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

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.

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

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

Orc Allstars - A blood bowl team

2.0 here... It has been a loooong time.

I had a long vacation, and for the most part, my hobby drive was non-existing.
For the last month or so, I have been working on getting a fully painted space marine army, but more on that another day.

For now I want to talk about something fun! BLOOD BOWL.

This is the beginning of my Orc Allstar team which is going to represent some of the NFL teams, and I can tell you - it is pure fun to paint all these colourful uniforms and logos. The freehand is especially rewarding and it is what's keeping me going.

Each piece takes about an hour to paint, and I would like to share my technique with you all.
Let's look at the dolphins logo.

This logo can seem quite complicated (especially when you think about how small the shoulderpad actually is), but the key to any sucessful freehand is to divide the work into smaller pieces.

On this one for example, I started with the orange sun in the background. It can basically be described as a circle with a bunch of triangles attached to it. A nice trick is to look at almost everything as basic geometrical shapes - that way you won't get stuck trying to outline a something extremely complicated. First we have the circle.

Then we add some triangles.

Here's when it gets a bit trickier. See the dolphin itself is too freeflowing to divide into basic shapes, but looking at a picture of the logo, you can still spot some pretty simple shapes, that would be some good starting points. I chose this one.

I thin my paints down to something like 2:1 water to paint. This is especially important when you start stacking layers upon layers as you don't want the piece to be in 3D. It is also good to thin your paints down because of the fine detail brushes. They will dry up very quickly even with this water-heavy mix.

Next step is to fill in the first shape and add the next like this.

You don't have to be to be all too neat with the paint as long as you use several thin layers. Mistakes can be corrected later on if they stand out.

From here on you can just add on more shapes and colour them up.

Now that all the basics are done, it isn't too hard to add in the detail work. It is a big help to know that you can always tidy up or start over with the background colour. Just remember to keep the paint watered down and it's smooth sailing from here.

This is pretty much done, but I didn't think it popped quite enough, so I finished it off by highlighting the sun with some brighter orange, outlining it, and filling it with white. I think it makes a huge difference.

And that's about it. This isn't easy by any stretch of the imagination, but it is something everyone could do with some practice.

Well that was a long post. Hope you enjoyed it as much as me ;)

/2.0

Still going strong - the cultists are no longer grey plastic.

I've been a very busy little bee this week, and finished off one of the cultist units - Actually, I had to strip them once, since my first colour scheme didn't fit in with the power armour boys, but I'm pretty satisfied with these. Pretty much all washes on a white primer (click the pic for a full scale version):

I took an all nighter last night, and the second unit is almost done, only missing the eyes and some small details, so hopefully some pics of those later this weekend. :)

I'm getting close to actually finishing a project - Hooray!

Next stop; finish the modelling on my Spawn and Champion, and getting some paint on those.

Andreas 2.0's Legion of Everblight

I finally finished the battlebox for LOE, and I must admit, it was an uphill battle. Don't get me wrong, the miniatures are some of the better ones from Privateer Press, and there aren't that many of them, but the sheer amount of scales on these guys can be very intimidating and overwhelming work - I mean just look at them!

The big guy in particular is just a truckload of linework if you paint him like I do (which in retrospect wasn't the brightest idea). The funny thing about these guys however is that the yellow was a breeze to paint, and it actually came out pretty good with minimum effort. Just look at it! It's so warm and delicious. Needless to say, I am pretty happy with the result.

 

Next up I'm going to paint some Blighted Nyss Striders (pic below). These guys are really ugly with poor sculpts, but their rules are just too good to pass up, so I'll do my best to make them look decent. 

We also have a new edition of 40k incoming, which means I will be airing my Space Marines some time soon, and there will of course be lots of pictures for those interested. Until then, thanks for reading.

/Andreas 2.0