40k

So, I've undercoated loads of figures in the past couple of days, all of which are here, the majority are classic space marines, but there's some of the more recent top quality stuff in there too. The marines I'm most looking forward to painting are:





Oh, and the deadly xenos Harlequins:

What are you undercoating those with? Maybe it's just the camera, but it reminds me of shots I've seen of people who undercoated their minis with black gesso (which I hear gives pretty good results).

-jgc

Whoa, those minis are Old School.

I'm using an acrylic car primer - it provides a nice coat, and as it's grey it means I can go to light colours or dark colours without having too much of a nightmare with the undercoat showing through.

Undercoating with gesso is a sensible move, though, as it's designed to be used as an undercoat on canvas for acrylics. I've some white gesso at home that I might try and use.

Yeah, seriously old-school - proper Rogue Trader figures. I'm loving eBay, although it's in danger of causing me to buy things because a) I didn't buy them when I should have when I was a kid, or b) I remember seeing really cool paint jobs on them in 'Eavy Metal back in the day. I picked up 3 100% white metal Genestealers the other day, and they're fucking gorgeous compared to the new plastic ones (which are a nightmare to clean up).

Finally managed to spend a night painting. Basecoated the bits I'm doing gold with a VMC Burnt Umber, as apparently gold paints go down nicer on brown, rather than black. Also applied a first layer of black basecoat on the Commissar (which covered pretty much all of him!).

After going over the RT Chaplains, and taking a look in the 40k compendium (which is the only place I've found pictures of painting RT Chaplains), there's a shit load of gold on them, so my gold-painting abilities are going to be seriously tested! I might try using the VMC golds on one, and Coat D'Arms golds (aka old school Citadel paints) on the other. I'm also going to diverge from modern thinking regarding chaplains, and instead follow RT styles. I might even do one of the chaplain's helms black instead of bone, and maybe use a slightly darker grey (if that's possible) to German Grey to cover the armour. Gold and grey go together, right?

Gold and grey is the colour scheme I'm going with for my chapter - they go together very well.

Awesome. Hopefully I won't fuck up my Chaplains gold parts!

A few more things I've decided for the Relictors:

• They'll be second company, so will have yellow flashes on their helms.
• Womble sergeants will have a skull painted over their helm.
• The bases will be VMC Hull Red, and given a pretty rough, rusty treatment like the inside of a derelict base/space hulk.

Haven't gotten anywhere with the Relictors, as I've had my paints cleared away for the past few weeks. I have managed to do some more modelling, but of an entirely different sort to 40k. First, there's my entry for the latest WHF painting comp., a Jagerhund Rottweiler from West Wind that hopefully fits the madness them:



Especially with the addition of one of West Wind's German zombies as a recently eaten meal:



Also, continuing the WWII theme, I've produced a diorama base for a couple of figures to sit on:

Managed to paint the pouches on one of my Relictors - yay progress! :)

Have also basecoated the Rottweiler Jagerhund:



I need to basecoat the boots, belt, and helmet-webbing of the corpse, and then I'll be able to move onto the next step: shading washes. That's going to be an important step as at the moment, quite frankly, the German Camo Black-brown I've used to basecoat the Rottweiler is just too light for a Rottweiler's coat, so hopefully several dark washes will put the coat back to being a bit more black-looking.

My mind is also struggling with how green Field Grey is. It's very green. I knew German uniforms weren't properly grey, but I can't believe they could be this green. Hopefully, once shades have been put on the green will look a bit more muted (I'm going to use German Grey as a shade).

I need to get some kind of set up together with lights and shit, because - as with Nick - my photography misses all of the really delicate highlights I've been trying to put into my figures, dammit! Anyhow, Rottweiler Jagerhund, and his victim, now look like this:




The Rottweiler pretty much finished, save perhaps a slightly extreme highlight to show off the ears and such, and I need to do a couple of things to the corpse's bone and flesh and then (once I've taken decent photographs of them) I get to do the weathering. I've decided on a nice dark mud wash (using pigments) on the base to make it look a bit darker, and perhaps an additional dusting with dry pigments, and then I'm going to go to town on the blood factor, and coat everything with a mix of Vallejo's Still Water product mixed with a muddy pigment and Vallejo's Transparent Red. Make it nice an fucked up gore-wise :P

Nice! What's Still Water, water effect?

