Fenrir leg armour

This week I finished the green stuff sculpting on the left leg armour for Fenrir. This is the leg that has the demon face breaking through on the knee pad. This is a recurring theme on my titans. In this case I sculpted an actual face that had broken through the armour rather than having something beneath the skin as portrayed on the FW chaos Reaver and what I tried to emulate on my war lord. I think this turned out fine. This part was done some time ago and I might have already blogged it. 

What I had not figure out was what to do with the lower leg armour and how to tie this to the face. I was playing around with some ides of having spikes/horned ridges breaking trough the armour in some nice pattern but I could not settle on a nice design. Then I came up with the idea of having two great horns poking through just beneath the knee cap, similar to the horns on the Magnus model. So I set about sculpting these, and to cut back on the need for excessive amounts of GS I made the core from three layers of 2 mm plasticard that was shaped into a rough horn shape. This was then covered with GS in several layers adding more and more details.

Once I hade these done the thought struck me, what if I continue on the Magnus theme and let the horns come come from a chest and then the face could be the demon face on the knee. Then I just needed to add the rest of the rib case to the side armour together with some arms to fill up the space. I did this in the same way as the rib case on the chest panel, where the ribs are poking through the armour in places. To get the anatomy reasonably correct I actually use some reference images. All in all I am pleased with the result. I probably could have med the details a bit better and the transitions to the armour smoother but over all I am pleased.

Painting was pretty standard. I kept the base colours of the armour to the greens without adding any decorations so that it would not be to busy, except for the knee that always has the heraldic designs on them. Now I am working on the laser blasters for the arms. After that there is not much left, just need to finish the GS designs for the right leg, fix the shoulder amour and the weapon cowlings. 

Back mounted Laser Blaster for Fenrir

This week saw the completion of the back mounted Laser Blaster for Fenrir. I tried to paint it the same way I did with the Laser Blaster for Varangian, so that if I need I can run a legit build for my Warlord (in that case Fenrir would get the Apocalypse missile launcher also making a legit build). But for now I am keeping with the rule of cool (in my opinion).

I have also, almost finished building and GS-ing the arm Laser Blasters so that will be next. Then it is only the armour plates left and the titan is done. I am so close to finishing this quick build, I can almost smell it.

Paragon War suits

This week my sisters got some reinforcements in the form of a squad of Paragon war suits. When the Grey knight nemesis dreadknight came out I was not a big fan of the design or the idea of strapping a marine to the front of a walking suit (almost like a penitent engine). But when the Paragon war suits for the sisters where presented I was all aboard. I think it might be that the pilot is more integrated into the suit rather than hanging of the front the makes it more believable. They have stolen some ideas from Japanese manga where these types of suits are not the uncommon with the arms of the pilot sticking out of the sides. I understand that the arms of the pilot has to go somewhere but this solution with them sticking out like this can not be a good idea from a survival point of view. But then again, it is a game and they look cool so why not.

GWs range of models does vary quite a bitt in complexity and I think it is soon time for them to start putting some ratings on the boxes. One for the complexity of the build and one for the complexity of painting. These models where quite fiddley to assemble and I needed to paint them in quite small units, but if I had not done that the painting would have been difficult. Over all I get the impression that the plastic sisters are not for the beginner modelers as there are so many small parts to assemble and paint.

As the rest of my sisters the models are mostly drybrushed, only the faces are painted traditionally. As with some of my later models I am using a green undertone for my black metallic, just to give it a bit more depth than just a white metal washed black. The green was really bright and vibrant before I added the last layer of black so it got me thinking that I might need to do one more suit but make it more like that to make it pop, perhaps the high lord? The tabards where painted purple to go with the rest of the sisters metal and purple theme. On the back there are relief borders, but on the front there are only very thin and weak indications of a border and I do not think I have seen any one actually painting the borders on the front, but I thought that the colour symmetry would be better if there where borders both back and front. for the rest of the model I thought that the metal was good as it were and I did not do anything more to it than what was created in the first dry brushing step.

These models were fun to paint and even though I did three of them in parallel it was not to difficult, just had to keep track of which sub assemblies belonged to what model. This dry brushing scheme really lends itself to batch painting.

Now I really need to get back to sculpting on Fenrir.

