Swordmasters of Hoeth

Swordmasters

Swordmasters test paint scheme

I got some High Elf models for my birthday and I'm working on my test scheme for how I want to paint them.  I'm pretty happy with how they are turning out, though there are a few things to finish/change.  I'm going to highlight the purple up to a lighter color and work on the whites a little bit.  Also need to figure out what I want to do for bases.  I kind of want to try and sculpt and cast some temple bases, but that will probably be out in the future.

Earth Reborn

Earth Reborn

I've been getting burnout from painting all of the 40k lately and decided to do a quick mental cleanser by working on another project.  Yesterday I did a quick paint up of the Miniature from Earth Reborn a cool looking post apocalyptic board game with some nice miniatures.  Took me an evening and afternoon to finish up.  My favorite is the guy with the buzz-saw and green goo flowing into his brain.

Skimmer WIP

So I pulled out all my old Eldar skimmers to repaint.  One falcon needs some repair work done on it, and both Falcon turrets are need of some TLC before they get painted.  The Wave Serpents all had their guns removed so that I can figure out a good way to magnetize them.  I decided against stripping the paint, as I found it doesn't come off evenly, and with thin airbrush coats the texture comes through.  They are not perfect, but considering that I got them for extremely cheap second hand, I'm not going to complain.

I used all Vallejo paint at this point.  White primer through the airbrush (only way to prime here in Seattle with the weather), followed by Vallejo GC Jade Green, Turquoise both thinned out with Matte Medium and a little water/flow aid.  The Fire Prism crystal is painted with Vallejo Model Air Yellow, Orange, and Scarlet Red.  Next step will be to varnish it and start on black lining.  

Models ready for a new paint job

Primed

Jade Green applied

Turquoise

Howling Banshee WIP

Howling Banshees

Howling Banshee close up

Howling Banshee rear veiw

Warlock

Farseer WIP

Worked on the Farseer last night and am almost done with him, a few more gems to do and figure out how to base him, since he has terrain built in already.  I decided on the power weapon effects using the same purple and magenta that I use on the majority of gems in the army to tie it all together.

Mymeara Eldar Farseer Front

Mymeara Eldar Farseer Back

Ranger paint test scheme

Ranger with Snow Camo Cloak

I did a test paint scheme on a Ranger tonight.  Ended up trying 4 shades of grey and white paint to do a snow camo scheme.  Pretty happy with how it turned out.  I need to do some work on his backpack and gear and get some details done on the front, but it gives me template for the squad.

Painting change-up: Romulans

What do you do when you get tired of painting the same army over and over?  Change it up and get something totally unrelated on the painting table.  I picked up the Romulan Expansion  for Star Trek Fleet Captains for Z for Christmas this year, and finally got them painted up for her.  Fun little board game, that captures a lot of the feel of the Star Trek universe.  It was really nice to be using different colors and styles of models.  Makes it easier to go back and work on the larger projects of entire armies.

Howling Banshee and Fire Dragon color test

Did a quick test of two of the aspect warrior types for the Mymeara. Wasn't sure if I was going to do them in traditional colors or in the jade and turquoise armor with accents from their aspects. I think I'm going to go with the scheme below as I would like to have the army to look cohesive as a whole, with individual accents for the various aspect warriors.

Mymeara so far

Death Company WIP

First five of my Death Company.  Still need to finish some details and paint up the backpacks.  I have magnetized their backs so they can be run with jump packs or on foot.  I've painted them up white rather than the traditional black to differentiate the odd past of the Lamenters and the black rage.

Painting a Storm Raven

So with one Storm Raven down, I figure I should learn a few things from the first build and painting that I could really do a better paint job, with much less effort.  The first thing was not gluing everything together, rather do sub assemblies that can be combined when the majority of the painting work was done.  So I built the wings, engines, and hull separately and then primed and airbrushed the base coat.  I'm much better with the airbrush now as well, and the finish on this one is much better.  I'm using Vallejo GC Heavy Ochre as my base color (thinned down about 1:1).

I also masked off a couple parts of the model that will have the checkered pattern on it.  I used blue painters tape, and then cut squares out and laid out in the area to do the black.  Much easier than free-handing all of them, though I will need to go do some cleanup.  I'm planning on adding more black and red details to break up the yellow and give it some nice contrast.  This model is also magnetized, and I made sure the polarity lined up with the other Storm Raven so I won't have to keep the different bits separate from each other.  The result should be finishing the model in a fraction of the time, to a higher quality.

Sanguniary Terminator WIP

Did some work on the Sanguinary Priest Terminator model made out of a Grey Knight Terminator.  Still need to clean up and do the power sword, but it came together super quickly and much better than any previous attempt at a white figure.  Followed Ron's guide on From the Warp here.  I'm going to eventually go back and repaint the other priest that I did using this awesome method.  

Lamenters Land Raider WIP

 

 

 

A few pictures of the Land Raider I'm working on and the guys who ride inside.  I've been enjoying jumping back and forth between my two armies and working on terrain, it keeps me from burning out on painting particular color.  Really happy with how the Land Raider is coming, just need to do some touch ups and do the black-lining.  Most everything is magnetized so it can be run as a Crusader or Redeemer.  

