Year in Reflection - 2024

It's that time again, when a lot of people (myself included) look back upon the year gone by and reflect on what went well, what didn't, and what to adjust and try in the coming year.

2024 in Review

My goal for 2024 was to finish works in progress. That failed pretty miserably. I have a dreadnought still in progress, others not started, and instead actually added more to the list. There's valid reasoning behind it all, and it's the most valid reason of all for a hobby: because I felt like it. Would I like to have cleared the plate and started fresh for 2025? Absolutely, but not at the cost of making it feel like a chore. This is purely a hobby and at all times inspiration, motivation, enjoyment must be the goals or what's the point? While I would have liked more time to dedicate to the miniature painting hobby, I did have fun, so I guess it's a win overall.

Recently I started to dabble in conversions, kitbashing, sculpting, and other forms of customisation. This isn't really feasible to do across a whole army because it takes more time to complete individual models, but it was necessary to keep me interested. Between the woke nonsense invading aspects of the hobby and some of the more interesting design choices inflicted upon my favourite faction (Sanguinary Guard are supposed to have wings!), my enthusiasm for 40k in particular was fading rapidly. It still is to a degree, and my spending has been cut back in response - and yet somehow I believe I've actually bought more models this year.

My rule of "1 model bought for every 2 models painted" fell apart this year, but it's not all that bad. The main reason is actually Combat Patrol Magazine - there are some great deals to be had with that, and I didn't want to pass up the opportunity. The incredibly cheap starter of a Terminator Captain allowed me to make a decent conversion of Karlaen, starting me down the kitbashing path. The Infernus marines I plan to convert with Devastator weapons because it would look cool. The Terminators are another relatively cheap option to practice sculpting with and bling them out to something more Blood Angels. There's an upcoming Chaplain on a bike that I might buy as well just for a rainy day. Outside of that magazine there's also some purchases from local gaming stores, etsy, and ebay either because again it was cheap at the time, or because I needed conversion parts.

The Sanguinary Guard situation was a boon for Greytide Studios. They came out with their Crimson Lords pack at exactly the right time - just after the official release of the updated Sanguinary Guard without winged jump packs, suddenly here's a third party offering to give people exactly that. I naturally ordered enough parts to kit out a few models, but instead of going for the "official" new sculpts, I decided that push-fit assault marines would be just as good. I could get them for a fraction of the cost, and there's enough conversion needed on the official models anyway - why would I pay full price for models that I needed to hack apart just to make something proper out of what they were supposed to represent to begin with? With enough spare parts in the bits box I think this has turned out rather well, and yes sculpted muscular chests should have nipples.

From the time investment in sculpting, to the newer models that need a lot of thought about colour choices, to health problems, work problems, and other problems throughout the year, the number of posts has been steadily declining. I simply don't have as much time throughout the week to get enough done to be worthy of a post. That's not to say I'm not painting - that always fluctuates - but there's not always enough interesting new things each week to dedicate to writing up anything about it. This is partially also down to actually spending longer on each model - if I spend a week making golden armour look nice, then that can be summed up in about three sentences and I won't spend the time writing about it. I'm trying to adjust for that and hope that next year I can post more regularly again, if only to keep up the motivation to paint a little bit each day (or close to it). More works in progress to switch between could potentially help here.

One of the success stories from 2024 for me was that airbrushing finally "clicked" and my skills with that tool improved dramatically. Some recent models (coming soon) have almost completely eliminated the speckling / noise / grain often seen when using an airbrush. I've learned to thin the paints better, use more layers, control the trigger better, and experiment more with filtering. All of this combined gives a far superior result on the model, makes cleaning the airbrush that much easier (I virtually never get a clogged nozzle anymore) and makes me faster by virtue of being more comfortable with the tool. I'm still learning a lot every time I pick it up too, so it will be interesting to see how much I progress in 2025.

Drybrushing was another technique that I managed to improve upon recently as well. I still can't use any paint from the box and get the consistency correct, but I did learn to use the Citdadel dry paints far more effectively. Layering up highlights without a large jump in value seems obvious but was also a piece of the puzzle to allow me to get better results. I'll still likely keep to terrain and basing with this.

And to wrap up success stories for now: metallics. I learned to treat them with a lot more respect and get greatly improved results out of them. The secret for myself was really just to treat them as any other paint: layering, glazing, mixing with other paints. Commander Dante was almost an accident where I started to experiment with with that, and I wonder why I didn't do such things before.

2025 Resolutions

Going into 2025 I'm actually planning to have several models in progress to begin with. I have some time right now for airbrushing basically, and so I'm using that to get initial base coats and highlighting sorted across several models. I would of course like to get them all finished earlier in the year if possible as well.

I would like to post more regularly again, but that remains to be seen - there are a lot of non-hobby changes coming once more in 2025 that might leave me with very little spare time on occasion. The hobby is nice to have, but sometimes it needs to take a back seat.

I would like to continue sculpting and get to the point of being able to bling out models to fit a theme or army better. I paint a lot of Blood Angels, and the newer models from Games Workshop don't have that artistic styling which the Sons of Sanguinius are known for.

All of the above being said, I think the number one aspect I'd like to improve is the ability to paint squads quickly. My backlog concerns me a little and I'd like to whittle it down if I could. Not agonising over every little detail would help, and simplifying the palette would also be useful. I've been trialling this with the Legions Imperialis models, and it's been working there, but I need (or at least would like) to translate that into larger scale army painting. That is my intended painting focus for 2025 - just paint some models.

-- silly painter.

Sanguinary Guard - Part III

 

The greater the bling, the greater the warrior.

Some recent progress on the Sanguinary Guard, and enough to fully assemble the initial test model. This was the first one that I'd airbrushed the armour, added edge highlights, shading, etc. It took me a while however to decide on how the next most important feature should be painted: the wings.

I'm still baffled by Games Workshop's decision to remove the iconic wings from the Sanguinary Guard. The helmets look derpy, but they're far more easily replaced; the wings are what make them such a special unit aesthetically amongst all the Space Marines. Whatever the reasoning behind the decision, the replacement parts work just as effectively as the original, but I didn't want to paint white wings fully white. A brighter white would simply overpower everything else, and leaves nowhere to go if I wanted something else highlighted more extreme. This really only leaves shades of grey, hints of blue, to work with, and I still intended to follow through painting the higher feathers brighter than the lower ones, encouraging the eye to be drawn upward.

The process involved a lot of paints to get the look I was after, and while I'm not sure all of them are required, having such a range to mix and move between was rather useful.

• Mechanicus Standard Grey
• Dawnstone
• Grey Seer
• Ulthuan Grey
• Corax White

I started with the darkest (Mechanicus) and worked by way up feather by feather, keeping the recesses darkened to provide an outline. The whole process took quite a good deal of time, and I while the results are fair, I wasn't a fan of repeating that again. Ultimately I probably would've saved time if I had just done that, but experimentation would inform future such attempts what might and might not work for me.

Biggus Swordus.

I tried to drybrush the next wings, which was actually before I had airbrushed them. I figured I could just mask off the feathers later. The drybrushing didn't catch the feathers as well as I'd hoped - mostly it was stuck to the edges and didn't fill in each as I wanted. Stippling may have worked, but that also would've filled in the recesses too much and I wouldn't have the control over edges.

Next I tried to airbrush the colour gradient in. Trying to do that in bands across feather rows did not work at all, however using the entire wing as a single shape and building up a gradient that way did give nicer results. Gloss varnish and an oil wash help bring back definition, but I still needed to touch up places later with a normal brush. It's for this reason that I think in future I should simply just paint it all by hand; it takes time, but with fewer steps it's quicker overall. A coat of Stormshield varnish later to pull everything back to the same finish rounds out the feathers, but the varnish should also help protect the paint when masking it off for airbrushing.

