Broken Paintbrush

I finished the last touches on my armoured sentinels a few days ago but haven’t had a chance to post the pictures yet. Although one of the options for the current ToEMP challenge is a fast attack, I’m not going to count these as I had them nearly finished before the challenge was announced. I have two scout sentinels that are coming along that I am using for the third challenge and should be posting wip shots soon.

I used the same weathering on these guys as I did on my russ. The sentinel on the right also has some more chaos goo coming out the window. I needed to do something to fill the gap because after gluing on the upper plates I realized they were the wrong ones and the top plate doesn’t sit flush like it does with the one on the left.  So magic green stuff to the rescue!

I’m not so sure about my attempt to create a glowing effect from the plasma cannon. It does mean that if I put a different weapon on these guys (the gun in magnetized) it will look funny with the green on the main armour. Oh well, can’t go wrong with plasma cannons right?

As I said above: on my painting table is the scout versions of these guys armed with missile launchers. I am also taking a bunch of pictures as I paint them so I can try to do a step by step for both the vehicle as well as the drivers (which are painted like my foot sloggers). This are due on the 6th for ToEMP (a full week away!) so if I finish them up in a short time I may break out one of my many special characters from Chaos and repaint them (Fabius, Abaddon, Chypher?)

So in celebration of finishing my Leman Russ and Armoured Sentinels (need to post finished pictures of them…) I thought I should post a group shot of my Traitor Guard army. I also needed to put together an official army list for the army for the painting competition on Sunday as well. As you can see they came a long way from just two months ago.

My company commander with his horde as his back drop and the two sentinels looming in the distance.

I am still needing to paint two more heavy weapon squads and two scout sentinels to finish what I currently have built. I also have another platoon worth of troops from a friend at the store but they may have to wait for some tanks to bolster the line first.

The Army List using only what is painted:

• HQ: Company Command Squad 137 pts
  • Company Commander with bolt pistol, power weapon and melta bombs
  • Veterans with regimental standard, medi-pack, plasmagun, vox, krak grenades
• Troop: Platoon #1 352
  • Platoon Commander with bolt pistol, power weapon, melta bomb; standard, 2x grenade launchers, vox 77pts
  • 2x squads with vox, flamer, power weapon, melta bomb , krak grenades 85 pnts each
  • Heavy Weapon Squad with 3x lascannons 105 pnts
• Troop: Platoon #2 352
  • Platoon Commander with bolt pistol, power weapon, melta bomb; standard, 2x grenade launchers, vox 77pts
  • 2x squads with vox, flamer, power weapon, melta bomb, krak grenades 85 pnts each
  • Heavy Weapon Squad with 3x lascannons 105 pnts
• Fast Attack: Armoured Sentinels x2 with plasma cannons 150 pnts
• Heavy Support: Leman Russ with lascannon, heavy bolters 185 pnts

Total: 1176

So after finishing my Leman Russ before the deadline for ToEMPs and not wanting to start the next project before the next challenge was issued I decided to dig back out my diy Titan I started about 6 months ago.

Although the plan I’m working off of showed building each toe segment and main foot section separately then gluing them together, I wanted a bit more stability and made the central toe connected straight back to the rear toe via a long I-beam. I then added the other two toes and the pads to the end of each toe. The picture below shows the foot on the left as right side up and the right one upside down.

I then created little caps for each toe end using a matching rectangle to the toe pad, attached to two right-angle brackets.

Once these were attached I wanted to think a head and create support into the foot to connect to the lower leg. I did this with some more the my trusty I-beams glued to the plate the will eventually be the middle of the foot and glued reinforcement beams around it. This created a very sturdy point I can work off of when building the lower leg.

Since taking these pictures I created an end plate for each toe and bulked up one of the feet so it’s not just a single, thin plate.

I’ve already set this aside again to work on the next TOEMP challenge but the titan will eventually stand!

