On The Table: Leman Russ

In a spark random inspiration I decided to remodel a Leman Russ that I've had sitting around in my cases for far too many years.  It was in rough condition and had a few parts missing, but I though that with a little work and some real primer, it could work out nicely.  With a dremel, a bunch of plasticard, and a lot of green stuff I got to work on creating a historically inspired, lived in tank.

A lot of tread heads will instantly recognize the directions I've gone with and some of the inspirations I've drawn from.  From WW2 to modern tanks, there are a lot of little things all over this bad boy that tells the story that so many wargamers leave out of their models.  These lived in touches create narrative, realism, and just make it more interesting to look at!

I'm not certain when this will catch paint just yet, classes have started back up for me and I'm really not sure how much free time I'll have in the coming weeks.  But with some luck, I'll hopefully get things going on at least a few of the lingering projects on my table.

I hope everyone is doing well out there in hobby land, and if you've got a cool project you're working on, feel free to share it here!  Especially if it's a neat new piece of armor!  Happy Painting!

Reinforcements: Angels Sanguine

It's been about two weeks since I finished the latest additions to my Angels Sanguine force.  I had been working so feverishly to complete the two squads of Assault Marines before a gaming weekend at a good friends house that I found myself burning out a little from the push.  In the end, I did get them completed before heading out for that weekend and they saw themselves on the table fully painted and ready to rip his army and others to shreds.

Reinforcements: Sons of Medusa Servitor

Over the weekend I was able to get out to a good friends place and get some game time in.  While I was there I was letting some new gamers play using my Sons of Medusa and Angels Sanguine.  This meant a little time sitting down to figure out some quick army lists for people to use.  The Sons of Medusa being the most basic of the armies I have I was making good use of them and digging around for extra points at times when I couldn't quite make the point max dead on.  Messing with the Master of the Forge options I started toying with the idea of taking some servitors to help flesh out the point totals from time to time, add a wound, and maybe a little more combat effectiveness to a unit that tends to sit back a lot. 

With the thought sparked I came home from my the weekend away and got to work on cleaning, modeling and priming two servitors.  The first of which you see above in his freshly finished paint, the second to come soon after. 

Paint was fairly simple and straight forward for all but the skin tone.  For the skin I painted the areas with VMC Cork Brown, washed with Gryphonne Sepia, touched up high points with Cork Brown, then highlighted with 50/50 Cork Brown/VMC Ivory, and a few touches of what looked to be a 25/75 of Cork Brown/Ivory.  I then washed this back down with Devlan Mud and touched the highlights up a little with the 25/75 here and there. 

Metals followed my typical metallic wash method with Chainmail as the base color, washed with Badab Black, touched up with Chainmail and a few areas given a wash of either Devlan Mud or Gryphonne Sepia. 

Red was done with a Mechrite Red base color, washed with Gryphonne Sepia, touched up with Mechrite Red, highlight of Blood Red, and a final highlight of Blazing Orange.  I washed this again with Devlan Mud and did a touch up highlight of Blazing Orange. 

Black areas are Chaos Black line highlighted with Codex Grey and given a final line highlight of Fortress Grey leaving some of the Codex Grey showing. 

The base was painted Bestial Brown and dry brushed with Bleached Bone before painting the rim with Chaos Black.  Static Grass was added in typical fashion using Gale Force 9 Arid Grass. 

After a Matt Varnish spray, I found he was still very shiny from the wash layers and hit many of the non-metallic areas with a brush on VMC Matt Varnish to kill it off. 

The Sons of Medusa are bolstered once more with a new unit that is in keeping with their background and one that I hope will be useful in filling out an army lists from time to time!  I have more of these guys to do still but 1/4 in a single night is the kind of progress I can handle!

