Imperial Fists Legion Army WIP 1

Hi all!

Just a quick update to show the rest of the tactical squad, pre-undercoat and before I break out the air brush. Ever wondered how a marine with a powerfist holds a boltgun? Now you know! Looking forward to getting on to painting that plume! I love plumes:

Note: the things they're standing on are just bits of old cork heat proof mat. Easy to hold when airbrushing. However, they do make good rocks too, FYI!

Imperial Fists Legion

Hi all!

All happily married now thanks (it went very well, ta!) and have found a little time to finish of the Imperial Fists that I showed a few (shoddy) WIP shots of in my last post. So, without further ado, here they are.

First of all, here are the first 5 of my first Legion Tactical Squad:

And here's the Contemptor, front and back:

And his base, complete with guardsman who really chose the wrong place to take cover:

And here they all are, hanging out together and having a lovely time:

And in profile:

If you have any questions about the models or any of the techniques I used, scribble a comment and I'll see if I can help :)

I'm off to start gluing together the next 5 tactical marines, including the squad sergeant with his plumed helmet! Nothing says "I'm gonna conquer your planet, so be afraid" like a plume!! I'll post them up here when they're done.

Thanks for visiting!

Pre-Heresy Imperial Fists WIP

Hi all! Sorry about the wait! So, I got an Aztek airbrush and compressor... OH MY GOODNESS!! Why did I not do this years ago! It has revolutionised my modelling life!! Here's how, with my imperial fists which I am currently in the middle of working on. (Sorry about photo quality! I'm in the middle of getting hitched so not had a great deal of time! I'll get some good ones soon.)

I'm painting 5 MkIV marines and a Contemptor pattern dreadnought. Here's how:

Undercoated black and then oversprayed with a rusty brown colour (bestial brown) and then given a layer of matt varnish (Testors matte coat). This is to seal it for the next stage where I gave it a spray of hairspray (any old cheap stuff will do!) and sprinkled some large grain salt over the model so it sticks to the wet hairspray. When dry, I then basecoated over the top of the salt with a brown/yellow and then a brighter yellow on the top. When dry, using my thumb I gently rubbed off the salt, taking the paint with it, and leaving the rusty colour showing beneath creating a GREAT paint chip effect! Here it is:

Realistic ruggedness or what?! More to come very soon!

Guardsman Horrific Death Conversion

This is a model I converted a while back to go with my Imperial Guard and Tyranid forces. It has no game purpose whatsoever but was good fun to make and paint! Thought you might like to see it:

Nurgle Chaos Lord

Another one of the awesome, single sprue, plastic heroes that GW have started making! Once again, I just wanted to paint him (also it'll give the Savage Orc Big Boss someone to face off against). So here he is, all glued together and ready for undercoating:

I'll post some pics when he's done!

Blood Bowl Orc Team - Update 1

As promised, here's the work in progress on the Orc team currently in production! I've finished 3 linemen so far and here's one of them:

I've used the new paints for the flesh, and have to say they we're pretty good! Very nice to use and cover really well (though not with one coat as sometimes boldly claimed, but then which paint really does AND keeps detail). I've glossed the armour with 'ardcoat to give it the shiny, laquered effect that american football helmets have. I've also converted a some goblins to be chucked by the troll and here's an example:

A knoblar makes up the main body with a cadian shocktrooper shoulder guard for the shoulder pad. I'll add more pics as they get finished off! (I will try to improve pic quality too as i appreciate its not great! sorry!)

Blood Angels Task Force

I have been wanting to paint a few blood angels for years and recently decided to go ahead and put together a small task force so I could try my hand at the classic space marine paint scheme. I have so far completed two units for the force. Firstly, a combat squad of tactical marines:

The sergeant was vaguely based on the picture from the old Warhammer 40K second edition boxed set, but toned down the yellow a little! I still need to finish the banner off, but they're pretty much complete! The second unit is a Furioso Dreadnought. A great model and I wanted to make it look mush more dynamic, like the close combat monstrosity it's meant to be! So I've pinned the arms out and added bass guitar string cabling to make them less rigid looking. I've also made him taller by adding a few metal washers in at the waist. If you do this, best to pin the torso to the legs of the model to make him less likely to snap in half during games! The left leg was also cut carefully at the knee and re glued to look as if he is stepping up onto the rock. Finally I carefully cut off 3 of the four fingers and repositioned them to make it look like he's pointing out his next victim:

I thought that the base could do with a bit of work too. I added the rock as something for him to be stepping up onto. The rock is a real rock from the garden, washed off and stuck on, then blended into the base with a bit of milliput. I also thought it would be cool to have his latest victim on the base, so added a skeleton and painted it to look like it had just been immolated by his flamer! The way to get this effect is to paint the skeleton with oranges, yellows and reds, making sure to get into all the crevasses, and then overbrushing all the raised areas with black. Looks like he's glowing from the inside as he cools!

