Unexpected Delays

Whelp let me start out with this, My buddies the same folks who are doing the stoneface episodes on youtube are running a fundraiser stream for extra life, Their website/team page is Here and their stream should be through my buddy sean's livestream channel Here, please spread the word, donate or at the very least pop in to see what they are playing, you might find yourself entertained.

With that being said I have been working for the better part of the day to get my CSM army finished and table ready, however having not worked on streamlining 50+ models in a while I fear I have fallen behind. I did manage to get most of them ready for detailing however so as soon as I have them done I'll be sure to post the entire army here. Once again I apologize for not having a proper update.

And I know I'm going to hear some grumbling before the next post so I'll give you folks something to look forward to, a penance in gift form, I'll be doing another giveaway next post.

 

See you next update 

~SWL

It's how big!? (small update)

Sorry to disappoint, but with some stuff going on this week as well as not being able to pick up anything until today (friday) I seem to have fallen behind, rest assured I still have an update but it's a smaller one before I show off the one of the projects I've been working with off and on for a year now.  SO let me start off by saying the Chaos codex is great having picked it up and thumbed through it. I forsee quite a few good matches coming from it's rules and am rather liking the idea of a slaanesh sorc riding around with 9 feel no pain noise marines tooled for assault in a land raider. Also it gave me a good name for my Chaos Imperial fists so I don't have to call them "Dornian heresy" Marines anymore. The brotherhood of Lethe, Which opens up all sorts of ideas for scenic basing. But that isn't what I want to talk about today, what I want to talk about is one of our new toys for heavy support.

Now I was dubious when I first saw the fiends, but have been since convinced that they can fill a much needed roll in our army, so I picked one up and while being surprisingly simple to put together is also quite large, I was actually amazed how big the thing is.

I recall being surprised at the size of the Tervigon when I got one of those too and wonder if I just have a hard-on for Monstrous creatures. But I find that the more I look at this model as well as it's conversion potential to other projects the more I find myself liking it. The guns look good, the pipes on it's flanks look excellent (for just about any vehicle that you want to have a small pipe-organ feel. The only thing I'm not a fan of is the reptilian head, but I must commend them for giving us the alternative shown above.

That's all for now, expect a larger update this week which will also include some W.I.P.s

~SWL

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

Sweet transvestites (or Why do old dark elves remind me of rocky horror?)

Hey there folks, Late update this week, but I was quite literally working on these gals until a few minutes ago and I still feel like they lack a few details but are done enough to post. 

So without further delays my company commander's squad of Hench-women.

Yes I know these are dark elf wyches but I thought their dynamic nature as well as impossible body structure (look at those size zero waists) made for a good contrast to the rest of the prim and proper feel of the army. 

 Now I love these models for two reasons, the first, it has a charming retro camp feel to it, but I get that a lot from the older models (noise marines with guitars for example) the other is the fact that conversions seem to lend themselves quite nartuarally to the older fantasy models and this standard bearer was the perfect example I could pull from this, one quick weapon swap where the standard used to be and you almost can't tell it was there.

 I wanted to do something decently funny with the musician turned Vox operator, so this being a chaos army I decided to make her instrument have a mouth like it's alive. already had the fangs, not much more to be done really. Also The rocky horror soundtrack came on while I was painting her and it made me notice that she could not possibly be holding that sword in a more suggestive manner could she?

 This is the gal I think came out looking the best honestly. I love the pose even the face is a little munged up, but I also think that is the second best color I have ever gotten for green hair, all the inks seemed to find their place on this model rather easily and the rips in her stockings are just one of the features I love.

 So with the gals out of the way I move onto the request portion of the blog, I got asked by Crab_Nicholson  to repost my IG shelf but a bit closer and an old Daemon prince project that I never completed, so here they are.

Well that is it for this week folks, Next week I'm thinking it's going to be a skaven and goblin painting tutorial for speed painting. As usual leave any comments, opinions or otherwise in the box below and Have a great week.

~SWL

Watch the skies! (The parasite returns)

Hey there folks, This week I decided to work on the parasite after chatting with a few folk I know IRL and not having enough time to paint a tank this week. 

So time to show off the completed parasite, and the color scheme I have chosen for my 'nid army.

 Well it may be a bit of a cop out, but results from those that I hear from were so varied on the two color schemes that I decided to do them both, the medium to big sized bugs getting the darker color scheme, and the small ones getting the bright green with blue shell.

 

 It's worth noting that I tried out the secret weapon purple ink over vallejo pink for the membranes of the wings as well as a few other spots, which I think gives it a distinct contrast, though I think some butterfly type symbols wouldn't be amiss if I ever decide to touch it up.

 So all in all that is my Parasite of mortrex, hopefully I have some gargoyles completed soon to keep him company.

In other news while trying to finish the parasite I wanted to redo my company commander for my Traitor guard. As my army is fluffed as house guard gone cult, I thought it only fitting that their company commander should be the lady of the house.

 Yes I do realize there are better whips around now, but I really didn't feel like remaking or tearing the piece offso even though it looks kinda bad I still kinda like it.

 For those of you wondering the model is from anima tactics, and she's a 32mm scale, so if you decide to get some for any of your armies he will look taller and thinner than most but I feel that kinda fits for this army so I let it slide.

 Her hair was done simply with the P3 brown ink over white paint, which I was astonished looked so good when done. again the pinks were done with a light coat of purple wash over them.

If I can't get around to another tank this week You will probably see these gals next update.

As always leave any comments you may have below, and have a great week.

~SWL