D100 system) player, I recommend this book... if you don´t already have it.

Little bit about my miniature hobby too... Inspired by the Open Quest, I dusted my Lunar Empire soldiers (Roman Auxiliaries and Praetorian Guard). I assembled and painted one of the Praetorians...

WIP... Bronze and red parts painted... washing with Devmud.

Here´s the finished mini, standing on a 12 years old crappy piece of self-made scenery, that I also dusted from the mini cupboard :)

It felt really good to paint something else for a change than Descent minis. Maybe I´ll do another... That´s all for now. Bye!

Descent Miniatures: Hell Hounds WIP

2011-11-07T23:44:00.001+02:00

Hello! I got the Hell Hounds on my painting table last night, and almost got them finished in one session... When I started, I had no plan on how to paint them, except I would keep it fast and simple. And that´s what I did. Here´s some pics of what happened...

Primer was made with Army Painters Leather Brown.

Then one layer of Red Gore to the parts where I planned to have some fire effect...

Heavy wash of Badab Black over everything.

Here I have made some over/dry brushing on the fire parts, starting whith Blood Red then Blazing Orange. Finally I added some little dots of Golden Yellow with a detail brush...

I made similar effects around the eyes and in to the mouth, and painted the eyes with Skull White.

I painted the noses black and high lighted them with Codex Grey. The claws were painted first with Red Gore, high light with Blood Red, and finally little white dots were added.

Finnally I high lighted the fur with 2:1 Graveyard Earth and Bleached Bone, and painted the teeth.

And that´s it for now... I think they´re ready, except what comes to basing job.

One more pic from different angle. They´re not my finest job, but I´m pretty happy with the painting, considering the speed and very simple palette. I´ll be back when I get the basings done. Bye now!

More Descent Scenery

2011-11-04T23:57:00.000+02:00

Hello! Quick update to what I did last week before our Descent gaming session. Here´s some pics...

I just had to make few more rubble props quick before our gaming night. So first I went through some old bits and minis... and found this old wood elf, that had an honour to become a statue. Then, back to carving urethane again. I made some writings to the stand by stabbing little dots in to it, and I think it turned out Ok. After that I glued little bit sand in random places.

Here it is painted, and some Army painter Dead Grass on it.

From behind...

And here´s some stuff I had bought from the local petshop last summer. I think they cost 6€ a piece. Not bad I think... Now it seemed like a good time to make something out of them.

After I gave them the base color, I decided to base the statue and make some floor tiles out of urethane. Sand was also added at this point.

After the high lighting and "grassing" they looked pretty decent (for 6€ a piece).

Here´s the other rubble markers "in action". I think the 3D markers really made a difference to the dungeon mood, and they made the action easier to perceive. I recommend this to all dungeon dwellers :) Bye now!

Descent Scenery WIP 2

2011-10-25T17:59:00.000+03:00

Hello! Finally found some time to give a fast paint job on the Descent rubble markers. So here´s the pics of what I´ve done so far...

I mixed some black and white Amsterdam acrylics to make a dark grey base coat. Paint was pretty thick, so it covered nicely with the first layer.

I painted the skulls with Kommando Khaki, and then washed everything with Devlan Mud.

And here they are with the high lights and some "dead grass" on them. First I dry brushed the stone with Amsterdam acrylics, adding white to the original mix. Then I high lighted first with Codex Grey, and finally with Astronomican Grey. Skulls were dry brushed with Kommando Khaki again, then high lighed with Bleached Bone. Finally I glued some Citadel dead grass and Army Painters grass on them.
I´m not sure if I should leave the base stone colored, or will I paint them to blend in to Descent dungeon floor... Oh, and the spiders are still missing :) Bye now!

Descent Scenery WIP

2011-10-23T15:28:00.000+03:00

Hi! I was surfing on the waves of the internet in search of some Descent Liutenant minis... as I discovered (again) many really impressive 3D dungeons and accessories, like the ones in the Dwarven Forge. I´ve been thinking for a long time, how cool would it be to run a Descent or RPG session (Rune Quest or D&D) in 3D dungeon. I´t really gives the feeling of "being there" for the players... I guess the only thing that´s been stopping me from ordering is the depressingly high prices of the products :(

Well... Broke as I am, I started to think that maybe I don´t have to go all 3D. The Descent floor tiles, props and obstacle markers are actually really good looking. So maybe I could just add some small 3D elements to it, to create more "realistic" dungeon. And this would cost me only time... Wich I don´t have either :) Anyways... I decided to start with the "Rubble 3D markers".

Here´s some materials that I found from the hobby cupboard. Some urethane, WH Goblin shield sprues, cavalry and monster bases (made of plywood), and some little nasty spiders (must be WHFB related, don´t really remember where I got those).

And here´s what I got out of that stuff so far... Just some rough sculpting to the urethane, glued some shield bits and sand on them. The pile of skulls is from Army Painter range. And those nasty spiders will be added after I find some time to paint these :) Bye now!

Descent Miniatures: Nagas painted

2011-10-20T22:56:00.000+03:00

These slithering babys have been ready for a while. Just couldn´t find the time to post anything. But here they are now... Nothing special to add to the last posting, where I went through the painting technique (truly simple indeed!). Big base didn´t look so cool as the smaller ones with just the floor tiles painted on it... They needed something more. So I added some sand and grass to them, to give some feeling.
Now I´ve got 30 Descent minis painted. Still a long (loooong) way to get to the last one. But I believe I can make it at some point, for there is an actual goal in the horizon... It´s considerably harder to imagine my dear Warhammer 40K and FB armies to ever be finished. Actually, I never want them to be. So many ideas to carry out... ;) Bye now!

Descent Miniatures: First Naga painted

2011-10-09T15:17:00.000+03:00

I decided to paint the Nagas this time. The first one is finished, and two others on their way. Here´s what I´ve done so far...

I sprayed the minis with Army Painters Wolf Grey.

Wash was then made with two layers of Badab Black.

Then quite fast dry brushing all over the mini with Shadow Grey. Two additional dry brush layers was then made with adding some Skull White to the Shadow Grey. Allways leaving previous layer to show a bit. I added some high lighting to the face after the dry brush to make it show out more from the rest of the mini. Some white dots was finally added to make some "shining" spots. This was all very fast to do... with basically one color :)

Here´s the Naga from diferent angles... I´ll be back with the other two later. Bye now!

Descent Miniatures: Skeleton bases done

2011-10-04T18:54:00.001+03:00

Finally got the Skeletons done... Now I can pick up a new group to the painting table. I´m thinkin Nagas... or maybe the Hell Hounds. Anyways, here´s few pics.

Dungeon floor bases are easy to paint... but in larger patches it takes time to finish them (and it gets little boring) I could paint the tiles little bigger... as they actually are in Descent dungeon map pieces.

Here´s what I´ve done so far in the Descent field. 27 minis painted... not that much if you´re aware that there´s 108 plastic monsters and 32 heroes all together (Basic game box and two expansions). Lot of Floor tiles there to paint... :D

"Ok guys, heres the plan... Ker, you open the door! Steelhorns will bash in with the axe and I´ll ready a spell, and Mok will show some light with the lantern. Allrighty..? On count of three, 1...2.."

Descent Miniatures: Dungeon Floor Bases

2011-10-02T10:04:00.000+03:00

Last night I was going to base the Descent Skeletons and the Sorcerers... But only got the other group done, before it was time to get some shut eye... ZzzzZ...ZzzzZ... with brush still in my hand. Here´s few pics of how I paint the dungeon floor bases.

First I painted two layers of Graveyard Earth on the bases.

Then I painted some stone patterns using four different colors... Codex Grey, Astronomican Grey, Tausept Ochre and Commando Khaki, leaving a little gap of Graveyard Earth showing between the stones.

Thick layer of Devlan Mud wash...

Then I made fast high lights to some edges of the stones, using the original stone colors. It gives the floor a little bit of dimension... Finally I painted the edges of the Master Sorcerers with Blood Red. There you have it :) I´ll post the Skeleton Crew pics when I get the bases done. Bye!

