Paint Frustration

This week has been a combination of frustration and satisfaction. Half way through the week my brown ink ran out. This is the main base color for the titans on top of the green. So I went to my local hobby store to resupply...   but inks are no longer sold by GW. Instead they have something called a wash. Last week I bout a black wash as my current black ink is running low. According to the attendant that should be the same. But it is NOT. Luckily they also have the P3 paints so I bought a brown ink from them. I have not figured out what the wash is for but it is not as a replacement for inks. I have now tested both the new ink from P3 and the wash. And I must say that the wash was useless, at least for what I wanted to do with it. The P3 ink was more like what I am used to. So the main paint scheme of the titans are saved for the time being. But the black ink is also running out which is a  greater problem as they did not have a black P3 ink, I dont know if there is such an ink but if there isnt I am in serious trouble. 

Well, apart from my paint troubles painting has gone well. I have now painted the Reavers legs and one foot, or actually both feet's are painted but only one has got the border work and red areas. I am quite satisfied with the idea, but I am not sure it comes across as a paint effect rather than some red lighting. I still have the other foot to do the same way, then it is on to the hip and pelvis. There is also some green stuff work to do on the armor plates. I managed to do a nice mechanicus emblem on the Reaver body, I might put a pic on that here later on. Once I get the legs attached to each other it is the second warhound that will get its legs done. Painting is going much faster than I though it would, which might be that I have had more time to put into this project than I usually put in to painting. 

If I am good and paint a bit on my deamon prince (featured in a previous post) I might get to start on a defiler night also. This is a bit of a risk but as most of the construction work is done on the Titans I could do with a conversion project. =) well we will see about that later on.

Reaver work

 Its has once again been a while since the last update, which does not mean I have not been working on the titans. As I states in the last post I intended to bring the reaver, Joluns Wrath to more or the less same state as the war hounds. As can be seen to the left, It now stands by it self. I have magnetized the waist so that the torso can traverse. Putting the foot together was a pain, the pistons to the toes where a nightmare to cut to the right length and get them mounted, especially at the extreme position of the foot. I am pressing the envelop of what the feet and legs where meant to be able to do, but I think I can get it together.


 I have left the foot and the leg unattached at the moment. I have pinned them together for the time being. This lets me paint them separately but still assemble them temporarily. I started painting the legs which got the same green brown paint as the war hound. I opted not to paint the "hip balls" in metallic as on most reavers that I have seen. I am trying to keep the paint scheme as military as possible, which means that i try to avoid having to many base colors.











Hopefully they will not be to uniform at the end. It is a risk painting everything in the same color as it is easy to lose details and structure. But I hope they will look more like gigantic war machines rather than large colorful toys. I think I will have to get the armor plates and upper body of Unbearable Desire painted soon to see how it looks. I do not want to repaint all three titans if it does not work out. Still I am pleased with the results so far so I will keep going.

I could not stay away from the war hound so the mega bolter got some paint. It is still only base painted and it should receive some more attention with details. Now it is only the body left to paint, and the armor plaiting. I will probably spray it some time this week and start with the painting. I also have to try to find some more paint, I am starting to run out. I hope that I can still get hold of the right colors as the ones I am using now are quite old.

More plasma blast gun ...and something else.

So I have painted some more on the plasma blast gun. I added the borders to the armor plating, the chaos growths etc.



It is basically finished, i.e all parts are painted but I have not done any free hand like numbers, warning signs etc.  This is something that I will come back to since it requires more concentration than I can muster at the moment. Right now I will stick to painting by numbers. =)

This is another project that I have been working on for some time...  5 years or so. It is still not done. I really dont like to paint chaos trophy racks and it has been kind of holding me back. If I get stuck with a detail that I dont feel comfortable painting I tend to stall the whole thing. Most of my painting is done as relaxation so if it upsets me, then it get put on the shelf. Well, eventually it will be a demon prince leading my chaos space marine army, or at least his own contingent of jungle chaos marines. The army is teamed around different mercenary bands lead by a champion. They are not necessarily attuned to specific chaos gods, it is more a way of getting to paint different schemes and still use them in the same army. Though I have to admit that there is one troop from each power... except nurgle. We will have to see what happens with this army. The titans are sort of demanding some ground support in the form of scitarii, defiler nights and perhaps a robot or two.

