Saint Lucia and Fenrir WIP

This week I decided to get some painting done apart from working on my titans. So this time it was Saint Lucia that came under the brush. This is a quite "simple" model as it is mostly black robes and more black robes and not to much details. The largest piece standing out form the model it the  hart in the standard. I tried to give it a deep black to read luster and I am pretty happy with the ho wit turned out.

When it comes to my titans I am starting to wounder what is wrong with me. First I bought a Warbringer because it was a new model and I thought that it would be nice to build one. Then I realized that it has no intenals... and as ALL my titans and knights has one I would need to build one...  and considering how long it took me to get Varangians internals done I came up with the idea of buying a Reaver and just give it one of the laser blasters I had leftover from Varangian, it would be a straight forward build with an easy weapon swap...





... but then I got carried away with my ideas for the titan, which include a tone of green stuff work, much more than I would have to do for the internal of the Warbringer... so now I am stuck with a tone of work to do before I can start painting... so does it mean I should buy another titan just to get some painting done?

Fenrir WIP

I have slowly been working on the assembly of Fenrir, especially the legs and feet which are a true horror story. It turns out that what I want and what the model is capable of is not necessarily the same. My initial idea was to have a more human like stride, with one for more or less in front of the other...  well... that is not possible. An even making a "stride" seams to be beyond the models articulation... it is more of a small shuffling step. I know that I was complaining about the warlords actual walking capability and the Reaver is no better, at least the warlord was easy to pose...  the amount of pistons in the Reaved foot and lower led is ridiculous, and it all has to go in at the same time.

So to minimize my problems I decided to just glue in the front and back leg pistons in a fist posing. the central leg is left unattached and the pistons are just glued into the foot section so that I can pull it out and attach the side pistons later. It is the front and back pistons that determine the angel of the legs in forward directions so they are most important. As I wanted a walking pose I raised the back foot onto the front toe which also meant I have to build that leg first as it would be in the most extreme positions as to the piston positions, then I adjusted the other leg to mach the height at the hip. All in all I am not to displeased with the result even if it was not what I was hoping for... 

I have also finished the cowl of the head and painted it. It really turned out great so I will go ahead with the theme of the titan..  just need to do a lot of other stuff like it all over which will take time. It also meant that I needed to trim the back carapace quite a bit to fit the ears...  but in the end I do not think it is visible.

Then there is the crew that also need to have the chaos treatment....  so much GS work to do...  but it is fun even if it takes a lost of time.

Dark Apostle with Disciples

It's been that time of year once again were I add yet another year to the tally, and this year I got a Dark Apostle and his Disciples from my wife. As tradition dictates I went straight to work. The model is once again of such quality and richness of detail that it takes forever to paint with a high risk of having to revisit areas as you notice even more details that you forgot to paint. It is also necessary to paint it in sub assemblies to be able to get to all the details. I greatly enjoy painting these as it really gives you some bang for the buck, but I do not envy those trying to make a full army of these new highly detailed models (or it might just be that I am getting old and do not have the energy of the young). All in all I think it is great to be a collector of models rather than a gamer and I think I could fully occupy my self with just painting character models.

As for colors I went with the same metallic crimson that I used on last years raptors. I really like the effect. The robes were done in a matching back to purple shade. I tried to avoid going to overboard with the shade here but they still got some distinctive highlights. As usual I would like to point out that the effects on the new models are not to my liking as I simply can not get them to match the rest of the model and removing them is to much work.



All in all I am really happy with how it turned out, and it has a special place in my collection (and heart) as it was a gift from the wife. Hope the rest of you also like it.

Saint Arabella

Not much to report this week. I have been slowly chipping away at a multitude of projects and it is only saint Arabella that has made it to the photo range...

As for the paint scheme it is not much to report either, it is black on black with some more black. I would have wished that the all saints would have been more like Katarine were the armor is more prominent and could have been painted in the respective order color. But as it is it is just black robes and some small parts sticking out.

And as usual I have to protest against the "special effects" on the model. I do not like when they add smoke etc that needs to be painted but can't be painted realistically...  but that is what it is...  but if some designer is reading this by mistake... please make the smoke etc optional...