Descent Miniatures: Sorcerers painted

2011-10-01T00:10:00.001+03:00

Here´s few more WIP-pics of the Descent Sorcerers. The bases are still missing paint job, but I think tomorrow´s gonna be a hard core basing day for me... I´m trying to do the Skeletons and the Sorcerers all done. I busted my ribs at work earlier this week, so sitting in the painting chair is a bit of a challenge now... so we´ll see how it goes :)

Here I have painted the skin with Dwarf Flesh, the skull ("To be, or not to be"..?) and Sorcerers beard with kommando Khaki.

Then I washed them with Ogryn Flesh...

I high lighted the skin parts with Dwarf Flesh again, and the second layer with 2:1 Dwarf Flesh and Skull White. Skull and beard were first high lighted with Bleached Bone and second with little dots of pure skull white.

Finally I high lighted the Grey parts with Codex Grey again, and second layer with Astronomican Grey. The boots were done with thin stripes of Codex Grey. Sorcerers staff was high lighted with Mithril Silver, and I painted the top of the staff golden. Little dots of white was painted on the eyes... and I think that´s it! Simple painting for simple minis... I´m quite happy with the result, and I think (hope) they bring some sinister mood to the next Descent session :)

I´ll be back with new pics when I get the bases done... hopefully tomorrow. Bye now!

Descent Miniatures: Painting the Sorcerers robe

2011-09-26T18:20:00.001+03:00

Hello! I started to work on the rest of the Descent Sorcerers, and this time around I remembered to take some pics too. Theyre not finished yet, but heres what I´ve done so far...

I started with the robes. Three layers of Warlock Purple on each mini. It was quite fast with a large brush. I painted the belt and the knee showing under the robe with Codex Grey. Sorcerers staff was painted with Boltgun Metal.

Then I gave the minis a heavy wash of Badab Black.

Heres the first high light with plain Warlock Purple.

Second highlight with about 1:5 Skull White and Warlock Purple.

On the third high light I carefully added some Skull White to the previous mix.

On the fourth and last high light I used Vallejos Squid Pink right out of the bottle... I guess I would have the same result with adding white to the previous mix, but it dried out, and I thought I´d save some time this way :) Last high light was really just adding some little dots of paint to the highest points of the robe... I´ll be back with these later... when I get something done :) Bye now!

Descent Miniatures: Sorcerers

2011-09-24T17:17:00.000+03:00

Last night, instead of basing the Skeletons, I started to clean up the Sorcerers. The minis looked so nice and simple, that I just had to paint one right away...and couldn´t stop untill it was finished :o There´s no WIP-pics, for I was too eager to see the mini painted. Sorry!

Most of the miniature is covered by the Sorcerers robe, so that´s where I put most of the time and effort. After black under coat, I painted three layers of Warlock Purple on the robe. Then I washed it quite heavily with Badab Black. Then I high lighted it with four differrent layers of Warlock Purple, always adding little bit of white in the mix, leaving the previous layer to show little bit... On the rest of the mini I used very simple palette, mostly black and dark grey on the clothing, for I wanted the robe to be in the main part.

Same mini from behind... I´ll try to remember the WIP-pics with the next ones :) Bye now!

Descent Miniatures: Skeletons

2011-09-23T17:24:00.003+03:00

I finally got the skeletons to the painting table. Now they are finished, except the bases, wich I´ll try to paint later this week... Here´s few pics.

Here´s a groop shot. I made three different color themes for them. The ones with the red robes (and a red base edge) are the "Master Skeletons" in game terms... so theyre little tougher to bring down.

Here are the green ones. Personally I like this color theme the most. It makes the clothes look old and raggedy...

Here you can see the difference in painting techniques I used... The skeleton in the right is the first one I painted. I used only wash over Bleached Bone... and then high lighting. I didn´t like it much, cause the bones didn´t show enough. For the rest of the skellies, I painted the minis dark brown before painting each bone separately with Bleached Bone. Then I washed with Gryphonne Sepia, and highlighted again with B-Bone, and finally with Skull White. For that reason these guys were not so fast to paint.

Blue color theme was nice too. I was going for little bit of Tomb Kings feeling with the blue and gold paint :) I´ll be back with these when I get the bases done... Bye!

Hobgoblin Rocket Crew

2011-09-21T18:41:00.000+03:00

Here´s one old blister I found from cupboard. Package says it´s from 1992, and I tought, "well, it´s not that old, that´s almost yesterday". Then I counted backwards... "Damn! It´s almost 20 years!!! I´m getting old! Well... Can´t help it.

Anyways... I had an idea to convert this to a Goblin Doom Diver Crew. Make a nasty little gobbo with flyerboy hat and goggles sitting on a rocket... But then I started to search the internet about current price for this blister... Couldn´t find any hits. Anybody now if this is worth anything??? Would be nice to know before I rip it open :) I´ll continue searching... Bye!

Descent Miniatures and other stuff

2011-09-17T20:37:00.001+03:00

Hello! Some time has passed since my last posting. Mostly cause it´s been quiet with the Space Marine Project, since Pan Vision put the painting project on ice some time ago, (for reasons unknown to me) but I hope it will continue as planned later :) I worked with the Black templars and Ultra Marines for a while before the halt, and I´ll post the pics at some point...

But here´s some things I´ve been working on in the mean while...

Here´s my Karak Eight Peaks gobbo horde with Standard, Battle Standard, Great Shaman, Champion, and my "own version" of Skarsnik and Gobbla :) The base is right size... I just put a Gobbo champ with Squigling and a bigger Squig on the base... Worked fine! Of course there´s some netters too ( and fanatics hiding in the ranks :)) Unfortunately I only managed to paint two ranks before the campaign ended :( Karak Eight Peaks was a great campaign to play, and the final battle with five armies (in our case) was huge mayhem, that took us whole day to fight through. And when the dust settled, my Green Skins were in strongest numbers on the table... We took some pictures of the battle, and I´ll post them later...

Then some Descent stuff...

We have been playing Descent for a little while now. First session with the basic rules of the starter box, and three latest games were all played with "Road to Legend" campaign system. I´ve been carrying a new expansion box to every session now... So there´s a LOT of stuff and minis to go around with. I decided to start painting the four Hero Minis, that he players have chosen to adventure with. Here´s few pics of the finished minis...

All four were really fast painted, (in my terms), in about three hours each.

Same dudes from behind...

And one shot from the higher ground to show the basing job... wich I´m quite happy with :)

Here´s some closer look to the mini and the "Hero Card". I tried to keep the colors little bit similar to the original pics in the cards... This is Battlemage Jaes. I made the light effect to the robe with dry brushing blue over the original purple color... Very simple stuff :)

Grey Ker... This was fun and easy to paint. Fortunately I painted the little bottles on the belt with the right colors too... cause they were the first thing the Grey Ker player checked (Pedantic Geek)...

Steel Horns was fast also. Not too many colors. I really like the green theme on the armour. I was thinkin to try it on my High Elves...

Spiritspeaker Mok. Well... not so proud of this one. Instead of dry brushing I tried some "comic" style with the light effect here. And it didn´t work :( I might paint this over later...) But I think it´s still OK board game standard :)

That´s all for now... More later. Bye bye!

Space Marine Project: Iron Warriors ready for war

2011-08-12T14:51:00.000+03:00

Allrighty then... here´s few WIP-pics first.

Here I´m done with the high lights. Gold parts with Burnished Gold... adding some Mithril Silver 4:1. Metal parts done with with Chain Mail.

Here´s group shot with the Chapter symbols done. They turned out ok, I think... They´re not identical, and that wasn´t actually my goal, but instead I tried to make them individually cool :)

Then I added some IW-stripes to different places. Sword, shoulder, legs...

Heres a bit lower perspective... Now you can see the sripes on the Heavy bolter dude also :)

And here they are... Four Iron Warriors advancing from the ruins...

And fleeing back for cover... No, really, Chaos Marines don´t flee. Maybe the nature is calling ( these guys really do everything as a unit :).

Space Marine Project: Iron Warriors WIP 2

2011-08-11T01:21:00.000+03:00

Here´s some more pics of the Iron Warriors... I have used the same colors as in my last posting.

Metal parts painted with Bolt Gun Metal

Gold parts with Tausept Ochre...

Followed by a layer of Burnished Gold.

Then a heavy wash with Devlan Mud... (Muddy Goodness:) As I´m writing this, I have allready painted the high lights and added some details... Like horns to the Bolter guy and some free painted IW symbols (wich turned out to be quite tricky) But I´ll post those pics tomorrow, hopefully... Bye now! Gotta sleeeeep...