Although I was hoping to have had a head start on the second challenge for 73rd’s A Tale of Even More Painters with my sentinels, I came back from my work trip to find the challenge was to paint an elites choice, and if none were available then a heavy support could be painted instead. I had neither choice planned for the short term for my traitor guard and didn’t even have any models I could put together for it, but luckily I had one of my brothers old Leman Russ tanks in the back of my closet. With his permission I have relinquished the tank from those who worship the corpse and added it to my growing horde.

I continued the Red/Orange/Yellow theme onto this tank to keep the army color scheme together. This is actually my first tank with “painted” armor, all my other tanks are silver for my Iron Warriors. This gave me the opportunity to apply paint scratches and wear.

The skull motif and XIV are unified across all of my tanks, linking them to the 14th Grand Company. The icon is from the dark elf warrior box, but works great for my tanks.

The process of pulling this tank together in just a few short days was helped by the fact my brother had this mostly built already. I simply had to add the tracks, remove those darn Aquilas and add some chaos flavor. Modifications were kept simple overall, some spikes were added to each sponsoon and around the top hatch.  Chaos star icons were also added to the back of each sponsoon (those plates fit perfectly into that spot!).

I also felt the cargo hold on the back needed some filling up. I debated on adding actual cargo, a blood sacrifice pool or some gnarly chaos goo. I decided to go with a gnarly chaos sacrifice goo with a victim pleading for help.  I continued this goo theme out the front viewing hatch of the tank (as well as on one of the sentinels).

I have yet to name this tank, I think I’ll leave that honor to my brother who was great enough to hand this tank off to me! (thanks Sean!)

For the ToEMP challenge this earns me:

• Vehicle: 10 points
• Icon/Symbols: 1 point
• Eyes: 1 point (This is the only guy I’ve done the eyes on and he is dieing!)
• Vehicle Details: 5 points
• Meeting deadline: 2 points
• beating deadline by 24 hours:  2 points
• Game points: 185 (just shy of earning another assault card!)

Total for this tank: 21

Total so far: 32

Another quick tip for painting: using brush soap to clean your brushes.

I picked up this tip from the manager of my local GW store. I had been having trouble with my brushes getting stiff and clogged. I know I should be washing my brushes with soap and water after each session but sometimes I just don’t want to be bothered or don’t have the time.

That is where this little dish of soap comes in handy: simple dip the brush in the water pot, wipe it across the soap a few time and rinse it again. While using this method I haven’t had any problems with dried paint in my brush and in fact older brushes cleaned up so well with this, they were actually usable again.

I picked up my soap at a local art supply shop but I’m sure any bar of soap could work, this is just in a handy, closable case.

So after being inspired by DezartFox’s  World Eater Rhinos I started painting my heavy sentinels with a streaky red pattern. I quickly decided to modify the color scheme a bit to fit better with the rest of my army and started painting a fade to yellow to match my commander’s cape.

After painting the red/yellow with the large dry brush, I repainted the metal parts black before adding silver and soon the brass. As the first deadline for the ToEMP hasn’t yet passed, 73rd hasn’t released the details on the second challenge yet, so I am not sure if these sentinels will yet fulfill the requirements. If not, well I still have plenty of other models to get done.

I have just finished my Company Command Squad for my Traitor Guard and in doing so met the first Tale of Even More Painters challenge. I know Admiral Drax (and his troops with hand painted Aquilas) beat us all done, but I think I may have just finished second.

Equipped with power weapon, bolt pistol, metla bomb, krak grenades, plasma gun (I love plasma…), medic, regimental standard, vox. Total Points: 137

There was little conversion done on this squad, just a bit of kit bashing and work with the knife/file. The regimental banner already had a sculpted on Chaos star (well perhaps it is some silly loyalist symbol…) and the medic looked crazy enough with just the needle and chain knife (a bit of a Fabius Bile flashback).

Yes my company commander is Inquisitor model, I liked the model so much I decided he would make a perfect leader for my army, even if it is a bit ironic. I filed off the Inquisitor icons and filled in the icon on top of the head. I may go back at some point and paint a Chaos star on his chest, but for now he is considered done.

