40k

[I encourage you all to start your own thread for your own projects and shit - no sense restricting ourselves.]

This thread is for the Emperor's Bastards, my nascent Cursed Founding marine chapter declared Traitoris Excommunicatis for being a bunch of Tzeentch-beguiled silly-billies. Here's my work in progress, Marine Commander:



The highlighting comes out SHIT on my phonecam. Trust me, it looks much better in real life. The grey and gold looks superb - I was going to do grey/purple but I might not now.

Next up I think I'm going to get a Dreadnought.

Looks very... VHive. But nice, well done!

Hah, it's actually more VHive than VHive because it uses the new purple colour scheme that'll be on the new version. To be honest I think it all comes from this anyway:

I think you should make the bolter casings bright orange.

Awesome! Love the colour scheme - still rich and bold and chaotic without being eye-shittingly gaudy like most of the usual colour schemes.

Do you tend to assemble post-painting, then?

Yeah - far less fiddly. And especially with plastics, they aren't going to break apart under their own weight or if accidentally dropped.

I'm aching to get it finished so I can move on to the next one but some stuff is taking me time as I get back into the swing of painting. I'm doing cretinous things like only doing one thing of a certain colour at a time - the winged skull on the combi-bolter needs to be bone as well but have I painted it? Have I fuck.

I've gone with pure metallic weapon colours partially because I hate painting bolters but also because it looks a bit grimmer.

I also need to pick up the Foundation red so I can do a few bits - plasmagun end bit, the rope + tassels, some of the wiring. And I need an Imperial Fist upgrade pack thing so I can actually give him a left shoulder pad, AND I need to work something out that I can put onto the left shoulder pad as I have decided that transfers are shit.

Well, if they're the Emperor's Bastards, what would be an appropriate abstract heraldic design (that's easy to paint)? A sundered ring might work - circles are a piece of piss to paint, and painting a ring is just one circle within another.

Also, a good way to get better results from transfers is to apply them to the base coat, then paint over them (obviously following the design). Applying transfers to small curved surfaces is a right fiddly cunt, though.

What I want to know is how come every other cunt can produce good golds, and I can't?

I like the subtle highlights on the combi-bolter arm. What colour are the wings on the chest? White? Are you going to do a Space Wolves Grey wash on them?

I hate painting designs on things SO MUCH that I'm just refusing full stop. I'm using nothing but molded heraldry and the one I like the best is the fist. I'll probably get some wing heraldry going as well so I can get away with using Dark Angel stuff as they have TONS of really nice models. The Imperial Fist shoulderpads are great - there's even a Terminator set.

That gold was pretty easy - base coat of Shining Gold (although my Shining Gold is more than ten years old and it could be totally different now), wash of Chestnut Ink, little touching up with Shining Gold again, and then highlight lightly with Mithril Silver.

Wings on the chest will be (are, by now) traditional bone because I used to be awesome at painting bone although I need to remember how I did it.

That looks really good - and like Kev, I'm envious of the gold bits. Those are always a pain in the ass for me.

As far as the bone chestpads, I always just undercoat with Snakebite Leather and then drybrush the bone over that, with a tiny highlight of Skull White afterwards; seems to work well enough.

-jgc

I love love love painting designs! Emblems are wicked fun, when you can pull them off simply and ingeniously.

Years ago I painted a ringed Saturn-like planet on the shoulder-shield of my ass-cannon terminator, and whilst I can't quite remember how I did it, it was satisfyingly clever.

With bone areas, there are two easy-ish ways of doing it; one is to start with a brown base colour (I'd probably use Bestial Brown) and work up through Bleached Bone to very light Skull White highlights. The other is to use Bleached Bone as the base colour, then do a brown ink wash, then touch up with Bleached Bone, working up to Skull White as before.

You know, I'm genuinely tempted to post my Necrons, just to mock all you Painting guys.

"Yeah, yours are beautiful, but mine were done in half an hour of dry-brushing with a broom."

KG

Fucking necrons! Man!

Painting continues apace - I made great strides last night, completing the base and pinning the legs to it, as well as finishing up all the torso rope/bone detail. It is looking pretty fucking dope. I just worry the head with those horns is way too big for the model. I'm also having a cunt of a time getting the bone right.

I wouldn't think that the horns will appear too large - plenty of people put horned helms on marine sized bodies.

The thing I've found with bone is that if it's looking a bit shit, put on a really thin wash of Bleached Bone, and it will unify the colours.

It turns out - not only is the horned head possibly too large for the figure, it's definitely too large to fit with that shoulder pad. I'm going to use a more subtle head - possibly a slightly Chaos-y one I have with no horns and a sort of skull-face. Also still waiting on 15 Imperial Fist shoulder pads, one of which will go on this fine fellow.

That said, it's looking ok - fucking phonecam makes it look like a blurry pile of shit though.

Good, solid stuff. That purple is eye-burningly vivid!

How does the backpack fit with the cloak? Is the cloak moulded with the backpack in mind?

The purple is nothing like that gaudy in real life - it's a much darker colour, closer to the "Post / Preview / Cancel" VHive buttons.

The cloak has a standard marine backpack join on it sticking out through the fabric.

Vexing! Got 15 Fist shoulder pads in the post and they're all different styles! Not sure if I like that, I would have preferred something more uniform.

That is weird - they're all different, or are there 5 of each type?

what you probably need is something like this.

3 of each type I think.

That pack is ok except I only want shoulder pads - I'm not arsed about special backpacks or the other junk. Don't they sell the components individually anywhere?

Not anymore. GW dissolved their catalogue of bits in favour of sets. Weirdly, 11 legions/chapters of 1st Founding have shoulder pad only packs available, but the Fists aren't one of them. I guess the others are more popular because they're easier to paint ;)

Imperial Fists or Crimson Fists? Crimson Fists are piss-easy to paint, dunno about IFs, although I thought they were mostly yellow.

Imperial Fists are yellow, yeah - that would have been a CUNT to paint with the old paints. You'd think Crimson Fists would be more popular since they were the starring chapter of Rogue Trader.

Crimson Fists do seem to be quite popular, in comparison with Imperial Fists. I think that's also because of the whole "yellow's a bitch to paint" problem. I'm still trying to learn how to paint a nice yellow. I've tried white undercoats with brown washes into crevices, and I've tried the insane route of going from a black undercoat (one of my Relictor-testers has a fucking awful helmet stripe). At the weekend I read an article on how to paint Gorbad Ironclaw (or some other massive Ork on a boar), and the artist uses Bronzed Flesh as a basecoat for the yellow armour of the boar - I'm definitely trying that as an idea.

For yellow, I think you just need to find a decent non-white base colour to start from (although the yellows in the Citadel range are piss-poor). I would tend to use orange-y colours, or possibly brown. Maybe even a warm-ish grey tone. At any rate, they paper over the cracks (or rather, streaky uneven shitness) left by the weak-ass yellow.

The problem for me would be that your rank-and-file marines would look terrible if they were all just blobs of yellow. Blue, black, white, red; they're not so bad. But yellow?

Crimson Fists should be waaay more popular than they are. Not only are they a nice sober blue, which generally looks great and is a cinch to slap on, but their 'red hand' gimmick is dead easy to do over a whole army and gives them instant character.

I just read a brilliant thing on how to do yellow. Undercoat white, basecoat Fiery Orange. Drybrush liberally with Skull White. Then Yellow Ink the whole fucking thing. Looked superb! Can't find the link now.