Space Marine Project: Iron Warriors WIP

2011-08-06T17:51:00.000+03:00

I started working on the Iron Warriors... here´s few WIP pics of what I´ve done so far.

Assembled minis. Poses came out pretty nice... I just had to take the Heavy Bolter to the group :) It´s the coolest looking weapon in 40k...

Chaos Black undercoat to the whole group...

I picked up one mini from the group to be the experiment piece, and painted the metal parts with Bolt Gun Metal. (forgot the sword at this point)

Then I painted the gold parts with Tausept Ochre.

After that I painted a coat of Burnished Gold on the Tausept Ochre.

Here I gave the whole mini a coat of Devlan Mud.

After the wash I high lighted the metal parts with Chainmail and the gold parts with Burnished Gold again...

Here I have added some details, like the stripes on the Plasma Pistol, red eyes, red sword grip, and stuff...

Here´s a daylight picture :) Little better I think. I will add the chapter symbol later, and maybe some more IW stripes.

One more pick from the back. I´ll be back soon..! :)

Space Marine Project: Emperors Children done

2011-08-04T15:48:00.000+03:00

Emperors Children are ready! So here´s two pics of the minis. Hope you like em. I think the Iron Warriors are next chapter under construction... we´ll see :)

Emperors Children WIP: Three done

2011-07-29T22:52:00.000+03:00

Just a qick update posting. I got myself a terrible summer flu that doesn´t want to go away... Crap! But I have managed to paint something anyway :), and so I finished the third marine today. Here´s a couple of group shots of the first three Emperor´s Children minis.

I did some repainting on the Sonic Blaster marine, and I think it looks pretty good now :)

The Chapter symbol on the Sonic Blaster dudes shoulder came out nicely. Ok...I used a bit different color on it (purple instead of yellow) and changed the symbol abit... But hey! John Blanche does it all the time, and nobody judges him :D I used some Army painters Battle Fields "Jungle Tuft" on the bases. Nice stuff! I have started painting last of the Emp´s, so I´ll be back soon! Bye...

Space Marine Project: Emperors Children 2 WIP

2011-07-25T23:59:00.000+03:00

Here´s the second mini of the Emperor´s Children, and my paint job step by step :)

I started with painting the power armour and the bolter with Warlock Purple ( three layers ) and some Vallejo Squid Pink to some parts ( two layers was enough ).

Then I washed the painted parts with one heavy layer of Leviathan Purple.

Here I have high lighted the armour and bolter. Warlock Purple parts I made with 3:1 mix of Warlock Purple and Squid Pink, and finally few dots with pure Squid Pink. Squid parts I high lighted with the base color again. I made the "leather face" and marines face with Dwarf Flesh, washing with Ogryn flesh, high light with Dwarf Flesh adding some White in it... Then washed again with Gryphonne Sepia and high light again (wery carefully) with 1:1 Dwarf Flesh and Skull White mix.

Here I started with the gold and metal parts... First I painted the metal parts with Bolt Gun Metal, then the gold parts with layer of Tausept Ochre. It really helps to make the gold very shiny with just one layer of gold paint... I like it.

As you can see... just one layer of gold, and its shiny shiny, blinky blink..."My Precious...yessss".

I gave the gold and metal parts a heavy wash of my favourite, the allmighty Devlan Mud...

High lights with Burnished Gold and Chain Mail for metal parts. And that´s about it...

I also painted it from the back... It´s not necessary, if you´re certain that you´re troops never flee :)
I try to take some daylight pics when I get the basing done... Bye now!

Rainy day painting with the kids

2011-07-24T10:01:00.000+03:00

My four and five years old kids are always watching, when I´m painting minis at the day time... asking punch of questions about the games and minis. Most of the time the question is "why can´t I paint"? Well... this time I couldn´t find a good reason why not ( Except I´m really busy with the Space Marine project...:) And actually, I just bought some extra brushes for the kids, if they would want to give it a try...

I looked up some old boxes of unpainted minis and found couple of 3rd edition WHFB miniatures. I gave my daughter (4years) a Skaven, and my son (5 years) a Dark Elf... that was missing part of his crossbow. I thought that these minis were good to start with, for they are simply sculpted and don´t have too many details in them. And hey... these are the minis I started the paintig with! :) I think they made a good job, and used the brush very carefully, not taking too much paint in it. They followed my instructions very well... that usually never happens!

Here are the masterpieces..!

Emperors Children WIP: Basing done

2011-07-23T11:09:00.000+03:00

Two more pics, with the basing done. The colors look a bit better now :)

Space Marine Project: Emperors Children WIP

2011-07-22T22:45:00.000+03:00

I had to take step back, and think again about the color theme. After looking at the first mini for a day, I discovered that I´m not happy with the first plan, and the paint job was not good... at all. I think I did too much surfing in the internet, looking for ideas and styles... and forgot to make my own ideas and use the style I like to paint. I guess that was my mistake :(

Anyways... I got back looking at the Space Marine game pics again, and started to plan the colors. I got down to four colors... Warlock Purple, Burnished Gold, Boltgun Metal and Vallejo Squid Pink. All washes were done with Leviathan Purple and Devlan Mud. Finally I made the High Lights different mixes of the base colors... I give you more proper tutorial later :) Here´s one pic of the new Emperor´s Children paint job.

Basing is not finished, but otherwice this is ready. High lights jump out little bit because of the flash... I´ll try to take better pic next time... Bye now!

Space Marine Project: Colors for Emperor´s Children

2011-07-17T00:42:00.000+03:00

Vacation started friday..! Hooray :) So now I´ve had time to plan some colors on the first group in the Space Marine project... the Emperor´s Children. I´ve been looking for some pics and fluff on the internet about anything related to the chapter... Some of the "old school" Post Heresy Noise Marines pics were just wonderful. They were brilliantly painted with flashy colors, just like they should, but for me... they looked too much like going to the Mardi Gras. They didn´t quite capture the feeling of the oncoming action spectacle. Well... I tried to find some color theme from the middle of these lovely festival marines, and the Emperor´s Children in the actual Space Marine game. And here´s what I have now...

So... the colors are flashy, but I try to keep the palette very simple. I think this could work... If it doesn´t, at least, I did it my way :) I´ll be back with some WIP-pics soon. Bye now!

Space Marine Project: First minis

2011-07-10T15:00:00.000+03:00

Just a quick update posting. I decided to start the project with some Noise :) Noise Marines box was first one to open... The bitz and stuff was so cool, that I just had to start building Emperors Children group! Here´s one pic of the assembled marines...

I´m quite happy with the poses... I used all the metal parts and the "heavy noise" stuff, for they looked too cool to stay in the box... I´ll be back with some WIP-pics soon.

Space Marine, The Drop Pod has landed!

2011-07-09T22:15:00.000+03:00

The goods arrived today..! Four boxes of Marines, and some paints. Thanx for the guys at the Puolenkuun Pelit again..! I´m very excited to finally get my hands on the Space Marine project. I purchased some new bruhes and all ;). Now I just have to figure out wich Chapter to start with, and get my hands dirty :) The sixth Chapter is still a "secret"... so can´t start with that one. I´ll post the name right away when I hear some news. While waiting for the marines, I´ve been working on my Goblin horde and the Descent skeletons. I might post some pics if I´ll get the time... But now, gotta glue some Marines together :o Bye now!

How to make a Cyborg...

2011-06-26T23:21:00.001+03:00

And now, something completely different... The biggest mini I´ve ever painted ( and sculpted ). This time I decided to post about something interresting, that´s going on at my workplace. I work at the City Theater as a metal and wood artisan... mostly building scenery for the plays. So...We have this Sci-fi (kind of) play coming at fall, and the set designer gave me an iterresting project to work with... "Build a real size cyborg marionette, that looks like it has been few decades at the bottom of the sea..." She gave me quite free hands to work with it. So I just started to draw pictures, and cut and weld some recycled metal pieces I found from the theater carage and at my workshop. I took little pieces from dumped computers and all the crap that looked like... a part of cyborg. I also cut a piece from a mannekin dummy to build the boobs :) Here´s few pics...

Working on a spine and arms... I tried to make the joints move like real arms do. Plastic hands are from old life support dummy. Some pieces of arms are from cleaners old extending mop.