Infernal Enrapturess

This year I got the Infernal Enrapturess from my wife for my birthday. The model was somewhat delayed due to Brexit and Covid so the model did not arrive until well after the day, so my usual birthday model painting did not take place as usual, but instead I have slowly been chipping away at the model for some time. It has taken a lot more time than I thought, but not due to the complexity of the paint scheme but due to problems with the paints and the techniques I use. For some reason the base layer did not stick to the spray paint that I used on the plastic. This meant that as I tried to get nice and even blends using dry brushing I wore away the paint on the raised edges, leaving black marks all over the model. To fix this I had to go back and repaint the base coat, which then has a completely different tone to the already drybrushed areas, so I had to restart the process which then ended up with the same result. So I think I have painted the model at least three times before I got to this stage. Once I got the paint to stick more or less I had rally lost the mojo for the model so it has been sitting around my painting station, just waiting to be finished, which is really sad as I do like to paint the models I get form the wifey.

From a design perspective I think the model is excellent. It has a very dark vibe to it while still being very elegant. I am however no so sure about the face (and the faces of the other demonets), it is not as seductive looking as one would expect form Slaanesh demons, not like the old metal ones that had more triangular faces, and not as masculine as the current range. But one can not get everything, and considering that it was rumoured that Slaanesh needed to die because he/she was to sexualised ( which was harmful for children), I get that GW needed to done it down a bit. So overall I was pleasantly surprised that the dared to do this model and now that it done I am very pleased with it.

Desert Rats command squad

This week we finally got some rain, which incidentally meant that I got some time to finish of some off the models hanging around my to do shelf. In this case it was the Scion command squad. The squad has the same basic modifications as the other squad with cargo pants and chest pockets but apart form that are pretty standard builds. I opted to give some of the models a las rifle in addition to their other equipment's so that they can take part in the action when not talking on the radio, waving with the flag or patching people up. The paint scheme is the same and are done as a all in one paint job where I first colour in all the different colour areas and then drybrush everything in one go...  it is a quite nice way of batch painting as I do not need to be to tidy at the different stages. Next up for this army will be the two vehicles but that will have to wait a bit as the to do shelf is not completely cleared of already assembled models.

1st Lieutenant Ernst Roml

Corporal Stefan Murdoc

Corporal Arthur Breit

Corporal Timothy Huur

Corporal Gorge Tart

Fenrir, standing skeleton

Over the last couple of weeks I have finally managed to finish up the last parts of Fenrir's upper body and internals. To be honest, it was not much that needed to be done but my time has been severely limited by work in the garden (moving some 30 tones of dirt with a wheel barrow). That and the fact that some days we had 28-30 deg C in the shadow, which made any type of work other than drinking liquid to much. The heat also played havoc with my paints. A large quantity of paints has just dried up in the heat which has also made it harder to finish anything, as well as influencing the mojo. Well now it is done and Fenrir stands. Now I need to get going the the GS work on the armour panels. I also need to sort out the arms and weapon mounts that I managed to screw up...  for some reason I manage to drill crocked holes for my arm pins that go through the magnets into the weapons, preventing the front heavy guns form breaking the magnetic lock. I am not sure how I will fix it but some how I will sort it out.

Next up is to finish the last set of the desert rats...  lets hope I remember the recipe.

Fenrir internals WIP

This year summer came early, i.e. I started work in the garden with hope to have finished most of the heavy lifting before vacation so that I actually get some vacation this year. This has off course meant that I have not had that much time for hobby stuff. But I have managed to sneak in a few shifts in-between haling dirt. I have mostly focused on finishing the internals on Fenrir so that I can assemble the upper body and move on to the armour. All the GS work I have done on this does however mean that there is a tone of more details to work on that should not have been there and hence it has taken a lot of time. But in the end I am pleased with how it is turning out. But I will remember this for the next titan. Do not make unnecessary organic growth on the titan but keep it clean and mean. But the growth do play their part in making the titan look more chaosy.

The paint scheme is my usual yellow "primer" that has rusted and been worn a way in places. I really like how it turns out. And I am also getting the hand of painting flaked over paint like chevrons etc. The next step is to finish the olive green armour and add the metal trims. Then I will assemble all the parts that I have painted separately. Hopefully that will not take another month but we will see.