Masking off the feathers also took me some time to consider. I wasn't sure if PVA glue would peel off the paint, and trying in a small area showed that it didn't - but metal tool used to lift up the glue sure did leave scratches. Blu-tac was far too difficult to put into the right shape, and I don't have any silly-putty, so in the end I went with PVA glue and a plastic tool to help scrape it off later. That mostly worked, but I did have to use water and an older brush to wipe off some of the more stubborn bits. Note to self: PVA is water soluble, making it ideal of this kind of thing. A few spots didn't mask properly of course, but they were trivial to clean up later with remaining paint from the palette.

Whatever he's facing is about to regret its life choices.

Something else I'm experimenting with lately is an alternate glue to superglue. The frosting from superglue has been causing a bit of hassle and I'd like to avoid that if possible. From unrelated activities I have a bottle of Gorilla Glue (Clear), and it apparently bonds quite well but requires some pressure for a couple of hours first. That's not always possible for these models, so in future I should probably just avoid using an excess of superglue to begin with.

I'm planning next to paint up enough of the rest of the Sanguinary Guard to have them fully assembled as well. I have a rough idea of the colours I'd like, but there's enough doubt that this might continue to slow me down. I need to break up the large gold areas with something of visual interest, but less is more sometimes and it would be difficult to paint up that gold again with a brush.

-- silly painter

Legions Imperialis - Sicaran Battle Tanks (Part I)

 

Tanks a lot.

Delayed post because of being laid low, but back to things now. I have a few things with slight progress, but these little tanks have been sitting assembled and primed for a long while now and I wanted to start them. I'm hoping to use the airbrush very regularly over the next couple of weeks just because I have an window to do that before certain distractions are restored.

Part of the reason in delaying starting these next models has been in wanting to try and get a better handle on using the airbrush. I've been getting used to thinning paints more, using multiple passes to reduce some of the speckle, and even swapping between airbrushes to see how the higher quality ones compare with my skill level. Hint: thinning paints makes cleaning out an airbrush much, much easier! I've been skipping full tear down and clean outs because it's simply not required, and there's been virtually no nozzle clogging. There is a downside that the with the amount of thinner and flow improver I use, the paint definitely does not adhere as well. It takes quite some time to cure and stick to the model, several hours or even a full day will give better results in this regard.

The multiple coats, multiple sessions airbrushing approach I'm developing works for me because I don't have all day to sit and paint - generally an hour session each day works best right now, so I can line up multiple models and batch as appropriate. The tanks here will have another couple of sessions before the paintbrush comes out: the Contrast paint filter stage, and then later gloss varnish to secure everything.

The initial stage on these tanks was Typhon Ash, roughly one part of that with one part thinner and one part flow improver. I probably need to adjust that mixture in future, make two parts paint to one part each of the thinner and flow improver. I did need to hold back the airbrush further initially, and the first coat was far too watery, but later it mixed better and more to my liking. I used about four passes in the end, rotating through the parts to give each time to dry before the next layer, to build up to full opacity and given even coverage. A little patience is needed, but I think it worked well.

Previous models always suffer from the problem that I don't go bright enough with the initial Zenithal highlights, so this time I then mixed in White Scar to the cup and did another pass. I'm hopeful this is now bright enough that the later Contrast filter won't be too dark. I still have trouble with this: I almost always need to go lighter and brighter than I might think, forgetting that mixing paint decreases both. I'll see how I fare this time.

-- silly painter.

Textured Bases

 This post is slightly different to normal and won't focus much on painting, but instead creating textured bases - particularly by using textured rolling pins from Green Stuff World. This all stems from wanting bases that are more appropriate for certain environments, e.g Space Hulk settings, Imperial Palace, etc. Generic gravel or dirt doesn't quite fit in these circumstances.

I considered 3D printed base toppers, or resin sculpts, etc, but while effective for smaller groups (e.g kill teams) they lack enough variety for larger forces and the costs can add up quickly. While browsing for other parts, I came across the texture rolling pins from Green Stuff World. I'd seen them before, notably for Eldar, but this time I saw some designs that might fit what I was looking for. In the end I chose Ancestral Recall for ornate flooring that might fit the excessive opulence that is likely to appear around the Imperial Palace (and be therefore suitable for Custodian Guard), and Factory for industrial flooring, grating on ships, etc (Space Hulk comes to mind for these, or Boarding Actions).

Marbled floor with gold inlay.

My very first attempt, was to use an old glass jar to roll out green-stuff onto waxed paper, transfer it directly to a base and then use the texture roller on that. After some trimming around the edges and a quick bit of painting (more on that in a moment) the result was...pretty good. I did however learn some important lessons:

• Rolling out on wax paper was a bad idea as the paper kind of stuck to the green-stuff.
• Rolling directly onto a base gives uneven thickness.
• Leaving bits of the cured green-stuff seam causes imperfections in the end result. I made this mistake a lot.

For my next attempt I bought a cheap acrylic rolling pin, normally intended for icing sugar apparently, and cookie cutters of multiple sizes. While not the perfect size, the cookie cutters should get me close enough. This worked again remarkably well.

Old and beaten factory flooring.

A couple of mistakes with putty that had already cured, but the acrylic rolling pin gave a more even result. Next up I wanted to get consistent thickness however, and so I hunted around for a way of doing this. I've only been doing one base at a time, so in the end I went with layers of cardboard with a hole cut in the middle. I tried 4 layers, 3 layers, and 2 layers, leaving the 1 layer for the actual textured rolling pin. It seems that 2 layers for the acrylic smooth rolling pin, and 1 layer for the textured rolling pin, is the sweet spot for what I intend.

Ideal for black and yellow chevrons.

The cookie cutter is slightly larger than the top of the base, so after the green-stuff has cured for several hours I remove it from the flat surface (a piece of glass in my case) and glue it to a base. The glass has some Vasoline rubbed on it before I roll out the green-stuff to help lift it off, but I find it easier when it's cured enough to be rubbery, but not before it's like hardened rubber. A hobby knife helps to peel one section off, then I can use that to help lift the rest without tearing at the putty. After gluing to the base, the hobby knife can be used to slice away excess overhang - but a Dremel rotary tool most definitely helps to smooth that out and unify everything. Just make sure to wear a respirator mask when doing that.

Creating base toppers is fairly keyed in now.

I did one test to try create two bases at once, but this showed a particular uneven thickness that I should've been aware of. The cookie cutter should be used in the middle area of the green-stuff, as the outer edges will be pushed away from that and might have a reduced thickness.

I did contemplate for clay based toppers, but ultimately decided to stick with green-stuff. I can confidently create new prints now while avoiding the almost certain mess that comes with clay, and all while keeping the tools clean. I try to use excess putty for creating tubes, cabling, insignia that might prove useful one, etc, but there is definitely some waste. I'm not sure on the cost effectiveness of using all that green-stuff (clay would be _much_ cheaper here) but the results are good, I like the designs, and can create different sizes as and when I need them. If I were army painting, then yes I might just roll out some clay and create dozens of bases in one go, but an army painter I am not.

To round off, here are how I've painted each so far, starting with the marbled flooring:

• Black primer.
• The "baby wipe" technique and Wraithbone spray.
• Praxeti White drybrushed across most of the whiter areas, and catching edges.
• Basilicanum Grey and flow improver into the recesses.
• Pallid Wych Flesh along edges, certain raised areas, and generally glazed where I wanted it more white.
• Retributor Armour to pick out some of the flooring design.
• Not done yet, but I may pick out the smaller diamond tiles in Corvus Black later.

