White Hot Rage!

     I'm ready for my close-up! So I've been experimenting. A friend of mine has asked me to paint his army, there's money involved, and I don't want to let him down. The request he has made, frankly, sounded like a bit of a challenge, but one I pretty much asked for.

     White marines. Ugh! What have I gotten myself into. So far I have "finished" two test models. Both were learning experiences. I tried the following recipes:

--First Attempt--
Based Codex Grey
Badab Black wash
Went back over with Codex Grey, leaving the darker areas
Went over the whole model with Fortress Grey
Went over most of the model with Skull White

--Second Attempt-- (Les Bursley from Awesomepaintjob.com's White Scars Tutorial)
Based Fortress Grey
Badab Black wash
Went back over with Fortress Grey
Edge Highlighted with Skull White

     The first attempt was less than satisfactory. The white simply became chalky, even with the very thin coats. Though the overall color was about what I was looking for, it just wasn't good. I didn't bother taking a photo of it.

     The second attempt was much better looking, but obviously not white. Just wasn't white at all. It was light grey, sure, but no mistaking that for white at all. Now having watched the aforementioned tutorial over, I was more confused than ever. His "Fortress Grey" was SUPER light. Looked like white, or very nearly enough white. He only highlights a few areas in the video with Skull White. The end results he got were very different from mine.

     I haven't given up yet. I have a few more tricks up my sleeve. I'm going to try basing with Space Wolves Grey, then covering that with a 50/50 mix of Space Wolves Grey and Skull White. I'll then edge highlight with Skull White. I think this will not only give a close-to-white look, but it'll have a slight blueish tint that will like a little "icy."

     Nevertheless it had been a while since I had put a paint brush on a marine model, and it felt really good to complete one again. I've only been doing this hobby for a little less than two years, but it seemed a little like coming home. I was happy to complete these tests, but I'm really looking forward to some more trials and possibly some better results. I'll keep ya posted. In the mean time, here are some more shots of my test model from attempt number two:

Mr. Melta Man

     Hello everyone! Finished my Melta Gunner for my command squad. I liked the scarred head. Had to use it. I had to work on my stubble technique a little. One large change was a little bit of stippling of a slightly darker shade to create some slight variation across his head. Came out pretty good.

     With this guy done, I have only one more model to complete my command squad. Mr. Vox caster will be next. I've got a good lead on an airbrush compressor and that will be critical to some ideas I have for my vehicles and some various other projects.

Local GW store closing...


     So I had mentioned some issues that I had with my local GW. Imagine my surprise when stopping by and discovering via a little flyer on their counter that they are closing up. I seems that the mall is jacking up their rent, so they really had no choice. I heard that the battle bunker that was closed a few months back is being reopened within the next year. Of course that has been and on-again-off-again rumor and a now don't know what to believe.

     The MOST interesting result of the announced closing of this store has been my interaction with the employees that ARE NOT being relocated. They are now awesome. They don't ask the silly canned questions and feigned interest held only long enough to make a product recommendation. I stopped by the store today and it was a great experience. More like hanging out, than trying to avoid the silly sales pitches. Turns out, when you turn the GW-ness down just a bit, the atmosphere of the store changes for the better.

Forge World stuffs...


     I've decided that I'm going to start a Red Scorpion army. I got some of my first bits from Forge World. They made a small mistake and sent only one upgrade kit when I had ordered two. Thankfully, the stellar customer support has sent out the rest of the order via express delivery. On a slightly related note, a friend of mine received his copies of the Badab War books, and they seem incredible. I haven't seen them, but he has read through some of the awesome rules and scenarios in those monsters. I'm a little sad that many 40K fans might never enjoy these. I'll endeavor to bring some of these to a table soon.

New Camera...

     My wife purchased a new point-and-shoot camera. A Canon Powershot, to be precise. I tried it out on the photos you see here. Interestingly enough, I think I'll stick with my old Kodak. The color balance is a little weird. I'm sure that I could have negated that with some trixy editing, but as my computer is still broken, I don't have the needed tools to do so. The other interesting problem  with using this camera is the face detection. It detects the "face" on my model and forces the camera from macro mode to portrait mode. This bit of software is annoying as the focal logic is very different in these two modes. So there IS such a thing as a camera that is TOO smart. I did take a funny pic with the camera, and with that I'll leave you to my most recent shots of my Melta Gunner:

 "Bring It Down" - This order allows all weapons in the unit to be fired as if twin linked against the a target vehicle or monstrous creature.

 

     That's it for now. Hope you enjoyed, and as always feel free to leave question, and comments.

Someone Call for a Flame Slinger?

     Heavy Flamer COMPLETE! He looks pretty good. Interesting fact: This is the first Heavy Flamer of any sort that I've painted. None of my Space Marines have them. Oh wait... ummm... okay so Ork combi-skorchas are technically the same weapon profile as a heavy flamer. Bah whatever.

