King in the north WIP 4

These last weeks I have been working on getting the king up and standing. It has taken a lot longer than I thought as I constantly needed to go back and paint in details that I missed as there are so many of them. I also feel that it is harder to paint these resin kits than the plastig knights as all the recesses are deeper and there are quite a few very deep pockets that are hard to get at with a brush. The pieces are also more 3D as they are not bound by a 2D projection in the casting. I also find that the pieces are more warped than the plastic, also on the smaller details, which is a bit detracting if you look closely at the model. But apart from that I enjoy this model and I think it is turning out nicely.

Since it was quite some time since I actually did all the sculpting on the model I have for gotten a lot of what I did so it there are some nice surprises for me as I start applying colours to the GS. It is also, sadly, quite obvious that I have progressed in my sculpting since I did the first parts. This means that not all the GS work is of the same standard. But I hope that it will still look ok in the end.

I am very happy with how the head turned out. I was not a big fan of the original look, but the crown really blends in well and give the head a better profile. This means that I can use the new head I bought for some other knight (Porphyrion).

Now that I have a standing skeleton I will start with all the armour panels and finish up the base. Then I just need to figure out how to attach it to the base, as the surface of the base is quite porouse with all the plaster that it attached to it.

King in the North WIP 3

Last week or so there has not been much progress on the King. I have put in the base colours and chipping on the legs and the weapon arms are on their way. I have also started to work on the base. It still needs a second layer of plaster before I can spray it and start paining. The reason for the lack of progress is that I have finally started to work on Opus Magna again, and that takes time, with little to show. I will come back with a separate post on this once there is some major progress to show. So that is it for now.

Dark Angel Sicaran Battle tank

It is new hobby year and I stated out, working on my Christmas present Sicaran Battle tank that I got from my wife. After a few sessions I have now finished it in the livery of pre heresy Dark Angels. I love this model, it has such character. I have always wanted one since FW released their resin version but I could not really motivate the cost since I am not actively collecting HH. The plastic version is a great model and is fun to build and paint. I choose to paint the main hull as one piece and the turret, guns and exhaust separately to make it easier to access all parts. I was thinking about leaving the tracks off and paint them separately but decided that that would have it own problems, such as consistency along the track. I actually left some of the track guards off in the beginning so that I could paint the parts of the tracks that would later be covered just to get a nice continuity on the track. The tracks in my normal rusted metal that I have use on other models. The plates where then re-attached before painting the main hull.

Since I do not have any active HH army, but a few fallen Dark Angels as well as a few pre-heresy models I decided that it would be a nice challenge to paint something other than ghost green and Mechanicum red. The big question was if my recipe for Dark Angels jet-black, that I used on the infantry, would work on a larger model. I had previously tried it out on a Contemptor dreadnought and it worked fine so I had good hopes. However I quite quickly realized that there was something wrong with my base spray as it did not retain the paints and it peeled of from the plastic. This meant that I had to redo quite a few areas and I could not use any masking tejp on the model. Once the black was done I tried to use my normal sponge chipping method but it did not work well on the black at this scale. So I had to switch the colours to a stronger brown and orange to represent the rust, instead of the normal black and brown. The shipped marks where then dry brushed gunmetal. I used the same brown and orange to paint in some additional rust in joints and added some streaks. All in all I think this method worked well at this scale and the model reads as black, but one can still see the edges on the panels. To break up the black a bit a added a bone white stripe on the side panels as well as a DA symbol. I also choose to paint the weapons etc in the rusted metal scheme to go with the tracks. 

Once every thing was done I added some brown-yellow-bone to the lower parts of the armour skirts to represent dust and dirt.

The model is built more or less as it comes from the box, I made some small additions in the form of areals on the turret to represent that it is a command tank. I also added the missile pod to the front just because I thought it looked good and filled up the space between the tracks at the front. I might do some more HH tanks and such for the DA just because I really like the new tank models. Who knows, I might even paint up some more infantry from the boxes I have in the to do bin.

Now it will be back to the King in the North...