New Crusaders... Conversions underway...

Adepticon is coming, so I need more crusaders for WAB.  Decided to add some Conquest Games's knights and few Perry's.

Below is a WIP of one of the riders. The Conquest mini's are cool, but like the Perry's too much chainmail.  Looking forward to the Fireforge minis that are coming out soon.

Below is some of the horse caparison work.  A ways to go yet along with some smoothing and fold work. 

Another shot.  The fronts are coming out pretty well.  Not sure if I will actually do the stitching yet.  It's a real pain and kind of fragile for gaming purposes.

So many projects, no time to get bored.

Warhammer Movement Tray Tutorial ... Part 3.1 Addendum

Our friend Mr. Bugman, NAVARRO (whose blog is in my blog list #2, check it out), reminded me of using a tooth brush to texture putty.  Something I do not do to often, and since my move I'm still looking for all my tools, but I still have the old soft bristled brush I use for removing paint.  So onto the second movement tray, similar method as the previous, but with adding an additional texture with the brush this time around the rock areas.

 One thing that is always difficult with spreading glue and sticking down the flock is control, often you get a small amount of glue somewhere you do not want it or when applying the flock and you press it in slightly it spreads in the wrong locations.

So I added the fake rocks and then commenced adding texture around the rocks in two ways.  One with the brush and the other with pressing a rock into the regular putty surface.   With the brush you can poke and sweep with it.

This is how it comes out, will add a bit more variety with the surface when I start adding the flock.  The flock I will be using is a HO Scale railroad ballast.  That will be in Part 4.

So there we are, another method that one can use.  Part 4 will be flocking and forest litter basing.

My new 40k Space Marine Army begins....

.....Slowly.  I'm so disenchanted with Warhammer Fantasy 8th edition, that I'm planning a return to 40k.  A game, I essentially, with the exception of playing a short team-up with Greg in Green Bay, last played just about 10 years ago.

So after my move I found all my loyalist space marine parts and began thinking about the army a bit.  It will certainly be a DIY Chapter, much in the vein of my Cerulean Templar army, except this time they will be red and not blue.  In my past experience, I never really had the firepower with that army as it was geared to close combat, overly so.  So this time there will be lots of marines with bolters.  So how do you make your army a bit different, dig through your bitz box.

In the digging I found an older boltgun like the one in the upper left, and I think a kill team bolter to the right of that (I have a bunch of those). 

Then I found some extra long bolters that I built long ago, and the metal one towards the bottom.  Still not enough diversity, so I will do some with drum magazines.  And then I found a bunch of flamers, so with a little bit of time today, I created the four boltgun you see in the center, using flamers, a bolt gun, and left over 40k ork bits from building my fantasy orc army. 

It's a start.  Its amazing how you forget what you have, as I found I had two Forgeworld Dreadnoughts in addition to a bunch of vehicles.  Much more to come on this army build. 

And no I'm not quiting fantasy as I still plan to build and paint the Chaos army and Orc army. 

Hope you all had a happy Thanksgiving.

Warhammer Movement Tray Tutorial ... Part 3 Apoxie Sculpt

The next installment of my movement tray tutorial.  In part 2 we constructed the basic tray and general shape.  Now we are going to bulk it out using Aves Apoxie sculpt.  Apoxie Sculpt is a two part modeling putty that takes many hours to cure, but cures very solid and hard.  Here I have mixed the two parts together and formed a long rope like piece.

As we also saw in the previous posts, I'm using a slate rock look on my Warriors of Chaos miniatures and movement trayes.  In the right hand corner of the picture below you see the fake slate rocks.  The rocks are, you guessed it, hardened Apoxie Sculpt that has been bust apart with a hammer.

The next picture I apply the rope to the tray.

Then I simply flatten out the rope, to get to the look below.  Nice and irregular, just the way I want it to look. 

Next up, I add the fake rocks.  These I simply push into the apoxie and I will allow it to cure overnight.

A close up of the one corner and the fake rocks.  I also pressed a rock into the corner and then placed layers in to that by using the blade end of my sculpting tool.

So now that is done, it will cure, and then you add the sand/flock/gravel whatever you are using.  In another post I'll detail how I add that and my trick at creating forest litter.  Until next time....

Beginnings of a Chaos Warshrine

I started this model a couple months ago before I moved, and have not made much progress with it since. 

The more it sits on my desk, the more I dislike it.  It started out as a sketch on napkin and has progressed to this point, but needs a lot more work.  I am a huge fan of spawns, but this one is not quite working out.

Below is the business end of the spawn.  Thinking about the model, wondering if I should not make it more like the two with the tyranid heads.





And yes the carriage portion of the model is not going to be empty.  There will be a champion riding that, using the nurgle champ model.  I'll dress him up a bit more.  I'm also thinking I need banners, those will need to go behind the pillar.  Can never have enough banners.

Second Reaper Knight ... Paint Work In Progress

This is the second of my Reaper Knights, another work in progress.  This one is not really a test in paint color like the other, but more of a test in using some of GW washes on the metals.  They work nice and flow well.

I think combining them with paint washes like I normally do will make for some good looks.

The red and whites are about my standard colors.  The photos are a bit dark, still don't have everything set up to take decent pictures.  Have not been home enough to get many things situated here.

I'm happy with the reds and whites.

So another of Werner Klocke's sculpts, crazy head crest and all, semi-painted.  When I'm all done with these two I'll probably ebay them.   Reaper's stuff is fun and cheap for experimenting on and painting test pieces.

Sometime this weekend I should be able to get some work on the next step of the movement tray tutorial done.

