Friday 24 April 2015

Red cloth and metal

Most of the skitarii army will consist of either some form of red or metal. This is why there are two crucial things to think about when painting these models.

1. Those two parts need to be fast to paint.
2. They need to look great.

These two things aren't always easy to achieve simultaniously, but I think GR and I have found a way to balance it out. First of the 'fast to paint' part is very relative, but we both agree, that as long as this step of the miniature feels like the relaxed part of the painting process, we are close to what we both consider a reasonable time to paint. Secondly we have found that the 'looking good part' comes down to deep shadows and an edge highlight.

The first picture below shows the red cloth without highlights (Except the guy to the left), and the second picture shows the cloth with a fine 'wild rider red' highlight. I think it makes a huge difference. If you look at the guy second from the left, you can see how the orange highlight also helps create the illusion of deeper shadows in the darker parts of the red.



When these guys are done, I plan on doing a metal and cloth tutorial for the Skitarii rangers/vanguard.

Until then I hope you have bought some of these guys for yourself, as they are nothing less than amazing sculpts.

/2.0

Saturday 18 April 2015

More Skitarii - Ave Deus Machina

Hi guys, GR here. As you've probably read from Andreas, he and I have started a joint project - a Skitarii army (which will hopefully evolve into a full blown Mechanicus army, when GW releases a codex).

We're both pretty excited about it, and we seem to have found a common ground in our paint styles - which is pretty cool considering that we normally have very different styles (he paints very cleanly, me being more into gritty, blanchitzuish styles). Anyway, enough with the talk - I'm almost finished with a complete ten man unit of Skitarii (Vanguard? I think?) - I just need to put together the last two guys with the plasma rifle thingies, and get some paint on them. I've also gotten hold of a box of Rust Stalkers, which are some of the coolest models GW has released in a long time imho, and put them together - they are next in the paint line. Without further ado, Skitarii;


I'm really liking the way the red coats and the turquoise glow makes them "pop" on the table - It's a quite simple, but very effective color scheme. We debated doing some freehand on the coats, but decided against it, since it IS an army project - it would be cool on a few models, or even a unit, but 40 skitarii would be too much work.

As always, all comments and critique is appreciated.

Saturday 11 April 2015

Better skitarii ranger picture

Just a quick update with a better picture of a ranger.
I love these models, and they dont take too long to paint. I think I can have my own 20 painted in a months time.

Besides that, GR has almost painted a full unit, so expect to more about this project very soon.

/Andreas 2.0

Monday 6 April 2015

Time for a change

As a hard-pressed student who spends most of his offtime sleeping or watching series, it can be rather inconvenient to keep a blog up to date. Especially when the other two guys are doing good-quality pictures with fancy effects and a logo, which puts some pressure on me.

Well it is time for a change. I am not going to be concerned with that any longer. If I have the time to take and make a good picture, I will. Otherwise I will still try to post a picture of my work every time there is some progress to show.

Which brings us to this -
I really wanted to add some guardsmen as allies to my space marines (I haven't posted any pics of them yet, but I'll get to that at some point), so I painted these guys. It took alot of time, and after I was done it didn't really seem like a good idea to paint another 50 and some vehicles.

Especially when this guy alone took somewhere close to 2,5 hours to paint -

Even though the guard project was doomed from the beginning, I still got the time to make this fine chicken-thing.

I really like the look of this walker, and it pains me to know, that it will never have friends.

After the dead guard project, I decided to get the new fantasy flight game - Imperial Assault, and paint the miniatures included. The sculpts aren't quite as pretty as one could have hoped, but I still think that they do alot to immerse you in the game. Here is my take on storm troopers and some star wars heroes-

And of course some OSL from the lightsaber -

I am not done with this project yet, and I will post some more pictures when there is progress to show.

The next project I started was actually born from my love of painting banners. I really wanted to freehand something cool and simple, so I bought 10 bloodletters just to get this guy -

The paintjob here is very subtle but it was a great deal of fun to try and get some depth into the khorne symbol, which I think went pretty well.

Finally GR and I decided that we want to do a project together. We have tried this once before and failed miserably, but finally there is a project worth giving it another go. I am sorry for the quality, but take this as a teaser for what is to come!

Lo and behold -
Skitarii Rangers. And a great deal more to come in the next few months.

/Andreas 2.0