I have some Death Company on the go at the moment so I'll add them on as they're finished!

Savage Orc Big Boss

This model is soooo awesome I knew I had to paint it! So here he is, fresh from the sprue, all glued together and ready to rock:

What a great model! I love how dynamic it is! I'm looking forward to having a go at painting tattoos, which is something I've not tried before. I'll let you know how I come along!

Blood Bowl Orc Team

As well as the Skaven team I've been working on, I'm also painting up the Orc team thats come with the Blood Bowl boxed set. However, I also wanted to add a few extras so I've made a troll and some goblins to go along with the standard models you get in the game. And here he is on the workbench:

He's based on a river troll from the river troll boxed set and I've just modeled on a large left shoulder pad with a sheet of green stuff, and the right shoulder pad is a smoothed off old chaos warrior shoulder guard. The helmet was just built up using green stuff and the bards are a paperclip, cunningly bent using a pair of narrow nosed pliers. To make him fit the style of the rest of the team I added some rivets using small discs cut from a piece of very thin plastic rod and glued in place using super glue. Now to paint him and finish off the goblins for him to throw!

Warhammer 40K Ork Conversions

I really am not a fan of metal models (Hallalujah for finecast!) so when I began building my Ork army I wanted to keep the models completely plastic. This meant making a few conversions, especially for key characters. So here they are below Firstly, the Big Mek with a Kustom Force Field:

He's a plastic Nob and I've greenstuffed on a scraggy beard to make him look a bit old and wise! The weapon is the head of a Big Choppa with half removed and replaced with a cut down shoota from the Ork Boys boxed set.The shaft is a piece of plastic rod and the component that joins the two is part of a Tau Fusion Blaster. The Shield generator itself is made from the communications set from the vehicle command sprue, along with the barrel of a tanks sponson lascannon. The rest of the sponson lascannon was used for the bottom of the generator. Some more plastic tube and rod, some greenstuff and some guitar wire provided the finishing touches. And here he is all finished:

The second conversion was based on one seen in White Dwarf and is based on the Warboss from the Assault on Black Reach boxed set. I Pinned his right arm so it was less square to his body and added a harpoon to his shoota. I used a head and metal jaw from the Nobs boxed set, to make him look a bit sterner than the standard head, and attached it at an angle so it looks like he's pointing down the claw. The claw was modified by carefully cutting down a Big Chopper from the Nobs boxed set to fit the claw where the lower claw should be. The lower claw was then added to the bottom to make it look suitably, ridiculously huge! And here he is all finished:

Sorry there's no work in progress shot! I made him well before I even contemplated this blog! :)

Skaven Blood Bowl Team Project

I have recently started getting into Blood Bowl, and what a brilliant game it is too! If you are yet to try it, I cannot recommend it highly enough! REALLY good fun. In fact, I thought I'd put together my own Skaven team based on the team list in the Blood Bowl Competition Rules using some bits and bobs I had knocking around from a Skaven army I'm working on. With a bit of hacking, glueing, green stuffing in a surprisingly short amount of time I have ended up with the team below:

I've begun painting them up and I'll add them below as they're finished, with a little more detail about how I put them together.

This is my thrower. He's essentially a stormvermin with the crest cut off of his helmet and a green stuff ball modeled under his arm. The right shoulder guard in the shoulder guard from a Cadian imperial guardsman's arm. Simple but effective!

This is one of the 6 Linemen in the team. They're effectively made the same way as the thrower, just no ball!

A couple of gutter runners will be needed to get a few quick, sneaky touch downs so I've made two, one of which is above. He's a clanrat from the plastic boxed set with a Cadian shoulder guard added. The cape is made from green stuff which I then blended into the hood on the original model.

I had to have a rat ogre. Mainly as I wanted to paint up the model, and also because Skaven lack punch so could do with the help! He's one of the rat ogres from the Island of Blood boxed set an all I've added is a 40K Ork shoulder guard and a small green stuff plate to cover the top of his head so he looks like he fits in with the rest of the team.