King in the North WIP 5

This week I have been painting away on the armour plates of the King. I really had forgotten how much stuff I had sculpted on to these...  so it has taken a bit longer than I thought to get it all done. But in the end it is mostly just filling in the fields using my, by now, routine scheme for the ghosts. I think the GS blends in well on the model. Some of the things could have been neater sculpts, but this has been a project over such a long time that it is not all consistent. Now it is only the greaves left and the groin banner (which I have no clue how to attach)... and off course the base I need to finish . But all in all I see that I can soon have this model done.

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...

King in the north WIP 2

Well, it has been Christmas, so time is at a premium. But in between eating, drinking and hanging out with family I have managed to get some painting time in on the King in the north. As it is not possible to insert the pilot after the cockpit is built for the FW knight I stated out with the insides. I painted up the internal panels as per my usual green/yellow rust primer and chipped it with black and brown. Then I went over it with brown and orange rust to give it that neglected, dirty look. The king himself got the usual blue jumpsuit and ghost green armour plates and leather boots and glows. I also added some gold just to give him that regal feel (there is also a crown on his head). All in all not a too complicated paint jobb. I did however realized that quite a lot of my paints had dried up so I had to go and get new ones...  which I could not do until after the holidays. Once everything was painted up and documented I glued the torso together (o what I miss plastics at this point). I let it dry over night before going back in and painting the whole thing in the green/yellow primer. And that is more or less where I am at the moment. I need to do the chipping and rust before picking out all the cabling etc. There is so much details on these models so that will take some time.

And I got me some presents for Christmas from the wifey in the form of a Sicaran battle tank that will also occupy me for some time. I have also promised my self that I will finish the last two sections of the Opus magna this holiday so that it is only detailing left...  so the progress with the king might be slow...   but who knows what the fickle hobby spirits will infuse me with.

King in the north

It is Christmas holidays and I have a new project, or rather an old one that needs finishing and I think I have the mojo to do so. This is a Cerastus Knight-Castigator that I started several years ago with the intension of having him as the head of my knight order, the Northern Knights (I know that my ability to come up with original names is limited). As such I decided to go nuts with the GS and this is where I got stuck. Once all the major ideas where done I did not know what to do next but I felt that I was not done. So the model got sitting around for some time (years), but after finishing the Dominus for the 5th banner I felt that I was on a roll and needed to finish this of also. So I set about tightening up some of the GS work, adding some new and finally tackeld the task of getting the legs built. I have really been dreading this as I wanted a dynamic pose, but had not built one of these before so I did not know exactly what range of motions I could get, and once you start gluing things together and cutting pistons you are kind of set and there is no going back.

I had this idea of the knight standing in a brazed position firing the Gatling guns. Since the knees are a bit strange on this model, having the leg on top of something would make the knee look strange in my opinion so I decided to have the model in a low and wide stance. This however cause the model to stick over the base so I needed to add some extensions (still need to get the details of the base done). With the basic structure of the base done I could start gluing in the feet, legs and hips. I tried to do this as a three piece assembly, two legs and the pelvis, but I could not get it all to line up with only bluetac holding things together so I had to glue everything into place to get al the parts in. Once I had the pelvis, legs and feet done I was about to glue in the toes... and realised that one of the feet where backwards... (they are not symmetrical as the front toe has a broader slot). I tried to break things apart but the super glue was to well applied and I risked breaking the wrong parts at the wrong place. So I had to remove the pistons and use a jewellery saw to cut the foot of at the ankel, turn it around and re glue it. Once that was done the toes could go on in the right direction.

Now I will base spray and then I attack the base with some plaster to build up some more structure. I also need to find some suitable piece to use for scale purposes.

Dominus Knight done

I have been away with work again for the last month, and only made short stops at home, and hence I have had very limited time to work on my knight. But now I have finally managed to squeeze in some time to finish of the arms for my Dominus Knight (which was also a bonus attempt for Dreadtober), which means it is done, and so is my first Knight banner.

I am not quite happy with how the arms turned out. They are ok but I think that if I hade started out with trying to replicate an imperial look from the beginning this would have turned out better. But I think it is time to let this go and learn from the experience and embrace the saying, "Kill your Darlings" next time. In this case I was so caught up with what I did for Varangian with the dragon skulls I thought that it would fit to do something similar here but no matter how much I tried I could not get the aesthetics to blend with the imperial look. I think it might be the size of the weapons. Smaller skulls would have worked as they would not have dominated the model, but in this case, the weapons are huge, probably to big for the model by them selves. So if I would re do this I would cut down the length of the barrels and make the housing as similar to the rapid battle cannon housing that I could make it. I should probably also have been satisfied with the capacitor banks under shoulders and not have had them also on the guns. But once again I had this thought of having these on the gun, similar to how many of the mechancium weapons look, but I could not make it and I tried several possible ways and this was what I settled on when I really should have realized that they needed to go. But that is now done with. I will try to keep this in mind for my chaos knight that I am planning to arm with dual Gatling's on the arms and back. If it does not work, don't force it. We will see if I can keep to this as the idea is already stuck in my mind. Now I have some infantry to finish and then we will see what I will do next.