     So I liked the respirator on this guy. The respirator doesn't really fit the guard models very well at all. Essentially you'd have to model all of the guys wearing the full respirators in the same head/torso position. It would look very static indeed. I decided to just cut the little hose off and leave it with just the mask. Even then I actually had to do some rhinoplasty to make it sit right.

     I moved along pretty fast while painting him, right up until I got to the tanks. I had to think about that for while. What color would the tanks be? I felt that black would just make the overall model too dark. Red was the obvious choice but I've gone through all the work to make them all wearing camo, so bright red tanks on his back seemed a little silly on second thought. In the end I did the Boltgun Silver. I darkened the base coat really heavily with a wash. I then took my Fine Detail brush and did small scratches with the original Boltgun color. I then mixed some Mithril Silver in and repeated that, and finally just pure Mithril. I added in a few scratches of Kommando Khaki and Graveyard Earth. I figured this would give a slightly more worn look to the tanks. Came out alright, I think.

     The nozzle on the flamer was another challenge I had setup for myself. I had seen some other flamers out there where the painter had shown some "blueing" on the metal. I liked the idea. First I tried using very thin coast of Ultramarines Blue. That wasn't turning out exactly how I wanted. I then decided to try layers of Azureman Blue wash. That did the trick. It might not be as obvious as it was intended, but I'm happy with the experiment. I finished it off with a little drybrushing of black, and then an even lighter drybrushing of the original basecoat of copper.

     The last challenge on the model was the right shoulder pad. The plasma gunner that I just previously finished had a nice custom shoulder insignia. It was a chevron with a nice little starburst to represent the he was a veteran and a plasma gunner. Seems like a cool idea. But for some reason the heavy flamer arm did not have this logo. The regular flamer DID. So I decided to freehand my own! I'm trying to stretch my free hand abilities a little more each time. Turned out pretty well, I think, and it helped build some confidence for some ideas I have for upcoming models.

Here are some more pics:

     I still have a broken computer. Two RMAs and two broken boards sent to me. I'm beginning to think that they just have a stack of these boards, all with the same problem. A new broken one comes in, they just throw it on the pile and grab another one and send it out. For all the testing they claim to do, they certainly can't be doing more than simply plugging the power up to it and make sure it merely accepts power... not if the thing actually BOOTS!

     That's it for now. Hope you enjoyed it and I'll be working on my command squad's Melta Gunner next. See you then!

Command Squad Plasma Gunner, Object Source Lighting attempt

     Here we go, two updates in a single day. Wow... unusual. I finished my Command Squad's Plasma Gunner, and yes I tried some Object Source Lighting. Or as the snooty artsy crowd might say: "Painting..."

     Well WHATEVER you want to call it, I think it looks pretty cool. I'm not saying I did it bang on, but I didn't want to spend too much time on this one command squad member. Basically I just did some strategic dry brushing ever so carefully. I tried a tiny little bit of glazing with a blue wash, buuuutttt that didn't work quite as I wanted it. I certainly realize that, in order to do some good OSL, you really need to change the shading on the opposite side of the lighting source. Basically that side needs to be darker to give the proper look to the lit side. That just would have taken a little too long, and it would have made the this one figure look rather mis-matched on the table along side the rest of the army.

     I also need to give some thanks to my wife, that made a fantastic recommendation that I paint some sort of pattern on the sole of the boot. Great idea, and I think that came out looking nice. It certainly gave some nice detail to the model.

     I've also decided that I'm going to theme my army after the veterans of Meridian. If you've played Dawn of War 2 (which you should, if you haven't) then you might remember Meridian as the planet covered in a large Hive city, the Blood Ravens came to defend this planet against the Tyranid invasion. The guard was present in many of the battles, and I think I can pull that together to give a nice back story to some of my guard squads.

     Well that's enough jibber-jabber, here are some more pics of my Plasma Gunner:

     Hope you enjoyed, comments and questions always appreciated! HAPPY NEW YEARS YA'LL!!

Drop Pod Assault On Dallas/Ft. Worth Area!

     So I'm not living in the Dallas area at the moment, though I spent the lion share of my childhood there, and prior to joining the military, my wife and I lived in Arlington (only about a mile or so from the new Cowboys Stadium... aka Death Star). There was only one GW store at the time, located in Grapevine Mills shopping center. That's an large mall, and if you have been to one of the "Mills" style malls, you know what I'm talking about. The GW store there is small, but most of the staff that I had met are top notch.

     Well the floodgates of GW are opening in the DFW area now. They built a GW store in sort of the Frisco area last year. One opened in Denton this year. CRAZY! Three GW stores! But wait there's more...

