Catch-up-alanche! Speed painting with contrast

Just a little video for anyone not sure of whether Contrasts are worth it. I have a friend called...Bames, who is wary of painting. Contrasts are great paints, and will easily help anyone get through their stack of scary looking models at speeeeeeeed.

Catch-up-alanche! Necromunda Water guild + Scum + Gryph-hound Phyrr Cat

Spent some time bashing some underhive denizens together to help pad out my crew.

These were using up of leftovers (and one very intentional sculpt for the Nautician) and were a nice break between some painting.  

Catch-up-alanche! Necromunda bulk scenery painting method

Again, no apologies for the title, catch-ups are hard. 

So, had a load of Necromunda scenery to paint, so out comes the batch painting assembly line! Apart from needing a decent space to get this done, you can give it a good enough look. 

Necromunda Underhive (Squat) Venator Gang: Felgryms Company

 This is my newest gang to try out in Necromunda, my Squat Venator gang; Felgryms Company.

The general basis of the paint scheme was this photo I found online, which I really loved the look of, as it was completely different from the majority of my much warmer coloured gangs. I learned a lot painting my Escher so wanted to try out the metallic look elsewhere.

Magnetised Goliath Gang

20 strongmen of fun!

So these boys were a much-needed enhancement to my Goliath gangs, in one campaign I’ve been flooded with a  bunch of Juves while my main gangs dies, in the other campaign I’m pushing 3600+ cred value, and have a hard time spending all that cash...so I bought more

Weekly Progress: Necromunda Chaos Spawn, Magnetised Goliaths, Cult bodies and a minor Heresy drop

Whew, long title, long few weeks. Have been getting heavy into Necromunda Underhive, and in the last three weeks have probably played 6-8 games, so I needed to jump but back in the painting seat to get stuff closed off. First up, this little pet.

My Cult call him their Son, Pelo Petay, and he's a keeper.

Salt Weathering gone wrong

Eeesh, this doesn't look good...

My little 'Bug' Arvus Lighter conversion got a little bit wrecked today...

Necromunda Chaos Cultists conversions

I fundamentally cannot paint and play armies for good. Dark Mechanicus, Traitor Sons of Horus, Sons of Sek. Crazy Goliaths are the closest to 'good'. So I figured I'd go for some Cultists to even it out!

These boys are rolling up in your sump, right now.

Sons of Horus Reavers

Finally got some of these guys painted, and they are an interesting bunch, boys in black.

Necromunda Goliath Gangers

Oh yeah, I'm sold on these boys indeed. Start of my Necromunda gang; The Dead Forge.

DIY Battlefield, third stages

I made a fair amount more progress on the Snow board One of the main things that I see whenever a Snow board is referenced is the disparity between blue and grey tinting to the snow.

Normally when you see these boards completed they always have a very grey tint to them, and that's not necessarily the look that I would expect to have for a field of snow.

See the picture, blue sky, dark shadows on the snow.

You'd expect blue with ice, not so much with snow.

I ran a couple of testers to see if I could identify which look I wanted most across the whole board. 

Sons of Horus Justaerin

Wahey, 750 points in 10+ models, now that is an easy way to rack up to 8000points!

Weekly Progress: Sons of Horus Rhinos and Squad + starting on the Knight

Quick one this week. I managed to get a lot of Sons of Horus churned through including these 2 boxes. Sadly, they aren't true to the period of the Heresy, but you gotta make do sometimes.

Lovely boxy-boxes.

Weekly progress: Big Sons of Horus Batch doooone, Sons of Sek tank

Nothing like chopping a load of work from your unpainted army. These 30+ guys were a 'delight' to get through.

Just Do it! The Process of Painting Pt2

BIG BATCH PAINTING BABY! I love a tip-list. 

With my own burning advice in my ears, I realised the best way to get over a painting ‘hump’ is to target it in the best way, by chopping a chunk out of it. Solution: Batch painting.

In reality, on any scale, all painting is batched. Even on a single miniature you are trying to paint a single colour across multiple areas of that one piece. Rather than switching colours for each leg, pauldron, weapon, you paint all of the colours of the miniature at each level. Paint the base, paint the metals, paint the detail.

Just Do It! The Process of Painting Pt1

This week I wanted to address what I've found to be my own worst enemy sometimes, and I feel it could also apply to many fellow gamers too. The actual process of Painting.

5000+ points of Traitor Sons of Horus! (WIP)

7 Hq choices , 4 man terminator command squad, 4 man regular command squad, 40 Tactical marines, 15 odd Veteran Tactical marines, 10 Heavy marines (now 15, oops!), 10 Assault Marines/Reavers, 5 seekers, 5 Melta support troopers, 3 dreadnoughts, 10 Justaerin, 2 Rhinos, a Phobos and a Dreadclaw.

That’s what I’m now up to, having won a great auction for 25 marines, and associated bits so I managed to successfully arrange all of the army. A grand total of 106 bodies to throw at my foes. These are all now either using Mk5 heads, or have a topknot bare head, or an archaic helm. Peppered throughout are around 30 sons of Horus shoulderpads, some converted combat kilts, lodge medals on strings, topknots and as many older generation armour marks as possible.

State of the Desk; Snow Testing and Characters

So my first focus this week has been making my Mechanicum a bit more durable in their basing as I left my Imperial guard in the car for a week, and the vibrations shook loose a lot of snow. So I have a to get tougher with the snow product I use. Cue testing.

I wanted something that would retain the finish of the snow, but lock it better in place. I tried out Woodland Scenics Water Effects, but as you can’t really dilute the product without diluting the effect, it was a fairly wasted endeavour. I will be using it for footprints however and maybe on some tank hulls as this stuff looks fun.

Used liberally it did give the snow an icy look. Hmmm, not good for this scenario at least.

State of the desk; More Dark Mechanicus

This has been a dark winter. Long and filled with the ichor of corruption...

In an attempt to stop turning up to games with half or quarter painted miniatures I started to put more effort into getting the Dark Mechanicus completed. What that means is that I need to get cracking and get the correct bits completed in bulk.
Batches helps. In order of intent.

State of the desk; Mortalis, Dark Mech, Stormtroopers, Apocalypse

So the desk this week has had a nice tidy after a busy couple of days,

First things first, Mortalis. This was a real “I'm not sure what to paint next. Let’s paint that”, moment. There have been some ridiculously nice colour schemes for Mortalis. See here for the eventual aim (landing bay).

I went the route that suited me best. I wanted dirty, rusted and oiled, but with some semblance of unity. Black and silver looks great as the internal corridors of a ship, but with a little extra work I hoped I could add some more character to it so that it could be other things as well, a bunker complex, the bridge of a ship rather than the bowels, laboratory etc.

I also didn't want to take forever, I have 7 more of these sections to do.