And for the factory flooring:

• Black primer, mostly to hide the green.
• Wraithbone over all of it.
• Space Wolves Grey (Contrast) over the whole base.
• Necron Compound drybrushed over the higher surfaces and metal grating.
• Basilicanum Grey in recesses, some glazing where necessary to tone things down a bit.
• Iron Warrior / Dawnstone mix across edges, some scratches, etc.
• Skrag Brown watered down for rust effects.

It's a bit of a convoluted process, but I do like the result. Not sure if I'll keep it - depends if I can think of a more efficient method to get something similar or not.

Still need to clean up a few edges and get painting on them all. With the process sorted, the novelty has started to wear off and I can instead plan the models that will go on top.

-- silly painter.

Legions Imperialis - Leviathan Siege Dreadnoughts

 

His name is "Plod".

These had been sitting in the prepared stage for a few weeks, and I finally got around to finishing them off. It didn't take long once I'd decided on a few colour choices.

These models I went with a simple black primer and then built up layers of Typhon Ash for highlights. Instead of immediately going for the next colour step, I decided to edge highlight with white first. The theory was that this would show through more than the Typhon Ash and give proper edge highlights without needing to colour match the Terradon Turquoise. It kind of worked, but I ended up cleaning a few placed with Lupercal Green anyway, so I'm not sure it was worth the effort. Gloss varnish and Black Legion with flow improver worked a treat as always for recess shading. I touched that up very slightly later with thinned black where necessary, but only where it was going to make a strong visual difference.

One of the major changes from previous attempts was to only edge highlight the black, without trying to perform any volumetric highlights. This saved a lot of effort and particularly with black isn't really noticeable compared to more detailed highlighting anyway. I do like how the green turned out, which for these dreadnoughts makes a difference because of the large, flat surfaces of the body - but even on the legs it's not really very noticeable. For "normal" troops, as I've previously considered, it's just not worth such attempts at all.

I am a dreadnought and I'm digging a hole...diggy diggy hole.

likewise with the metallics it's not worth putting in much effort. For this scale, edge highlights are everything - base, wash, maybe additional definition on raised areas if necessary.  I went with darker silvers because of the darker overall palette, and limited Runelord Brass to add variation where I wanted to break things up a bit, such as the hood over the head. A relatively small brush and light touches, and not even a wash is needed afterwards. 

The eyes are Troll Slayer Orange. I did do a very minor amount of volumetric highlights on the helmet simply because it's a focal point and helps to frame the eyes.

Not much else to say on these. Very quick to paint, mostly because I'm only aiming for a tabletop standard, but the end result is still rather solid and they look impressive enough when grouped together. Next are some more tanks, which I hope to have done by the end of the year - if I get time enough with the airbrush.

-- silly painter.

Sanguinary Guard - Part II

 

The return of nipples.

Some progress on the Sanguinary Guard kitbashing, although only one so far is actually painted to this stage. I wanted to test out some ideas with painting metallics through the airbrush, having learned how not to do things with the start of Dante. I also wasn't keen on spending quite as much time on these models, so the hope was that the airbrush would give me a solid start to the armour and I could more easily work from there; with many more golden armoured warriors to paint, doing it all by brush wasn't the most appealing.

I think I've come up with a good compromise, and in the process learned that metallics can given an amazingly smooth finish through an airbrush. It's actually far less smooth than it might first appear, but more on that in a moment.

The base coat is actually Dryad Bark. It's quite a dark brown to begin with, so multiple thin coats over the black primer were required to actually show anything, but it's worth the effort to do so as this will ultimately become the shadow colour.

Next up through the airbrush was Balthasar Gold, with a bare minimum of cleaning out the prior colour. Four drops of this along with three drops of thinner and three drops of flow improver, to make what is essentially a glaze consistency. Multiple thin coats are required to build up the opaqueness desired in places, but it also means no large mistakes can cover up the shadowed areas and it's easier to transition from them.

Normally I would want something like Gehenna's Gold, however that doesn't exist in the Air range and so I chose to go with Thallax Gold instead. Once more the previous colours received the bare minimum of a clean out: thinning down the paints reduces tip dry and makes it easier to flush the previous paint out, but a little mixed in won't hurt. Thallax Gold was mostly a Zenithal at this stage, highlighting various volumes as I saw fit and trying to leave previous coats visible. As before it was four drops of Thallax Gold, three drops of thinner, and three drops of flow improver, to create an almost glaze and using multiple thin coats to build up the highlights.

At this point the result was ultra smooth and gave an almost mirror shine to the whole model. Metallic paints are very forgiving when blending from one colour to another: the gloss hides much of the effort while the pigments and reflective material used naturally gives a kind of grain or noise to hide any speckle from the airbrush. The effect was so astoundingly smooth that I wonder why I didn't try this before - it's a great time saver compared to using a normal brush. It's only on (very) closer inspection that some of the "noise" is still clearly visible. This makes sense - the colour pigments and other materials will kind of float and spread out more when the metallics are thinned down, disassociating from each other and producing that result, however with multiple thin coats the effect is evened out substantially and the gloss finish hides much of the rest. The result is still superb when viewed from any kind of distance and so I'll continue with it, and besides when looking close enough the layer lines of the 3d printed parts are easily visible anyway.

One of the problems in the past with the metallic paints through an airbrush is that they rub off far too easily. To counter this I like to use a gloss shade over the top. A matt varnish can't be used because that ruins the shine of course, but a shade can still serve to lock the airbrushed stages down. I don't use it as a wash, but instead more of a glazed shade colour. Reikland Fleshshade (Gloss) It was used to give more warmth to the golds and help outline some areas. I'm still debating if I should go back in with Agrax Earthshade in key areas to further outline them, which is a decision I'll leave for later down the line.

Auric Armour Gold and Canoptek Alloy were used to apply further highlights, either as volumetric or edge highlighting where necessary. I generally use pure Auric Armour Gold (thinned to more than a layer paint, but slight less than a glaze) for building up some volumes or edge highlighting lower areas, with a mix of that and Canoptek Alloy (roughly 2:1 or perhaps 3:1, no hard & fast rules) for extreme edges or more focal points such as the "face", and some filigree.

Iron Hands Steel glazed into some areas allows for a silver colour, while keeping the golden reflection apparent. This is most easily seen on the spherical points on top of the jump pack.

Not shown because I forgot to get a photo is that testing a very small amount of Khorne Red mixed with Auric Armour Gold (really about 1:10, or 1:15) and glazed can give excellent contrast in areas - I've used it to outline and shadow some filigree on the back of the jump pack and it really adds to the depth of the model. I might consider doing more of this, but I think I'll leave it for for artistic details to help them stand out more.

And there we are. I'm continually pleased with how these models are turning out and looking forward to adding in more details. I won't paint all three to the same level at the same time, but just see how I go on individual models and paint as and when I feel like it. The wings I might try to make darker further down, getting more bright towards the top of the jump pack just because I like how that's framing the model so far. It might have been better to try and airbrush that effect, but it's too late to try on this model on account of that jump pack being already glued in place. A normal brush will have to tried one way or another.

-- silly painter

Sanguinary Guard - Part I

 

Black background wasn't the best choice.

Starting to put some sculpting lessons to good use with the parts received from the Crimson Lords campaign. I can still spot defects and layer lines, but the ordered parts are basically "good enough" and imperfections aren't noticeable from a distance.

