Some Help

So I know I'm supposed to be working on my dread for DreadTober but this guy has been sitting on my painting table getting work in little bursts of activity.  I've also found I've gotten to the point I need to stop trying to work on him.  You can go down a rabbit hole trying to do too much detail.

I need to finish the organ in his hand and touch up the shoulders and arms which were don separately from the body and just now glued on.  Then finish out the base.  The base has really turned out fantastically and I hope to only improve that look.

Color Pallet Test

So threw some paint on one of the new Primaris Lieutenants for the Salamanders. Base color is Army Builder Greenskin, with a nuln wash. I will probably go back and highlight with the base color to lighten it up a bit. Over all I'm happy with the look. Photo isn't perfect as its off the phone, I'll get out the good gear for some final photos when things are done.

Dreadtober week 4

Well best laid plans and all.  I did not complete the challenge
that was put forward but I did get paint on models which I haven't done in quite awhile.

I had some set backs that really set me back a week but really at the end of the day I just didn't put in the effort that I needed too. 

I did finally get all the dreads a base coat of green.  The issue is the newer batches of my green are a shade off and just a little duller green.  I was very disappointed in that.

I got more block work done on the primary Contemptor and his brother came in the mail week two.  He got his base coat with Brother Ashmantle and will be painted up as a twin of the first.

Brother Ashmantle has his base green, and I've started his gold super structure.  I was a bit worried it was too much when I started but I think once I get the ink on and get some details it will mellow out.

He will be mostly detail work to really highlight the model.

Dreadtober week 1

Week one did not end so well.  Time issues kept me from getting any prime and base coats on the dreads.  As I had a free weekend this past weekend I looked forward to making a lot of progress.  Well that didn't go as planned.

The dreads and some other models sitting around got their black prime coat done with only a small airbrush issue.  That was fixed early Saturday morning with a friends advice who uses this same basing airbrush more often.  Base coats on we gave them some time to cure and fired up the new green.

Well that just sucked.  The paint came out with a consistency of water, making it next to impossible to get a good coat on the models.  Due to his smooth surfaces the contempotor finally took a solid coat after three passes.  He has now become the focus of my efforts for the time being.

I have two new bottles of paint on order and hopefully it was a bad mix.  We shall see when they get here later this week.






Brother Ashmantle did not fair so well, with his volume of detail and sharp edges the paint just rain off him or pooled in places that had to be caught quickly.  He's the one I really wanted to concentrate on this cycle as I've had him sitting around for quite awhile.

There is your update for week one, hopefully week two will be much more productive.  I still think I'm on a good track for the contemptor but  now a very tight track for Ashmantle.

Dreadtober color tracker

Quick post that I can update keeping track of the colors used for Dreadtober and the new Salamanders color scheme.

Vallejo Black Surface Primer for Airbrush
Badger Minitaire Fresh Grass
Army Painter Warpaints Gun Metal
Army Painter Warpaints Army Green
Vallejo Model Color Panzer Series Hull Red
Citadel Base Warplock Bronze
Army Painter Warpaints Flat Black
Citadel Base Balthasar Gold
Army Painter Warpaints Greedy Gold

Welcome to Dreadtober

This year I'm taking the challenge started by the folks over at Brokenpaintbrush.com to work on dreadnought or dreadnought style 40k minis in the month of October.  Its a chance to challenge yourself to get paint on a model.

As most folks know I have a horrible follow through on painting my minis.  This will be a good chance to focus on a character model I've had for quite a while and will make a nice show piece for my Salamanders restart.  Because most of the base color work also needs to be done on his simpler cousin the 30k contemptor I'm going to push myself to do both.

My friends Dan and Glenn of The Narrative Guys have also thrown in on the challenge, check out their work while they also plan to run a fantastic local event and some really nice narrative gaming at LVO 2017

My models have already been assembled and Ashmantle has paint on him, but both will be repainted with a new color of green that I've chosen for my Salamanders.  The painting time should be tomorrow as today was spent on prep and getting my space cleared to paint.

I'll try to track the colors used as much as I can and put in at least weekly progress reports.

