One year achievements

I thought that I would make this post on the anniversary of this blog, but I forgot so I will make it now instead. This is what I have painted during the last year.

Last year at this time I was going through a rough time and I felt that I needed something to occupy myself with as well as having something relaxing to do. For a long time I had wanted a Forge World titan, actually the though of a titan was awakened some time 20 years ago when I visited a gaming club and someone had brought a armourcast reaver. At the time I did not have the financial means to buy one so I thought about scratch building one but it never happened. When the FW titans where released I once again found the urge to paint one, but I could not really motivate myself to by one. But as I needed a large, all consuming project last year I finally decided that a trio of titans would do. I did have my wive's blessing to buy a titan but I think that she was a little shocked when I ordered three. I did pay for them form my own stash so the family funds did not take the hit.  Well, as I was looking over the internet for inspiration a came across a lot of titan WIPs. So I decided that a blog would also be a nice way to document the project. I also came across some ad-mech armies and different paraphernalia. One thing that fascinated me were the different defiler knight conversions. This gave me the opportunity to build something titan like to have as a test bed for painting techniques before applying them to the titans. Of course a knight and and some titans can not be without scitarii troops to protect their feet so I had to build some of them to, so I took the opportunity to make a tech adapt with a robot and servitor as well. Then if you look carefully you will see two chaos marines that where the first models painted to try out the color scheme of the legion. And then I also had a predator hanging around that I finished of while waiting for the titans to get assembled. 

So now we will see what I will do next year. The titans will be done soon so I will have to find something else to do. I have thought about some models that I would like to paint. But I have also thought about doing a new space wolf army but we will have to see what comes up.

Note to self

"When starting a big project, like painting up three Forge World titans, check that the paints you are going to use are still in stock, or that you are absolutely sure that the amount of paint you have will be enough for the whole project!"

I am not sure, but I think most of the paints that I use in this project are no longer sold, so I am reduced to scavenging paint from "find boxes" or depending on the charity of the local hobby center that has kindly provided me with some of the out of stock paint jars form their hobby corner.

Apart form worrying about the amount of paints left the project is rapidly moving forward, painting armor goes quite fast and as that is what is mostly left I can now count the total of unpainted pieces on my fingers, and not using to many on the left hand at that.

Then of course I can go pack and add details and free hand to the titans later, but soon they will be covered in paint and all the major details will be done. So all in all I am looking at about a one year total time for this project.

Reaver work and green stuff

In the last titan post I realized that I was running out of thing to paint as the titans are getting close to completion. It is only the armor plates left to do. So I decided that I would start to clean up the Reaver and second warhound weapons so that I would have some more things to paint. However, some of the parts needs a lot of green stuff to get them to match up with the rest of the Titan panel work. At least two of the weapons are also pure imperial versions and will need some chaosification. I started out with the weapons already modeled as chaos and began adding the same patterns that I have used on the other panels. I then realized that these are the last emblems that I make on these titans so I added several of them together to make more complex designs. These designs where put on the power fist and on the back mounted missile launcher.

 But then I stated thinking about the shoulder plates that I had already made some work on. The undersides are quite barren, which is in contrast to the rest of the titan. After some thinking I decided to ad the cog wheel design to the under side. I do not know if I am satisfied with them. But they are on the under side so they will only be visible if you look for them. They might look better with some paint.

But is has not been only green stuff. I have also painted the reactor covers on the reaver and the upper part of the arm holding the power fist. Here I put the legion insignia and the titan serial number on the "biceps". It turned out nice so I think I will do the same on the other titans, i.e. not put things on the biceps but combine the the legion and the serial. So now I will paint up the power fist, the back armor and the shoulder plates, then the reaver will be mostly done. As I have the option to change weapons I have decided not to attache the power cables to the weapons. On the guns this is ok as the ports are not to eye catching. But on the power fist the cables are attached to the elbow armor and either it was to file them away or do some thing else. I chose the later and attached the cables as on the original, but instead of having them go up to the titan I bent them so that they attach to the shoulder instead.

