Miscellaneous...40k Space Marines, Painting Workshop, Go-Karts, etc.

Space Marines
Got a bit of modeling, playing with a theme sort of spinning off of the crested Corinthian style helmet, or Sons Sparta marines that someone did years ago. I think they turned out pretty good.






River City Hobbies, La Crosse, WI
This coming Saturday RCH is having a painting contest, I'll be one of the judges with a couple other veterans. There will be prizes for the winner in a number of cateogories. I will also be giving a tutorial on painting and may even be coaxed into delivery a seminar on sculpting/converting.

Go-Karts
My retired dad has many crazy ideas and love for motorsports. When you have 40 acres of land in the country its easy to make a 1/10 mile dirt track and get some go-karts and a few of us crazy family members together for racing over a holiday weekend. Its getting seriours and is a hell of a lot of fun. These ain't those incredibly slow rental karts either.

WHFB 8th Edition
I really liked the fantasy game when I started playing, still do. What I've been reading of the rumors, I'm very apprehensive about 8th edition. Not sure I'm going to like it, we'll see how much comes true, but my initial thoughts are not good. It may work out for my coming orc army though.

Indy 500
I didn't watch all of the race, what I saw was much better than the 600 in Charlotte. The last lap crash, where the car went cartwheeling up into the catch fence was just crazy scaring, and appears one of the drivers will be in a bodycast for 3 months. Good thing about Charlotte was Jimmie Johnson crashed not once, but twice. Not a fan of his.

Rampage vs. Evans
Did not get to see it, but not surprised about the outcome. One of the crazy things I heard about this was that movie company for the A-Team threatened to sue Rampage if he lost the bout. Just dumb.

Go Blackhawks
Be nice to see another Wisconsin Badger hoist the cup in Adam Burrish.

Chaotic Sorcerery...not making the cut

Originally this guy was going to be my chaos sorcerer. Once and while you have this vision of what your conversions are going to be, and they turn out to be something entirely different. That's what happened with this guy. I initially liked the conversion, painted it and came to the conclusion that it just didn't work.


It came off very stale and boring in my opinion. So the model has been cut from the lineup.

Don't worry it has found a new home already. Like many of my conversions that I don't use, they normally end up for sale at some point. Although most I realize they are not working before I spend the effort painting. This one though I wanted to turnout, and it just didn't work. So that said, new sorcerers are coming soon. Nurgle....Tzeentch....Oh My. Just hope 8th edition doesn't completely blow chunks and trashes my plans for chaos.

So there you have it...

And oh by the way....Orc building is underway....big massive units....with much animosity.

Last of the Mutating the Empire...

Yep this is the last of the mutated empire flaggies. I've had lots of fun with them. This group features some multi-armed types, and another with the head in just a wrong location. Oh the misgivings of the empire. The owner of all of these models, really liked them, hope to one day bring some painted pics of them to you, as he will be providing the paintwork.

And me, I'm moving on to the next project, orcs, orcs, orcs, and wab crusaders. Along with a bunch of miscellaneous stuff.

'dem Blue 40k Templars...motorpool

A bit more nostalgia, did these vehicles years ago. Back then I was just figuring out painting freehand, always been drawing and have done some watercolor and marker stuff, but messing with acrylics this way was a first for me back then.

I sold this crusader and the rhino with the sort of halo effect not too long ago. Really don't have the passion to play 40k anymore. I love the models, but became disenchanted with the game.

So there you have it most of the more modern motorpool. When I was playing this army I also had two of the older style rhinos, one of which was in the previous post.

Frank Frazetta...inspiration

I've been a struggling line artist and painter for going on 30 years. Frazetta, Brom, Bart Sears, John Buscema, Keith Parkinson, Larry Elmore, they have all influenced my work, just wish I could be half as good as them. I was disheartened to hear that Frank passed away [at age 82, I believe]. I'm not that old, and three of those artists that I listed are no longer with us.

I recently added a blog to my list by Dave Finch, one of the newer breed of comicbook artists who first broke onto the comics scene when I was attempting to become one. I enjoy his work and I know Frank was influence on Finch. If you like Frank's work and are not familiar with Finch, checkout his work.

Frank's work over his career was a huge inspiration to me. Long before I read Conan, I was hooked on Conan because of Frank. Being a huge Conan fan, his covers were just awe inspiring. DeathDealer, the Silver Warrior, and so many other paintings...always influence my imagination. I think his work is legendary and will most certainly stand the test of time.

Next post...will return to nostalgia with the rest of the Cerulean Templars.

A bit of Nostalgia...The Cerulean Templars

I was in the local store this past weekend, converting some things, and someone asked me what it was that got me started converting pieces and what was the first things that I converted. I’ve always like things that were different, was my answer and my Cerulean Templars were the first conversion work. Then on some forums I ran into some names of people from that period that spoke fondly of that Blue bunch of Templars. A little bit of nostalgia set in.



My first army was 40k Eldar, something I initially liked, but eventually grew to hate, with the exception of the Falcon and Vyper models. I remembered seeing someplace conversion work by Mike Butcher and Joe Orteza online or in Whitedwarf, and then I saw some other stuff, and it was pretty much always marines, and I realized just how versatile the models were. It appealed to me. Being a history buff, the Black Templars really struck a cord with me. So the path was set.

I started this army for 40k around 2001 or 2002. It started out as a whole slew of conversions, some good, some bad. Then I got the itch to play a game with them, so I had to come up with a paint scheme. If you look really close as some of the models you can actually see the natural progression of my painting skills. I took about a year and half to complete them with all of the vehicles. Influences ranged from Spartan/Corinthian to Medieval Knights, lots of interesting pieces were used and created, I bounced all over the place, about the only thing that brought all of this stuff together was the paint scheme. I painted just one Templar in black and white and realized I couldn’t do it, I needed color, and my favorite color was blue, which lead to Cerulean which I think had a nice ring to it. The way I looked a GW’s Black Templars was there name was “Insert Color Here” Templars.

So there you have it, the trigger mechanism for my current psychosis. And there are more of these guys, but these were some of the first ones, I'll show more of them in the next post, the ones that were more medieval influenced. And if you can't wait that long, feel free to click the link to the Madhouse Workshop Forum. In the 40k Loyalist Spacemarine section you will find many more pictures of the Cerulean Templars.

Some more mutants....

All these mutants were surprisingly fun to do. The guy on the right has that Gemini two face look, that think was influenced by watching Thundarr the Barbarian as a kid. The demonette arm, hand/claw thingies work pretty well also.