Need for speed (part two, also first impressions on the new CSM codex)

Hey folks, lots going on this week so lets jump right into the skaven painting tutorial I got set up, I will reference a couple of things I did with the goblins so take a look at that if you haven't already.

So first things first I wanted to give our vermin lord here a green flame atop his banner, I always liked the imagery of the Warpfire that the skaven use on a bunch of stuff and try to mimic it every time I can get away with it, As with last time I started with a white basecoat, and to achive the almost neon greel glow of that fire I added 4 drops of P3's yellow ink to 3 drops of P3's green ink and Applied. it was that simple.

The next couple of steps came vary quickly and naturally, Some watered down liche purple for the robes, and I decided on a 1/1/1 of menoth base+ vallejo's light brown and a drop of water to create the skin, which is a creamy light brown, the fur would later be a reddish brown of dark flesh to give a bit of contrast.
I must confess I also added a drybrush of scorpion green to the flame as I though it would make it pop more but only proceeded to muck up the nice ink I had applied.

I started on the banner and rusted armor next, the banner would be simple as I wanted to make it look like bloody skin, I went for menoth white base instead of rotting flesh to avoid the greenish tint, I would later add a purpleish red wash named "drying blood" from the secret weapons line to make it look like strips of flesh. Now for the Rust walkthrough, which is what I wanted to show off most, You start with a watered base of black over the sections of armor or blades that you want to make rusty.

Then you take a light brown and water it down to wash consistency and apply it to the black sections. (You'll note I added the yellow brown wood color for later as well as added the wash for the banner as well)

After this Brown wash has dried you will notice it looks like a thin layer of dirt in the cevasse and areas where the wash has pooled. Now it is time for the rust. This can be tricky and ultimately depends on what look you like better, you can make the orange a wash and over the parts, or you can attempt to drybrush it over certain areas. I recommend different styles for the different paints you will be using, Vallejos orange is always runny so it doesn't take much to make it a wash, but GWs is so thick it doesn't take much to drybrush with that, experiment see what you like best.  I went with both though I think the wash worked better on this model.
 After all this rust I began painting metals in order to make the lord here look like he had a mismatched or looted armor.

 Shortly after this is done I begin to add washes to the wood and metal, adding a light flesh to the tail followed with a flesh wash, little leather straps being touched up with dark brown as well, and finally adding the reddish brown color to the fur.

Finally, I added some blood spatter on the cleaver, and on the arm holding it as well as painting the pillar he is standing on, with a light grey, and covering it with a black wash before adding white to the stone and then covering it with the green wash from earlier.

So with the Vermin lord completed, I figure it's time to discuss the new CSM codex a little bit.

Now let me start off by saying I am by no means an expert and have no doubt people will like other things that I don't and hate things that like,and that's fine but I'm a firm believer of "play what you want to play" and I'm going to talk about stuff that I liked and stuff I want to play.

-Things I am excited about-

-First off cultists being back is awesome. I plan on getting about 60-70 of my traitor guard painted up specifically so I can run nice looking cultists. 
-Noise marines are back and pretty freakin' cool this time around, they can't really assault but don't lie to yourself you weren't going to use them for that anyway. You now HAVE to take a champ now which I'm not a fan of but the sonic weapons are cheaper so I'll deal with it, Blastmasters and doom sirens are still good so be prepared to see them get used quite a bit.
-Dirge casters on vehicles are awesome, every CSM army is going to use them, they kill overwatch within 6" so get ready for Khorne armies especially to abuse the shit out of them.
-Forgefiends are good, and I'll pardon the dinosaur attached to the guns because the guns and pipes look so good. but I might find myself hiring some sculpting help for a slaaneshi top.
-Lords are cheap as hell.
-Eye of the gods is awesome
-All slaaneshi troops can get Feel no pain for cheap.

-Not so excited-

-Deamon weapons mysteriously missing, except for two upgrades and two HQ's they have mysteriously vanished, and granted it's not a bad thing but I miss having the option to have a slaaneshi lord w/ jumppack and a daemon weapon menace the opposing side.
-We all knew Lash was going to disappear, but to replace it with nothing else that messed with movement? Seems a bit harsh. Spells are still pretty good, but all in all not looking like something I'm gonna take often.
-Not excited about the maulerfiend, or the Heldrake. Seems like there are things that do these two new toys jobs better (except for maybe the heldrake which can chase flyers). Others may like them but I'm not a fan.
-Daemon princes are probably gonna be what you see mostly as the Hq's again. Though having to take a  humanoid to take the cult troops as troop choices instead of elites.

