This is how it looked on Saturday night. As you can see I've based all of the painted models, everything is off the spues and undercoated. Spore mines finished (apart from one escapee that needs basing.) But now its 2 days later. All my gene stealers are finished, and I've even done the bases. I'm much happier with the finish of the red on these. I think what i was doing wrong was failing to reset the red base colour after the shadow coat (Chestnut ink) I also managed to mix the right shade of pink for the highlights, and it has a real, dried gone off raw chicken look about it now, which I'm happy with. So all that was left was the remaining marines, which I think I had been putting this off as I was bothered as to how intricate they were. The first three I had done I took ages putting the base coat on, while letting some of the black show through. This time I decided to wet brush the blue on, that is, use a drybrushing technique with more paint on the brush. This left the concave detail black, but left a brighter blue color on the models. I'll have to black ink some of the detail back in, but it was much quicker for the batch painting I was wanting to do. My real life now needs to retake priority over my painting, so probably no updates for a while - but I've made some progress over the last week no doubt.

My mate Paul came around the other night. Now Paul is the chap that I used to do this painting lark with 15 years ago. After the kids went to bed we played the first two scenarios from the Macragge pack. I think thats what has given me the encouragement to get all of these finished, as I enjoyed it but felt bad that I was playing with some unpainted stuff - silly really as you only use them as counters. Heres my version of Lieutenant Varras. He seems to have lost his chin on my version, must have been some horrible battle wound.

Labels: W40K

I've also finished all of the scenery from the set now. Originally I had just undercoated and drybrushed the crashed Dauntless, but now I vomit browned the sand, and then brown inked it, and added some detail to the bits of wreckage. Saw this in the shop today, and they had drybrushed everything - I prefer this way, where I have colour coded some of the pipes and whatnots... Just seen on the picture though that I better blacken the fins on the part in the middle, and maybe tarnish the engines a little, as they look brand new on this shot.

Heres the finished Biovore, with sanded and inked base with some static grass. Looking at it now it's a bit dusty, that was due to sanding off the polyfillered base. But a brief brush with a big paint brush will clean that off. Does a Biovore have eyes? They are just painted red in the manual, so I'm not sure what to do with this one.

Labels: W40K

Well, I've been at it again, buying something else before I have finished painting my other stuff. I bought this metal Biovore miniature. it was quite a bargain actually, as you get a few spore mines with it as well for the price, and it was surprisingly easy for me to put it together, but i did pin it while gluing, - something that I don't often have success with. I purposely put the fist so that it would touch the floor outside the base as I thought that was a nice effect to show how huge the beast was. I finished it last night, but the picture here just shows what it looked like before last night - like most of the macragge set - blood red with chestnut ink wash, and turquoise with a light blue lining. It looks much better than this picture now, but I'll save that for another day.

Had a good night of miniature preparation again tonight. I polyfiller'd the bases of all my models from last night (I fill the underside of the base with polyfiller, and then sand it flat - this gives the figure - especially plastic ones, a bit more weight when playing with them.) and then I removed all of my remaining marines (8) and genestealers (5) from their sprues, cleared their flash, washed them and mounted them, and sprayed them with undercoat - that was a boring but necessary job.

I would like to think I'd get these models finished by the end of the week - but I've got other commitments. I do feel I'm on a roll though at the mo.

Labels: W40K

What an evening. I ended up with an unexpected evening in, and two very tired boys who went to bed early. So I was rewarded with the opportunity to get some painting done.

I wont talk about it now, apart from mentioning that I based everything I've painted from Macragge so far, as well as finishing my Biovore, which I haven't even talked to you about yet. But must get some sleep now, so I'll talk about the rest when its light so I can take some better pictures. - And so to bed..