DreadTober 01

I missed the kick off!!!  I do not know how it happened, but I am a week late with my DreadTober build. I must have miscalculated the days and just missed that the first weekend was only a few days into October.

Well, this week has been all about getting things up to speed. I am building a Deredeo Dreadnought for the first legion/Dark angels. I have done few first legion dreads before so this is not that much new territory. I will use the same colour palett that I have used before so the paint jobb will be basically the same. However I am trying out a new technique, sponging, for the armour. So that will be interesting.

The first thing was to bet the model built. And you never know with GW kits how complicated they will be, and the Drededeo kit is complex. It is four sprues with a lot of small parts that needs to be cleaned and assembled. That took me two full evenings after work to get sorted. The build is basically out of the box but with some Dark angel things added, so nothing to fancy.

Once everything was assembled I gave it a quick base spray and started with the first layers. I did the metal parts in my usual way with a black base and some brown and orange watered down colours to give the appearance of rust. Then I dry brushed on some metallics. Then it was on to the armour with a sponge going from blue grey to light grey. This will all get a coat of wases before another round of dry brushing and we will se how that turns out.

A hectic week with some speed painting. Hopefully I will get some time in this weekend and have a new update pretty soon.

Dark Angels Saturnine Praetor

Once again I have to start with a statement that it has been some time since I last posted. It is not that I have not been working with hobby stuff, it is just that I have not finished anything really, what I am doing on the opus takes forever. Perhaps I need to start posting more WIP stuff.

Well it is October and time for DreadTober (sort of missed the first update), but this post is not about DreadTober but my warm up, a First legion Saturnine Praetor. As I noticed it was once again time to do some dreadnought stuff, and I had mostly been building things for Opus over summer so I decided that I needed to get the rust out of my fingers before the challenge. To do this I decided to build the Saturnine Praetor out of the box and paint it up for the Dark Angels. Well it did not last long before I decided to go for the "extra allt" option and just disregard any rules and just go for what I thought looked cool, and what I wanted to try painting. This sadly meant that the build became more complicated than I would have liked and it took longer time. The original model is bad enough to get posed right, add in some extra parts and things will no longer line up properly. This really came back to bite me as I paint things in subassemblies, and some of the mismatches were not obvious until I stated to put everything together, which meant I need to cut into already pained parts and reglue them... So the model is not as clean as I would have liked for a character model.

Apart from the somewhat messy build I am quite happy with the painting. I did once again use the sponging technique on the armour, cloak/tabard and the Watcher in the dark. This is a really powerful technique that gives a similar result that you could get with an airbrush when it comes to shades and blending. I will try to use this on the dread for the DreadTober challenge and see how it works on larger models. The metal parts were given the same standard treatment that I usually do to get a rusted look. I also tried my hand at some free hand on the cloak and armour panels, with some varied success. I really need to get better at freehand. I kept the over all colour scheme close to what I already did for the first squad of Saturnine terminators so there where no great challenges, just getting back in the sadel so to say.

Well, now that this model is out of the way I will start with the Deredeo dreadnought for the DreadTober challange.

Lord Marshal Dreir

Meet my version of Lord Marshal Dreir. He will be leading the Death Riders of the desert for my Desert Rats. This is a model I got from my wife some time ago (birthday last year?), together with the Death Riders box to keep him company. I painted raiders some time ago, but held back on the Marshal as I really wanted to do him justice. In contrast to the raiders I used sponging on him to get the shades smooth. I did a double layer with a black wash in between. I really like this technique as it is fast and gives smooth blends as it is basically wet blending. once I got all the basic colours in I did some detail work and normal dry brushing to get the highlights on the edges. I would really like to try this on a tank (I am thinking about a Rogal dorne), and see if it will work as well. Colour wise I did not go for the box art, nor a replica of the death riders as I wanted him to stick out, but not be do different. Instead of using a light coat for the mount I went with a back base and light feet. I kept the robes black as well and I tried to match the sadel cloth to the colours I used on the flags for the rats.

Over all I am pleased with how it turned out and it was fun to paint when I could find the time and mode to paint. I see in the pictures that I might have worked a bit more with the wound on the flank of the mount, but I am not sure it is worth going back and try to access this as it is behind the barbed wire.

Next up will probably be some knights, or some more mechanicum... we will see.

Mechanicum Tech Thralls

It is spring and the garden is not taking care of itself, which means I do not have as much hobby time as I would whish I had (and also, hobby mojo is a bit low). But I still managed to get some Mechanicum Tech Thralls pained. At first, and still, I am sorry to say, I do not like these models. The way the legs are done and the left arm, it make them to reminiscent of mindless zombies, just shuffling along. I would have like a more determined stride, so I tried to reposition the feet, but the way the models are constructed it is almost impossible to correct this without major cutting and green stuffing (I had hoped I could just dipp them in warm water and bend them into a better position), and there is way to many to do that. So I will bite the bullet and paint them as is. But I removed the bayonet as it looked to goofy to be left on.