The new Sanguinary Guard are, obviously, not the designs people were hoping for. The terrible helmets could've been forgiven and replaced with something else, but the lack of adornment and the lack of wings makes them simply not Sanguinary Guard. The excuse of "oh well, they're new to the post and armour hasn't been adapted" is disingenuous considering Mephiston, Dante, Astorath, and even a generic Captain all had their armour adapted. So it was that the Crimson Lords campaign became somewhat popular.

In the model shown I wanted to try and use the full front torso of older and smaller scale models. I needed to pick a model where the abdominal plate wasn't naturally too far tilted compared to the chest because I couldn't adjust that piece. Given what I know now, then a very (very) thin sheet of putty and sculpted impressions might be able to resolve that. I may just try that on one of the others.

The model torso needed to be clipped out and a good deal carved away behind the belt for the new torso to relatively fit. I didn't want there to be a lack of bulk so needed to pad out behind the torso rather than fit it directly flush. This was a lot more effort than it sounds. Green-stuff was used to fill initial gaps and give more surface for later Milliput layers to adhere to. There was quite a gap between the back and front of the torso and this needed to be filled, and the sides bulked out to fit properly. I'm not entirely happy with the end result, but it's good enough to stand up to a cursory inspection. The arm attachment points also needed to be filled out some more, and it's here that I was impatient slightly. This particular Milliput can be soft and difficult to file, especially if not cured for at least 24 hours. A sharp blade trimmed excess just fine, but I'll need to keep this in mind for future work.

The left arm is from the Crimson Lords pack, but the fist from the bits box of spare Intercessor arms. The right arm is the original with the shoulder pad removed and the hand replaced with a hand and sword from the 3D printed parts. The shoulder pads I'm still choosing, but I'll need to paint them separate so that the wings don't get in the way when painting. I actually learned more of how to use my own custom tools when fix the gun holster, which I now imagine to contain spare ammunition for the wrist mounted weapon. Leaving Milliput in the freezer overnight allows it to still be malleable, but with just enough resistance to allow for impressions to be made without tearing at it.

The helmet and wings are, of course, from the Crimson Lords pack. The wings interested me the most: everything else I could have work around, but those wings make it all worthwhile. I may have rushed to assemble and prime the model, but I wanted to know how it would all come together so that the next two are better informed. I did try to created moulds of the Blood Angels chapter badge, and then use thin pressings of Milliput to place them on the legs, but that didn't really work and I scraped it off. My sculpting isn't sufficient yet to tackle that, but perhaps in future I could put down a decal as a guide and slowly sculpt on top of it. I have ideas on how to experiment with that, namely using normal troop shoulder pads to sculpt a blood drop onto: simple, and might give better results than the mess I sometimes make of the decals. In the meantime, the legs and knee pads will probably just get freehand painting to mimic the style of the old Sanguinary Guard.

I'm pleased with the overall look. I think I would still have preferred a single main booster jump pack, but this is acceptable. A worthy successor to the older sculpts, and enough to keep me interested in painting for now.

-- silly painter.

Commander Dante - Part V (Showcase)

 

Angel of Death.

Despite not thinking I would manage this, I've actually been able to finish Dante over the last week. Everything just kind of fell into place, and I'm calling him done. Not that I'm entirely happy with everything: the axe blade in particular doesn't really do it for me, but I think I'll leave it as a reminder for later projects.

The base I think turned out better than I'd hoped. It doesn't clash with Dante, and I intentionally gave it a cooler, darker tone that was complimentary to the red, but contrasting to the warmth of Dante's armour. It's not actually much darker though: it's the glossy shine from the metallics that give that impression. Compared to the shaded areas, the base is actually a lighter tone. The rough painting approach is:

• Mechanicus Standard Grey / Black (3:1, or even 2:1, exact amount isn't important) as a base colour over everything.
• Chronos Blue drybrushed over all of the stone, with very light touches over the dirt and loose rubble.
• Stormfang Blue drybrushed as highlights over the previous step.
• Wrack White drybrushed onto the very edges of the stone, and again lightly over all of the dirt and loose rubble.
• Seraphim Sepia shade into random areas of the dirt. This isn't a heavy wash, just a light one to more or less glaze over them.
• Agrax Earthshade in the deeper recessed areas, and also glazed as a transition colour on stone, or where the previous shade was too red.
• Nuln Oil as a glaze more than a shade, mostly to define some of the carvings in the stone, or to darken some of the stone work. This is most noticeable where the broken pillar meets the ground.

I'm fairly pleased with the end result, and thankful that I made the decision earlier to strip the texture paint off and go with more of a "pillar crashed down from high into stone tiles" look. On a note about drybrushing: as it turns out, the Citadel paints for that are really good! They have the right consistency if using the right (_very_ slightly damp) brush, and moving between values slowly instead of any one large value jump (e.g white over black) helps smooth out transitions and helps prevent that grainy texture that drybrushing is so often associated with.

The half-tabbard is Barak-Nar Burgundy and Gal Vorbak Red, with mixes of black in there to shade things, and even the old Bloodletter Red to shift some of the volumetric highlights more. In general I didn't go for much in the way of extreme highlights, effectively only going as high as a mid-tone. This makes it look less reflective and more like material of some kind. I need to work on that kind of thing more, but I think the basic idea is sound.

Must have good type script for battle.

I haven't magically become very good at writing on scrolls (although a size 0 Windsor & Newton is making short work of purity seals), but for the right pauldron I used the opportunity to give self-printed decals a go. My printer isn't configured for super high quality to leave it at that, but it does give enough of an outline that I can fill in the rest with a fine-tipped paintbrush. It has that "cheating" feeling, but ultimately I chose the font, I cut it to size and applied it, and I painted over it to clean up the lines, and if it gives me excellent lettering every time then who really cares? I have a bunch of names printed out to use in future as well. The skull is a little too bright white, even after I dulled it down slightly, but I need to stop somewhere and it's not bad at all. I'd work on it more if this was for a competition, but that's all.

The axe has one component with Canoptek Alloy glazed onto it for more of a brass feel. This was mixed with Balthasar Gold to help shift the colour, but it turned out nicely enough. I'll keep that in mind for future reference.

Not much else that it's paint-by-numbers and which I haven't done many times before. I'm happy with the end result, and really upped my game with using metallics. The base turned out much better than I'd hoped, learned few tricks with drybrushing, and decals for words is a definite hit - plus, the model itself looks great.

-- silly painter.

Commander Dante - Part IV

 

Now officially more bling than Sanguinary Guard.

In what I hope will be the penultimate post on this more recent version of Commander Dante, there's actually very little change since the last time. The winged iconography has been filled in, some of the silver metallics have been started, the grip on the axe haft done, and the base given a new primer layer.

By far the most interesting choice I've been exploring has been the metallics. I knew I wanted to try more mixing metallic paints with non-metallics, wanted to try paint them in an NMM style, and wanted to keep more glazing. The problem is really that black is a terrible colour to start that with and so I went with a darker grey instead. So far I've found this works acceptably well:

• Mechanicus Standard Grey / Abaddon Black (4:1, doesn't need to be specific). This creates a dark grey without being too black - the ratio isn't too important, just need it darker than Mechanicus Standard Grey on its own, but lighter than Corvus Black.
• Stormhost Silver, glazed. I prefer to use a small amount of flow improver or Lahmian Medium rather than water to help get the glaze consistency but without the reflective particles flowing too far out of the way.
• Stormhost Silver more directly layered for edge highlights.