Then I only have to paint the outside of the upper body of the second warhound with its back armor and it will be done so far as the titan. I will still have to paint up the weapon as well as green stuff two of them. So I am not there yet, but I can see the light at the end of the tunnel. I am fairly confident that I can have them done before Christmas if I can keep up the pace. So now I will go back to the hobby lair. 

Dark Angels from the past part 2

According to the statistics of this blog the "Dark angels of the past" is one of the most popular post we have on this blog. It is constantly in the top even if its quite some time since it was published. So here is a follow up.This time I am presenting my  Death Wing army. This is actually the part of the Dark Angels that got me going in the 90th. I was at that time a dedicated Space Wolf player and my army was expanding.

Partially due to their Nordic culture fluff and partly because it was the only space marine army with dedicated figures. So when the Death Wing terminators where released I just had to by a set of them. At the time we where on a holiday car trip around the UK and I just had to visit every GW store we came across. During tis time I also bought all the fluff I could get my hands on, Wh 40K compendium, 40K compilation, 40K "vehicles" etc...

So as soon as I got back home I started out to plan the painting of the Death Wing as a liaison to my Space Wolves. Fluffwise this was a bit on a stretch as the Dark Angels and Space Wolves do not get along so well. At the time the Death Wing was mostly known from the space hulk game expansion Death Wing.

 As the new terminator set was introduced they where presented as bone white which I found was in contradiction to the fluff background found in the Death Wing expansion. In the original fluff a squad of Death Wing space marines in their original black canopy returns to their home world which is based on a native american back ground. As they find their home world usurpered  by a genestearler cult they realise that they probably will not survive the cleansing of the planet so they prepare them self in their cultural way for death by calking their bodies white with lime. Well aplying a was of white lime over a black armor will not give you a bone white look so I choose to paint them bone white, ink them black and then dry brush them back to white using bleached bone and bone white giving them a withe washed look.

Well as I got the first squad painted I realized that they looked better than my Wolf guard counterparts and as time went I slowly brought the wolf guards over to the Death Wing, creating this army. In its time it was a complete 2k army, now I don't know if it would muster up to that amount. As my Dark Angel army grow I also started out with the the inner Circle of the Dark Angels, painting Aszrael, Ezeikiel, Asmodai ets a also decided to paint some green terminators with robes similar to the inner circle models. At this time no terminators where available in robes so I had to sculpt them using miliput. Well the army is almost finished and I am thinking about painting up the last elements once the Titans are done. I will come back and present the rest of my Dark angels in another blog post, so until later then.

What happened?

I recently discovered something strange. After having had the warhound assembled over the summer I had to open the back carapace the other day and realized that the insides had taken on a wet shine. It almost locks like I gave it a coat of clear hard coat but I didn't. So what happened. In the picture to the left you can see the inside of the back carapace, it was sprayed with a mate black base paint and has not been touched since, but you can clearly see a line dividing the front form the back. This line matches the contour of the warhound body. In the other picture I compare the newly painted firewall to thew reactor room in Wolfish Perversion with the one that has been mounted in Unbearable Desire, and it is a clear difference in color. Admittedly some difference in coloration can be expected as since I might not have exactly mixed it the same way, but the surface texture is completely different. The newly drybruched surface is slightly rough and looks dry, like stone while the one out of Unbearable Desire is smooth and slightly oily and has a wet look. This can be seen on all the interior parts of the titan while the outsides look like the newly painted surfaces. I have no idea why this has happened but my guess would be that during summer and the temperature has gotten the resin sweating and that on the interior parts the oils released form the resin got stuck while they evaporated away on the out side, but I don't know. There might be something more sinister going on, the descent into chaos is under way.

Joluns Wrath part2

This week thing has been going fast. I started painting on Joluns Wrath upper body, I thought that it would take me some time to paint, but suddenly the front part was painted and soon the I had started out with the armor plating covering the head. Now one can see what it will look like when it is done. I have not really thought about it much, but once I saw this picture I realize that all the green stuff work that I have done, together with the painted patterns and all, it is really quite cluttered. Actually a little more than I aimed for but now it is what it is. But I am happy, it is looking good and I am looking forward to finishing it up. Speaking of finishing things up, there are currently only 7 major pieces and three minor pieces left to paint on all the titans. This means that I will have to start cleaning up and assembling the weapons for the remaining titans.

