And we're back! - Goblin Shaman

Right..
so after an absolute age of no new posts (tbh i even forgot i had a blog)
i have decided to resurrect the old thing and hopefully get into the habit of posting on a regular basis- i know, i know.. we've all heard that one before, right? 

But anyway, now that my friends and fellow gamers/modelers/painters are spread out around the country, at uni and other things, it makes sense that i start posting pics of what I'm getting up to these days, so that they can have a gander at them and feel comforted in the fact that i haven't given up on the hobby altogether.

So to kick off.. we have my Goblin Shaman for my planned Orcs and Goblins army..

Goblin Shaman.

I actually bought this guy ages ago, when the new models came out..
(I also bought the big boss, cos both models looks very cool in my opinion) 
 However i have literally only just got around to painting either of them as i took a break from painting and instead pretty much just started collecting every army i could possibly think of. 


The interesting thing about this particular model is that i tried out a new technique (well for me anyway) and painted him using pretty much only washes and glazes.

Now, I've used washes before.. in fact they're one of my favorite painting techniques..
but I've always used them in moderation, whereas for this guy i wanted to see if i could make a model look decent using them almost exclusively.  

A close-up on the cloak (or is it a cape? hmm..)

Fortunately Games Workshop do an excellent range of washes and glazes, which i have only recently had the pleasure of trying.
(Up to now I've always made my own but that requires more effort and produces a far inferior effect).

One thing i found with using washes to paint an entire model is that the model has to be primed using white (or a similarly light colour). This means that when the wash flows into the recesses, it leaves the raised edges much lighter but still stains them the colour your using.

This is most pronounced on the cloak and skin. 

Fortunately for me, I always prime using white anyway.


The Cloak was painted using progressively heavier layers of Druchii Violet and Carroburg Crimson (love these two colours). These were applied directly over the white primer, without any base coats. The Druchii Violet was painted directly into the deepest recesses and allowed to pool towards the base of the cloak. 

The cloak is personally my favorite part of the model, and i was very happy with the end result.. plus it was crazy quick to do and took almost no effort, a definite win :-)

The other noteworthy part of the model is probably the skin. Unfortunately, i can't remember exactly how i did this, as i paint pretty much every green-skin model differently, however, i believe it was just a number of washes of Biel-Tan green.. although it is entirely possible that there was a base coat 'wash' of watered down goblin green first.

The picture to the right demonstrates how the washes leave the uppermost raised edges much lighter, almost white, and therefore if done correctly can completely negate the need to use time consuming highlighting techniques.

Apart from those parts already mentioned, there wasn't really much to this model..

The hair was painted the same way as the cloak (this will likely be the colour i use to tie my whole army together),
the vest thing was painted using Guilliman Blue
the rocks were simply painted codex grey
and the bones/ropes etc.
were just left white.

The entire model was then finished in my usual way- with Army painter quick shade, strong tone- this added further definition to the recesses and darkened the overly bright nature of the washes straight over the white primer.

Finally the base was painted with watered down Abaddon Black and the model was given a couple of coats with the army painter anti-shine matt vanish.

Altogether i am very pleased with the look of the lil guy and he only took me a couple of hours to paint, if that!!

Like i said at the start of the post, i will try and get into the habbit of uploading more regularly as i have some extra hobby time now, which i'm using to get some old models painted as well as starting a few new exciting projects (well really, one BIG one).. but i'll go into that in the next post :-)

As before feel free to comment, I'd love to know what you all think.

Empire Witch-Hunter

I wonder if you can guess what this post will be about... ? .... 

any ideas? .. ogres perhaps? .. more maneaters maybe?.. 

AHA!.. you have fallen foul to my masterfully conceived trap!!! Mwhahahaha...

yeah.. i agree, lets cut the melodrama.. 

so to business...

today we have, the 'new' empire witch hunter!

i've had this model since it came out a few months ago.. i actually pre-ordered it.. not that i intended to use one in my army, i just liked the model (although he does currently act as my general of the empire)..  

I also painted this model more or less as soon as i got it.. which means this is hardly an up-to-date post, i just didn't have any photos of it until now...
I chose to stray from the GW paint scheme slightly as i didn't want him to be overbearingly red.. i was aiming for a slightly more 'Van helsing' type look.. although i still wanted to hint my armies colours.