I like how this turned out. It could use some more experimentation to get everything just right, for example I didn't mix the metallic and grey colours together (because I'd swapped out the palette by then) which would help smooth things out. I think there's potential in the contrast it gives. I still need to glaze over a blue of some description, just for the weapon glow effect.

The other very minor (and not visible in the photo) new idea is actually for the axe grip. That was done as normal for such things by now:

• Doombull Brown
• Tuskgor Fur to highlight.
• Carroburg Crimson shade.

However this time on the opposite side from what's visible, I mixed a very small amount of black into Doombull Brown and used that as a shadow colour. It makes a very dark and leathery brown which I'm definitely going to look into later. I may also try mixing Rhinox Hide and see how that turns out, although I'm not convinced it will be any better. I suspect this will be one of the few occasions where black is more suitable for the dual reason of it darkening and desaturating the mix.

The base so far is mostly Mechanicus Standard Grey, some black mixed in there just to play around with some areas, but nothing too noteworthy. I had some complicated plans for the base, but the darker and more muted tones play off the shine and relatively brighter appearance of Dante. A combination of drybrushing and washes will likely carry the lion's share of the work on the base.

The weapons need to be finished, gemstones painted in, a little more purity seal writing, the base, and of course the half tabard are yet to be done. It's simultaneously not much left to do, but also will take plenty of time owing to how different each piece is and how much I'll need to change approaches on each area. I doubt I'll have a quiet week to finish this model, but maybe in the next two weeks (or longer if I get sidetracked onto other projects).

-- silly painter.

Legions Imperialis - Deredeo Dreadnoughts

 

Oreo Dreadnought

(Warning: long day, a lot of spelling and grammar mistakes below no doubt, and I can't be bothered to proof read and find them.)

Pursuing more testing of small scale Legions Imperialis, I've managed to work on some Deredeo Dreadnoughts. They're honestly not my favourite design, just personal preference, but do provide some interesting shapes to serve as a test platform.

For these I opted to try a base coat of Night Lords Blue with Typhon Ash kind of Zenithal'd over the top. I put some extra emphasis on the upper body area, the upper missile racks, and the base of the legs. I also drybrushed Wraithbone over the top because I felt like I hadn't gone bright enough and wanted to try and catch some edges - but edge highlighting on models this size are rather pointless to do everywhere. A gloss varnished followed by flow improver mixed with Black Legion sorted out the shading, which actually isn't too visible aside from around the legs. It's still easy enough to do that I think I'll keep this step.

Black Legion was again used to base all of the black areas, and I still prefer that paint over anything else when doing this. The pigment count is very high and the paint consistency works well even over the gloss varnish. Troll Slayer Orange for the eyes to try and make them stand out, but they're barely visible at any sort of distance.

I did try some fluro acrylic paint, but that was a complete mess. The consistency was wrong, opacity was wrong, everything about it was just wrong for this usage - but that's what you get for using canvas paints on little models. It was worth the experimentation to see if it might be useful in future, but I think I'll stick to dedicated miniature paints for now.

Back to the black details and initially I was trying to do some volumetric highlights, but my patience was wearing thin. Lack of time to paint coupled with not really liking the model, and eventually I just stopped and instead only went with edge highlighting. Here's the biggest takeaway from this test: other than boxy tanks, and perhaps even not then, it's simply not worth trying to do volumetric highlights on this sort of scale. Save it for the Titans and larger vehicles. Anything smaller than a tank, just use a solid base coat and edge highlights to make it readable. It will give a cleaner look, take less time, and be far more impressive on the tabletop.

When Rifleman from Battletech goes grimdark.

The other major mistake on these was just a little playing about with Runelord Brass. I put Spiritstone Red over the top of that for the missile rack sensor array. It's a nice colour, it works well standalone, but it's far too bright here and attracts all the attention even with a matt varnish.

Lastly, I still need some practice with the airbrush. I suspect I didn't leave enough time between coats of Terradon Turquoise, which resulted in a grainy appearance instead of the smooth finish that I'd like. Practice will help I'm sure. The next models on my list (more dreadnoughts) I'm going to try give white edge highlights before that step, just to see if it will show through.

And no, I'm not drilling out those gun barrels.

-- silly painter.

Starting Sculpting

 

Sanguinary Grey

I've not had any time for painting at all for the last couple of weeks, but a few things are in progress. Which is slightly odd; I was going to try finish off some in-progress projects this year, but instead I've been just adding more. It's not that bad though, because I have been starting to try my hand at some proper sculpting.

The inspiration for this most definitely comes from Trovarion. I have no doubts that it would take quite a while before I'm as good as he is, but I need to start somewhere. I've been poking around green stuff and milliput for quite some time, but mostly just to fill gaps rather than actually seriously try to sculpt anything. Then along came the refreshed Sanguinary Guard.

It's important to recognise my own personal takes on what has gone wrong with some of the Blood Angels models recently released, as this is the motivation behind wanting to sculpt. I was actually looking at the Blood Angels Captain and wondering what it was that I simply didn't like about that model. The design seems to mostly be fine - muscle sculpted armour, various appropriate details, the head options are fine. Then I looked at the knee pads and it suddenly made sense. The old miniature designers knew a lot more about their craft I suspect, because they needed to when hand sculpting. Part of this is composition: and when there's subtle details creating ornate, artisan armour then surfaces devoid of detail stand out like a sore thumb. The knee pads in the older Sanguinary Guard have an iconic detail, but that means curved surface detail is balanced throughout the entire model. The chest plates on the new Captain are too bare - for all the prude social anxiety these days, nipples serve an artistic purpose of breaking up all of that surface area. Blur your eyes when looking at that new model and all you'll see are bug-eyed chest plates and a knee pads. The same can be said for the new Sanguinary Guard, who also suffer from another problem: they're all the same. There's no individualism, no soul to any of the designs, which is antithetical to what Sanguinary Guard should be.

The solution is therefore to try and kitbash and convert my own. I don't particularly want to pay full price for models that I simply don't like without major work being done on them. My own attempts are going to fall well short of display quality, so again I don't want to invest money into something that I know will end up mediocre at best. Even with the replacement parts from the Crimson Lords campaign from Greytide Studios, some sculpting is likely to be required.

Where now to begin? I bought some of the old push-fit Assault Intercessors. They're cheap, have good poses that will work without needing bases to make them look like they're flying about the place. There are also five on the sprue, giving me two to practice with.

The first attempt here was to see how well an old ("firstborn") torso would fit with the Primaris scale. It doesn't. I had to carve out most of the chest to fit one of the old upgrade sprue pieces, and even then the position is off: it's too high. The nipples looked odd. I've kind of solved that by trying to fill in the gaps and add a scroll to pad out the chest details and obscure the nipples. Here we come to the first problem: green-stuff doesn't file nicely.

Silicone clay shapers work very well to smooth out green-stuff, but it's an almost rubbery finish. It's workable when new, but after trying the freezer trick (placing uncured green-stuff into a sealed bag and freezing it to use again the next day) it wasn't quite as pliable. It's easy to knead, good to bulk out areas, but for a smooth finish and holding detail it simply isn't what I'm looking for. Another problem when sculpting is having the material stick to the surface: injection moulded plastic can be very smooth, and green-stuff will not stick readily to it. It might help to roughen the surface beforehand, which I will try next time.