Reaver legs and War hound plasma

So, now I am almost at the same stage with the Reaver as I am with the Warhounds. The legs have been constructed, pinned and magnetized. The leg assembly can still be broken down for painting. The only things remaining are the toes and gluing the hip joints to the pelvis. This time I use super glue to attach the hip joints to the legs when dry fitting the stance, I have learned from the Warhound not to use blue tack for this... Hopefully they will break away easily once the joints are glued into the hip. Then it is only to start painting the inner leg structure. =)  I will hold off with the armor platings so that I can green stuff them in the same way as with the Warhound armor.



I could not stay away from Unbearable Desire so I started to paint the Plasma Blaster.It is not finished so I will put more pictures here later when it is done. At the moment only the green plates are painted and the inside of the barrels.

Assembly

So I finally got around to painting the last interior detail of Unbearable Desire, the wall separating the reactor control room from the elevator room. Here I opted to paint the serial number of the Warhound, 2089 on the inside of the reactor room and I also painted the titans name in runes above the entrance on the outside.. After this part was done I attached the rear part of the upper body to the front part and put the wall in. At this point I could attach the upper body to the legs, and it did not fall over. =). As I saw this I decided to magnetize the arms and weapons. I drilled out the arm stub and attached a 10 mm diameter neodym magnet with a 4 mm hole and a 4 mm iron rod in the recess. Then I drilled out a 4 mm hole in each weapon and a small 10 mm diameter recess at the bottom of the socket. In the recess I glued in a iron disc.Once all parts where fixed I could not resist to assemble the titan. I know that it is unpainted and a lot of the smaller parts are missing, but it is the first time it stands more or less ready for battle. =)

I have also started to assemble the Reaver titan's legs. I started with the magnetization of the outer armor plates and now I am moving on towards cutting the pistons to the right length. I will keep the lower leg lose at the moment and only glue the toes, and piston guards in the right position. This gives me the possibility to paint the inner leg before assembly, which is good since the outer armor is removable. =). I don't understand why people say that the Reaver legs are easier than the Warhound, I find these more complex and not as flexible as the war hound feet. Well I will try to squeeze the pose that I want out of them and if it does not work I will have to use a more standard way to assemble them. I also have to think about pinning. I have not had any problems with the epoxy so far but it is not worth taking any chances with the legs.


I will probably take a break from the Unbearable Desire to work on the other titans, so that I get them to more or less the same state before starting to paint the armor. I still have some green stuffing to do. This will in principle mean that I have to paint every thing that I have done again =) but on another titan. We will see if I can keep away from the armor.

It stands!

 After being away for a few weeks it's time to show you all what has been done to the titans lately. Both legs of Unbearable Desire have been painted and assembled in their walking position. It was quite a scare to glue them together! I had glued the legs in their position and the hip, leaving only two joints unglued and held together by blue tack. This was done so that I could paint the parts separately before assembly. However, when I applied glue to the last joints and tried to get them to fit together I could not make the joints flush at the same time as all the toes where in contact with the surface. This was due to the fact the the blue tack that I used when gluing the other parts used more space than the final glue and hence the parts did not fit properly. Since the walking pose puts a lot of strain on the legs I did not want the feet to be in contact at just one point. After about an hour of fiddling back and forth I finally managed to get them into a position where the feet were flat on the ground and there were only very small gaps in the hip joints. I will have to fill the gaps with more glue or green stuff at some point, but it's holding and standing so it's not critical right now. However, it has to be done before the upper body gets attached. I have also worked some more on the shin guard, adding the border and Chaos icons. I also tried the idea of having a red paint scheme (Khorne type) starting to grow out from the Chaos icon, taking over the original paint scheme, though I'm not sure if it comes across right or if it just looks like something else. We'll see if I want to enlarge the areas so that it becomes more of a painted surface but I don't want to make it too cluttered; I don't want the armor to look like a colorful camo paint. Sine all of the armor plates are either loose or magnetized I can hold back on painting them until I know what I want. 