Review: SWM Flight Deck Bases

After a weekend gaming with friends, I arrived home Saturday night to a package from Secret Weapon Miniatures.  Inside I found a set of beveled edge flight deck bases I had ordered earlier last week.  These bases were released late last year and have been one of the base styles I've had my eye on for some time.  Thanks to misterjustin, I finally have my mitts on them and have taken the liberty of photographing them out of the bag so that others can see what to expect should they pick up a set themselves. 

The set.

60mm Top

60mm bottom

25mm Top

40mm Top

40mm Bottom

There is some flash around a lot of the bases, but it's nothing that a quick shave with a hobby knife can't handle.  The tops of the bases are all immaculate and don't have any bubbles or warping.  The bottoms of all resin bases tend to have some bubbles from the process but none of them ended up around the edges and there was only one larger bubble that I found and that's shown above on the 40mm base. Details are crisp and surprisingly fine.  There are some bases that I was quite impressed by because of how well the textures take while staying so shallow.

I'm really looking forward to putting these to use in the near future.  Right now I'm considering using them to build upon for some fun space hulk style basing for my Angels Sanguine.  But really, these are cool enough to spark an entirely new project if I'm not careful! 

Random: 'Overwatch'

A day to myself and I sat down to the easel and finished the marine painting I had been working on.  The piece, now entitled 'Overwatch' is a 24"x18" acrylic on canvas painting.  The final photo above too me a few days to get thanks to the type of acrylic paints I was using, Open Acrylics, but I'm happy to say that it's finished and dry now and I am quite happy with the end results.

I used this piece as a reason to play with color, and saturated colors at that.  The subject being a very basic Space Marine with not much in the way of detailing, it allowed me to explore texture and shape in a way that a super detailed armor wouldn't have.  The background was kept basic and brought together mostly by impressionist styled paint markings.

Placement of the figure helps to bring him forward amongst all of the warm tones in the background.  Not allowing him to be surrounded by the oranges, reds and yellows keeps from having him lost somewhere in the mid-ground and instead forces him to the foreground and into the viewers space.  His sharp finish helps bring him to your attention as well amongst all of the loose brush strokes of the background.

I'm quite happy with the finish on the armor, the mottled texture helps to give the look of a field hardened fighter instead of parade ground highly polished plate.  Using my fingers to help create the effect brought me more into the piece and allowed me to not be as careful and loosened me up to allow the effect to take hold.

The painting is far from perfect, but as an exercise in color and texture, which it was always meant to be, it has succeeded and allowed me to step away from the serious subject matter I've been delving into of late in my other works.

Thanks for looking, and I hope to do more paintings like this as a way to let go and have fun with my learning process!  We'll have to wait and see what comes next!

Reinforcements: Angels Sanguine Assault Marine

To give myself an idea of how the basic troop for my Assault units will look, I took a marine from the unit I've been working on the last few weeks and painted him to complete.  It didn't take much doing as the majority of the work was already complete.  The main things I had to do were gems and detail work.  Metallics were given a touch up and black areas given highlighting. 

The marine follows the majority of the color scheme laid out by the Angels Sanguine Terminators.  But with additions of the yellow which was done through GW Iyaden Darksun followed by a highlight of 50/50 Iyadend Darksun/Ivory and a final Ivory highlight. 

The shoulders were also done to help lay out colors and ideas for the army.  I've gone with Second Company markings for this force, so yellow teardrops on the right shoulder.  The left shoulders will have chapter badges, but because of how odd the placement is for this guy, it was hard to get right, plus, I wasn't really happy with just how it came out, so I will have to continue to work on the approach for the badges in the future. 

The base used rust colored pigments mixed with VMC Matt Varnish to create a crusted and rusted look.  I drybrushed this with GW Boltgun Metal along the edges of the plates.  Mixing in more pigment brings out the matt/powdery look of the pigment while adhering it nicely to the surfaces. 

I will be sure to do a full write up for the color scheme and how I approached everything when I post the reinforcements for the finished squads.  Here's hoping a few tips come out of this force!