As a complete opposite, removing green-stuff from some areas is proving difficult. I don't want to remove all of it, just carve out under the chest piece where I'd put too much. The thinking was that I could clean it up later. As it turns out, I should ensure surfaces are shaped as smooth as possible (with roughened surfaces) beforehand, as then later I only need to smooth out the putty - and while it's curing I should be careful to trim away excess then rather then trying to carve it out later. It's simply easier, particularly with green stuff, to keep the excess putty to a minimum. I did this with the holster, which doesn't fit with Sanguinary Guard, by trimming the shape down and filling in gaps to create just another pouch. Green-stuff might work here alright: it has a natural finish that fits to the texture of pouches, smooths out well enough, and I don't need to file away excess.

I would like a couple of extra tools to poke shapes with. I have some which are ok, but I might buy another one or two if they look appropriate. I'll also consider using vasoline to keep the putty from sticking to the tools.

When sculpting details, it's easy to smooth across a general shape. Something like scrolls, however, require some more thought. I need to practice creating thin strips of putty that are in roughly the right shape, then somehow transferring them to the model. Either that, or put a roll on and directly poke it to the proper shape. I think for future scrolls I should make the central strip, let that cure, and then add details on the ends. Curved patches are probably better as circular blobs that I try to poke pieces out of rather than rolls that I curve around - again, particularly with green-stuff. I may find milliput handles differently here.

I've started small on this model, and so far there's nothing that a bit of clever painting can't hide. I'll try to add some blood drop shaped gems to the left greave next, though I'm in two minds of how to approach that. I could either try to sculpt the shape in place, or make a stamp to press a blob of putty into the proper shape. The latter might have problems if the putty comes away on the stamp. I might try by hand first just for the practice.

The next model I try I'll likely keep the basic chest piece, but replace the central skull with a blood drop. After that, the third I'll probably try to make bare, add a blood drop in the middle, and nipples to the side. I'm not sure that I'll directly carve out grooves on the knee pads - a bit of freehand could achieve the same thing. I guess a trip to the art store is in order.

-- silly painter

Commander Dante - Part III

 

Dante's Inferno Pistol

After what seems like an age, I've finally painted enough of Dante to fully assemble the model. There's obviously still a lot left to do, but now that everything is in place I'm hoping motivation will speed up the rest.

I might have reached this point a week sooner, except the base was looking pretty horrid and I decided to try and fix it up. I have a lot of trouble with bases actually, and it's the one thing that I wouldn't mind a 3D printer to help sort out. For this particular model there's a fallen pillar of some kind, but it's lying on top of a pile of rubble that looks almost like dirt. That just doesn't make much sense outside of ancient buildings in Greece or something. It should be something more recent, related to whatever battle and campaign that Dante is prosecuting. Originally I was going rubble strewn about and covered in dirt, but decided to scrape most of that off and instead have tried to adapt it to look more like a pillar or column has fallen from a height and smashed into some flooring (and maybe the halo of some large statue next to it). It won't be quite as effective compared to having thought of it much earlier, but I'm hoping it'll be acceptable. I still need to clean up some rough edges, glue pieces down, add some texture in places, prime and paint it all.

Painting-wise, not much to say really. The "white" iconography is just repeats of before, and most of the rest comes from my standard recipes (I should probably link to that somewhere again). I've tried a few silver metallics in areas, and it's not quite as effective yet as with the gold armour. I'll need to try glazing over a colour other than black - possibly Mechanicus Standard Grey, and see where that takes me.

The glossy nature of the armour is causing some photography problems which I honestly don't have the time to sort out right now, but in good lighting the model really does look a lot better. Actually the black pauldron trim looks far too dull in comparison and I might need to try give that a more satin finish later. I won't be varnishing the model in general because it will simply dull the armour too much, but then I'm not likely to be using it for gaming anyway.

The eyes of the mask are incredibly simple: white, and Talassar Blue over the top. With a very pointy brush and magnifying headset. I wasn't sure if blue would work, but again in proper lighting this really gives an impression of a golden figure with incredible power. It's a really good sculpt. Too bad the Sanguinary Guard models are...not. More about that and how to improve them in the coming weeks I hope.

Otherwise, that's all for Dante right now. Painting is slow going, but not stalled.

-- silly painter.

Blood Angels Furioso Dreadnought - Part III

Armless maybe, but harmless not.

Not too much to say here other than I'm starting to fill in some colours on the body of the last "boxnought" dreadnought. There are a few details remaining, but I can soon start on the arms I think.

The sarcophagus is the part that really brings everything to life (as is natural for a dreadnought), but it's also one of the simpler things to paint here. There's nothing fancy beyond my normal approaches, and I'm following the box art fairly closely. I forgot to put some silver around the side gems, which I'll need to very carefully do later, but the one "cheat" I suppose is actually the side cabling. I'm not using multiple different colours, no fancy hazard stripes, just all metallics, black, or some variation thereof. I used to take far too much time selecting appropriate cable colours, and now I kind of don't bother without a very good reason. It's simply a time saver.

The armour I'm still highlighting gently in places. The airbrushing back then did most of the work, but was lacking in a few key areas, most notably the feet. I'm concentrating most of the manual touch-up around them. I'm also leaning into highlighting lower panes of flat surfaces to give more depth and shape to then, and I think it does help. It's possibly not very physically accurate, but it looks nice and helps readability.

The base I'm going for another marbling look, but with perhaps some more weathering added later on. I think I know why some previous attempts never turned out quite right and so this time I'm going to work slightly in reverse: the thin marbling lines will be added next, and then some of the more gentle striations. This should prevent the thing lines from overpowering everything, and blending them in more. I find marbling to be about subtlety more than anything else.

And that's about all for now. The metallic surfaces haven't had additional highlights yet, and I might wait until after varnishing for that, or I could do some basic highlights first, then pick out details again afterwards. I'll see how motivated I am.

-- silly painter.

More Misfortune

 The next animation dropped today, and as I feared: woke through & through. Girlboss soldier who is more moral and upstanding than any male counterpart, saves the day, better in battle than any other, etc etc etc. I was going to write that the Commissar would be mentally broken in battle and the girlboss would have to save him, but they made the Commissar broken _before_ the battle (during which, of course, the girlboss has to save him).

Enough of the Cadians everywhere. That's pure narrative laziness at this point. Try be more original.

Enough of every single damned 'hero' character being a girlboss. Iron Within? Girlboss in charge and better than anyone else. Broken Lance? Girlboss in charge and better than anyone else, naturally has to put down a failed male character. The Tithes? Even the Astartes-centric story was female in charge of Cadians. The others had female in every single position of power, without fail. Tech-adept female, psykers female, in-charge soldiers female - but the problem is female and always bossing around, putting down, and showing up male characters. Every single time. Even the Commissar mentions being a burden to his mother: not his parents, specifically his mother. 

The forced ideology is painfully obvious, and it's ruining the entire franchise. I see the new Kill Team models and immediately they show of course: female girlboss in charge of everything. Does the kit come with options? Near as I can tell, yes, but I can't see the kit without thinking of that now, without thinking of the animations, the ideology being bludgeoned into everything and the massive attempts at indoctrination. The grimdark setting is supposed to be a parody of such things, not an instruction manual. I don't see the setting, the parody, or even the hobby.

It's all just so unnecessary too. Games Workshop was handling diversity just fine a few years ago. Diversity does not mean "gender swap some leader and try to put down men at every opportunity". That's just pure bigotry, hatred, and sexism. Just make a good character instead, focus on a good story, and people will barely notice any diversity at all.

So I've cancelled my WH+ subscription. I'm suddenly no longer interested in the new Sanguinary Guard, even for kitbashing purposes. Or the new Blood Angels Captain. Or much of any new 40k models at all outside of Lemartes and Astorath. I'm going to just start pulling back from 40k entirely now, because all I see is agenda everywhere, and I shouldn't need to battle just to enjoy the hobby. 30k and Imperialis fortunately remain....for now.