I am also building another LR that I got for my birthday as well.  I imagine a list where I run two of them, one with TH/SS Terminators and the other full of Death Company.  Shove that down the middle and it should pretty much take care of anything.  Also armor 14 seems like it could be a little more survivable in this edition, but we will see.

Wraithseer WIP #2

Broke the airbrush out last night after finishing the assembly up on the Wraithseer and put the base coats down.  One thing I love about this army is how fast you can paint it, while having it still look nice.  Still need to do the ten trillion gems and other detail work.  I'm going to do the spear blade and shield with the airbrush in some nice purples when it's dried enough to mask off.  Will be putting snow on the base as well.

 

 

Ice Table WIP #3

 

Did a little more work the last few days.  Put the third board section together (also have enough left over to do a fourth board later), and sanded the flat snowy portions of the board.  Next step will to do the white over-brushing to give a better snow effect.  I will probably end up gloss coating the board as well to have it look a little more snow-like.  I still need to figure out how to do the iced-over river.  Probably use resin with a little white and blue paint mixed in to cloud it up a little and give that a try.  Also time to start making plans for the various terrain bits that I will be doing.  Probably will start on the ice-crystal forests tonight and plan some pumping station style buildings.  Not sure what else I want to do.

I also found a similar board here that someone has built, and will be using some of his ideas, especially on the ice crystal forest.  Hopefully mine looks as good when it's finished.

Ice Table WIP #2

 

 

I managed to do more work on the ice table.  I attached the foam to the plywood and put a base coat of light blue paint on the whole thing.  Also picked up the rest of the materials for the third board section, as I didn't have enough of the 1.5" foam to do the board.  Also you can see the test fitting of some of the details that are going to be added.  For the third section I'm considering narrowing the river down and maybe building some sort of bridge over it.  Though I want to be able to stack these boards on each other, so most detail needs to be removable.  Also I need to figure out what to do for the pumping station in the middle of the river. 

War Walker WIP

Mymeara War Walker 

I worked on a War Walker tonight for my Mymeara army.  I'm really excited so far with how it's coming out.  Looks much better than my old paint scheme.  It's also nice to have a break from painting so much yellow with the Lamenters, though I will continue to work on them as well.  The weapons are magnetized and will be white and black when they are painted up and the upper body is also magnetized to the legs for transport.  As a bonus most of the work is done with the airbrush so the army should paint up pretty fast.

I'm going to try something different with the bases and use some water-effects to have an ice-world theme.  Also looking at different products and ways to do snow.  I've seen the baking soda methods as well as the crushed glass products.  Might have to try a few out to see what works best.

Lamenters Paint Scheme Part 1 - Assault Marine

Just wanted to document the process I am currently using to paint my Lamenters.  First up, yellow is hard.  It's a major pain to get right.  I have gone for a browner/darker yellow rather than a bright yellow.  Second, I'm not the greatest painter as I haven't been doing this for very long, but you might find something useful. My goal is to get a nice looking army on the tabletop and nothing more.

A few things on assembly and preparation. I would definitely magnetize the jump packs, or at least paint them separately.  They make the shoulder pads really tricky to get right and doing seperate would make this a lot easier.  My first 20 or so models were all glued on before hand they take a lot longer to paint.  as a bonus for Blood Angels codex armies, you can run them on foot (though personally the reason I chose to run a BA codex army is the jump infantry.

Step 1:  Prime the models.  I do a two part prime, first with black to get into the shadows and then white from above.  I would definately recommend a white primer when painting yellow.  It takes just too many coats to get a decent coverage over black, though the new GW base colors might work if you want to go that way.

Step 2: Base Coat yellow.  I used my airbrush to put down the base coat using Vallejo GC Heavy Ochre.  You really need to water these down to put them through an airbrush as they are similar to the foundation line of paints from GW.

Step 3:  Paint the base with Charadon Granite.

Step 4: Base coat everything that will be metallic with black.  No need to be very neat here as we will be fixing all the messy brushing later in the process.

Step 5:  Base coat white.  I'm using the new GW base paint Ceramite White.  It only takes 2-3 coats rather than 4-5 that most whites took.  I had good luck in the past with using Vallejo off-white and then bringing it up to white, but this seems to work fairly well.

Step 6:  Eyes.  I do mine green starting with P3 Gnarls Green and then highlighting that with GW Scorpian Green.  A wash of Thraka green wash brings it together nicely (not pictured here).  Also note that I'm still being messy as this will get cleaned up later.

Step 7:  Paint purity seals, aquila, etc with P3 Menoth White Base.

Step 8:  Wash armor and aquila with Gryphonne Sepia wash.  I apply this liberally, but you want to make sure you get a good coat in the cracks and recesses.  Pictured here still wet.  I generally would do this step last in a painting session to let dry overnight.  You can do some of the later steps pictured here before this wash is done.

Step 9:  Paint metallic areas with Boltgun Metal followed with a wash of Badab Black.  Again not being too careful here, we can clean up still.

Step 10:  Checks!  This is where things get difficult.  I use a 0.3mm drafting pencil to draw my lines in and then go in with black first.  This will be tricky and I am still not super neat and tidy about it.  Follow up with the Ceramite White to cleanup as best you can.

I will continue this later with part 2 where I go and finish up with highlights and cleanup the mess made so far.