I hammered some iron bars agains the anvil abit... made good ribs. Also working on the wrist joints...

Workin with the head here... The mask was made by our "wizards of all things" department... It´s made on a mold of one of our actors face, and I think it looks great. Reminds me of Halloween movies abit :) I just sculpted some foam bits and hotglued them on a styrofoam head. And then added in lots of recycling crap and old power cords.

I added some cloth and lots of smaller details on the body... and finished the arms.

Welded the legs together from scrap metal... Joints also work in the legs. They move pretty much like the real thing. This is "I gotta go to the toilet" posing, I guess...

In this picture the metalworks of the Cyborg is quite ready, and I have made some painting experiments on it... I´m going to add some more "sea bottom crap" on it, and paint it again... this is just experimental paintjob. Cyborg has a history of many employments... one of them as a crash test dummy. Thats why the logo on the hand and sholder.

Close up of the unfinished paint job... :) Black undercoat (with some saw dust, sand and carpet glue in it), then few different browns to build a rust effect on...

Close up on the chest details... the rusted plates on shoulders and sides are made of pieces of leather. I just hot glued them on the dummy, and added some rivets on them.

That´s all I got this time... I get back with the Cyborg project after the summer, because I have other projects under construction at this point, and the Cyborg is at the street level window of our theater all summer, so I cant get my hands on it now... :( If you visit here at summer time, go and see her :) Bye now!

Correction..!

2011-06-08T19:16:00.001+03:00

Hello! Correction to my last posting... Space Wolves, Black Templars, Iron Warriors and Emperors Children are the only Chapters that comes with the Pre-Order Pack Download code... There´s not gonna be some mysterious extra chapters... :( Darn... Sorry bout that!

"Heretic! I will punish you for giving false information to the Emperor"!!!

Space Marine is coming!

2011-06-07T22:55:00.000+03:00

Get ready for the Emperors wrath... The 3rd person 40K mayhem is gonna be released at 9.9.2011 for PC, Xbox360 and PS3... I had the privilege to see the game in action few weeks ago at Pan Vision… And it was amazing! The action was intense and brutal, the world of 40K looked just like it should (in my eyes anyway :), and most important, the weapons were devastating and sounded cool!!! Now I just have to buy a new computer to play it with the full gore goodies :D (And I will)

I also heard some Space Marine news… (Yesterdays news by now, but I´ll tell them anyway :) With the Pre-Orer Pack you´ll get some cool skins (Power Armours) of Space Wolves, Black Templar, Iron Warriors and Emperors Children. With the Pack comes also some kind of “Elite Armour Download code”, that gives you two more armours for Space Marines and Chaos Marines..! I don´t know the chapters yet, but I´ll post them when I get some information about it.

Space Marine Collectors Edition is really cool! It comes with Space Marine game, Hard cover 40K-art book, the original Sound track CD, Space Marine character cards, and… 20cm long, magnetized Purity Seal!!! (That´s gonna look cool on my car)…

I have a reason to be particularly excited about this release… I get to paint some 40K miniatures for a good cause again! Pan Vision and Game Reactor Magazine are throwing in a Draw in Scandinavia (All countries are not locked yet)… Just like there was with Dawn of War 2 Retribution. There´s gonna be some miniature and game prizes! (More details about those later) I´ll paint some Ultra Marines, Space Wolves, Black Templars, Iron Warriors, Emperors Children... and maybe one more Chaos Marines chapter, that THQ and Relic haven´t announced yet ;) So there´s lots of research to do for me, to learn the tricks of painting those chapters. I´ll start with visiting the hundreads of talented 40K hobbyists on the Blogisphere...

Right now, I dont have the patience to wait for the "prize miniatures" Drop Pod to land at my door steps... So I think I´ll go and kitbash some bad ass Marines from my own stockyard...(And put all other projects on hold... again :)

Here´s some links too if you want to learn more about the game... http://www.spacemarine.com/gb
and for Pan Vision Finland pages. I´ll be back with some news, and most importantly, with the WIP-pictures of the minis :) Bye for now!

Skeleton experiment

2011-06-04T20:25:00.000+03:00

Just a quick WIP-posting about Descent skeletons I´m working on... These bony fellas aren´t so fast to paint than the previous beastmen were. At least I have to plan the colors and style carefully, before I start the actual paint job. Well, here´s two of them painted in different style and colors...

The skeleton on the right was the first attempt... It´s Ok, but I like the second one better (the one on the left), for I painted the bones on a darker layer, to show them more clearly... Also the green on the clothes gives them more worn-out look somehow. I painted the bows to look like they were made out of bone too :) Yes, I think I´ll go with the second plan, and see how they turn out... (If nobody convince me otherwise :) Bye for now!

Descent Beastmen basing ready

2011-05-30T22:31:00.000+03:00

Hi! Beastmen are ready to defend the dungeons :) Got the basings ready, and here are the pics...

Here are the bases with the first coat of dungeon floor painted. I used four colors to paint the stones: Codex Gray, Astronomican Gray, Tausept Ochre and Kommando Khaki. I used Graveyard Earth to paint some fractures and crackings to the stones.

Then I washed the bases very lightly with Devlan Mud. And finally I high lighted the edges of the stones with the original colors, to give them more realistic look...

They look pretty nice on the floor tiles... I still wonder if I should have painted the stone pattern to the edges of the base also... Except to the red bases of course. Well maybe later :)
I have already started with the Descent Skeletons. I cleaned them up and gave them a bath in fairy water... (I believe the paint will stick better after that) And I also primed them with the same Army painter Brown as the Beasties. I´ll post some WIP-pics as soon as I get some real colors on them :) Bye now!

Descent Beastmen WIP

2011-05-27T21:08:00.000+03:00

Hello! The Descent Beastmen are allmost ready... Just missing the basing. I tried to keep the painting job really fast, but neat... I don´t have much experience in fast painting, but I´m pretty happy with these Beastie Boys :) I also took few WIP-pics this time. And here they are...

Here they are with the base colors. I tried different colors with the clothing... otherwise they all have the same palette.

Then little washing with Devlan Mud...

And this is how they look after the high lighting... I think they look little bit like Rob Zombie in consert... Now I´m gonna start with the bases. I´ll post again when it´s done :) Bye now..!

Descent Beastman

2011-05-24T18:48:00.000+03:00

Hello! I got on a side track again form my present projects, the "Dwarf Lobba" and Karak Eight Peaks scenery, as I accidentally layed my eyes on my Descent board game boxes... I decided to try and paint few of the several minis that come with the box. I thought that beastmen would be the simple choice enough to fast paint... Allrighty then, here´s the pics :)

Here they are before priming... The red ones are "Master Beastmen" in game terms. Because they have different stats in the game, I decided to cover the edges of the bases before painting.

I used the Army Painter brown primer... Here you can see them after I removed the tape from the base edges.

And... here it´s allredy painted. I forgot to take any VIP-pictures... Sorry! Nothing special to tell about the painting it self. I tried to keep the palette really simple. It took me about two hours to paint the mini, and half an hour for painting the base... (had to wait for that Devlan Mud to dry :) I think I can go faster with the rest of the beastmen, now when I know the colors I´m gonna use...

Side shot... I pretty much used flat colors on the mini, then stained it with Devlan Mud. After that I picked up few high lights, finally adding some Bleached Bone to the base color... fast and simple :)

The dungeon floor themed base blends quite nicely with the Descent floor tiles... Perhaps I should paint the stone pattern little bit bigger with the next one...

The broblem with the basing is... that it doesn´t blend very well to the out doors encounters. :( Maybe I should base half of the minis as "out doors Beastmen" :D

Night Goblin Dwarf lobba

2011-05-15T00:07:00.000+03:00

Hello! I got my computer working again... Hooray! :) It´s been awhile since my last posting, and lots of hobby related stuff has happened after that. Most interresting for me is the starting of Karak eight peaks with our gaming group. I´ve played one and a half game so far in the campaign... (last game against the Chaos was put to rest after third round, because of the "real life" crises...) Anyways, the first game against the Empire was just Green Skin mayhem, and the dices were on my side (for a change). More about Karak Eight Peaks later...