Does this one person matter? No, not likely. To repeat: it's not diversity I mind, it's the constant being lectured to that I mind. I'm simply stepping away until that nonsense fades. I'm hoping it will, but not expecting it anytime soon. To anyone thinking "no great loss", or "glad to see you go if you think that" then just remember: the more people stay away because of this, the less of the hobby there will be. It's a hobby to enjoy, not a platform to preach, and if people start leaving because that's no longer the case, then it's not a going to be a hobby anymore, and won't be entertaining.

In the meantime, I have plenty in my backlog to paint up. So I guess there's a silver lining: not spending money on new models.

-- silly painter

Mermaid of Warsaw - Part II

 

Wow! Look at that rock!

There's not a whole lot of difference yet on the model, however I was recently playing around with oil paints again, specifically with the Zorn Palette (or close to it, as I don't have the official paints). I have a particular interest in that palette because of the skin tones that are seemingly trivial to make using it. Red, yellow, black, and white. Mixed in whatever ratios work.

One of the tricks behind skin tones is that skin is generally based on orange. Not like an orangutan, but the particular palette here can create nearly all the basics. There might be some shifts into green or blue depending on environmental factors (shading, lights, etc), but that should be simple enough with just adding those as necessary.

Working with oils is quite the joy on larger models where smooth blending is important. The long working time and ease of smoothing out colours just makes everything so much more pleasant. Notably some of the skin highlights here, and obviously yellow for the hair, but I also worked on the rock. Black was thinned slightly and dabbed around some areas, and then a grey was mixed up and kind of drybrushed (referring to the brush motion, not the paint consistency) across to build up some highlights. This workes surprisingly well. Oils have a natural translucency that also let some of the airbrushed colours show through, and I used that to act as secondary reflections from the body of the mermaid.

The hair is mostly playing with the yellow paint. No pattern or thought, I was just playing with the idea of drybrushing using oils. The desaturated yellow hair on the models's left doesn't fit with the lighting angle and I'll need to go back in and fix that next time, but I kind of like the drybrushing idea. The hair does need more depth though, and I probably should fade out some of the blues, otherwise it looks too much like coloured stone instead of hair flowing in the wind. I have some ideas on that.

I'll likely continue to play with the oils before I switch back to acrylics for finer detail work, but I definitely need to sort out some better brushes. Oils need smoothing out, and short, stiff bristles work better for that kind of thing. I have some older brushes that aren't any good (Army Painter ones that never worked as they were supposed to) so I might trim the ends down and see how that goes.

The skin tones need some blending out in places more (the abdomen for example), or building up entirely (the back). I'm also considering using some of the mineral spirits to make a wash for the hair and scales. The rock could use browns and perhaps some greens closer to the waterline as well. Still, the main colours are blocked in and I'm getting an idea at least of where the model will go. Just hope I'll be able to keep up some kind of painting routine to actually get it done.

-- silly painter

The Unfortunate Community

 This is one of those posts that has little to do with painting, but everything at the same time. It impacts the motivation for painting, and is leading me away from Warhammer 40,000 and Games Workshop in general.

In part this is inspired by what I've seen regarding a recent Code of Conduct being applied to the open source wine project. I have no issue with the CoC as I've read it (not in the current iteration anyway), but I firmly believe that these are things that should be debated (in a civil way, of course). They're not always a force for good, particularly when applied as enforced behaviour rather than limits on behaviour - and there is huge difference between the two. Enforced behaviour does not accept opposing viewpoints, where as limits on behaviour are mostly "don't be a prick". In one particular corner of the Internet, opposing views are frowned upon (even being perceived as critical of Valve is cause to be attacked there, whether true or not) and someone who obviously doesn't like CoC's was immediately attacked, insulted, and told to get lost. Someone literally admitted to waiting for a comment so they could attack. That is a toxic environment, that is not fostering an open community, that is excluding people - ironically the very thing they claim that a CoC is supposed to prevent.

This is not a problem with a Code of Conduct. They're simply a guideline. This is a problem managing a community, and it follows on to ..... female Custodians.

I have no problem with female Custodians in principle. It was handled extraordinarily poorly on introducing them, but the idea standalone is fine. The idea isn't standlone though. It's being shoved down everyone's throats with a battleship's turret rammer. The recent animation The Tithes: Harvest is proof of this. It was a conscious choice to use a female Custodian there, and from a narrative perspective a rather poor choice at that. Yes it shows perfectly the arrogance and ultimate failures of the Custodes, but it lacks the balance of already establish characters such as Valarian and Aleya. Male and female viewpoints are a part of that balance. Combined with every single person of authority being female in that show, and the increase in this everywhere (all the of Imperial Guard commanders are now female, the Imperial Knights animation was this again, the Skaventide animation has female guard captains everywhere, the Iron Warriors animation again has the heroine as better than everyone else, the list goes on) and the show can only be seen as an agenda propaganda tool. The preview of the next episode of the Tithes I predicted a female girlboss in charge within the first two seconds. I was right. I'm sure she'll be super morally above everyone else, always right, and more fearless than any male. I'll try to remember to edit this when it comes out - but even now I'm already biased as a symptom of what's really going wrong.

The problem is that it's all so obviously ideological agenda driven. It's not world building, it's not expanding on characters, it's shoving ideology down people's throats. This used to be a safe space for geeks of all kinds, and now it's being taken over by some ideological investors who for reasons unknown are trying to putrefy everything they touch. I think this is being forced on Games Workshop personally through some investors; before then GW was actually doing diversity properly in simply giving people options.

The consequence of this enforced ideological diarrhoea is that it becomes the identity of the intellectual property. I don't see a great show with a Custodian in it. I see yet another agenda driven pile of crap. I don't see a great new model - I see yet another girlboss. I don't see a diverse range of options, I see exclusion. Even the recent Space Marine II game: a couple of years ago I wouldn't have blinked twice at the battle-brothers. Now I see token representation whenever I see their faces because it's being hydraulically rammed into everything. I see it if there's ever a weak male character, especially with a female superior. It immediately ruins gameplay, stories, lore, and communities. I never saw that with the original Space Marine where the Imperial Guard commander was female and awesome - but the others (male mostly) were also just as battle hardened and poised. Was this agenda? Yeah, probably - but it wasn't obviously so.

Swinging back around the unfortunate community reactions, the amount of harassment, insults, attacks, and bigotry is disgusting. What's worse is that all of it is being done by those claiming to be against such things. I would be attacked for daring to have the opinion that from a narrative perspective a female Custodian was a poor fit. Or if it's a female Custodian, why not a male blank? That too is apparently cause for being attacked (yes, really, I've watched that happen). Any form of opposing view is immediately under fire, and it's being done in targeted manner: people are gaslighting to then claim their moral superiority. Goobertown Hobbies was guilty of this in my opinion, smugly proclaiming himself righteous while putting down many hobbyists using an argument that simply wasn't true. I stopped watching his channel because of that. I much rather watch people with viewpoints I'm against, but who debate and put forth reasons without stooping to attack others to make themselves feel better.

None of this is unique to Games Workshop, tabletop gaming, etc. It's been happening throughout the movie industry for a while (where it's now crumbling in a spectacular fashion): Star Wars, Star Trek, Doctor Who, Marvel, etc. I'm hoping that coupled with the massive success of Space Marine II will convince Games Workshop to push back against the agenda and just stick to pleasing their core audience while still giving diverse options as they once did. Otherwise, every time I paint a model I'm just going to be thinking "how will they turn this into gender politics, wonder if they'll try use this to enforce stupid pronouns everywhere, I wonder if I'll be attacked for using one colour over another on this model". I used to want to experiment with a wide range of skin tones. Now I don't - now I just want to paint Caucasian skin tones in defiance of the real bigotry.

