Call The Cops!

Back in 2012, I attended the Games Workshop Games Day. I didn't know what to expect and was a little underwhelmed by the experience. Being at the mercy of trains also meant that by the time I arrived, I had missed a few of the participation events.

I did however come away with two of the event exclusive miniatures - the Second Edition Blood Angels Sergeant / Captain and the Forge World Imperial Enforcer.

I liked both of the models so I bought them, and then proceeded to file them away with the rest of my 'cool' models and forgot about for nearly two and a half years.

Recently however, I have just moved house and when I finally found time to paint, these event models were some of the first that I came across, so I decided to finally give them a paint job they deserved. The Captain is still in progress, but here's the Enforcer and his trusty hound.

As usual, the photos are taken from my phone with a less than optimal set up, so apologies for the poor quality.

The colour scheme is pretty simple and none too flashy. For his trousers / shirt sleeves, I simply highlighted from an azure to white and his carapace involved different shades of grey, I don't think I did much shading on the model apart from the usual metal work.

The hound involved a lot more shading. I painted the entire coat in Vallejo German Grey then gave it a black wash before picking out the highlights. I then gave it a brown wash, picked out the highlights, then a sepia wash before highlighting for a final time. I then picked out areas for the browns and highlighted accordingly.

Finally, when I managed to unpack it, I used one of the large resin bases I got from the Citadel 40k Basing Kit to make it look that much better.

I'm not sure how I'll use the model, probably as an Inquisitor that is hot on the trail of the Cult.

Avengers Assemble! (Warning this post contains only a few Avengers)

I thought it was about time I posted some updates on here. As previously said before, Summer's usually a bit of a dry season for painting so I've been a bit lax in posting.

Anyways, I've decided to post some of my superheroes that I've painted over the last year or so.

First up is Spider-man and a couple of his villains. I'm not sure if I've posted these already (and too lazy to check).

I'm really impressed with how Hobgoblin turned out. It was the first time in about 10 years that I'd painted orange (and probably the first time I even shaded it). 

Shocker was probably the first time I'd ever tried anything major using yellow. Fortunately the grooves in his suit are modelled in (I've nowhere near a steady enough hand to paint lines) though it was quite time consuming highlighting it all.

Spider-man had grooves like Shocker but much smaller making it trickier to highlight. I might have just phoned it in and drybrushed him, I'm not sure. I was quite impressed with how the blues came out too.

Next up is Excalibur / MI:13 / Captain Britain and his pals.

Bit of a mixed bag with The Black Knight here. I have issues highlighting black. I've not got the patience to do lots of multiple layers and so the highlights usually end up a little too extreme. Also, I had an issue getting his face (and eyes) to look good as there's not much depth to it. On the other hand, I was really impressed in how well the gold came out and the logo on his chest. It only took me two attempts at free hand.

Pete Wisdom next, the model's not very great (it looks like he's got super long fingers) and its not very exciting to paint. I tried to get a glowing / energy effect on his plasma knives but again, its an area I need work on.

Meggan really required me to expand my paint selection, I think I only had a couple of greens before painting her and they were the wrong shade. Whilst I am quite impressed with how her body suit came out, I'm not the biggest fan of the face, skin or hair. I've got a newer, better sculpt so I'll have to improve before I tackle that one.

Captain Britain is possibly one of my favourite pieces. He's one of my favourite superheroes and I think the effort I put in did him justice. The whites were quite time consuming (involving many layers of highlighting up from Space Wolves grey to white) but I'm pleased with the results. The reds came out quite well too (and so they should since I've got more shades of red than any colour, except maybe beige). The blues came out ok too.

Here's a few assorted others:

Morbius fell into the problem of being mainly black and grey. The reds came out ok (due to the aforementioned number of shades I have).

Hard to get a good shot of Ant Man (as he's so small) but hey, he's red and blue.

Ultron was super quick and easy to paint as he's all silver apart from his eyes (which are my favourite colour - red).

Guardian was fun to paint. I basically followed the same principle that I did for Captain Britain. Assessing the images now, he might have even come out better.

Finally, some henchmen to bring things to a close. The problem with my Heroclix collection is that there's not much organisation between the bad guys and if I were to play a game, some of the team ups wouldn't make much sense (though it is based on comic so anything could happen).

To remedy this problem, I decided to get some AIM troopers.

They're painted everyone's favourite colour to paint - yellow.

To be honest, the original models looked quite bad (apart from the guy in the middle) and the factory quality painting was dreadful.  I didn't have much issue painting them myself, though I did have quite a light basecoat to work off of.

Obviously I need to get around to basing them all but I prefer to do that in one big batch.