Sternguard

Back summer of 2010 I got an awesome idea to build my own custom sternguard.  I wasn't happy with the at the time metal 5 man kit, that later turned into fine cast.

So I went about building my own.  I collected 10 identical chest plates, ordered aftermarket shoulder pads and combibolters from Chapter House Studios, and a red scorpions upgrade pack which was the only way to get mark 4 heads back then.  Don't forget the two custom built heavy flamers from plastic terminators.

Fast forward and they have recived newly released forgeworld salamanders shoulder pads.  I could have also just ordered a squad of mark 4 marines and given them newer plastic combi bolters from the newly released plastic sternguard box.  Oh well they are unique and they are mine and they are finally getting some love.

They were mostly assembled around sept 2010 but have languished.  Towards the end of 5th they picked up some steam as body guards for vulkan, nothing like two heavy flamers and a gauntlet of the forge to ruin your day.  Lately they have become a first strike option in a drop pod.  After an amazing performance against some rouge Iron Hands, they have earned some time on the table.

Base coat is of Army Painter green, which is a pretty close match to my original Reaper Master Paints leaf green.

Project Management for Gamers

So recently there has been a small band wagon among my gamer friends to start a project board for our gaming projects.  It was started by a great pod cast that outlined how to use standard project management techniques, to wow actually manage our gaming projects.

As I've said before I have the project ADD of a Ferret.  I start stuff, either put it in the bag to use it or start something else before its finished.  The number of finished mini's I have compared to stuff in progress is sad, very very very sad.

So over here to the right under Fifth Chapter Readiness you'll see a new link for Project Board.  This is the public facing display of what I'm working on for the Salamanders.

Dono if it will help me work faster, but its shown me how bad I've been at working on Projects.

the Salamanders Project Board

I get buy with a little help from my friends!

Heir Commissar

So for Christmas of 2012 I received a ton of Allies.  Mainly because I didn't update my wishlists and my wife wanted to do something she normally doesn't do.  Buy me toys, as we call it.  I was so amazed and excited by the fact regardless if it was stuff I really couldn't use at the time.  
I got some Grey Knights, and my mother in law bought me a super sweet Valkyrie kit.  So quick run to the store and I have an HQ and troops to field the Valk or in this case Vendetta as Allies!!!! 
It also gave me a great excuse to pick up this pretty sweet model.  Granted its fail cast.  I had to puddy some holes in his boot, and one on his left side.  Other than that it actually is a really nice model, and has been pretty quick to get base coated, the details are the killers.

Must paint or the Eldar clowns will eat me.

I've been very bad about painting.  Add to this to project ADD, and I have a ton of half started projects on my painting table.  I was recently given a new airbrush station and compressor kit so it seemed like the perfect time to get things straitened out.

Amusingly the same day i go to setup the airbrush station our back order of brand new Badger Airbrush Minitaire Paint came in.  So after setting everything up I grabbed a conveniently placed pre primed space marine for a test paint.  This was a marine I picked up when a friend was clearing out some of his stuff, so he was just going to be extra.

Child Safety Paints?  Really?

I ordered Orc Complexion Minitaire Paint hoping it would be a close match to my base Reaper Master Series Paint used for the Salamanders.  The paint went on smooth and even, perfect paint to use strait out of the bottle.  Only two issues arose.    First the paint comes with a styrofoam seal that has to be removed before using the paint.  Really handy except it was very hard to peal off in one go and parts of it ended up in the paint.  Pretty minor annoyance really, and Now that I know I'll be more careful when opening a new bottle.

Brother Bob

The second problem?  Its actually much darker dry than it looks in the bottle.  Since no one that I know of carries this locally yet, its another minor annoyance.  I had to order this based on what the bottle color looked like online, and then compare the bottle to a bottle of my base Reaper paint.  Before airbrushing everything looked good.  Upon getting it on the white primed model, I ended up with an awesome Dark Angel instead of the expected Salamander.  Oh well, I'm sure I'll find a use for the color at some point.  Brother Bob formerly of the Dark Angels will probably end up as a statue on some terrain.


Other than small annoyances one of which is based on its scarcity at the moment I was really impressed with the paint.  10 drops or so gave awesome coverage strait out of the bottle and it cleaned up well.  Cost is insane considering you get three to four times the amount of a comparable airbrush paint marketed for miniatures painters.