Yeah. It's a water effect product, which apparently mixes well with paints and pigments. My plan is to effectively drench the front of the Rottweiler with blood, which is going to fuck up my nice delicate highlighting of his lighter fur, but fuck it, the look should rock the heavens! Unless I fuck it up, hehe. Hence the plan to take some photos pre-weathering so that I can still enter the competition this bunny is intended for regardless :P

At this rate I'll never do anything more to my Relictors, but anyhow, here's the Dogface Gremlin as he is at the moment. I'll snap some better pictures tomorrow, when there's more natural light, and then I'm tempted to give him a spray of Testors Dullcote (matt varnish) before I go to town on the blood :D

It's ace, really lovely highlights and stuff. But I can't help thinking it's missing something - the whole palette is so dull that there's no really a focal point. My keeps wandering all over the place, which I guess isn't totally awful. But I reckon the mouth is a natural place so if you maybe made the highlights a bit brighter there? Especially if you're going to be adding some dark gore all over the place...

But that's just me, i think it looks delightful :)

Where do you get your testors, by the by?

It's one of those annoying things where I wanted to use a fairly muted pallete to keep the realism. Hopefully some gloriously red blood down the front of him will keep the eye on the centre of the model. I don't intend to over-redden his mouth, and especially not his teeth. I'm tempted to do a couple of passes with different shades in order to get more variation in the gore and hopefully make it a little more visually interesting.

Oh, yeah, and the Testors: I bought a couple of cans ages ago, and unfortunately it's now illegal in the EU due to it containing Tolulene. Testors are working on an alternative recipe, apparently, which Antenociti's Workshop are chasing after as it's a massive seller in modelling circles.

You might be able to find the odd can in model shops, but they're getting pretty rare now they're banned.

I was wondering why it was so hard to find... Apparently Tamiya Flat is also good?

Not sure about Tamiya's flat product - I thought that was for use with an airbrush? Hmm. I definitely know that GW's matt varnish is supposed to be gash :)

Ah, that's why you can't get it over here. I assumed it was some sort of shipping-of-aerosols thing.

Testors was widely distributed in the UK, and would probably have been shipped in bulk - the shipping-of-aerosols only applies to shipment by air (decompression and all that).

It's probably hard to find in stores due to the panic that its banning spread throughout the plastic modelling community :)

What's wrong with the GW stuff? I have a can of that, I was planning on finally actually varnishing some finished minis at some point soon. It's a few years old, mind.

The quality varies considerably, and you can often end up with a frosting on your model.

As yours is old, it might be okay, as something that seems to be clear from every discussion about GW's paints and sprays is that the quality has dropped off in the past few years.

BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD!



Here's a close up.

That looks super! I like the blood pooling on the ground, good show.

It's the handy self-levelling feature of Vallejo Still Water. What's nice is that it looks really sticky :)

One thing I have planned to do, but haven't implemented yet, is to use the VSW to make the ground look like wet mud, mostly because the corpse is a little buried, so wet mud would make more sense. I'd also wet-up the lower part of the dog's legs and the corpse's boots. Do you think that would work?

Also, I need to add some grass, so will get to use my newly purchases autumn shades of grass, w00t!

Nice work!

Final set of photos of the dogman:



Does he look mad to you? He looks fucking pissed off to me :D

very nice, I especially like the blood wash down the front of his trousers

Thanks. I figured that if you've got blood all over you it should spread down your troos. I had great fun slathering the stuff all over him - just a simple mix of Coat D'Arms Brown Ink, VMC Transparent Red and Vallejo Still Water. It looks nice and wet, and meant I was also able to pool the blood at the same time :)