Points Earned:

• Foot Sloggers x5 = 5 pnts
• Icons/ Symbols/ Marks (the banner counts?) = 1 pnt
• Eyes/ Lenses/ View Finders (commanders eye lens) = 1 pnt
• Beating Deadline by at least 24 hours = 2 pnts
• Meeting Deadline: 2 pnts

Total Painting Points: 11

I have to spend some time figuring out what is up next to paint. Options are: 2 heavy sentinels, 2 scout sentinels, missile launcher squad or a mortar squad. I haven’t tallied up the points I have painted, but I think I’m getting close to the 1k I need for the painting competition at my local GW. Because of time constraints (I’m out of town all of next week for work) I may start with the heavy sentinels to add some more character to the army. I am going to paint them like Dezartfox’s World Eater Rhinos over on the Vanus Temple. After painting so many tanks for my Iron Warriors, I want to try out a “painted” tank (aka not another silver one) and although I’m trying to stay away from the blood pact theme, bloody walkers could look so intimidating!

Although I’m trying hard to finish 1k of my traitor guard by the end of the month I thought I would also share some of the painting tips and tricks I often use.

Today’s Tip: The magic eraser brush.

Whenever I’m painting I always have two brushes out: the one I’m using and another to erase. The need for the second brush arises because I don’t like to do touch up painting and my hands shake a bit. To solve both of these problems I have a second, clean brush always on hand that I can quickly wet and “erase” any spots of paint I put on the wrong spot.

This technique is not completely fail proof but it usually removes enough paint to make it unnoticeable. The trick is to wipe the paint away as soon as possible with a wet brush. If you wait to long or use a dry brush the paint will no longer come off easily. I prefer to use a large, stiff brush for this, such as the medium dry brush, because it both springs into the cracks a bit better and grabs the edges harder than softer brushes.

For my traitor guard I have used this technique many times to remove spots of orange on metal parts or metal on skin areas (though the metal paints often leave a touch of aluminum shavings no matter how hard you try). Because of this I have had to do nearly no touch up.

Thanks goes out to 73rd for putting together A Tale of Even More Painters and adding me to the list. Although I am shooting for my own challenge deadline for completing 1,000 points by the end of the month, I look forward to 73rd’s challenges to keep me motivated past that point (painting 60+ guardsmen is tiring!) and providing interesting challenges to keep things fresh and enjoyable.

The first challenge is to have 75 points painted by the 17th. This should be very doable as I am planning on having my company command squad done by the end of this week, but you know how life goes, something always comes up. Speadking of which I will be spending most of next week out of town for work, oh well…

Platoon two has been finished right on schedule. This marks the fastest I’ve ever painted this many models for 40k (Fantasy seems a bit easier to paint large groups). I also am not completely done with the platoon as a whole, as I have two heavy weapon squads that still need to be painted, but I figured I needed to at least get the core of the troop choice finished.  As I had mentioned before, I am trying to enter this army in my local GW’s monthly painting competition. This months requirement is for a legal 1k point army. Finishing this platoon gives me my two troop choices so now all that is left to make it legal is paint the company command squad and see if I can squeeze out 1,000 points. If not, well I have 4 sentinels and 6 heavy weapon teams to paint. If all else fails I have my three Basilisk I could pull out to complete the army, but as they don’t completely fit the theme I’ve built it would fell a little cheap.

Here is the full platoon squeezing into my light box.

The platoon command Squad. I haven’t thought up any fluff like I did for the other platoon. Once my painting flurry is over I’ll have to think about some stories fitting for the Iron Army.

Platoon Squad One

Platoon Squad Two

Another thing I tried with this batch of pictures is add a water mark in the lower corner. I’ve been noticing a great deal of bloggers re-posting pictures but failing to give credit. It was a simple thing to add and if anyone is interested I may put a tutorial together on how to do it.

Next up is my company command squad which I hope to finish this week.