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.

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.

Death Riders of the desert

After some time, as usual, I have managed to finish the Death riders. These models are truly magnificent with all the details, but that also make them very hard to paint, and very time consuming. As a collector I appreciate this, but if I had to paint a viable army of these I would despair. That aside I enjoyed the experience but would probably not paint another five at the same time again. And that is my second point in all of this. I do normally not batch paint, but focus on a singular model and try to make the best of it, but this time I decided to go for the whole squad at the same time. This ment that I had to go back and forth on the models as a continually discovered things I missed. I guess that if you are a seasoned painter or commission painter this might not be a problem as you probably already painted a stuff of them, but as a first time experience it is a bit daunting. But, with the amount of back logg that I have on things that I do want to paint, batch painting might be the way to go to get it done with in my life time.

For the riders I did the same as for the "horses". I went with a tan armour and grey robes and trousers. The robes do nicely tie in to the "horses" grey bellies hand feet. This makes the over all model look cohesive and the grey of the robes does still give enough of a connection to the original Death riders of Krieg colour theme. In the end I think this tied in nicely with the desert theme of my imperial regiments with out losing to much of the grim darkness of the Krieg theme. The only thing I am a bit uncertain about is the glowing power coils of the spears as they are not typically part of my palette.

But I am happy with how they turned out. Now I just hav the Marshal left to do, but that will have to wait a bit as I am very keen to start on some Saturnine terminators and a dreadnought for the first legion.

Death Riders WIP

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.

The Lord of the Northern Forge

This is my first post in some time, but that does not mean that I have not been hobbying, it just means that I have not finished anything in quite some time. But here is at last, the Lord of the Northern Forge with his riding beast.

This is a model that has been years in the making. The idea behind this is that it should represent the Lord of the forge that does all my conversions for the Northern Knights and Northern Ghosts. He is an outcast member of the Mechanicum, banished from Mars because of his tempering with the divine STC designs. He is also an avid collector of arcane technology, be it imperial or xenos. There is a quite complex backstory to all this including the knight world where the forge is located. I might write it down at some point. But this model is supposed to be the centre model for my (dark) Mechanicum forces. So I really wanted it to look the part.

The base model is a Mechanicus Tech-Priest Dominus that I turned around and added a Kataphron torso and head to. This was done a few yeas ago with some left over bits. I also made some back mounted tentakels from the Mauler fiend, but I thought they were a bit to massive so the model got stalled. Then for Christmas this year I got a Lord discordant from my wife (which were the second try as she discovered I already had her first option), but as it turned out I already had one painted up. So she said, why not make a cool conversion of it? This made my thoughts returned to the Forge Lord. One thing was clear, if I were to do this it could not just look like a Lord discorand, but had to be a unique model. So instead of using the rider I decided to see if it was possible to mount the Dominus based model I started with on the back of the Helstalker. As it turned out it is actually quite a good fit with some minor cutting and greens stuff filling. But the main model of the Forge Lord did still lack some gravitas. I tried using different arms with guns, shields etc... but in the end I felt that the Mechanium staff and a power fist with a shield generation worked best. I also added some halos from some electro priest around the shoulders to beef him up. But not even this worked as well as I initially intended. I was missing the tentakel things that were still around in my head, but then I remembered that I had some Canoptek Wraiths that had some thin tentakels in the alternate build that i was not using. After a quick test fit it all came together.

The rest of the build was to make it look more Mechanicum and less Chaos Space Marine. So I cut away all the spikes on the hell stalker and removed the tail which were replaced with some smoke stacks. I also added a lot of cabling to the legs and head to make it look more mechanicum. I used a armiger face plate instead of the more organic chaos one. I also replaced the space marine back mounted weapon with some left over mechanicum Kataphron weapons (dual mount). Once the modified Hell stalker was done I thought it look very cool on its own and decided to make the Forge Lord dismountable and give him an optional base so that I can display him either riding his beast or walking beside it.

Painting was done to resemble the rest of my Mechanicum forces with green armour and red robes. The stalker got a green and rusted metallic look. Basically my standard recipe.

I am very happy with the model, perhaps I could have worked a bit more with the posing but I think it is ok. Next for these guys it to start with his entourage, which should consist of liaison officers from the Northern Ghosts, Northern Knights, Skitarii forces, the Legio Cybernetica, together with his personal aid and chief strategist, and his Domitar body guards.