We have also found some time with the other gaming group to play some "Descent: Journeys in the dark", from the Fantasy Flight Games. We all liked the board game very much and I´ve already purchased the "Road to Legend" expansion for the game, that puts the players to a campaign map, and allows the "heroes" to gain experience to upgrade their stats and skills etc. It´s mainly a hack´n´slash dungeon exploring action with RPG elements... and if you haven´t played it yet, you should, because it´s pure fun! I get back in this subject, if I ever start to paint the Descent minis... :)

And back to the miniature stuff... Here´s one mini project I´ve been working on lately. It´s a Night Goblin Dwarf Lobba. Still missing the basing and the paint job on bully, but i´ts starting to look nice. It´s inspired by the Karak Eight Peaks campaign... and designed to humiliate my Dwarf enemy player :) Also the Night Goblins "Hate Dwafs" rule gets a visual presentation in this project :D

The Stone thrower is from a "Ring of Rule" game, and you can see it in it´s earlier stages from the previous postings... I´ve just added some Green Skin bits to it, and one Snotling "engineer". The crew is from Night Goblin regiment box, slightly converted... The gobbo on the right has three hits in a chest, but the Bully thinks he´ll still stand up and work, after a good whipping... "Geddup you lazy sod..." The Bully is made from a Boar chariot rider...

Frontal view... from the chargers eyes.

"You´re fired"... Update to the latest WHFB rules: The Dwarfs can now fly without the Gyrocopter... :D

I´ll be back with this later... and some scenery for the campaign. Bye!

Taking a little break...

2011-05-10T13:06:00.000+03:00

My computers busted... I´ll be posting again when I get a new one :) Lots of stuff going on anyway... Night goblin "Dwarf lobba" is almost ready with the crew and bully. That´ll be the first posting when I´ll get back. Also we started the Karak eight peaks campaign recently. First game was wictory for my Green Skins :) Some scenery projects are also on the table for the campaign. I´ll be blogging about those (hopefully) soon!

Dust - Minis2

2011-03-29T00:01:00.000+03:00

Finally I found some time to finish the basing on the second Recon Grenadier... and take some pics. Machine gunner is painted with the same colors as the first one. So here´s the pics :)

And here´s the "army of two" group shot :)

Dust - Minis

2011-03-22T17:40:00.000+02:00

On my last posting I planned to paint something green... Well, I was supposed to continue working with my Green skin rock lobba, but something else came up. My friend asked me to paint two Dust Tactics "Recon Grenadiers" minis. I had never heard of this game. The minis looked great... and had some heavy Death Corps feeling in the sculpting... so I instantly agreed :)

I looked the game up from the Fantasy Flight Games site and googled some pictures of the minis. Have to say that the game looks very interesting and minis are cool. Might get me some... In the fist pic the minis already have a white base coat that my buddy had painted with airbrush.

Well on with the painting... I decided to do things my way, and planned my own colors for the minis. Pics on the box and internet looked fine, but I wanted to paint something more than just different shades of gray.
Here´s what I came up with...

First I gave the mini black under coat. On the clothing I used Codex Gray and leather parts with Tausept Ochre. Metal parts were painted with Boltgun Metal. Lenses on the gas mask with Emerald Green. Panzer Faust on the minis back was given 1:1 Knarloc Green and Tausept Ochre base coat. Then I gave heavy wash of Devlan Mud (of course) all over the mini...

Clothing was then high lighted with Codex Gray again and finally with Astronomican gray. Metal parts with Chain Mail. Leather parts with Tausept Ochre and final high light with the same adding some Bleached Bone. Panzer Faust with the original mix, adding some B-Bone to it. Lenses with Emerald green and Skull white mix, then added the white dots. Black parts I high lighted with Codex Gray... and I think that´s it. Very simple palette :)

And here it is with the base done... I´ll be back later with the Machine Gun dude :)

Dawn of War - Final Chapter

2011-03-05T23:16:00.003+02:00

Allrighty... All twenty Terminators painted and delivered. As I finished Squad Seneca at thursday night, I had a good feeling of a job well done... but at the same time it felt a bit sad to have to send all the Termies away, for I thought that the paint job came out really nice. And after many nights of painting, I guess I created some kind of connection with the minis... or maybe that´s just the lack of sleep (I didn´t start to talk to them, or anything... hopefully). I think I have to start a Blood Ravens chapter of my own now :) Well... here´s the pics of the Squad Seneca first.

Squad assembled... The poses are pretty nice. Especially sergeants. I had to cut the arm a bit to get the Storm Bolter up there... but nothing more complicated.

Metal parts painted. Same old recipe... Bolt Gun Metal, washed with Devlan Mud, high lights with Chain Mail. Drops of Mithril Silver used on some details...

White parts and chapter symbols painted... Nothing new here either. Three layers of Bleached Bone for starters, wash with Gryphonne Sepia (very lightly), high lights with B-Bone again, and finally with Skull White.

And here I´m done with the red parts, and bases too. Lets repeat the red recipe too... Army Painter red primer, wash with Devlan Mud, high lights with Blood Red, and finally with Blazing Orange.

And if you´re one of the lucky winners, and you´re wondering "From what squad does my Termie come from..?" Just flip the mini over and check out the base. You´re answer will be there :)

And here´s group shots of all four Squads. Squad Seneca was missing their basing at the time I took the picture... But I had to take the pic right then, for I had to say farewell to the first three squads the next morning, and had no time to finish the bases :( Crap..!

Terminators from the front...

and Terminators from the side.

And here´s the first three squads (Thales, Faidon and Bromius) ready to be transported, and face the future missions and battle tables. I have to say, that this has been the coolest project so far in the field of miniature painting for me. Termies are awesome minis, and they bring a massive power to the battle table, but these four squads also had a great story line behind them... I´ts been a great inspiration to have the Dawn of War as a back ground for the minis. And I hope it somehow shows in the result :) I really loved to paint them all...

Well... Now squad Seneca has left the building too... So now it´s time for new projects. After reading the latest White Dwarf with the new miniature news, I think I´m gonna paint something green... ;)
Good luck to the draw for all of you ... and congratulations to the winners!!!

Dawn of War - Squad Bromius Group shot

2011-03-01T19:10:00.000+02:00

Sorry bout the little delay with the group shot... It´s been hard to find time to write or post anything. Well here it is now :)

I really like how the sergeant came out... Imperial Laurel really brought some Roman discipline feeling for him :)

And here´s another from the above. Mainly just to show that I decided to paint the chapter symbol on the top of the cyclone missile launcher, for the Termie had a limited amount of space on his shoulder :)

Next squad (Suad Seneca) is coming along nicely... I´ll post the WIP pics soon.

Dawn of War - Squad Bromius WIP again

2011-02-26T16:22:00.001+02:00

Squad Bromius almost done. I finished the red parts. Same tricks as with the earlier squads... Army painter Pure Red primer. Wash with Devlan Mud. High lights first with Blood Red and second with Blazing Orange.
I still have few details to fill in... then I´m on to the basing part. I hope I get to take the group shot later tonight.

Dawn of War - Squad Bromius WIP

2011-02-22T23:42:00.001+02:00

Allrighty then... I got the white parts painted, with the same old recipe. Bleached bone under coat (three layers, to get smooth result :), wash with Gryphonne Sepia. High lights with B-Bone again, and finally with Skull White. Then I added some battle damage and chipping. Also got the chapter symbols done... and Sergeants face. I´m happy so far...

Dawn of War - Squad Bromius

2011-02-21T00:05:00.002+02:00

Quick update on DoW-Project... so you can see what I´ve been up to. Here´s the first pic of the Squad Bromius. As I was putting the squad together, I decided to keep it interesting for my self and you out there... and do something differently this time. Nothing too radical... :) but I played around with the bits choices, and assembled the Sergeant without the flag this time, and gave him the Imperial Laurel above his head. I think it was a nice touch... Hope you like it.

Here they are with the primer done (Army painter - Pure red), and washed with Devlan Mud. Metal parts are painted with Boltgun Metal, washed with Devlan Mud, and high lighted with Chain Mail. Gold parts are painted first with a Vallejo 332 for under coat, then with burnished gold. Wash with Devlan Mud. High lights first with Burnished Gold, then with 1:1 Burnished Gold and Mithril Silver. To be continued... :)

DoW - Squad Faidon, Group shot

2011-02-15T21:32:00.000+02:00

Now I got the bases done, and it´s time for a group shot :) So here you have it... Squad Faidon in action, somewhere in Aurelia sector!

