Ahh… the dreaded Reaper Bolt Thrower. Not much to be said about it other than this is another paint job from the beginning of the army but other than the metal areas I think it looks pretty good and looks great for a table-top piece. I had created a larger base for the unit but in never got passed to the primed black stage, perhaps when I finish it I will repost with the unit on the base.
This is my fourth Iron Warriors Rhino finished. Complete with plenty of chevrons and looking fittingly dirty. Finished up the details on Rhino #4 which mostly entailed the stripes and spotlight. After the last Rhino’s attempt at doing the strips freehand I decided to cheat a bit on this one and mask the black areas off with scotch tape. I started by taping all the area around where I wanted black so I could spray it. I then took some clear masking fluid and sponged it into the area. This way I could take an eraser to it and uncover the metal area underneath. I then sprayed it black, waited for it to dry and then covered it with scotch tape. After marking out each strip, I cut it apart with the handy knife and removed the tape where I wanted the yellow. After painting up the yellow, I removed the tape and washed the whole thing with a sepia wash. Once that was dry, I rubbed off the clear masking fluid to finish the worn effect. Overall I’m …
Ok so you have a descent camera, a light box, and nice looking models you want to share with world. Now what? Well for me I spend a few minutes to edit each picture before posting it online. My program of choice: This is an open source (and free) version of Photoshop that can do way more than I will ever need but it does the things I do need very well. For this tutorial I will go over cropping and white balance. Cropping There may be ways to take the perfect picture so that you don’t need to crop out the extra white space but I find that if I zoom in to the point the model fills the screen the depth of field is too narrow and much of the model is blurry. Below is a pre-cropped image from my light box from my recently finished terminator squad. This is an easy fix in GIMP: click on the rectangular select tool and drag it so it roughly contains your model. Now there should …
Decided to finish each of the Rhinos one at a time, so here is the first. I credit Wienas for the idea o f hazard strips on the front panel, so thanks for that! I think they turned out ok. I made the mistake of deciding to paint the interior and although it turned out ok, the amount of work that went into something that may never been seen any way… not so sure.
. Next up in my Dark Elf Army postings is the neat, but ineffective Cold One Chariot. This was also one of the first I painted when getting back into the hobby so forgive the not-so-great painting 🙂 As much as the temptation is to go back and repaint the model, it is good enough to sit on the table and I would rather focus on the units I have yet to paint. In some ways I am glad they didn’t redo the chariot with the new cold ones. As cool as the new dinos look for the knights, I like the look of the bulkier beasts for the chariot. Though it they redid the whole model in plastic I would probably buy another, though this model hasn’t found it into many of my army lists in 7th edition, and may even less in 8th. Any one have success using chariots in 8th edition? On the plus side they can no longer be auto-killed with S7+ hits but being single model units they would have …
So as I continue to balance between completing old units and finishing new ones (see the Mentor Legion guys I just finished) I have put the finishing touches on my 4th Iron Warriors Terminator squad (WIP shots here). There wasn’t much left to finish on this squad. I finished the base using my new style and painted on the XIV to mark them as part of the 14th Grand Company. Standard bolter and power ax with the obligatory Space Marine helmet. Heavy flamer and power fist with the cool helmet from the Sorcerer Lord kit. Chainfist time and a trophy rack with my Brother-in-law’s Hive Fleet Behemoth head on display. Combi-flamer and another power ax. This is by far the coolest chainfist, fitting I also give him the combi-meltagun.One more squad off the painting table and marked green in the status page! Next up is the rhinos…
May I now introduce you to my Dark Elf army. When I first got back into the hobby a few years back the Dark Elves were the army I started back up with since they had just been re-released. I choose to post the pictures of my Masters/Dreadlords first because it shows the improvement in my painting most distinctly. The new dreadlord model was one of the last I painted before moving back over to 40k where as the old dreadlord model was one of the first I painted when getting back into the army. After taking the pictures I realized the base was never finished, he is now moved to the painting desk to remedy this. The weapon arm was swapped with the sword from the Cold One Knights set as I didn’t like the pose of the model with the hook weapon, I’m saving that for something else. I would often army this character with the Heart Seeker sword which is why I attempted to paint the sword with the red tone, not the …
