Broken Paintbrush

Well it only took 4 weeks but I have finished my first squad of Ork Boyz! One could argue that I spent a bit too much time on simple boyz, but since I’m doing this for the enjoyment of it, and trying something new, even Boyz get a shiny paint job

Even though these are the Orks from the Assault on Black Reach set, they are still detailed and entertaining to paint. From their unique sneers, dangling teef, and cobbled together weapons (there are bolts holding the choppas together!) it was fun picking out the details as I went along.

A decided to paint the squad as Death Skulls for two reasons: I like the color blue, and I wanted to try a hand at war paint. So each Ork has sone form of blue face paint, painted weapons, or shoulder tatooes.

I was also going for a heavily weathered look so I added rust, teal patina a lots of scratches. Even the mud was brought up the legs, knees and rear ends of the models.

For the most part I followed the painting guide from WD350 where they paint the AoBR Warboss step-by-step. Obviously the blue was replaced for the yellow and I didn’t go nearly into the number of layers/colors that they used, but it was a very handy guide.

For the bases I wanted to add lots of texture and follow what I did for my Tau suites. I will be putting together a post on how I did this while I work on the Deffcoptas.

After painting this squad I can see how some get the green fever and go all out with the Orks. While I was working on the squad I was continually looking up units in the Codex and online, reading Ork blog posts, and in general fantasizing my own Waaaagh! but for now I need to keep it in check as I have a goal to do: four 500 point armies by the end of 2012!

I was finally able to finish the last few details of the squad, including the base and matte varnish. I’m still playing around with some various backgrounds and picked up a pack of card stock of a couple shades of tan and gray. For this shot I used the dark gray card as the tans turned out too yellow and light. The only thing I don’t like about using the card stock is the lines, oh well. On to the individual shots:

With these guys finished I think I am going to take a break from the Mentor Legion for now, the thought of painting up a battle force + ABR of these guys just tires me out! I have some Iron Warriors to finish up any way that have been patently awaiting the brush… stay tuned for those terminators and rhinos that have been sitting on my desk!

Thoughts, ideas or criticism? Let me know!

Well I wasn’t able to finish the squad over the weekend, but I made some good progress. Until now I had been debating on how the Mentor Legion would show company/squad markings. They are a codex chapter but having different colored shoulder bands wouldn’t fit their look. I couldn’t find any thing scouring the interwebs so I decided on knee pads for the company color and Gothic numbering for the squad. This squad has been placed in the 2nd Company, 3rd Tactical Squad.

This guy was my first attempt at free handing the tactical arrow and it turned out terrible! So I opted for the half-cheating approach. I used the transfers from the kit for the inner white arrow and repainted the red edging and then repainted the white inner area. I used the transfers on the other tactical arrows as well with an over-paint to cover the decal.

I tried using the same technique for the Gothic number 3 but the decal was way too big for the curved surface and kept bulging. After trying to cut it apart and restitch it I gave up and decided to try the free hand approach. Overall I think they turned out pretty good.

I also did some work on the two missing guns which I painted separately and are now resting in their rightful holders. I am now down to finishing the metal areas, a little armor damage and the bases.  Stay tuned!

Well I was finally able to get all the white done on this small squad. I think the last two guys got a little rushed in my anxiousness to get them done, but overall they seem to match up pretty well. Now with the white done there is little left to do other than details: the aquilas, purity seals, squad markings, and the bases. Hopefully I can get these done over the weekend.

I also tried a couple different background for the photo shoot as white models on a white background don’t work all that well. For both of these shots I grabbed a nearby t-shirt and crumpled it up as the backdrop.

Tan backdrop:

Dark brown backdrop:

What do you guys think about the different backgrounds? I am also going to try out a dark, textured paper somewhat like what Massive Voodoo uses.

So the white armor is takes a while to do… After painting this guy’s base coat I realized that to take full advantage of the paint mix I needed to complete him before moving on. I think his armor looks smoother than the Sargent but doesn’t show the same depth and shading. win some, lose some yeah?

Anyway the steps I used to paint the white. I started with mixing 1:1:1:5 mix of graveyard earth, codex grey, skull white and water. I used this to pretty much cover everything except the recesses in the armor or where it met other colors. I then added more and more white and water and added about 6 or so layers focusing more on the ridges and ‘tops’ of the white areas. I finally used pure skull white to highlight the hard, upper edges.

Here’s a shot of my messy desk area. In the background you can see some Iron Warrior Terminators awaiting finishing touches on their bases. Center back is my really basic ‘light box’ to take WIP shots – yes it really is copy paper leaning against the wall You can see the missile launcher guy is up next as he stands on my improve ‘handle’ made from an old paint pot and sticky tac.

