mock-up

OK - a very rough picture, but put the sled and the santa together, and had a look to get an idea of what I'm going to do with the basing.

Decided I should do a roo-top scene, with a large industrial chimney, which santa is going to dive down to exade xenos scum.

I want to be able to take this diorama apart, and base the ogryn seperately, so I decided to magnatise the sled chains to the ball the ogryn is pulling.

ALso put in his base colours. A mix of red gore and scorched brown and black for his skins, white and Kommando Khaki for the fur, with tallarn flesh skin, with a thinned wash of ogryn flesh and blue. I'm going to be mixing blues into his skin tones to give him a cold look, as well as contrasting nicely with the red and the white.

HoHoHo!

Santa's sled.

I wanted this to look quite crude, so used gw sprus for the 'skis' and then bits of plastic card to make up the frame. I'm going to cover the thing with a tarpaulin, so just wanted bits that would give a good shape.

I have a terrible pot of GW black spray - that gives the uneven finish, but at least it doesn't come out lumpy.

Santa Ogryn

So - if you have been following the blog you'll have seen the ogryn I converted, and while in my shop recently, I saw a christmas themed figure competition, and though this guy looked like a pretty good santa.

Give him a red coat and white fur, and a sled full of ammo crates, and a little story about beleagered Valhallans, desperately low on ammo, being saved by the timely arrival of one ogryn with a sled load of power cells who has fought his way through a shit-ton of enemy.....

I wanted to finish off those knights before i got to work on this guy. The deadline is christmas eve, which gives me just under a week to go. Have a mini-diaorama in mind, and will start work on that as well.

thanks guys!

Really enjoying these guys, and the new empire figures in general. I think I'm a bit odd. I 'get' into armies via the figures and the stories I can imagine them in. These guys are tough, gritty and take no shit.

Enjoy!

batch 2 WIP

I find personally that the empire knights are too 'historical' and not fantastical enough for me, and I'm sure gw will bring out a new set next year. IN the meantime, Ive ordered forge world black templar storm shields as these look pretty good for empire knights.

here are some WIP pictures. Really enjoying these guys, in my head they're from an order called Teutonic Knights who garrison bleak castles along the norther borders of nordland, with the task of keeping out chaos.

Like the idea of them so much, i'm thinking of painting up an order of teutonic knights, with supporting foot troops all in the same black and white chequer board pattern.

First batch of Empire Knights painted

I was quite apprehensive about starting these guys, because I loved the conversions I'd done, and wasn't sure I'd have enough time or ideas to do them justice.

I'd originally thought of them as freelance knights, with seperate paint schemes and heraldry, but didn't have the time to do these, and was pretty sure they wouldn't look very good without some kind of comprehensive colour scheme.

I wanted to get the nordland colour schemes in there somewhere, and so originally went for a dark metal colour, that ended up, after a number of washes, looking black. Duh! Why didn't i think of that in the first place. Then came the chequer schemes, and the coloured bits were added last.

Not sure if i'd made these guys too 'busy' with crosses and writing etc, but wanted to get a mildly gothic feel about them. I like the more gothic feel of the terminator shcileds, and have my eye on the forge world black templar sheilds, which i might see if I can get over the xmas period.

Going to start the next lot now, which should go a little easier now I know what colours I'm painting, though might see if I can add a few more skulls etc.

Lances were painted with air brush and masking tape.

Nork Dedog /bonehead

The ogre hunter struck me a long time ago as being perfect for an ogryn conversion, and here is the beginning. Simple arm swap, and addition of a commissar's hat. Fairly nervous about doing the hat - but the trick I've found is to break the hat down into minimal stages. So I started by clipping off the hair and bone so I had a fairly even surface. I then added a simple hat shape, and let that dry.
The I added the peak at the top front of the hat, to give it its shape.
Then, I added the brim, which was the trickiest part. I made it roughly the right shape before putting the piece on and gently smoothing it onto thefront of the hat.
Then I added the thin roll of cording over the top of the brim, and lastly - when everything else was dry, I added the aquilla, which was fairly simple. I put the wings in first, and then a small ball for the skull went over the top.




Cant decide what to do with him now. Either Nork Dedog, or a bone head, or an inquisitorial retinue member.

40k Terrain

Been a little distracted recently by some 4OK terrain, and thought this would be interesting.

I've been doing alot of buildings, but thought it'd be good to have some terrain that went down instead of up. A bit like the Rockefeller Centre...... but without a thick foam base to dig down into, the best I could come up with was a kind of sewage treatment centre.

Enjoy:

Paint and play: second 500

So the knights are primed and ready to go, and the first step is getting the bases done. I like to do these seperately so I don't mess up the figures or the base while painting the other.

These bases are done with a base of filler/white glue/grit/gravel/and cork or bark stones - then airbrushed a number of colours, from graveyard earth, komando khaki, and then with gw washes of devlan mud and green - that i mix up together when wet, so there are natural blends.

Finally a drybrush, and a few little details like bones, arrows, or rusting weapons, painted individually.

For the snow I sprinkle on baking powder, and then blow most of it off and seal it in with varnish to keep the remaining snow in place. I also use vallejo snow in patches, which gives a more visually appeaing look.






Starting the bases for the five archers and two canon crews. A week and a half to get all these guys painted.

Marienburg Freesword Part 2 - Knights

For the second month of the paint and play, I've added two units of 5 knights, and a couple of canons.

I DONT like the empire knights, or their horses - and decided to use chaos marauder and pistolier horses - as well as go deep into the bitz box to find some interesting ways of converting the knights.

There's been plenty of greenstuff use, which i've taught myself a little as I go along, and gone for a mix of lances and great weapons.

Elysian 99th for 2009 Hong Kong Gt

This is the beginning of a deamonhunter's army- and actually competed as a IG army in the 2009 Hong Kong Gt.

I used Elysian drop troops, because UI thought that the spookiest place to meet a deamon was inside an abandoned space hulk, and the Elysians had a diving down corridors/hustling kind of look, that seemed to go best with this idea.

I wanted to get my hands on some valkyries - just because they looked awesome - and to add some umpfh! to the whole list I thought I'd use some of my Aquarian Guard leman russes.

I've leanrt quite alot about air brushes and weathering techniques in the last year, and thought I'd redo my tanks, and as tanks can be a little dull looking, i thought I'd paint up some fun crew to sit in them.

I should specially mention my hydra, which I've loved ever since I saw it on the forge world website, and now that there's an excuse to drop that much money, then I couldn't resist.

results below:














The thunderbolt pilot is the officer of the fleet, and the astropath is from Hector Rex's retinue, and is largely unfinished so I can come back to him without time pressures and work on his cloak.

The elysian officer was semi-ruined by GW varnishes, which came out with the snowy effect. Note to self: NEVER USE GW VARNISHES AGAIN!!!!!