Back to my Mentor Legion Tactical Squad that I’m working on as a test pilot program for some loyalists. I was finally able to finish the last few details of the squad, including the base and matte varnish. I’m still playing around with some various backgrounds and picked up a pack of card stock of a couple shades of tan and gray. For this shot I used the dark gray card as the tans turned out too yellow and light. The only thing I don’t like about using the card stock is the lines, oh well. On to the individual shots: The Captain pointing away with his yellow power sword and Mk. VII Armor. The sensor guy with his grenade. I like how the numeral 3 came out on his shoulder pad. Standard bolter marine but with an added scope. Meltagun, note the extra targeting lenses, I always have issues hitting with meltaguns, so I figured it could only help right? And the missile launcher. I added a bit of script to the tube …
Well I wasn’t able to finish the squad over the weekend, but I made some good progress. Until now I had been debating on how the Mentor Legion would show company/squad markings. They are a codex chapter but having different colored shoulder bands wouldn’t fit their look. I couldn’t find any thing scouring the interwebs so I decided on knee pads for the company color and Gothic numbering for the squad. This squad has been placed in the 2nd Company, 3rd Tactical Squad. This guy was my first attempt at free handing the tactical arrow and it turned out terrible! So I opted for the half-cheating approach. I used the transfers from the kit for the inner white arrow and repainted the red edging and then repainted the white inner area. I used the transfers on the other tactical arrows as well with an over-paint to cover the decal. I tried using the same technique for the Gothic number 3 but the decal was way too big for the curved surface and kept bulging. After trying to …
Well I was finally able to get all the white done on this small squad. I think the last two guys got a little rushed in my anxiousness to get them done, but overall they seem to match up pretty well. Now with the white done there is little left to do other than details: the aquilas, purity seals, squad markings, and the bases. Hopefully I can get these done over the weekend. I also tried a couple different background for the photo shoot as white models on a white background don’t work all that well. For both of these shots I grabbed a nearby t-shirt and crumpled it up as the backdrop. Tan backdrop: Dark brown backdrop: What do you guys think about the different backgrounds? I am also going to try out a dark, textured paper somewhat like what Massive Voodoo uses. [amazonify]B000NH42Y0[/amazonify]
The ever faithful Rhinos! These are 3 of the 4 rhino transports currently possessed by the 14th Grand Company with the 4th being an ancient piece needing some fierce care before being shown to the public. All three are in various states of near-done. Mostly it is the various copulas that need to be finished and details added. Oh, and this one is now missing the roof, some how got left at the LFGS and never found, teaches me to not just seal it up and hide the inside. I made heavy use of the washes for all three tanks, perhaps too heavy. I wanted to give a worn, weathered look which is often hard for ‘silver’ areas as they don’t have paint chips. Instead they came off a bit blotchy and may need some touch ups… we’ll see. [amazonify]B0009JJZ2G[/amazonify]
So the white armor is takes a while to do… After painting this guy’s base coat I realized that to take full advantage of the paint mix I needed to complete him before moving on. I think his armor looks smoother than the Sargent but doesn’t show the same depth and shading. win some, lose some yeah? Anyway the steps I used to paint the white. I started with mixing 1:1:1:5 mix of graveyard earth, codex grey, skull white and water. I used this to pretty much cover everything except the recesses in the armor or where it met other colors. I then added more and more white and water and added about 6 or so layers focusing more on the ridges and ‘tops’ of the white areas. I finally used pure skull white to highlight the hard, upper edges. Here’s a shot of my messy desk area. In the background you can see some Iron Warrior Terminators awaiting finishing touches on their bases. Center back is my really basic ‘light box’ to take WIP shots …