I still found some details that needed some more work... they´re all fixed now (I hope :). At least I´m very happy with the result. Bases are covered with Citadel sand, and painted with Grave Yard Earth. Then wash with Devlan Mud, high light (dry brushing ) with Bleached Bone and finally with Skull White on the edges of the base. That leaves a darker tone right under the figure and creates kind of a shadow effect.

Here´s a link to the official Dawn of War site (in Finnish, but you can change the language of course)... I forgot to post it earlier :) You should check it out, if you haven´t done it yet! There´s gonna be some serious Orc / Eldar / Chaos / Tyranid / Blood Raven action coming! One detail really got my attention... Eldars are NOT from Biel-Tan Craftworld (as in 99 from a 100), but they´re actually Alaitoc this time around :D Cool!

Dawn of War - Squad Faidon painted

2011-02-13T15:51:00.000+02:00

Squad Faidon is ready with the paint job. Painting method is a bit different from last squad (Thales)... Recipes for colors are the same, but I just decided to paint all five Termies at the same time. I´m not sure if I managed to paint the squad any faster, but I think the result is somehow better... more coherent. I don´t know... you tell me :) Here´s the close ups...

Teminator with Cyclone missile launcher

Terminator with Assault Cannon

Terminator with Storm Bolter

Terminator with Heavy Flamer...

And Sergeant with Power Sword and Storm Bolter

I will get back with these guys when I get the bases and group shot done... Asap :)

Dawn of War - Squad Faidon

2011-02-11T22:15:00.000+02:00

Just a quick update on the DoW - Project... I´ve been painting the second squad (Faidon) for few nights now. Here are the first pics.

Here they are assembled. I tried to make the poses different from squad Thales. I also used different bits this time.

Here they are with the white parts painted. I decided to paint the Cyclone missiles white this time... I think it´s a good color for them.

And here I´m done with the metal parts... I´m especially happy with the Sergeants power sword. That´s all this time. Gotta go... there´s some painting to do ;)

Dawn of War - Competition Started..!

2011-02-08T20:18:00.001+02:00

Just a quick posting, for now it´s out there... Competition announced and started. Here´s a link to the Game Reactors (Finland) site, where you can take part to the competition. You have to live in Finland to take part through this link! Sweden. Denmark, and Norway will have their own competition of course... And there also, you have to be citizen to take part on the competition. So check out your local Game Reactor site to take part...

Anyways... I got my paint brushes on fire... Working on a second squad. I´ll post some WIP pictures soon :)

DoW - Squad Thales painted

2011-02-06T00:20:00.000+02:00

Scanning the area...

And here´s close ups of all the Terminators, with basing done :)

DoW - Heavy Flamer ready

2011-02-05T21:39:00.000+02:00

I´ts been a while since last posting... Sorry bout that. A bit of a nasty flu in the family :) But I´m back on my feet again, and here´s few WIP pics of the Squad Thales Heavy Flamer.

Here I´m done with painting red... And couple of bullet holes on the left leg. I just painted the holes with black, and then high lighted around the lower part of the hole with Blazing Orange.

And now I´m done with the metal parts. All is done as in the earlier posts... The heating effect on the flamer is done very simply, with few layers of Gryphonne Sepia wash. Then I high lighted the washed area carefully with Mithril Silver.

Here I´ve painted the white parts. Nothing special to say about that... :)

And here´s a shot from a different angle... Hope you like it! So, Now the "Squad Thales" is complete. All five Termies painted, and I´m happy with the result. I´ve already taken the "happy group shot" and I will try and post it later to night... Over and Out, for now.

DoW- Assault Cannon and Cyclone Finished

2011-01-24T00:08:00.000+02:00

Well, I got something done this weekend after all. The Assault Cannon was fast done after the last update. Then I jumped right out to the next one... Terminator with some serious fire power, (and that for my favorite) the Cyclone missile launcher :) But first the pic of the finished Assault Cannon...

I think it turned out OK. At the finishing line I noticed a little detail missing from this one and the previous Termies... I forgot to paint the "flashy green" eyes!!! Well that´s corrected now :)

I´m jumping ahead with the WIP shots on this one... right to the point where I have already painted the metal parts with Bolt gun metal, washed with Devlan Mud, high lighted with Chainmail and finally with Mithril Silver. I think the metal parts came out nicely... specially around the Cyclone "missile tubes". At this point I had also high lighted the red parts, first with Blood Red, and then with Blazing Orange.

Here´s the Terminator from the back, at the same point... Metals and Reds done.

Here´s the finished one... White parts done with Bleached Bone, wash with Gryphonne Sepia, high lights with BBone again, and final high light with Skull White. Then some battle damage to the sholders... Everything done pretty much as told in the previous posting. In this pic you can also see the eyes painted :) I used Emerald Green, high lighted with the same color adding some Bleached Bone... There you have it. So there´s just one to go in this unit... that would be the heavy flamer. I´ll be back with that. And maybe some happy group shot of the unit :)

DoW-Terminator with Assault Cannon, WIP

2011-01-18T12:19:00.000+02:00

I started painting Terminator with Assault Cannon... and this time I remembered to take some pics too :) I actually got carried away with the camera. There´s maybe too many pics for a short update :D Sorry...

Here´s the Termie with just the "Army Painter" Red Primer and heavy wash of Devlan Mud.

This time I started with the metal parts, and gave them a coat of Boltgun Metal. I really like this color, for it covers the areas very neatly with just one coat of paint...

Then I washed the metal parts with two layers of Devlan Mud. I usually wash metal parts with Badab Black, but I have started to turn on the Devlan Mud, for it makes the shadows contrasts little softer...

I made the high lights. First with Chain Mail, and second with just a few drops of Mithril Silver.

Then on with the white parts... Three thin layers of Bleached Bone for starters on all of the white parts.

And then a wash of Gryphonne Sepia... I tried to keep it light as possible.

High lights with Bleached Bone again... and final high light with few careful brush strokes of Skull White.

Finally I added the Chapter symbol on the shoulder, and some battle damage... Damage is made with just little spots or strokes of Graveyard Earth. Underneath of the damaged parts I used a high light of Skull White to make them stand out more clearly. Well that´s all folks... at this time. I´ll be back with new pics shortly :)

Dawn of War - Painting Project started

2011-01-16T01:09:00.000+02:00

The first Drop Pod has landed... bringing me some goodies. I got two of the four Terminator boxes, and some paints. It was enough for me to get started... and I did.

I started to put the first squad together right away... assembly, cleaning up, and drilling the barrels... I tried to give them some cool poses, and I think they came up quite nice :)

For me, the great thing about plastic minis nowadays is that it´s so easy to make them unique with just a pose... Turn the hip or raise the arm, and you got a mini that no one else have ;) Anyways, I had orders (from the Emperor) to assemble the squads to the Maximum Fire Power..! So the upcoming Blood Raven squads don´t follow the rules of the Codex Space Marines... They follow the rule of "Give em Hell". So, following the orders I put all the heavy stuff in the box on the lads here...

I got really carried away painting the first two of the Termies... And forgot to take any WIP pics. Sorry bout that... Still, I got eighteen to go. I hope I will remember to take them at some point :D

Here´s Sergeant Thales and his buddy. Yes... they are still missing the basing. I will add that later. About painting... I started with Army Painter "Red Primer". After that I gave the minis a heavy Devlan Mud wash. I painted up all the white parts with Bleached Bone, and gave them a very light wash of Gryphonne Sepia.After that I high lighted the white parts first with Bleached Bone and then with Skull White. Then I high lighted the red parts with Blood Red, following the high light with Blazing Orange. Metal parts are made with a Boltgun Metal base color and wash with Devlan Mud (twice). High lights first with Chain Mail and second with Mithril Silver... The Chapter symbol is not the "official" one I guess. But it´s a symbol that I can paint freehand, twenty times in a row... and make it look decent :)

Hope you like them... Over and Out for now!

Terminator and his little friend

2011-01-09T12:42:00.001+02:00

While waiting for DOW-painting project to start... I had to dig out my own terminators to get into Terminator mood :) Here´s the first one painted...