Old Stuff Wednesday - November...40k Templar Dreadnought

Back quite a long time ago I painted up a dreadnought for my 40k Cerulean Templar army. This is one of the miniatures where you start painting and things really start clicking as far as the paint work goes. It was also back in my period of painting in this ultra-stylized method (Heavy Bart Sears X-O Manowar armor influence) for highlighting. And it was the first miniature that I did not use any metallic paint on, yes the “so-called NMM”. I do have a rant that I often use regarding miniature painters and the ridiculous terminology that they use for describing their painting, but I won’t get in to that right now.

This is the only dreadnought that I built and painted for this army, so I did want it to be sort of special, and if I remember correctly it was during my Bolter & Chainsword forum posting days and they were running a contest on painted Dreadnoughts and it placed fifth in the voting which did win me a prize.

The painting work for me was special. When I think of dreads, and the mythology that Games Workshop has created around what dreadnoughts are, I think of special characters. They should be treated that way in the army, a sort of center show piece for the army. So as I was painting, I explored doing some heraldry on the model and sculpted a tabard and a bunch of purity seals, very minor conversion work.

This is one of the very few models that I have kept from the Cerulean Templars army. It’s a nostalgia thing with me. Even if I sell off one of my armies, I normally keep a few pieces of it. Looking at cool models is always far better than looking at pictures. It is also a nice visual when I do paint seminars locally, as once and awhile, fresh people at my seminars will say they recognize a particular model. And it does show a progression in skill and style.

One day I do plan to rebase the model. Back then I really did not have a good grasp on basing and have never been happy with how that turned out. The theme of the basing was this sort of urban fight thing, but I don’t think I really pulled that off very well.

That’s it for now, enough nostalgia, it makes me feel old, back to more modern stuff in the next post. I think for Old Stuff Wednesday in December, I will dig up some photos of a massive battle that Mike Butcher and I had way back, my Templars versus his zombie / Nurgle horde.

Reaper Knight...paint WIP

I wanted to do an experiment with green tones as I prepare to paint Orcs next year.  So I've had this Reaper Miniatures knight lying around for a long time.  I thought it would be a good opportunity to practice.

As I was painting all of the green, I decided that the cloth needed a bit of a design to break it up a bit.

The yellow trim definitely sets off the green.   Not a big fan of the brick work.

This is a Werner Klonke sculpt, one of his earlier works.  The cloth is nice and smooth and has the right kind of flow to it.

Not sure how I will base the miniature just yet, but I think it will be a fall, burnt grass, type look.

Orc Palanquin WIP

Did not feel very well this past weekend and was a bit busy on top of that, but I did get started on a project for my orc army.  I got this miniature last year at Adepticon.  Ever since I saw it, I thought it would make for a good orc palanquin with some changes.

The first being the head, did not fit with the GW miniatures.  I've started to fix that by removing the top part of the head and replacing it with a GW head top.  I also removed the ugly looking skull at the top of the tusks.  Will replace that probalby with an Orc glyph or one of the Beastmen large animal skulls.

 The second was the big disc that the throne sat on.  That needs to be made into an appropriate palanquin.

So, that's it so far.  Long ways to go on it.

New Spawn….Influenced by the Disc 2

As things come together, you always get new ideas and the Tzeentch disc and my previous spawn gave me some more ideas on new chaos spawn. The ideas like the others were mainly to help tie more of this stuff together in the army. 

 
This one also uses a rat ogre body left over from the Warhammer Fantasy boxed set. I really like these overly muscled rat ogre bodies.  For this one I decide to merge it with a number of tyranid pieces to make it more menacing and this also ties together better with my disc.

Not sure what I will do with the paint schemes just yet, but they should all tie together with the other spawn. I do really like the use of the armor on these rat ogres, they do kind of resemble the armor on some of my marauders. I’ll probably incorporate some of the armor elements into my Chaos Ogres down the road.

 The back banner is from some other chaos model.  I really wanted the extra small arm claw to look like it had some musculature and could actually work.

The recessed areas will soon be rivet heads, but I still have not unpacked that material from my move.

I can't wait to paint the eyeball buried in the shoulder, as strange as that sounds.

Warriors and more warriors...

I'm still getting settled in to my new work space and unpacking all of the maruaders and other chaos warriors, along with a number of other projects that I have yet to finish.  Now I have a desk full of miniatures.

It's quite the mixture of miniature barbarians.  Going yto get back to painting very soon.  The one thing I forgot to do prior to the move and during the modelling of this was to make some banner men for the units.  So I will have to rectify that. 

I also recently picked up some Avatars of War plastic dwarves, and plan to convert those into some chaos models.

Next up some paint WIPs and we will get back to finishing the movement tray tutorial.



Old Ford Pick-up Progress

My move has significantly slowed my progress on miniatures as I get settled, but my old truck really hasn't moved much and at least I know where all the pieces are for it.  Progress is always slow on it, but it now it has rear fenders that actually have paint on them (look better Butch?).

Course when you do things like this you always find mistakes, and one of those is the black rectangular like gap between fender, box, and running board.  Getting some new sheet metal bent to fix that.

Yep the aluminum box is the gas tank, minus all of the plumbing.  Decided the yellow was not bright enough, so I needed a box with some diamond plate.  The yellow color is a little off in these pics.

Another angle of the box.

 And yes, I got wheels, nice looking 5 spoke rally type wheels.  Now I need a tailgate and rear bumper, tail lights, and more work.  New goal is to be on the road next spring after the snow melts.

Much more to follow on this project.