Great news: New Sisters of Battle coming up!

Ok so at this point I'm closing in on 'extatic' here.... A couple of weeks ago I heard from my local retailer that gw was dropping the SoB, which of course made my horribly disappointed. The Sisters of Battle have always been my absolute favorite army and actually the only one that has ever stirred my imagination and enough to spend money on. Now, the disappointment has been turned to joy, as I read on the great net that not only are gw keeping the SoB, they are actually releasing new models!!!!!! YAY!!!


I first read about it in Faeit 212, where was passed on from stickmonkey on Farseer. Rather than trying to rephrase the whole thing, I think it's best to simply pass along what was originally said. Read it while I try to regain my breath. The plastic (!) models coming up sound amazing (despite the traditional and oh so unpractical haircut which is still there).






(Link to original HERE)


I'm posting this in the rumor section on purpose, but it's more of a review.

I got to get a good look at a new protoype basic sister, and I'm hoping one of our other sources can sneak a picture out once they see it. The reason is, this sister has a "veil". Words cannot describe...the detailing is phenomenal. The veil is a separate piece, but it looks gorgeous. If they can get this right in molding the sisters wave will be beautiful models. If you've seen this one, you know what I mean... I begged to take a photo for here, but no luck. 

The model maintains the existing armor styling, but with more filigree. Little details like lace boot tops, small details in the armor. Look at the evolution of daemonettes to wyches, and think what the next step would be. 

The bolters however are now streamlined, they are not the marine bolter we've known and loved, but still recognizable. Feminine.

I know I'm getting folks worked up, but sisters are still a long way off, it will be a long wait. So temper any enthusiasm.


EDITED:

I've had a chance to gather notes and thoughts a bit more now that I've completed my work today and had time to get a pint and a bite...

So to clarify a few bits.

The lace, is not laces, its lace around the top of the boot. at the knee. the model has like a pirate style boot and the lace is around the top edge..or thats my take away of what it was.

The bolter is still most certainly a bolter, but look at the existing line, the bolters are disproportioned...especially the bolt pistols...to the models. the new ones are much more like the AoBR SM bolters. With straps, etc. and are separate pieces from arms. they "look" slighty thinner than a SM bolter and have a different shape to the over all gun, but they are not "Girly" i did not have a SM handy to compare directly, so it could just be impression. Also, they have abandoned the banana clip completely it seems.

the veil covered the whole head, its an alternate to the helmet, the face piece is just separate. think cobra commander vs vera wang wedding.

the torso has small details in the corset, i think skulls.

the tabard between the legs had flur de lis details.

there are "sleeves" similar to the image on 19 of the current WH book. similar, but not identical.

I'll reiterate this is a prototype though, not what has necessarily been approved. But as a beta stage model, i really like it, and I think a teaser of it would really build up excitement...hint hint GW overlords...  Maybe wait til closer to release...

Overall when i see the current sisters their are very "bulky" these new ones are very graceful, but in a brutal way. the poses are much more dynamic and agressive. not everyone has their feet planted shoulder width apart torso straight on to their opponents....

I was told there will be numerous head options for the sisters, in the way theyve been doing all releases, but the "bob cut" is the preferred hairstyle.

I'm also told sisters repentia, priests, celestians, and seraphim will get new models with seraphim likely to adopt jump packs similar to the sanguinary guard...though I saw no evidence of this. No word on arco flaggelants.

Penitent engine is getting reworked as well.

And of course you saw my Jan rumor post. To provide a clue, Dominion squads.

Inq forces should all be updated by the GK release, so no news there for SoB, but they are expected to be present in the codex.

I also know of a few more "new" units that are being developed.

Cheers.