So I'm not sure what I'm going to do here. I'll wait and see I suppose. I've already changed my mind about buying a couple of Custodian models. This is again not a gender issue - it's because I no longer see Custodes, I see agenda whenever I look at them. I won't sell those I already have, but I'm not motivated to paint them either. I've passed buying other models recently too. This toxicity coming from those claiming to be against toxic behaviour is making the hobby unpalatable, driving out the very people who built it in the first place. I'm not even recommending it to parents of the core audience anymore. Maybe Horus Heresy is still alright. For now. 40k though, is in some serious trouble.

Most unfortunate.

-- silly painter.

Captain Karlaen Kitbash - Part I

 

New armour, same hammer.

I wasn't intending to start any new little projects, but the Combat Patrol magazine has resulted in quite a few of the Leviathan Terminator Captain models around the place, and I grabbed one. I like the model, it was cheap, why not. I'm also going through a lot of furniture and "stuff" reorganisation (again...) and so at the same time as this new model I also happened to be looking at Captain Karlaen. I like the old sculpt, it works well, but the proportions of the newer Terminator sculpts are much better. Why not give some kitbashing a go?

The first thing was basic eyeballing to see if it might even work in theory. The belt buckle and tassels are a fairly unique part to Karlaen and I wanted them - they even flow in the same direction as the cape. I also looked around the Internet for inspiration: if someone else has done the hard work to prove it will fit, then it would certainly make things easier for me. I also basically copied someone else with the model's left tilting shield.

I decided early on that I wouldn't bother with the chain around his torso and across the cape. It would be relatively easy to use jewellery chain for this, but I was concerned it might clutter the model too much, and I also didn't want to be spending any more money.

The pauldrons aren't easily swapped out, and so I've kept the originals in place. The intent is to simply paint the right one in a similar fashion to the older model's sculpted version. This does leave a bit of a problem: no Blood Angel would march into battle without the Chapter's insignia. If this wasn't going to be on the pauldron, then I would need to convert the chestpiece to display it instead. I used a Dremel to carve out the skull, and a spare blood drop symbol (actually from an Aggressor pauldron) to fill it in. This didn't work quite as well as I'd hoped: the engraving bit was slightly too large, and the blood drop symbol wasn't flat - I had to very carefully try and carve off the back. I probably should have made a green-stuff version instead. I'm sure it will look nicer once painted.

The Dremel was again used on the belt buckle. I carved out the old hanging scrolls, and used a jewellers saw to cut off the belt buckle as cleanly as I could (I might actually be able to use the rest of the Karlaen torso somewhere else one day). I needed to snip off the bullet bling to fit at the proper angle, and very slightly trim one of the tassels to fit better against the leg. I had intended to fill a small gap there with green stuff, but forgot to. I then needed to Dremel out a lot of the back of the belt buckle to fit flush against the new model. It might not be perfect, but I'm pleased enough with the end result. It doesn't stick out too much, it's more or less centered, and the bullet bling helps cover up the other side.

The symbol on top was fairly straight forward: snip off the old one, glue on Karlaen's. It's not perfectly in the middle, but not so bad. I did use a very small amount of green stuff to pad out the join on the back because it wasn't a perfect fit and I wanted more stability to the join.

The hands I thought about for a long time: keep the new model's, or try and use the older model's? There's no particular reason not to keep the new model's unless some of the blood drops want to be included, and would have made it much more difficult. Ease won the day (it's a kitbash, not a total conversion). The storm bolter is all original except for moving the targeter from the older model.

Now for the thunder hammer. I spent a few days considering the best approach. I wondered if I should trim off the power cable just to make everything easier, but that would mean the grip wouldn't match up. I don't have an appropriate replacement haft and couldn't do a simple swap of the head of the hammer. So I would need to keep the cable, and all of the thunder hammer itself (hilt included). The older model's sculpt isn't the best to trim away only the hand, so I'd have to cut around that: only the hammer. The power cables don't have anywhere to connect on the new model however, and the cables from Karlaen aren't great fit to replace. Instead I figured something on the forearm would be added to split the power supply from the armour on the newer model, and I'd simply have to try and green stuff that in. It's hidden in the photo, but it ended up much simpler than I'm making it out. I used a jewellery saw again to carefully cut away the hammer and the forearm cable housing, and trimmed the latter back until it mostly fit the new model. It wasn't a perfect fit against the new hand, so I pinned the hammer and put some green stuff around that to extend the haft very slightly. More green stuff to fill out the forearm cable housing and harmonise it with the cabling, and that's pretty much it.

The tilting shields are simple: trim off the old, glue on the new, trimming and filing back as necessary to get a clean fit. The head cowling had a push fit nub which I cut off and then used the Dremel to smooth back. It's a little rough, but will be hidden by a head when that's ready.

The head I again thought about for a while. I don't have any spares that I thought were appropriate, and I didn't want the shouting expression of Karlaen's. It just doesn't seem to fit the post of the rest of the model. Fortunately there is a new Blood Angels upgrade sprue on the way at some point in the future, and one of the heads in there looks almost exactly like what I'm after. With that not yet available though, I'm likely to leave off doing any painting until it is. The motivation was the kitbashing, not the painting, and I really need to get back onto some other projects next, especially now that I've readied a painting area again.

I think the efforts have paid off in the kitbashing. It's all gone relatively smoothly, and nothing looks too out of place. The silhouette is still obviously of the Leviathan model, but as I'm unlikely to get another one anytime soon then it's still going to be fairly unique within my collection.

-- silly painter.

 

Legion Imperialis - Tarantulas

 

Turret Defense!

For these weapon platforms, sentry guns, whatever, there's not a whole lot different from before. Certainly nothing revolutionary, just trying to fix some mistakes and add a whole bunch of new ones.

The starting point with these weapons (four in total, just double up on what's shown) was Typhon Ash to serve as an undercoat, and Terradon Turquoise over that. The Typhon Ash seems to have some kind of grainy problem: I checked airflow, checked it was properly thinned and mixed, enough flow improver, but somehow it was hitting the model like flecks of sand. I don't mean it was dry when it came out the airbrush, I mean it was like adding small flecks of sand to a thinner medium and airbrushing that, with the result being a very grainy appearance across the surface. Spray primers have a more even coverage. Next time I'm going to add a drop of white ink to see if that will smooth things out. As it is I needed a couple of passes with Terradon Turquoise, which in turn darkened the base colour more than I'd have liked.

I also worked with the edge highlighting using Gauss Blaster Green again, but I think I can do better. I'll try to edge highlight with white before the turquoise and see if that makes any difference. I can always go back over them again if not.

Not worrying about volumetric highlights of any kind was a big help to these models. They're so small that they just don't need it: the edge highlights are sufficient to help with definition. A top-down approach with the airbrush will give some gradient in places anyway for next to no effort.

These models were given a gloss varnish and then gently covered with a Black Legion Contrast mixed with acrylic flow improver wash, which really helps with all the definition. It could have been a slightly darker wash so next time I'll try play with the ratio of contrast paint to flow improver.

Lastly, always dry fit to the bases before just blindly gluing these models on. The bases aren't always even, and not all of the feet might make contact with the base properly. Just worth keeping that in mind.

-- silly painter.