Finished Ork Boy

I've finished the test model for my Ork army, completed in a short time using basic colours and Army Painter quickshade. I've gone for a muted look for my scheme, but with lighter colours than usual on an Ork. A lot of Ork armies I see on the table are very, very dark, and I think this detracts from the army as a whole - but on the same hand, I don't want to have incredibly bright and clean Orks.

Here's the Ork next to one of my Blood Angel scouts, for comparison.

Expect to see more of my Orks posted here soon.

- Gavin

Old Models- Better Camera

I've borrowed a decent Sony camera from a neighbour, and played around in photoshop. Before I upload pictures of my latest models, here's some of my older models reposted with better pictures.

Eldar Guardian - Painted this year, this was a very quick and simple paintjob, followed by a dip in the quickshade. Turned out quite well, and I want to one day paint an army in this scheme.

Chaplain Grimmauld - This model was painted this year, and is one of my better painted Blood Angels. This model was the first Blood Angel of the army, in fact it inspired me to collect the Blood Angels again!

Sniper Scout - Painted around 2 years ago, you can see white specks on this model from poor varnishing. I'll get rid of them eventually, but they're not noticeable in the 'flesh'.

A new Blood Angels combat squad and an Assault Marine Captain are coming soon, and maybe some more old models.

- Gavin

Quickshade Part 3 - Objectives & Imperial Officer

Here's one more post regarding my experiments with this stuff, which I love. It's been a great help for me, allowing me to finish units and models that have been sat in my bits box for years in minutes. It's not something that gives amazing results, but it gives very respectable results, which will do just as well half the time. I'm never going to use nothing but quickshade on my models, but I can see myself painting up second and third armies using this. You can see my previous dippings in these posts:

Eldar Guardians

Empire Handgunner

Kroot Squad

Recently I've spotted a shedload of well modeled objective markers around the 40k blogscene. A crashed Falcon, a Wraithgate, wounded Battle Brothers and Guardsmen, Nurgle Trees and Eldar Escape Pods. 

Naturaly this would inspire me to model my own, perhaps cutting up a spare Rhino and filling it with wounded Blood Angels for my Sanguinary Priests to tend to. Well, that's far too much work for me, so I did the next best thing.

I grabbed some vaugely important looking Imperial Machinery from my bits box, and stuck it on round bases. Most of these pieces came from the Battle for Macragge box set, which is suprising since I never owned that set. A quick Chainmail drybrush, pick out some details with brass, gold and black, and a dip in the army painter.

Nothing awe-inspiring, but they make passable markers for the moment. I added some subtle colour coding to each of the markers, to make it easier to take about them - I could just say "the red marker", and you'd know which one I meant.

One other thing I dipped at the same time was an Imperial Guard Officer, who was featured undipped in an older post. I may end up using this model as a mobile objective, perhaps he's carrying important information which both players need, so he must be taken alive. The paintjob on this model is passable at most, I intended it to be a test model for a possible Imperial Guard army in the future, but I think the scheme pretty much failed.

One interesting thing about this model is the base - I painted it originaly 3 years ago, and at the time I used a much finer material for bases. If you compare it to the bases on the objectives, it shows a marked difference.

This will probably be the last quickshaded models I post for a while now, I really need to concentrate on my Blood Angels. I've got a post about my finished Chaplain and part 2 of my Blood Angels Painting Guide coming up.

- Gavin

Kroot Part 2

The Kroot are dry and varnished, with the bases yet to paint. I painted them Knarloc Green, with a Gretchin Green chest, Desert Yellow spines and a Chainmail / Snakebite Leather gun. This is how they turned out.

I think they turned out quite good, Quickshade seems to works better on fleshy models than armoured models, so things like Kroot, Orks and Nids would be perfect for dipping.

- Gavin

Return of the Tau.... er, Kroot! - Part 1

I don't think I've posted them on here before, but my previous army was the Tau. I managed to collect nearly 3000pts of Tau through buying plenty of battleforces, and I probably got them 60% completed, which is insanely complete for me. Here's a few of the finished models, all painted around 2 years ago:

Here are 2 of my Basic Fire Warriors. I had 36 of these, 24 of which were finished. The blue was achieved using Basecoat/Wash/Highlight, a similar technique to my current Blood Angels armour, although it was a little more basic. The red barrels were deliberately bright, I wanted them to look almost like toy guns.
This is my main commander, whose name I have forgotten. This guy was a Guard/Eldar killing machine, but could hardly scratch an MEQ list. For when I was playing against MEQ, I had a Forgeworld battlesuit with twin-linked plasma guns and a hefty shield.