This model was actually the first finecast model i ever bought and i have to say that sadly it lives up to its rather unfortunate internet nickname 'crapcast' (and all the other variations). The model needed a fair bit of green stuffing to repair it.. such as fixing the cloak (which had a big hole in it), the hat (which was broken) and rightside of his face and nose (which was just a mess) and countless air bubbles across the model. Although this was fairly easily solved with some greenstuff and abit of patience, its still not the sort of thing you want to be required to do to a new model. It did however give me a chance to try out the liquid greenstuff for the first time and i have to say i liked it alot, makes filling in gaps alot easier and quicker!
This model was also the first time i tried out the army painter quick-shade system, which i've already spoken about in another post... although as it was the first time i tried it, i did nearly completely ruin the model...
let me explain..
I spent ages painting up the model, applying my own highlights and shading as normal, with the intention of using quick-shade to add further definition. After dipping the model and letting it dry i realised that i'd forgotten it would come out shiny.. so i bought some army painter matt varnish spray and coated the model the same way i would with games workshop primers.. and watched in horror as the heavy coat wrinkled and deformed. As a result i had to carefully scratch of the wrinkly bits, reapply some of the paint, brush on the quick-shade in those places and then lightly 'dust' with matt varnish. I should note that i don't blame the products (which are excellent) it was simply me being a ponce!

So yeah.. thats it for this post!
i've got some more models ready to blog but need to grab the camera first..
so i'll try and upload something next week!
   

   

 

I'M AN OGRE!!!

Well I've finally finished uni now and as a result i have lots of free time to waste.. which is great news for my warhammer armies!

I finished painting my witch hunter a few weeks ago but haven't got any pictures of it yet so that will have to feature in a later post.. i have however got a few pics of my first completed ogre models, two leadbelchers.

After play testing a few lists, these guys don't actually appear in my army anymore but i liked the models and they may find a place at 2000pts. (we'll see)...

 I recently purchased some army painter products (strong tone, dark tone, Matt varnish,white primer, some paints and some 'tufts') and so have been experimenting with all of them. I'm already a big fan of the quick shade dips and the tufts but was less satisfied with the white primer.. it is very thick and so you have to pay alot of attention and lightly dust the models with the primer.. other than that it works fine, but i'm a lazy guy and prefer games workshops primers which are much thinner.    

The quick shade dips i really can't recommend enough.. and although some may consider it to be cheating, they are great at getting an army painted to a decent standard quickly!

I'll upload more pics when i have time. In the meantime I'm working on converting Ogre bulls in Maneaters, as although i love the models i don't want to spend £90 in order to get 6... i've already made 2 of them and have a few pics so will upload them later in the week.

as always, comments are criticisms are welcome!  

Night-Bringer = LAD!

Well, I've just come to the realization that i haven't posted in some time, so i feel the need to post in an attempt to keeping my momentum going! that being said, this is only going to be a quick post...

So recently I've been devoting my entire life to the hobby... hardcore i know... having gotten back into painting and modeling etc. I'm now starting to get back into the whole gaming side of things, although i seem to get consistently flattened with my squishy empire army, leading me to purchase an ogre kingdoms battalion.. against the warnings and protests of my friends. But i digress..

So recently i played a 40k game.. for the first time in many many years...  and, much to my surprise (and amusement) i absolutely destroyed my friends space marine army using my old necrons.  Now, without a doubt the 'man of the match' was my night-bringer.. who we realised halfway through the game couldn't even be wounded by half the models in my oppositions army, let alone killed. To celebrate this fantastic show of power (cutting through dreadnoughts and terminators like they were made of plastic... see what i did there..) i decided to dedicate this post to him.

I have to preface this by saying that it is still very much a W.I.P.. (to use my cool street lingo) .. the only thing I've really done is the base, i haven't even started on the rest of the model.
So, having had this model for years, and loving it, i decided to strip all the paint and give it the paint job it truly deserves.. but not content to merely repaint it, i decided to do something cooler with the base.. which has been the one part of the model that i felt was underwhelming... i mean, why are there scarab beetles coming out of a rock-like-thing? just why!?

So i decided it would be infinitely cooler if he was bursting out of the ground, revealing a pool of lava beneath (not that he cares, being a god and that). So i got to work with the poly-filler, adding some bits of slate that i snapped of my mums water feature (she'll kill me when she notices), painted it with some quick dry-brushing of different shades of Grey and voila..       