He has a friend too... The vulture has found out, that it´s practical to hang out with this dude! Lots of corpses to feast on, when Auto Cannon starts to sing...

Auto Cannon is from Dark Angels veteran box... as are the other bits with the feathers on them. They were really cool details and I just had to use them on this one. From there I got the Idea of a vulture on his shoulder, for I was thinking... Where the hell did he get those feathers on his armour :o I took the birdie from WHFB Giant box.

About painting... On armour I used the old Hellfire recipe: Base coat of Red Core. Wash with Devlan Mud. First dry brush with Blood Red, following an other with Blazing Orange. Finally some high light spots with Yellow. Vulture was painted with base coat of Graveyard Earth. Wash with Devlan Mud. First highlight with 1:1 Graveyard Earth and Bleached Bone. Second with Bleached bone only... Can´t remember the mix on the vultures head... Sorry :(
I tried to make the Auto Cannon look like it was gilded long time ago... and now the gilding had worn out.
Didn´t quite capture the feeling... but it´s ok :) Maybe I´ll post another picture when I get the base done...

Dawn of War - Painting Project

2010-12-26T20:49:00.000+02:00

Massive cool painting project fel on my lap the other day... Old friend who works for PAN vision Finland contacted me. He told me there´s going to be Warhammer 40 000 related competition (or a draw) in Game Reactor-game magazine , in honour of upcoming Dawn of War II - the Retribution..!

The "competition" is held in four countries... Finland, Sweden, Norway and Denmark. And the price is going to be (this is where I come in) five fully assembled and (master class :) painted Terminators!!! The chapter is going to be Blood Ravens of course... as they are in Dawn of War. I´ve never painted Blood Ravens before, so there´s going to be some research coming up...

Finnish game store Puolenkuun Pelit was kind to come along in the project, and is going to deliver the Terminators, some paints and hobby stuff to get the job done! Humble thanks for that..!

In the meantime... Better go and practice on my own Terminators before the goods arrive. Painting twenty Blood Ravens is gonna be huge job... And I´m gonna try to paint them in best standard I possibly can. There will be lots of WIP pictures from the project of course.

Merry Christmas everybody! And happy New Year... if I don´t have time to write before next year.
Over and Out...

Duck for Rune Quest

2010-12-05T17:38:00.003+02:00

Finished this cool little mini last night... I happen to have one player in our Rune group that plays a Duck (don´t ask me why), so now that I got my hands on this mini, I decided to give it some paint job.

Nothing special to say about the paint job... Just took the high lights a bit further than normally... First I painted the whole mini with base colors and washed it with Devlan Mud. For high lighting I used the same base colors just added white to the base color after every layer. This result is made with three high lighting layers.

I really like this mini... Just don´t know the sculptor, for I bought it from a
acquaintance, and didn´t ask him. Only thing I found online was Duck Adventurer box sold by http://www.trollandtoad.com/p155086.html . It seems to have come out from one of these boxes...

Bonus picture of the week... "Encounter near the river of Cradles" :) Lunars vs Adventurers

Savage Orc Boss

2010-11-24T21:31:00.001+02:00

I managed to get my hands on ten oldies Savage Orc Boar Boyz... with a nice price :) Correction... Two of them are plain Boar Boyz, and two are "SOBB" Shamans. So there´s gonna be some convershu´n clinic mayhem before I get the unit of ten ready. Shamans can be quite easily transferred to boyz, but the Boar Boyz need some cutting and green stuff to become savage...

I started painting this mini as a fast paint project... but soon realized that it was full of beautiful details that I had to give some attention.

The Orc skin tone is painted with four different layers of green, from dark to lighter tone...(always leaving the previous layer to show a bit from the edges) First a base coat of Orchide Shade, then other layer with Knarloc Green, third with Gretchin Green, and last layer with Gretchin and some Vallejo 332 yellow added to it. I like the result. It makes the Orc skin a bit yellowish, as they used to be at the 90´s :)

I just had to paint the leopard skin on the boss, for I´ve seen it done in some old White Dwarf (or somewhere), and it really made an exotic touch for the Orc. I also decided to paint the bracelet´s golden and few giant gems for the chief to make him look filthy rich... as he had some higher status in the gang :)

The symbol on the shield is not a Halloween pumpkin. It´s supposed to represent boars snout and jaws... but I screwed it up! :D

Oh... and the cool stones on the background are just stones... that I collected from the beach last summer, when we went to Greek.

Captin Morg´n finished

2010-11-06T22:14:00.000+02:00

Finally... I had inspiration and energy to attach the banner to dear capitains gentle hand... and paint it. The paint job on the banner was pretty fast. (One night project to attach and paint)... I wanted to keep the banners "art" really simple... (as an Orc artist would :) But still it had to have the Piraty feeling on it, without the usual boring skull theme. So I decided to leave the good old skull away, and use simply the crossed bones.

I like the paint job on the banner, but still have second thoughts about the symbol... Is it piraty enough..?!

All together... I´m very happy about overall result. It was my biggest single miniproject ever... The Orc is totally kit bashed. Axe-hand from Black Orcs, banner hand from Arrer boyz, torso and legs from Orc Champ, head from 40K Orc... And the "Wyvern" is actually a Dragon taken from Malekith, the Witch King of Naggaroth box.

So after all that cutting, gluing, green stuffing and painting, I´m very relieved to get it off my hands :) Now I´m just waiting to see Capitain in action... on the battle field. And hoping he´s not gonna get a cannon ball on his head in the first round of the game.

Old Scool Squig Hopper

2010-11-01T20:28:00.000+02:00

I managed to get five of these old Squig Hoppers in my hands with a fair price of two euros per mini... Here´s first of them painted. It was pure fun to paint... and didn´t take more than two hours to finish :) I sure have the new hoppers too, but I have a "thing" for these old ones... I can´t quite put my finger on it. Maybe the sculpting on these is just nasty as a Gobbo can be.

More Rune Quest Minis

2010-10-30T14:14:00.005+03:00

Here´s one more Humakti and Lunar soldier... Really fast job this time (in my terms). I think 45 minutes per mini. Lunar came out a bit crappy, I think, but I really like the Humakti. Colors are nice and paint job is fast but not too sloppy (as in the case of Lunar soldier :)
Well... next time I should do better

Fast and furious from behind... Sorry bout bad quality pics :(

Sword Master continued

2010-10-25T20:10:00.003+03:00

I have made some progress with my first rank Sword Masters... Unit Champ and bases are unfinished, but otherwise they are ready for battle. Ranks behind these fellows are going to be fast paint stuff... I might expand the first rank at some point, for I want to be able to try the new "horde rule"... It´s mean! With Sword Master skill and two attacks with 2h-weapon they will chop anything that comes in their way :o

Epic Stuff

2010-10-24T14:57:00.009+03:00

I was cleaning my miniature cupboard few months ago... (Had to make some room for new minis). My wife says that I have too much of those "toy soldiers", so I had to mastermind some way to fit them in the cupboard or listen to nagging all day long...

Anyway... I found a few old dusty boxes from back of the upper shelf. My old Eldar Epic miniatures, still in a box... I remember playing Epic once in the early 90´s, and enjoying it alot. After that we somehow forgot the game, for we played alot of different things back then...

I got really excited of all this tiny stuff, and decided to find out how large army I could put together... (and so I forgot to clean up the cupboard)

I counted that with few extra purchases I could nicely have a 6500pts army according to the latest rulebook... I had easily over 10 War hosts of infantry, over 30 Falcons, lots of Bikes and Artillery... So I ordered a one more infantry War Host from GW and went shopping... from an old collector, who I new, was selling he´s stuff away with silly prices :)

I made some really good deals... with only 2 euro´s per blister. I had to make lot of "Counts as" research with these old minis, because the minis and their names had changed many times since 90´s.

During autumn I even had a little time to paint few of these tiny little things... here they are.

I decided to paint them on Biel Tan colors... a bit of a common choice, but I´ve always liked that color theme a lot.
With a little planning I found a nice way to paint them in a bearable time...

Close up of a Falcon...

Close up of infantry... I like that Biel Tan banner :)

Walkers are my favourite minis of Eldars...

If I only had more time..! It would be so cool to have whole army painted...

