Horus Heresy: Dark Angels

Hi folks,

A few weeks ago, Rob from 30kplus40K ran a competition to celebrate the Birthday of his blog. The prize was a squad of Tartaros Terminators, a 30K era unit that had caught my eye previously (I am a complete sucker for Terminators). To win, we had to post which Legion we would collect and why, to which I replied:

Slippery slope indeed! I was lucky enough to win a squad and my already bursting To-Do list has now erupted volcanically. Having skated on the edge of 30K for a few years, secretly yearning to explore the Dark Angels pre-Heresy shenanigans; this random act of kindness has finally pushed me over the edge. After a fairly rough day, I came home to this little package of awesome. It literally made my day.

So, expect to see some 30K Dark Angels Terminators some time in the near future. I have promised myself not to work on them until my first Imperial Knight is painted, which doesn't actually look that far off at the moment. I have been researching schemes and something like this looks like fun to me:

These Terminators were painted and posted by someone going by the username of Forward Assist on The Bolter and Chainsword forums. There is something about the shiny black beetle look of the armour that I really love. I am going to try for a scheme like this, though perhaps with some more weathering. I am also on the hunt for some detailed resin bases or inserts. I haven’t settled on a theme yet, so if you have any suggestions let me know in the comments.

A BIG thanks goes out to Rob; the Terminators are seriously cool and being rewarded for reading an excellent Blog seems like it should be illegal [insert joke about Australia's convict heritage here].

I am planning my own competition for a little later in the year, after the new edition hits. It will be based on scenario/mission writing, which is something I really enjoy doing myself. If you would be interested in competing in something like this, let me know.

See you across the table,

Marc

30K Painting Competition: Death Guard Marine TO-DONE!

Hi folks,

I just finished my entry to a 30K painting competition organised by the Google+ 30K community, a loyal Death Guard marine of the 7th Company. The 7th Company included quite a few notable characters that survived the virus bombing of Istvaan III, including Nathaniel Garro himself.

In this model I wanted to try and portray the marine's resistance against the encroaching pestilence. I don't think any Death Guard marine looks genuine without weathering and corrosion, but I wanted you to think he was clean compared to the base :-)

The closer you look to the base, the worse he gets, as the crapulance spreads.

The base is primarily Citadel textured paints (Astrogranite Debris), with an olive green river of slime that I coated with Noch water effects. I tell you, waiting for those water effects to dry on the day of the deadline was excruciating. Usually I would shade and highlight the skulls carefully, but I wanted these to look dirtier. I have seen a few exhumed skulls recently (purely academic, I assure you), and they weren't neatly highlighted either. Around the edges of the slime I painted a light brown and orange crust. Ewww.

If I had a bit more time I would matt varnish the decals to knock off that shine, but I'm not touching them again tonight. I would also lay down another 1 mm of wet effects. If I had more skill... well, that's another thing. I haven't done all that much weathering before, particularly over white. I would love to perfect the kind of subtle weathering of white I have seen around the place. I would also like to learn how to free-hand skulls, which seems to me like a handy skill for a 30K/40K painter ;-)

See you across the table,

Marc

30K Painting Competition: Death Guard Marine Progress 2

Hi folks,


I have been struggling to find the time to paint the past couple of weeks, which doesn't help when you have a painting competition deadline looming! This weekend would usually have been prime hobby time, but instead I whisked the family away for a weekend at the beach. I can't complain, the fact that we can still go to the beach and have a swim at the end of Autumn is something to celebrate. Tonight I had a go at some of the details, managing to get the head, bolter and backpack mostly done. I still have a few highlights to do here and there, as well as the jewelling on the bolter's laser sight.

Tomorrow night I need to tackle the weathering/damage on the white and brass armour, highlighting the brass, company markings on the right shoulder pad and the Legion symbol on the left. I also need to make a start on the base, which is going to be a simple grey rubble with perhaps a pile of skulls and a pool of pus. Maybe. That's a lot to do!

I'll probably also run a careful black wash to pick out some more details in the white armour. We'll see if I get that far. Assuming all of that gets done tomorrow, I should be able to knock off the base detailing on the day it is due, just in time to post my entry. Best laid plans and all that :-)

See you across the table,

Marc

Sculpting Rivets: What NOT to do!

Hi folks,

Last month I entered a 30K painting competition with a bunch of great guys from the 30K Google+ community. I pieced together a Tactical Marine out of odds and ends I had floating around the place, which led to an interesting mismatch of MkIII armour and... something else (my bet would be MKVI). It was suggested that I could add some rivets to the legs to tie it all together. Yup, I thought, I can do that...

After hitting up some tutorials and forums I decided to sculpt them out of green stuff. To begin with I rolled a thin cylinder of green stuff out. I contemplated letting it set and cutting rivet shapes from it, but decided against that. Instead I cut small portions of it and formed them into tiny balls which I gently placed on the end of a plastic toothpick. This made the balls easier to apply, particularly in those "hard to reach" places. The plastic of the toothpick was also more attractive than my skin, which made transferring the balls off my fingers easier.

Transferring balls from the toothpick to the model was tricky: they really liked that toothpick. I overcame that problem using super glue. I dipped a pin in the glue and tilted it so that the tiniest amount of glue would pool at the tip. The trick was then to touch the tip onto the model exactly where I wanted it. 30 times. From there I could touch the balls lightly onto the glue and they would stick. Which was great, except for the 30 or so times I squashed them and had to re-do the whole process, or try to sculpt them out of their misery. When it was all done I put it away and slept on it, waking up to this:

The tiny balls I was rolling, at the limit of my ability to roll balls, were about 4 times as big as I would have liked. Thanks to all the squashing and the sculpting, they were also quite irregular. So, lesson learnt, I spent 30 minutes or so tonight scraping them all off again! After some careful knife work I got it back to exactly how it looked 24 hours ago: no more balls. Suffice to say, I will not be doing it that way again, and with the deadline looming, this guy is going to get painted as is, balls-free.

See you across the innuendo ;-)

Marc