This is my 1000pt army taking to the field at the Golden Throne Tournament 2007, where I came exactly middle of the results. I took an army designed for killing Guard and Eldar, since they were the most prevalent. I came up against 2 Guard armies (which I dismantled with incredible anti-infantry firepower), a Mechanised Squat army (which took me by suprise, and thrashed me - they used the Guard rules by the way) and a Necron army (where he made all his We'll Be Back rolls, so I couldn't dent him!)

I've been sorely tempted to dig this army out and complete all the models I own (without buying any more). Rather than do that right now, I've decided to quickshade my squad of 15 Kroot. I'm not a Kroot fan, and I never inteded to put them together and use them, but Quickshade will allow me to finish them incredibly quickly, and will give me another completed unit to field when I do dig out the Tau.

Here's one of my Kroot pre-shade. I used foundation paints, and did one of the sloppiest paint jobs of my life. Thats the beauty of quickshade, it's letting me finish all the odd jobs I've been meaning to do, but could never be bothered to finish. It's also been very distracting for my Blood Angels, I keep putting them off to finish Kroot, Empire and other such rubbish.

I've dipped the first 5, and it'll take 12 hours to dry. After that they'll need a coat of Matt Varnish and then bases painting. I'll post the results when I've finished.

- Gavin 

Experiment with Quickshade - Part 2

I was mightily impressed by my first use of the Army Painter Quickshade, which made a simple box of 4 snap together Guardians look like this:

I thought they looked great, especialy since I put pretty much no time or effort into them. Unfortunately, I don't collect Eldar, so they were pretty useless to me. I've decided to put some Quickshade to use on an army I actualy collect, Empire. Here is a handgunner painted in a very basic scheme of Iyanden Darksun / Blood Red.

Pretty rubbish looking, and the photgraphs don't help at all. I then dipped the model, left it to dry and applied Matt Varnish. Unlike my Guardians this didn't work perfectly first time, the yellow had turned into a Vomit Brown, although I was pleased with the Red, the face and the gun. I think the solution for this would be to use a cheap molehair paintbrush to liberaly splash the shader on the model, leaving less splotches. 

I decided to try and salvage this model by going over the yellow with a new coat of Iyanden, which is something I've not tried yet. I think this saved the model, and I can now proudly use this, as long as I keep him in the rear ranks.

I pulled an old Imperial Officer out of my bits box, and applied a fresh coat of paint to his armour and cloth. I'm going to test the brush on method with this model next.

More Blood Angels coming soon, painted with real  painting...

-Gavin

Experiment with Quickshade (Updated 20th April)

I recently picked up a tin of this stuff. If it did what it said on the tin, I could finally finish some of the armies that I just can't bring myself round to paint, like the Empire I have sat in a box in the loft.
I decided to test it on an Eldar Guardian, because I had a strange urge to paint some Eldar. The colour scheme is base on Adam FitzGerald's Eldar army, because they rock.

I first slapped on a quick layer of Hormagaunt Purple, with Skull White and Iyanden Darksun in places, with Blood Red Eyes. Took me about 5 seconds, and that's it. I added some sand to the base and simply painted that Khemro Brown, although that was after the picture was taken.


Apologies for the poor quality of the picture.

I then dipped it into the quickshade, shook it off and left it to dry for 12 hours. I then painted the bases rim black, and sprayed with Matt varnish.

I'm actually quite impressed with this stuff. I once tried the same with Wood Stain (inspired by a thread on WarSeer), but it failed. I'm definitely gonna use this stuff to finish my Empire, and may even start an Eldar army painted this way. Not gonna touch my Blood Angels with it though, I prefer the results from 'real' painting.

UPDATE - I've now finished a unit of 4 Guardians in this method, here's a group shot. Took around half an hour from prime to painted for 3 of them, and then 12 hours to dry from the dipping. I've also added Static Grass to finish the unit

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- Gavin