New project

So, the things for my new project arrived today. When I got home from work I found a large package guarded by Balthazar in the hallway. After some unpacking I realized the magnitude of my purchases. This will be the next installment in my mechanicum army which will hopefully give me, two knights, three raptors, three myrmidons, two or four re-arming bunkers and a lot of bits for coming projects.

The myrmidons will be based on some conversions that I have found on the internet. There will be two myrmidons based on the model made by Mordian7th. Then there will be a heavy version based on a scorpion pattern defiler by tentakel games. They will not be copies but similar.

Then I will make one more Knight like the one I have. I will also make a heavy version with more armor and dual CCW. The left over legs and weapons from the boxes will be used to make some smaller two legged weapon drones that can accompany the knights. 

The bastions from the strong points will be made into rearming stations where knights and titans can stop to reload their weapons, or I might make them into drop pods for the knights.

These units are not taken from the fandexes that are out there and I will make them mostly to look good, not to be playable other than in very freindly games.

Space Wolves

During the last week(s?) i have painted some more Space Wolves. I am starting to get a feeling for the color scheme. I kind of like the dark color that they turned out to have. In the beginning I thought that they might be to dark and that they looked kind of lat in the color. Some more high lights might have been good. Then I started to look at the painting process. After I have painted the base blue in its two stages of dry brushing they are very detailed with a loot of highlights, but as I start to ad the other colors I lose the contrast of the base armor as it is so dark compared to the yellow and bone. So it is a trick of the eye rather than a real lack of highlight. And, if you look closely at the model you still see the highlights. Strange, but that is how it is. And as I accumulate more and more of them they look better and better, strange. In a group they look much better, the highlights pop out and so on. I also tried to use some transfers to get the Company logo on, but I could not get them flat on the shoulder pads and the borders got wrinkled so I took them of again. This probably means that I will have to free hand the symbol...   which might be for the better since I have gone for a very heavily chipped shoulder paint. Well I will paint up the last of the models I have and we will see where it goes form there.
I am also on the verge of buying the thing I need for the next mechanicum project, so this will also take up a large part of my time.
So here are the latest of the Space Wolves, Wolf Guard, Grey Hunter and a Blood Claw.

Random minis

I have found that I have somewhat of a difficulty to maintain a strict focus on the blog now that I do not have a project running. It was much easier to remember to update the blog with the progress of the week. It was also a way for me to document the progress. Now however I only paint random miniatures without any greater context, not that I don't enjoy it the painting, but documenting painting a single marine and then posting about it becomes some what lame. During the last weeks I have painted some more Desert Eagles, Space Wolves and Scitarii as well as finishing up the Desert Eagles command rhino. But since I am not painting an army it is still random minis. So what I need is a new large project to keep me occupied for some mounts so that I can post about it. I have an idea about building two more knights to join my mechanicum force. I have also seen some Myrmidons based on the Defiler kit so I am tempted to build three of these. I have made a list of parts that are needed and it looks promising. I need 5 Defilers, 2 Sentinels, 1 Phirana, 2 Imperial strong points and 4 hammer head weapons sprues. The cost is about a war hound so It better last at lest 4 mounts. I only have to come up with the funds for this, and order the bits...

Command Rhino

We have finally found our camera again. It had been face down in a field for two weeks, suffering both snow and rain as well as some trampling. Well we brought it in, wiped it down, dried it out and now we can take some pictures again. Apart from this my hobby time the last weeks has gone to other family related activities so I dont really have that much new to show.



I did however get an impulse to make myself a command vehicle for my Desert Eagles. I hade done one a long time ago for my Dark Angels, based on the old rhino model so I started looking through my stach of boxes and lo and behold, I found an old rhino kit that hadnt been to badly raided. So I started to look for more bits and managed to get something together. The bolter racks at the back was not really meant to be there but it was the only peaces that I had that would fit. There is still some work to be done on it but it turned out ok, abit of old school.

Fallen Dark Angel

Once again it has been a few weeks since the last update. This time it is mostly due to us loosing our camera so I have not been able to take any new pictures. Finally I decided to try out my mobile and hope that the inbuilt camera can focus enough on close objects and the light will be enough. Well enough of excuses. So I finished my fallen dark angel demon prince. I am happy with the over all result. The green stuff casting I did for the right arm did not come out as good as I had hoped but the other sculpting is ok. I was inspired by the Horus Heresy novels about the Dark Angels and their sort of medieval night in black armor with white tabard look. So I put a purple surcote beneath a layer of chain mail and a white tabard on top. I also made it torn and worn to represent centuries of warfare. The pose was inspired by another demon prince that I found on line, but instead of a rock under its right leg I made a defeated loyal Dark Angel in purple robes as a foot rest. The arms where also re-positioned to get the swords in front of him so that he could flex his mussels a bit. This is one fallen angel that the interrogator chaplains will have some trouble making repent. As I was working on this guy I got the idea that if roumours are true about the new 40k rule set will containe both Dark Angels and Chaos Marines I have the making of an army of Fallen Dark Angels. But we will se what happens. Now I will paint up some more Space Wolves and then I will go back to the Desert Eagles. And I am also currently saving up to the next large project for my mechanicum army, this project will not be as expensive as the titans but still not sheep, more on the order of one warhound, so it will probably take me some time to get enough funds to by the required components. Well this is it for now, I will be back.

Space Wolves prt2 update

Just a quick update. I just finished a Blood Claw with a jump pack. Originally I used the old GW jumpacks for my blood claws, the ones that looked like they had two fans on the back. I like this look better than the current jump pack with the forward looking intakes. Well I did not have any of the old ones left (but I think FW is doing some no) so I found some jump packs from an independent company (maxmini) at the local hobby store. They are about twice the size of the original and look somewhat over dimnensioned. They are also mounted at an angel compared to the back plate putting them quite high and pointing backwards giving the model a strange balance. So I think I either will have to get some FW jumppacks if I am to do more of this or I will have to re-position the fans on the ones I got or even split them so that each marine only has one fan mounted centered on the back. Other wise I am a bit at a loss about how to get the red and yellow blodclaw pattern to look ok. They tend to be very bright and do not go well together with the dark color scheme of my Space Wolves. Well this is just some trials so I still can make changes to the look. This is it for now.

Space Wolves prt2

After last weeks attempt to paint a Space Wolf I just had to find out if the color scheme and painting technique was good enough to work on "standard miniatures". So I bought a Space Wolf pack and some Wolf Guard terminators. At this point I will just assemble them on an individual basis (disregarding the rules and any unit sizes) and paint them up as either, grey hunters, wolf guard, blood claws or any other space wolf I can think of. I am not building a new army, yet, I am just trying out the colors.

That being said, the models are very well suited for the painting style. There are lots of fine details making drybrushing a simple method of picking them out. And it also means that I don't have to use a blade on them to get some more contrast. The models shown are still work in progress but I thought that I would show them and hopefully get some feed back (not on their legality) but on the color scheme and painting.