As I am moving forward with painting most of the the things are at this point standard since I have already figured out how to paint them. This might actually be the reason for the pace at the moment, it is just painting and no thinking. But once in a while I come across a feature that is unique, or atleast some thing that has not been painted so far, such as the teeth on the head and on the armor. On the titans I have seen these are painted in a bone/white color. Since I have the imperial remnants on the armor painted in a similar color I thought that I would try another color scheme. I ended up painting them a brown/black combo with the lighter areas at the base and black tips. I am not sure about this, they are quite dark and tend to be lost among all the other details of the titan. This might be good and it might be bad depending on whether I want them to pop or not. I will leav them as is for the moment, I can come back to them later on.

The Cockpit has also gotten a coat of paint, I am not satisfied with the look so I will go back and try to clan it it up a bit. The screens look too flat and the dials are too jolly. This is a chaos Reaver and not some nice imperial thingy. It might look better once the crew gets installed, they are looking suitably chaos. I have also done the last parts on Wolfish pervertions legs. The thigh plates got painted and attached. So now all the titans legs are painted which was part of my goal before the one year mark of this project. Now if I only can have the upper bodies painted as well it would be nice, but we will have to see about that.
I is nice and a bit sad to see them growing up. It has been an intense journey over the last year but is has really gotten me into painting again. I will have to find a new project to work on after these bad boys have moved out onto the fields of battle. Talking about battles, my primary idea with these titans where the painting experience, but now I am thinking about actually finding me a apoc battle and let them lose. But to do this I need to find the rules for them and as far as I know there is not one book with the rules but several so I will have to try and find some information about what is needed to play them. Well, this is it for now, until next time then.

Joluns wrath

 This week I have been working on Joluns wrath. I had promised my self that I could start painting the head of the Reaver once I got the last war-hound insides painted. So I sat out to paint it in a base green with the green struff modes painted as a broken bone mask covering the skull. I this is one of the pieces I have made the most extensive modifications to so I realy hope that is will trun out fine, otherwise I am in a bit of trouble as the Reaver will be the center piece of the army and the had is the focal point of the model.
So I started out with a green base. This was pained in the same way as the green canopy of the titan armor, green covered with brown ink, drybruched three shades of green and then inked again and drybruched again. This give me a feel for the 3D structure of the surface on the parts that will be painted later.
I have discovered that it is easier to get the shading right if I use a slightly watered down paint, covering the under lying drybrushed parts. In this way the drybrushed shades will shine through the new color. This helps later when I start painting on the highlights. In the pictures to the left you can see the process. The first picture show the green base color, In the second picture I have painted the bone in a light brown tone, washed it in dewlan mud and then highlighted it with the same brown color. In the following pictures I add lighter and lighter tones going towards bleached bone and with. I always paint these things with watered town colors, letting the underlying colors shine through and slowly building up the highlights.In the last skull picture I have reached the last highlight. I am stopping here at the moment,
I am thinking about washing it again in dewlan again and then highlighting it again. But I will leave it for the moment and maybe I will do it later on. Well I think it turned out quite well. It is obvious that it is a sculpt and not the original but it is not to intrusive for the model.
Apart from the skull I have also managed to paint the rear crotch plate. I will have to attach the cables going from this part to the legs. This I do not look forward to as it involves reshaping the resin and I have not figured out a god way of doing this. The position of the legs also makes it a bit hard go get them into place. I will forgo the cables to the weapons as I will have them exchangeable but these cables actually looks good so I will have to mount them. And as if this was not enough I also managed to paint the last two leg armor parts with wings. They turned out really nice. So now it is only the front crouch plate left on the legs and then they are base painted.
To keep up with the progress on the head I have also started to paint the main upper body. This is mostly large green surfaces and does not demand so much fine detail painting and should go quite quickly. I can feel the titans progressing and I can actually see the end of this project within the next couple of months. It is a strange feeling to not have a lot of titans pieces lying around and in stead have three large, mostly painted models standing around. Well there is still much to do on them but I am starting to get a feel for what they will look like.