The summer is nearing its end and I am returning to work. I did have high hopes of getting some time to sitt down with my hobby stuff as I have quite a large back log of models I would like to paint and things to do on Opus and the flight wing. But even if the weather has not been super great it has not been bad enough to motivate me to stay indoors when there has been literal tons of things to do in the garden. So instead of painting models I painted the house. Instead of building stuff for Opus I built walking paths around the property. That and barbequed with my wife and spent time in the lounge set on the patio and read books late into the night. So progress has been slow, but that is ok as the summer has felt very productive over all. But as autumn is coming closer and it is getting darker I am hoping to have more time in the evenings for painting.
Well, I have been able to squeeze in a few hours to finish up some old medels and to start some new. In this case the Death Riders I got for my birthday. I absolutely love the models and have been looking forward to painting them. The detail is superb and they have a lot of character. I opted to go for the full out fit with rifle and sword on the "horses" and the lance held by the rider. I also added some extra stakes and broken concrete to the bases to give them some more texture.
When it comes to the colour scheme I stuck with pale skin on the "horses" but opted for a similar desert tan colour on the armour as I have on my desert rats to keep the theme on the Astra Militarum troops. To make the skin a bit more interesting I decided to make the feet and belly a darker grey shade while the top and head is more bone white. I am really happy with how the toning turned out. Basically it a mix of wet blending and dry brushing. Tack and sadels got the standard brown leather treatment and the gasmask a black rubber tone. Now I just need to find some time to paint the riders. I am thinking to do a similar colour on these, with a grey uniform and tan armour instead of the box art that has black armour. We will see how it turns out.