So, once again I managed to pull of a decent batch jobb. The models are not that detailed and can easily be broken down into colour fields that can be handled separately, so no need for to much neat brush work. There are still 15 of these guys still in the box and they are a repeat of the first 5 so I do not know when and how I will gather the drive to make more of them. However, once they are painted they look quite nice with the rest of my Mechanicum troops, and it would be nice with a full blob, so I might just try to use that as a motivator. I still have a lot of other mechnicum models to do so who know when that will happen.

Skitarii done

I am really happy with these Skitarii. It was some time since I batch painted models, but these turned out nicely. I would say they are basically the same standard that I do if I do them one and one. This gives me some hope that I actually can start finishing of some squads that I whish to add to my armies with out it taking forever.

I like these sculpts. They look a bit more like cyborgs than the rangers/vanguard and add something of a distinct look to the mechanicum. Might be due to their non human proportions. To bad that they are so limited in the poses that having to many of them will look strange. I painted these with the same brown leather robes that I have for my ranger squads. I think they will fit in nicely with these. The next eight will be done in red to tie into the Vanguards that I have.

I also have some more Cybernetica models to paint, both resin and plastics and perhaps I can do them also in batches going forward.

Opus AEW and skitarii

I finally started work on the last (I think) member of the Opus flight wing, an airborne early warning (AEW) craft, similar to the E-2 Hawkeye. I have had the model for some time but I could not figure out how to make the wings fold as the need to fold back along the body. This was extra tricky as I was using the Valkyrie as a base, and the model has wings that angle down so they had to fold with the tips going inwards and not outwards. That meant that the wings needed to fold downward and rotate, and that is kind of the same way gravity works on the wings which makes it tricky to keep them up. I solved it by friction and two small latches that can swing in beneath the wings to prevent them dropping when I want the model in flight mode.

Another obstacle was what to make the radar disc from. I did not have any suitable disc that could be used. I was thinking about using a large round base, but I did not have any spare so I decided to make the disk from scratch. The center is a plane 2 mm thick 10 cm diameter plasticard disk. The top and bottom disks were made from disks of 0.5 mm plasticard, with sections cut out to make them angle up a bit. Over all I think it is coming together nicely. Need to make a more permanent attachment for the disk and start with the wheels. Then I need to make some internal operator stations where combat command can lead the airwing operations and guide the Opus Magna's artillery. There is still a lot to do on this, but I guess that it will have to mature a bit at a time as the rest of the flight wing.

I also started work on the 30K Skitarii I got for my birthday from the Wifey. I really like the look of these models. Sadly there are only four poses, and there are 16 models in the box, but it turns out the arms are interchangeable so basically the four set of arms can be permutated through the four poses to get all individual looks. The bodies were prepped and painted in my standard rusted metal look. For the coats I tried a new technique, egging. This was also a present from the Wifey, it is a makeup sponge in the shape of an egg that has very fine pores so that one can get smooth blending's on flat and textured surfaces without dry brushing. I hope this can be a solution to a problem that I have been having, namely that to get smooth blends with dry brushing I usually need to use 6-10 layers of paint, and it has a tendency to stripp the paint back to the base coat on raised sharp surfaces. In this way I can get a base blend without wearing the layers down. I am pretty happy with how it turned out, but I still need to do some more experimenting with this to see how far I can take it. I also need to see how long the sponge holds upp before it is to clogged with paint to work properly. 

Fulgrime done

Now this model that has left me somewhat confused as to whether I like it or not. I mostly like the design apart from some details like the big open wound at the front. But my biggest issue is with painting this thing (I do not see how you could do that with it fully assembled). I tried breaking it down into subassemblies, as I usually do with big models, but there were not god way of doing this for the body. Either I had pieces where I could access all necessary parts, or I could assemble the model so that I did not get big seams at the front of the model, but I had to choose. Here I really think the sculptors should have a good discussion with the painters, so that they place joints where they can easily be hidden for breakdowns.

I am also not sure about the contrast in the face so I might need to go back and add some inks to give it some more depth, it might also be that the lights I used to take the pictures saturated the colours a bit and that's why it looks so bland.

Over all I am happy with how it turned out. I gott to play around with some new techniques, and I think the result is ok, but it is getting more and more obvious that I need to start working with the airbrush as it is to hard to get to all the places with a brush for smooth blending on these new complex models. I did not follow the box art colours for the model, instead I tried to match it to the Keeper of secrets that I have (which needs to get its base fixed). In particular I am happy with the combination of the dark and bright gold. The wings also came out nicely. I am also glad that I did the base and not just let him slither around on the ground.

It was an intense journey painting this thing. There are so many details and things to paint that it is easy to forget or miss something so you have to constantly go back and fix things, and when you think you are done you notice some more things that need sorting.

Well that is it. Now I have all the big four Demon Primarchs painted up. Next will have to be the Lion. 

But I have some other things to do first. Just need to figure out what it is.