Any comments on how the white looks would be appreciated, I always like learning new things.

Although I was hoping to get some feedback on my first cut at my Mentor Legion Squad before continuing I decided to press on and finish the squad.

As I picked up my paintbrush I realized that this was the first time I had done any painting for nearly 3 months! And man could I tell, my hands were somewhat shaky, the paint wasn’t smooth and my hands kept cramping up. After a few sessions I was able to get some good progress on the squad and regain some of the painting mojo.

I almost didn’t post this next picture as it looks like a elementary school kid slapped the some paint on so that they could be played in a store… ugh. But oh well, here is some WIP shots of the squad:

Here I blocked out the different colors to both get an idea of what goes where, as well as cover up all the white primer in all the little nooks without worrying about getting paint where it doesn’t belong. Colors are pretty simple: Orkhide Green, Mechrite Red, Graveyard Earth, Tausept Ochre.

Next up I painted the highlights on the green. I do this next as I find it is easy to touch up darker colors rather than the white armor. The green was layered from Orkhide Green, to Goblin Green,  to Scorpion Green, and finally Skull White on the extremes. The areas were then washed with Thraka Green wash to tie the shades together.

The red areas were next. Starting with the Mechrite base I layered Blood Red, to Blazing Orange, then  Golden Yellow. A small amount of black wash was used to darken the recesses.

Next up will probably be the white armor… this part will take a while…

A long while back my FLGS was doing a challenge to paint a unit from every Space Marine Chapter on the poster that GW put out a few years back. I looked into my bitz boxes and realized I had quite a few loyal space marine pieces that I needed to put a use to and decided to jump in. I wanted to chose a chapter that would be fun to paint, but require me to stretch my painting skills. With this requirements, the Mentor Legion caught my eye as they are a not-often played army (at least from what I’ve seen) and had white armor (which I heard was difficult to paint well).

To further challenge my self I decided that I would minimize my use of washes on this army and work on blending and layering. I decided to start with the sergeant the squad as the test model since it is a bit more ok if he stands out slightly from the rest of the squad.

I think the white armor came off a bit too brown and streaky up close, but comes off well as a table top model. I’m also not so sure about the yellow power sword, the idea was to tie it in with the chest eagle and eyes but it doesn’t look as striking like a power sword should. At this point I just need to finish his base and add some company/squad markings and he is done.

Here is the rest of the small, test squad I had started, but with Real Life (I think one of you bloggers has that copyrighted, hope you don’t sue me ) I had to put them aside for a time. They are now sitting on my painting table awaiting my motivation.

Please give me any feedback (negative or positive) on the sarge so I can continue to improve my style and technique with the other 4 in this squad.

Well I was hoping to have finished both this squad as well as the mortar squad for the 4th ToEMP challenge, but alas, I got distracted yet again. The 4th challenge was 60 points of what ever we felt like, as long as we gave a reason why we chose what we did. I picked this squad (and wanted to finish the mortar squad) because they are the “last” troops I need to paint for my traitor guard.  And when I say last, we all know that means: “all I currently have at this time, until I get inspired to buy more plastic crack…”

Any way onto the pictures:

I want my traitor guard to be colorful, but not over the top with mutations and such (the Iron Warriors really don’t like that type of thing).

For the fourth challenge I earn:

• Foot sloggers x6: 6 points
• Meeting deadline: 2 points

Total Points: 8

Total to date: 69

Hmm I didn’t really push my self to much for this challenge did I?

One of my many distracts for this last week will probably be part of the next challenge and I give a sneak peak here:

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.

Even with the 90+ temperatures in my apartment this week I was able to get some painting done and am still on schedule to finish 1000 points by the end of the month. Part of what made this possible is the suggestion from Dweomer in my last post to get paint retarder to keep my paints from drying out so quickly in the hot weather. I was having to add water between every model or two just to keep it usable, now with the addition of this paint retarder I was able to paint a color on a whole platoon without having to add more water. It didn’t work as well on the metallic paint for some reason, perhaps I didn’t add enough retarder to the mixture.

Use Paint Retarder to keep paint from drying out quickly in hot weather

The second platoon is nearly done with the base-coat layer, which is arguably the longest part of the process. Once the base coat is finished the models are washed, highlighted, based and then clear coated.

Most of the base coat finished on platoon two

My plan in to have the last of the base coat done by Tuesday to start the washes and have this platoon done by the end of the week. Next up is the company command and the two remaining heavy weapon teams. If I still have time before the 27th I will paint the sentinels to and an extra touch to the army.