We close with a shot of the ever cluttered but newly arranged painting area, now with year round airbrushing!

I can't be OCD have you seen my painting table?

SM Tech Support Day (we lost count)

Master of the Forge Heath

As some of you may remember I started a Master of the Forge on a Bike project back in September.  I took him with me on the road so I would have something to do at night in the hotel.  He didn't see much progress when I got back, but saw plenty of table time.  Well he's going with me to WarGamesCon and I needed to get him finished.  Here he is in a quick rough shot before i do any touch ups or decals.  I think he turned out great for a bunch of bits and the awesome conversion beamer kit from Chapter House Studios

Everyone look busy!!

Brother Tu'stin

Well I should be painting grunts for WarGamesCon which is just a few weeks away.  But I've been painting this guy on and off for awhile.  I've been using the black on black paint job on this one as show on From The Warp.  I've used P3 coal black for the base and then a simple wash of badab black.  Looks great and super simple.

So here is a quick WIP shot.  I still have one or two small bits to touch up.  Then I'll get him under the photo lights for a true portrait.

SM Tech Support Day 5

Well got a bit more done.  Got the black panels done and some more metalics as well as some of the brown for leather.  Wish I had thought bring some dull coat to hit it with before I pack it.  But as I still have a bit to do once I get it home having to do repair work won't be too bad.

SM Tech Support Day 4

So the lack of work and updating last night is brought to you by the alcohol fueled beach/pool party compliments of Fujitsu. Tonight is a quiet night so I should get some more detail work done.

SM Tech day 3

So got a touch done lat night. Mostly the metallics and some reds. I was going to do the blacks but the dropper bottle didn't want to play nice.

Not much is going to get done tonight as we just finished a night of entertainment provided by the conference. Meaning alcohol dosen't do well for detail work.

SM Tech Support Day 2

So the first night was pretty productive. I got the base coat green down on everything that should be green. Painting in the room is different. I don't have my normal tools or setup. Starting to work on some of the detail should be interesting.

As you can see here my biggest problem is light. I've got a little led light for a spot off the laptop and the table lamp. I could paint in the day light with the drapes open on the window but as it overlooks the pool I'm not sure how productive I'd be. So off to paint mechanical parts tonight!

Project: Space Marine tech support

So you know how your getting old? You pack a mini and paints for your week stay in Vegas. Really though it's all day tech seminars and I play 40k so I dint have money to gamble. I chose a simple smallish mini to bring. My cobbled together master if the forge on bike with conversion beamer. The cheese is strong with this one. Our first hurdle with the project came with a spot inspection by the Inquisition aka the TSA. They thought they should check out my checked luggage. Hell I wasn't gonna do carry on because I was bringing a mini.





Oh well. I've got my painting station set up which house keeping should love. Well I'm going to paint for an hour before heading to bed I'll try to update my progress through out the week.

Snowdays are productive!

Well today's update is some really good photos of some really OK mini's.  Actually I'm really proud of Vulkan.  The other two are added for reference and photo practice.

Forgefather took me quite some time and in the end I had to force myself to stop tinkering with him.  I am really excited about how well the drake skin turned out.  Simple wash repeated about 8 times over white primer really gave it a great effect. 

The gallery is here.

Rhino number 1 is at the end of the day the main example for the rest.  I still need to go back and give his decals some touch up as well as adding some shading and lining. 

The gallery is here.

Predator number 1 will probably be the only one for now.  At some point I want to go back and build a second using all the lessons learned since building this one.  This unit is fully magnetized and I can swap out both the main gun and the sponsons with ease. 

The gallery is here.

The Heavies

In an effort to get back on track I've put the marines back on the bench. first of the projects is the heavies. This includes the missile units for the tactical teams and the available heavies for the Devi stators, which includes the sergeant in the photo.

Flame On!

Quick update on the Forge Father.  He's on the home stretch to be finished.  I'm actually getting to the point I have to stop adding stuff.  I finished up the flames on his back pack tonight.  I originally thought about skipping them all together and sawing the emblem off.  I'm glad now that I went through with trying to paint it.