This is probably a better picture, showing a more 'zoomed in' view of the base. I plan to paint some 'source lighting type thing' on the cape.. to show that its right next to molten lava.. which should be interesting, but fun..

Let me know what you think of it so far..

Well.. this didn't turn out to be such a short post afterall...

I'll try to post more pics of this model when it's finished, but at the moment I'm working on so many different things, inc. deffcopters, an oger army, the new empire witch hunter, and my own war altar (which i think i mentioned in the last post) so i'll get cracking and post lots of more things!! so watch this blog!!

The army so far..

I have been promising myself and my loyal fan base (thank you both) that I'll upload another post and today i shall finally deliver!

Being a fairly new blog, i figured it would be a good idea to show what my empire army looks like so far. Fortunately for me although i bought the army secondhand, almost all of it was unpainted... so i didn't have to spend hours removing the paint before applying my own. 

First up we have my artillery...

The middle model is infact a minor conversion, which i would love to claim to be my own but was actually done by a friend..  its difficult to see in this picture, but he's been positioned so he's sitting on a box, with green stuff used to fill in the resulting gap between his torso and body - very nice indeed...

 I wanted the artillery pieces to look well used... so i used washes of watered-down chaos black over a base coat of brazen brass, an effect i liked alot, so you'll notice that it gets used on a number of my models. For the pieces below i also used water-down hawk turquoise, to make it look like aged brass...

The handgunners were the first fantasy models i bought.. and so, as i had nothing else to paint at the time, i was able to spend a fair amount of time on them, which is why they're probably the best painted so far... 

I want to get ALOT more of these.. so i can kill as much of the enemy as possible before they get close enough to flatten me in close combat...

Excuses time-
The swordsmen are probably my worst painted so far, as they were very rushed. With the easter holidays coming up and with it the promise of many games.. i am desperately trying to get my army painted to at least a basic gaming standard, which means the rank and file don't get as much attention as the more attention grabbing models. I intend to revisit them at some point in the not too distant future and tidy them up and add abit more detail etc.

 

For the shields, i wanted to make them look like the Spartans shields from the film 300 and so i painted them the same way as the cannon and mortar. The beauty of it is that it looks good and only took about 10 minutes to do the shields for the entire unit.

All of the models i've finished so far have been based in the same way... First i glue sand and small stones/pieces slate to the bases... then i paint this a dark grey (i mix my own) and drybrush over this with a lighter grey... next i use a brown wash, to add abit of colour variation to the earth and make it look less 'flat'... then i rub some PVA glue onto the base with my finger (this makes it more random, and look more natural) and sprinkle on some Citadel snow.. finally i use some watered down PVA glue to seal it all in.. so far none of the snow has fallen fallen off, but only time will tell.

The final model is a W.I.P... the basics are there but with this model i want to put in some real time and effort. (Even if he is going to spend most games sitting back in one of the artillery crews)

Recently I've been working on my white wolf knights and a unit of halberdiers, so i should have the knights up fairly soon (I'm trying something slightly fancier with the bases, so their taking abit longer). I've also just ebay myself some bits, which I'm going to need for my war altar that I'm making pretty much from scratch.. so stay tuned..

As always, comments are more than welcome.

And soo it begins...

SO.. i just got back into the hobby, and agreed to start playing LOTR again. After a few games and some new Haradrim purchases :D my mates began to pester me to start collecting fantasy (first time for everything)

So eventually i relented, and bought an empire army from said mate and with a few additions of my own, courtesy of ebay (Knights and Handgunners) i had the makings a decent force. It should be noted that this decision to collect fantasy was on the strict condition that i did not, under any circumstances, start collecting 40k again.. i've been down that road before and it ended up being rather expensive.

So naturally i'm now collecting necrons and orks to complete the list..

Cue facepalm.

Anyway.. the punchline is i'll be posting models from all of those on here.. i know, aren't i just the best.. i just keep on giving!

The first lot are Beastmen minotaurs, which i painted for a friend who started fantasy at the same time as me..
once properly based i think they should look pretty cool.. but let me know what you think! :D

Sorry about the fingers in the pictures.. these were taken by my mate.. as i go on i'll probably sort out some method to take better quality pictures, we'll see..



I'll be posting lots more soon, i'm pretty much constantly painting atm.. to the despair of my uni lecturers :/