     I happen to have a friend who is a manager at a store in the Parks Mall in Arlington. He said he has confirmation that they're putting up a GW store there! So for those of you DFW Texans, congratulations, you're pretty well covered if you live in the mid-cities area and north.

     

     That's not even to speak of some of those independent retailers, simply because I don't know a lot of them. After all, I didn't get into this hobby until AFTER I left Texas. I do know of a pretty key IR though called Area 51 not too far from that Grapevine GW location.

     Just two more years, and I'll be able to return to Texas. I've been looking forward to it for many reasons, and these store openings are getting me very excited. My local GW store at the moment, is decidedly less than awesome. I was really hoping for more, when I moved here. The employees are all kinda slimy script readers. I've been in that store countless times, hell I even painted in the store (not really by choice) and they don't remember me, they ALWAYS go to their scripts, and you can't engage in a just normal chew-the-fat conversation because they're actually TOO dorky. That's saying something as I'm a huge dork myself. Of course I need to also mention that the store's assistant manager's son is there almost all hours of the damned day. He's a little snot-nosed brat that will find his way into ANY discussion in the store, and will interrupt games with stupid "humorous" insights. I had to play a game against him one day, and he specifically tailored an army against mine using some of his army and some of the display stuff. Bleh... worst... game... ever.

     So I hope that these GW store exemplify the better store experience I had at Grapevine Mills, and will provide me and my friends with a good place to enjoy our 40K games.

Orders sir?

     So I lied, just a little. I decided to throw another update up before my computer was fixed. The reason for this? I've completed my commander! I really... REALLY like the way he turned out. I was a little hesitant as it's another HQ model. You always want to put your best foot forward when it comes to HQ models. This one, even though he's just a plastic model out of a command squad box, was no exception. I spent a lot of time on a few areas, and I think they paid off. These areas were the face, the blending on the armor, and the free hand on the right shoulder.

     The freehand was really simple, but it turned out exactly how I pictured it in my mind prior to putting the brush to the model. That gives me a pretty good feeling. Up until now, my freehand has been limited, to say the least. I've been inspired to try it a bit more, as I have a few ideas for some fun stuff I'd like to throw on some vehicles. I needed something on this model to show his rank. I've placed skulls on my two veteran sergeants, so his shoulder had to be a bit fancier. Fun stuff!

     Of course, given this long void of blog posts, I had mentioned that I wasn't idle on the painting table. As requested, here are some pics of my second Veterans squad that I completed  a while back. Enjoy:

 Yes, that's a Space Marine scout head... Big whoop, wanna fight about it?

Some bones from a Vampire Counts skeleton box given to me by a friend. 

 Some scratches and nicks on the armor that I dig. I'm starting to dig the weathered look

Wounds for my meltas? Look! I green-stuffed some bricks, the red ones. Sculpting skillz.

     That's it for now. The army is really looking good as it builds up on my table. I've got the rest of the command squad to paint, then I'm in vehicle territory. For those, I'll need to go buy a compressor for my airbrush.

     Been putting a lot of thought as to what Space Marine army I'm going to do as my next army (much further down the line) and I'm pretty set on Red Scorpions. Should be fun. I wish those damn Imperial Armour books for the Badab war were not so freaking expensive.

     Thoughts and comments are always appreciated! I'm still contemplating the name for my Guard army. The best I've come up with so far is the Hive Rats. Since they are an urban, more elite force style army, I thought that might work. Any suggestions would be appreciated. I couldn't find an established Guard regiment that had a similar color scheme, so if you know of one, do tell. Thanks for tuning in.

The System Is Down!

COMPUTER MAKE BIG BONG NOISE!

    I have been without a computer for about three months now. I live on a military base, in military housing. The result of that is a terribly antiquated power grid, and one fried motherboard. In the process of trying to properly troubleshoot and diagnose my computer troubles, I've spent money, and that makes me angry.

     Normal post will resume once Asus gets around to repairing my motherboard (correctly this time, thanks) and I get that installed. I certainly haven't been completely idle at my painting desk. I've completed both Imperial Guard Veteran squads, and I've started painting my command squad. I'll have to take some pictures and hopefully have them ready to post once my computer is back up. In the meantime, I've been borrowing time on my wife's laptop. I try to keep my time on the laptop limited as it's hers and I don't want to hog. Note to self: One PC relationship is much more difficult than first thought.

SELLING MY MARINES

     I've been giving some serious thought towards selling my Space Marines as I would like to use the proceeds to fund another army. It will most likely be another Space Marines army, but just a completely fresh start is what I'm looking for. If anyone is interested, let me know. I will be posting details later. You can find pictures of most all of the army on my picasa gallery here. Ignore the Ultramarines at the beginning.  If you do have any questions about the army before I start giving details, drop a comment here or send me an email. I'll be happy to answer.