Rune Quest Miniatures

2010-10-10T18:05:00.006+03:00

Hello everybody! It´s been a while since my last posting... Busy with the job and three kids :D Actually I´ve managed to do some painting at nights, when it´s nice and quiet... but haven´t got the energy to post anything... Now I decided to try and update my blog with the latest hobby pics. I have made some cool progress with Sword Masters and Dragon princes, and have fast painted some Squig Hoppers etc. But here´s another speed painting project that I started recently. It has been a good practice for me... My firs painted minis for Rune Quest (of many to come).

The Lunars on the left are actually Warlord Games Roman auxiliaries. Humakti on the right is from Field of Glory Celt warband regiment box (Look more pics from earlier posts).

Lunar armor have base coating of 1:1 Scorched Brown and shining gold. Red Gore on the clothing and shields. Scorched Brown on the leather and wooden parts. Skin color with Vajello 332... Then heavy wash over whole mini with Devlan Mud. High lights with Shining Gold on the bronze parts, Blood Red on the clothes and shield, and finally for the wood and leather parts 1:1 Scorched Brown and some Vallejo 332.

Humakti fellow was painted with almost the same colors as lunars... except for the blue pants. For those I used Enchanted Blue base coat, wash with the same Devlan Mud as the rest of the mini... The gray pattern on the pants with Astronomican Gray... and that´s it.

It took me less than hour per mini to finish. In my standards that´s really fast :) I like the results, and planning to paint some more in near future... It would be cool to have some Rune Quest battles going on with miniatures, for I´ve never used minis before when Game Mastering Rune...

Night Goblin Wolf Riders ready

2010-06-10T22:09:00.007+03:00

So... I finally finished the Wolf Riders. The first six miniatures anyways. Now I have to go and buy some more LotR Wargs to make a full unit of twelve Riders.

I really tried to work as fast as I could with these fellows. So I used about six hours per mini. That includes converting, repositioning of the limbs, painting and of course basing. For me that´s really fast :) To be honest, the standard took me about six extra hours to paint...

I think my home made bases (actually made them at work) look pretty nice with the sand and dead grass. The gobbo on the left side is on original GW cavalry base, but the rest of the unit are on home made. You can see that the original is little lower... Otherwise the measures are the same.

Here´s a closeup of the banner. At first I was just gonna leave it red with the blood drops dripping down the banner. But it was too Vampire Counts look alike, and made the unit look too serious, so I decided to paint it as a goofy pirate flag that suits my army theme. I think the Orcs and Goblins army is the last funny army in the Warhammer world nowadays, so I try to keep that image up :) I tried to make the skull look like Captin Morg´n miniature, with the eyepatch and hair style.

I specially like the musician mini Banging the Gong... I made him carry a mean looking heavy spear on he´s back too.

"Get it on, Bang a gong, Get it on..."

Captin Morg´n WIP, and some Speed Painting

2010-06-03T21:31:00.009+03:00

It´s been some time since my last post. I´ve have painted a lot, but haven´t found time to post anything :) Wolf Riders are ready, some progress with the Sword Masters, Captin Morg´n almost finished and I took part to local speed painting competition too... Lots of stuff, but now few pics of dear Capitano!

If you´ve been reading earlier post´s, you can see that the banner is gone! (It´s coming back later) I wanted to change Captin´s pose a bit, so I removed the old arm and added a new from Orc arrer boy. I attached the shield to the back of the arm and made the strap from Green Stuff. And the old head is gone too... I really liked the previous one, but it wasn´t Piraty enough for me :( So I decided to switch the head with WH40 000 Green skin that came with White Dwarf magazine some time ago... It has eyepatch and everything :) Funny I didn´t come to think of it earlier.

The Wyrm is now finished painting. I really like the sculpting and pose of the head. Looks nasty and baity. "Chomp chomp"

As I mentioned, the banner is coming back later... Hopefully this weekend :o. It´s gonna make the mini look even bigger and more threatening ( I hope ).

Next time when I have the chance to play WH I´m definitely going to put Capitain on the table. Just afraid that hes gonna receive "everything" on the shooting and magic phases :)

The Wyrm is crapping skulls...

And finally something else that I´m gonna squeeze in to this post...
I took part of local speed painting competition. I was really surprised to win the first prize, for the speed painting is really not my thing. Or at least it wasn´t. This competition really opened my eyes for new way of painting. I have always tried to make every miniature look as neat as possible, with all the details painted, shaded, high lighted and so on... In that way I´m not gonna finish painting any army in my life time.
Anyway... now I noticed that fast painted minis can really look good even if all the details are not painted. And who´s gonna see the missing details in my vast unit of 40 goblins for example. I see and know of course, but no one else doesn´t even care!

So... We had one hour to paint two miniatures. We could choose what to paint from the minis that the store had prepared for us. I was lazy and picked two of the new Skull Pass gobbos... They seemed to be the easiest ones to paint :) Never has one hour felt so short. I didn´t have time to paint the belts or even teeth for them, but I managed to get a result that pleased me, and surprisingly, the judges too..!

Now I´m impatient to get my gobbo horde on the painting table, and show them some speed brush!

More Warg Riders

2010-04-16T22:43:00.008+03:00

I found some time to get two more Night gobbo Warg Riders converted and painted. Again, I tried to be as fast as I could... and I like the results

Here´s one with a bow...

And one throwing a spear...

The mushrooms came out nice...

Both riders are on a new, self made bases... I think they look just fine :)

Self made Cavalry bases

2010-04-14T22:12:00.006+03:00

After the first "Night Goblin Warg rider" finished I was facing a broblem... No more "extra" cavalry bases. The LOtR wargs naturally comes with a round base :)

So I decided to give it a try, and make my own bases from 4mm plywood at my work place...

First I adjusted the right measures to the circular saw and cut out a stack of base size pieces.
After that I sanded all the base edges with a sanding machine... and I think they turned out just fine!A bit scattered formation... The measures came just right. Only the thickness of the original base is less than 4mm, but that changes nothing in game terms. Now the mini is just 1,5 mm higher :)

Only the sanding of the edges came a bit in a wrong angle, but I can live with it. Next time I´ll do better :) (That´s official base under the Warg Rider)

And once I was at it... I also made a movement tray from same materials, which came out a bit too wide :o for I measured the width for 25mm wide bases. And the cavalry base is actually 24mm wide. In the rulebook it says 25x50, but in reality the original base is 24x50 ;)

The whole project took me about 30 minutes... I think it´s not bad. And I saved a bit of money too :D

Night Goblin Warg Riders

2010-03-31T00:17:00.001+03:00

I was wondering the other night, what to do with my old, unopened Night Goblin regiment box... Since I bought two boxes of "Battle for Skull Pass", I´ve had a horde of cool looking new Night Goblins... and no use for the good old regiment box :(
Suddenly, when I was reading old issue of White Dwarf, the Lord of the Rings sections "Warg Riders" made me remember that I have no Goblin Wolf Riders in my Orcs and Goblins army...
I really like the sculpting job on Wargs... so I decided to buy one box and see how my Night Goblins would ride them. (And they would ride... with a price of 22,50 Euros for six Wargs)

On my way home from the gaming shop, I was still thinking if this was a good idea... I didn´t know if the Wargs were big enough... for I remembered that the LotR is in a smaller scale game :o
When I got home I noticed that my fear was unnecessary. After few minutes of repositioning of the Gobbos feet and arms it fitted on the Warg like a glove.

Then on the painting... This time I really decided to keep it fast. Black under coat for starters.
High lights on the Gobbos robe with mix of Enchanted blue and Black. Then new high light with previous mix and adding some white...

Gobbos leather clothing with Scorched Brown and high lights with Grave yard Earth. Another high lighting with previous mix, adding Bleached Bone...
Gobbos skin was first painted with Orkhide Shade. High light with Knarloc Green, and another with Gretchin Green. Teeth and nails with Bleached Bone.

Warg was painted with the same way as leather parts of the gobbo... except the face and feet were left black. Then the black parts were high lighted with Codex Grey and finally with Astronomican Grey.

In the shield I tried to get some pirate feeling... since it´s the theme of my Green Skin army :)

All this... Repositioning of the limbs, painting job and basing took me six hours..! That´s a New record for me. I really enjoyed fast painting, after endless hours of painting High Elves that are full of details. It´s not my best painting job, but I think it´s very rewarding to get something finished so fast...

Hope you like it :)