Broken Paintbrush

So with the long, holiday weekend I spent a bit of time finishing up the two Traitor Russes.

Here is the finished Traitor Leman Russ #2.

At first I was going to paint the lenses green to match my Iron Warriors but through it clashed a bit too much and decided on the blue instead.

I also thought the cargo boxes looked a bit funny being empty so I painted up some bitz to add some details. This one has an extra gas can (for those torch wielding fanatics), an extra lasgun and a rusty shovel.

And Russ #3.

This one got a camo cloth and broken down  stubber.

Hope you all like how they turned out. I have the two Leman Russ Demolishers still to do but first I have a surprise. The next unit has been sitting on my desk for a few years now begging to be painted and all you old school Chaos players might remember this character

So the second Russ went a lot faster even though I did a bigger Chaos star. I also was more careful with not rubbing the masking medium and it paid off.

In trying to keep the stars more free-form and chaotic I choose different centers and angles for each but kept the same size to give some coherency.

Next up is some more detailing and the final weathering (dust/mud splatter)

So I’m hoping that I’m starting to pick up the pace a bit now that I’m getting back into the painting but it still feels like I’m slogging along. Anyway, on to the new work:

I spent this last week to add a chaos star to the tank to add some color and break up the large side. As I said in the last post the idea came from the amazing Dave Taylor’s work and tutorial. The base coat is Tausept Ocher, then adding Dheneb Stone and finally Skull White for the highlights. I wanted to set off the yellow from the red as the two colors somewhat blue together at the edges so I added a fine line of Necron Abyss.

I wanted to add some wear to the markings but without having to go back and repainting it on so I tried using a masking medium that “paints” on and once dry allows you to paint over it, and when done just rub it off. It didn’t seem to work to well on this tank as I tended to rub it off while working on it so the other Russ I plan on handling a bit more careful.

The close up of the back o the turret you can see some of the masking fluid’s work.

The last Russ is almost complete with it’s chaos stars and both will be moving on to the last weathering stage before completion.

So I’ve been able to change my schedule up to get some free time in the morning to start (finally) painting again. After getting over the hand cramps and the loss of muscle memory in the hands, I have managed to get some work done on two more Leman Russ tanks for my traitor guard.

Both of these tanks are fairly simple in the conversion sense as they are support tanks for the lead Russ. To add some character (and color) to the tanks I plan on adding some Chaos stars ala Dave Taylor thanks to his great tutorial.

Its kinda weird seeing the interblogs all up in flames about the price raises, the finecast (or not so finecast), and European stores in chains. Maybe its been too long since I’ve actually played a game to be too concerned about it all but I have no plans on dropping GW or their products. Personally I’m going to wait a few months or a year before buying any finecast so they can work out their production issues but I’m excited for the possibilities.

Finished the third and final (for now) Rhino for my Iron Warriors army (see the first and second here). This one I tried a few new things. The first is the scratched metal. I tried using an old, tough brush and splayed the bristels to create parallel streaks. I don’t think they all work out well, but it is something to build off of.

The second is the free-hand Chaos star on the top hatch. I took the design from one I found in the 4th edition Codex showing the dual rings and 3d shape. I don’t think I pulled it off how I wanted, but for a first attempt, I’m happy with it.

For this tank I decided to put the stripes on the outer faces of the smoke stacks. Keeping it simple was needed too keep the tank from becoming too busy with the start, chain and skulls and havoc launcher.

And here is all three in their finished states (click for bigger picture!).

I have a couple random projects I want to do next (one currently in progress) before continuing the completion of my Iron Warriors or traitor guard. stay tuned!

Finished up the details on Rhino #4 which mostly entailed the stripes and spot light. After the last Rhino’s attempt at doing the strips freehand I decided to cheat a bit on this one and mask the black areas off with scotch tape.

I started by taping all the area around where I wanted black so I could spray it. I then took some clear masking fluid and sponged it into the area. This way I could take an eraser to it and uncover the metal area underneath.

I then sprayed it black, waited for it to dry and then covered it with scotch tape. After marking out each stripe I cut it apart with the handy knife and removed the tape where I wanted the yellow. After painting up the yellow I removed the tape and washed the whole thing with sepia wash. Once that was dry I rubbed off the clear masking fluid to finish the worn effect.

Overall I’m happy with how the stripes turned out with this technique, which is good because it was very tedious.

And here are the two finished Rhinos together. Work has started on the last Rhino of this group  and will hopefully have it done latter this week.

-Update: Finished the last Rhino here

As always comments are welcome and appreciated!

Decided to finish each of the Rhinos one at a time, so here is the first.

I credit Wienas for the idea o f hazard strips on the front panel, so thanks for that! I think they turned out ok.

I made the mistake of deciding to paint the interior and although it turned out ok, the amount of work that went into something that may never been seen any way… not so sure.

The ever faithful Rhinos! These are 3 of the 4 rhino transports currently possessed by the 14th Grand Company with the 4th being an ancient piece needing some fierce care before being shown to the public.

All three are in various states of near-done. Mostly it is the various copulas that need to be finished and details added.

Oh, and this one is now missing the roof, some how got left at the LFGS and never found, teaches me to not just seal it up and hide the inside.

I made heavy use of the washes for all three tanks, perhaps too heavy. I wanted to give a worn, weathered look which is often hard for ‘silver’ areas as they don’t have paint chips. Instead they came off a bit blotchy and may need some touch ups… we’ll see.

So this is one that I’ve have done for a long time but seem to have failed to capture it on film.

Personally I really like the vindicator and put it in nearly every army list. Sure it is a one-trick pony with its one big gun but no matter what it hits, it is gonna hurt.

In objective missions I’ll often leave the vindicator in reserve to give the enemy time to move towards my objectives. Once the tank rolls on it should be able to find a nice juicy target to demolish.

Perhaps the title is a bit misleading, are any of our little plastic armies ever really finished? Perhaps not, but I completed the 2,000 point army I brought to the Seattle GT  including a display board for it.

Two models that were last to be finished also completed (though very late) ToEMP #10: officer of the fleet and the company command’s chimera.

The officer of the fleet is a real help against reserved based armies such as drop pod marines. During the tournament he wasn’t a game changer as none of my opponents relied on reserves, but then again maybe they just changed their tactics in response to him?

The Chimera was used to protect my command squad with the invaluable Commander Creed. This tank was destroyed in nearly every game in the tournament but Creed was lost in only 2 of them, so I think all in all it was well worth its cost.

As for my results? I achieved my goal for my first ever GT: win 2 games. In fact I even tied a third while grabbing the secondary objective. The two I lost were both hard losses. The first was against Nidzilla and only a sole sentinel remained at turn 6. The second was the last game against a fully mechanized guard army which would have been a great deal closer if luck had been better with me.  In the end I placed 47th out of 80 some great 40k players (and cheating one who won but was later disqualified!). After spending the last few weeks getting over the hard losses and the less than I hoped painting score, I’ve started to reorganize my army composition and think hard about how I want to play this army. I may move to a more mechanized army with squads of veterans rather than the platoons, but I still want to stick to the theme I’ve started so may look at replacing the tanks altogether and build a completely foot based army. We shall see what the future holds…