Dawn of War - Painting Project

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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!