-Things that need errata already-

-Only thing that currently comes to mind, although I'm sure there are going to be more....is the nurgle zombie cultists. If you haven't heard when taking typhus you are allowed to take cultists as zombies, and they gain some good abilities such as feel no pain, but here is the rub, you are not allowed to take options, adding extra dudes to the unit is under the section called options, so reading the rules as written you are only allowed to take ten zombies with each unit of cultists which pretty much mean many people won't (although you could just take plague marines in the elite choice after filling all your troop choices with the zombies.) Point is it needs an errata already.

Hope you enjoyed the post, I won't have another up until monday at the earliest as I'm going to a concert tomorrow and work the rest of the weekend.

~SWL

Need for speed! (painting that is)

Hey folks hope you had a good week, Got an early update for you today a speed painting tutorial for two goblins, one done is the bright almost cartoon-y version that I prefer and then the other done in a very quick style that only needs touch ups. I sort of lost my will to paint the skaven yesterday so expect a bonus update about mid-week with the skaven tutorial in which I will show some interesting colors and ways to do things such as rust.

But for now lets talk goblins.

The first step I do is prime white. Many people don't like to prime white and usually choose black, white does three things: Makes colors brighter, absorbs inks and washs better, and finally will make you a better painter because it doesn't allow you to cut corners as black does, I hear many swear by grey primer but I'm not convinced.

So the next step is the basecoat of the skin, in this case I started with scorpion green (which is near necrite green for those using P3's line) which is almost a bright neon in color.This color will be brought down in the next step so don't worry.

So this is the step where these two goblins are going to diverge in their painting evolutions, the tribal goblin is getting a dose of the green shade from GW while the night goblin with the squig will be getting a P3 ink treatment. Normally I water down the ink a little bit but I didn't feel it was nessecary this time as it was just a drop. covering three small areas, Remember Inks are like LSD "A little dab will do ya."

Our goblin friend will remain like this for a little while, as he'll get done rather quickly now that he only really has details and weapons to paint. So we'll focus on the Night gobbo for a bit.

As you can see I added a layer of coal black for his hood and clothes, as well as painted a layer of Lime green (vallejo, Wurm green is the P3 equivalent) for the skin and we can already see the miniature coming together.

Wanthing to give a nice contrast with the model and not seeing very many Orange squigs, I decided to make an orange ink with the P3 red and yellow inks (3 drops red, 4 yellow will net you this mixture) which after it dried I added a light brown for the leash as well as coloring in the eyes on the goblin and squig with mephiston red (which I'm still convinced is the best red I have ever used) and finally added a menoth white base to their teeth and claws.

Now sadly I went a bit fast on this one, and perhaps should have taken another picture inbetween this and the last one, but hopefully I explain it well. The first step was to add a tanned almost ochre color for the wood, when a sepia wash is applied to this color it gives the appearance of wood, I also added a very light silver color to the top and bottom of the hook and when dry went over it with a coat of black wash finally finishing up with very light drags of an old brush with mephiston red for blood spatter. You also notice that the squig is more defined now thanks to a sepia was over the entire skin, teeth and claws, which I feel pulls  a lot of color and character into it.

Meanwhile our tribal goblin  gets his bones and feathers painted, along with the beady red eyes though you can hardly tell those are painted from more than six inches away.

The next few steps were rather simple, adding brown to the loin cloth as well as the bands around the wrists. The bow got an ochre treatment like the hook on the night goblin, it along with the bones and loincloth got a sepia wash while the feathers got their standard blue glaze which I still think looks great. Finally I made the spider pink and gave it a small wash of purple to show the segmentation and such.He may seem kind of dull compared to the first guy but he only took 15 minutes to paint, compared to the 30 of the first, which if you are like me and have an assembly line of the little bastards can be a godsend, but ultimately it depends on what you want to do.

Hope you learned somthing from this, as I said I'll have a skaven up later this week as well as talk a bit on my thoughts on the new CSM codex once I have it in my possession.

Preview of somthing else I'll be working on this week:

Have a great week, See you guys soon.

~SWL