Well, next up is Fenrir's head... I finished the GS work and have started painting. I am doing this as a test piece to see if the whole armor peeling of thing works or not. If it works I will add it to the rest of the armor panels.

Surtr head WIP

Finally inspiration struck like a thunder bolt from a clear sky. I just knew what Surtr would look like. First of is the head as I already had it washed. I started out with a picture of the Warbringer head and pulled it into paint. I split the head down the front, moving the central pieces apart and added a shin guard (or beard as it turned out). Also rounded of the eyes a bit on the top and cut back the forehead shield.

Once I had done this digitally I when into the garage and brought out the jewelers saw and started carving the head a part, much as I had done in paint. I had to use a scalpel to cut away some of the pieces that needed to go to open up the front of the face. That was a bit fiddly but resin is really easy to carve so with some patience it was all done. Once the pieces were glued back on in their new positions I started working with green stuff. For the helm all the joints etc had to be covered to smooth things out. Also the beard needed some smoothing, and still does. There is still a lot of details needed like rivets etc but that would have to wait. First I needed to fill out the gap with some underlying texture in the recently created gap. First I thought of adding a grill like on the warlord head...  but then inspiration struck again...  off course there would be a demon face looking out form behind the face guard...  and there we are. Once the face is done and I see that everything fit I will move on the the final details and the head will be done. At least for now. I am thinking on adding a horse mane to the to top of the head like a roman helmet... but that will interfere with the neck shield of the body. I could just leave it of as I did on Varangian but I am not sure how that will look just yet. Need to build the body box before that so I can try out some options. At least I am started. I also have some radical ideas for the decorations of the armor plates...  but more about that later.

The Triumph of Saint Katherine WIP and Custodes Vertus Praetors

This week I finished the last of the Custodes Vertus Praetors. Not much to say about it really. It is painted in the same way as the other two, in white and gold metal with some brown leather and crimson robes. I like this models a lot. If I was making an army I would have liked to have a bunch of them as they are really cool.

Then I started a new project, The Triumph of Saint Katherine. When I first saw the model I just know that I would need to get one and paint it. I think this is probably one of the coolest character models that GW has produced. It is crazy detailed and some very nice poses on the sisters. The only thing I don't see how I will pull of is the writings on the parchments... but we will see how that turns out. The first model to get painted is Saint Katherine her self. This is by far the coolest of the sisters around the bier. It is sad that there is no regular sisters with shield and sword. Might have to convert some sisters as crusaders to get that. As for painting this it will be a challenge as it is mostly black, and black is notoriously hard to paint, especially when there is so much of it. So I will try to put some color nuances into it to break it up a bit. So Katherine's armor was painted a dark metallic and then washed in a thinned down green to make it contrast a bit against the robes. The inside of the robes got a more crimson color than what is depicted on the box. I also kept the out side black instead of read to tine in white the rest of the saints that are all covered in robes. This is a WIP so I am not really done whit here yet, as I saw from the photos. But it is a good start. Also the base is just started and need some additional dry brushing to smooth it out.

A new light rig

As some of you might have noticed I have had some problems with the lighting of my models as I takes photos for this blog. This is some parts due to the facts that a large part of the year there is no natural light in the evenings (after work) when I do most of my hobbying. So for some time I have though about getting a light box or something that will illuminate the models a bit better. I have not be quite sure how to go about it though, one thought that occurred quite early was to use multiple light sources in the form of diode spotlights from shelf lighting to get light from all angles. IKEA has a number of these for affordable prices and I when for two of the "Ledberg" sets that contains four sources each. Once I had eight lamps I just needed to figure out how to hold them in place. I thought about making some stands out of wood, but that limited my ability to position the lights for different models. In the end I stumbled over a soldering frame that is used to hold the cables etc when soldering. I removed the looking glass that came with the set and mounted the light disks in the pincers. Then I pulled out some random models from the cabinet and tried some shoots with my mobile. I think the lighting is better than on the original posts of the models but I still need to learn how to best point the lights to get good pictures (and get the focus right). So it is better but there is still room for improvements, both to the positioning and to the light rig itself, but it is a start at least.