Spider-Woman

To keep this blog alive, and prove to you all I'm not lazy when it comes to painting, I've decided to branch out a little (read - had my arm gently twisted) and start showing some of the other projects and things that I've been working on.

So, I bring you Spider-Woman:

The model is a repainted Heroclix figure. I've painted a few more previously and quite a lot of the time, I like the actual models, its just sometimes the paint job that they came with (especially on the earlier models) doesn't give them justice.

The figures don't usually take too long to paint either as they tend to only have a handful of colours. I also only really have the characters that I know about (and are Marvel) so its quite an interesting change from painting troops and aliens.

I'm not using them to play Heroclix with though. Whilst Heroclix is by no means a bad game (and the clix mechanic is kinda cool), the rules are a little too light for me. Instead, I use them to play a game called Super System.

If I remember, I might fish out some of my older models that I've painted.

Oh, and before I forget, I've also got this to paint:

Excalibur are probably one of my favourite Marvel teams and this team base makes for quite a nice display piece. Might have to bone up on my painting skills for it though.

Watch this space.

The Hydra

Ok so I've not been updating this blog as much as I'd like and thought I'd just share a few thoughts on it.

Firstly, I initially set this blog up to showcase work towards my Genestealer Cult. At the time I set this blog up, the only wargame that I played was 40k and even then, I played very few games. Since then however, I've branched out a little into a couple more systems - namely Super-Heroes and Pulp (of which I've set up a separate pulp blog here) whilst both of these systems involve painting, I didn't want to muddy up this blog with non-Cult or even non-40k content. Additionally, I started playing a lot more 40k of which there hasn't been any updates to Genestealers for a good few editions (the last official codex rules probably came out about twenty years ago) so I've been playing mainly with my Imperial Guard. Because of this, I've been expanding my guard force slowly.

Which leads me to the Hydra - my painting backlog. It seems that for every model I paint, two more take its place. Its far too easy to just see something on eBay and place a very small bit on it, only for it to be accepted and when places like Hobbycraft have been selling off some of their stock recently. Also, the past month had the Triples wargaming show and my birthday, which only increased my overall model count. Finally, throw in the fact that I occasionally feel the need to repaint some of my older figures it seems like I have a never ending stream of models.

However, I must point out that I do really enjoy painting (though sometimes the painting itself may seem like a chore, the end result is usually quite pleasing).

Another problem, which doesn't help towards reducing my painting backlog, is the summer drought. As probably evident through my posts over the years, the summer period is when I tend to paint the least - probably due to the nicer weather. In fact, I'm only just getting back into painting after close to a month off (and I think its quite an early return this year).

So I'll try and get more of my Cult (or stuff that can be used in my cult) painted, but I can't make any promises.

I'm Back...Kinda

So I haven't painted in a long while. I've been quite busy with work and any time I found to paint, I haven't spent on 40k (possibly due to lack of playing).

However, I found myself with some spare time at the weekend and decided to finish a piece I was working on. Its not for the Cult, but it is a start:

I've got 20 of these guys (enough to make 2 squads) so I'm aiming to make one squad have red berets (paratroopers) and one to have green berets (commandos). Obviously they're for my Imperial Guard though they could be used within my Cult as either corrupted special force or something to break up the uniform of any non-Cultists that I use.

In other news, I've finally stripped the paint off my Genestealers who have been sitting in Dettol for the best part of (if not more than) a year.

This Blog Needs More Genestealers

People are never coming up to me complaining that there are not enough Genestealers on this blog, and to try and make sure that this remains the case, here's a picture of a Genestealer that I painted all those years ago:

I've decided that as I've got far too many guardsmen to paint that I would break things up by painting about five or so of these guys to match the genestealer I did over a year ago.

Unfortunately, since then GW have taken down their painting article. Fortunately, I found someone who had printed it off and uploaded the scans here. I took my own screen shots of that scan and now I have a handy painting guide I can use even when I'm away from the Internet.

Finished that Scavvy

And got round to basing it too.

I think the model captures what I think a Brood Brother should look like.

I've also decided that snow covered rubble is the direction I'm going to go with the bases as it ties in my Imperial Guard and Blood Angels forces.

Another Figure Complete

For the long weekend I decided to do some painting in York, some work done on the Cult but also working on finishing off a squad of Imperial Guard.

Whilst the Scavvy / Cultist still remains to be finished (I have done work on it, honest) I managed to finish my Relic bearer / Priest.

I think the staff came out alright. He didn't end up as good as the Confessor but the model is older so a little simpler.

Hopefully won't be too much longer before I finish that Scavvy...

Confessor Finished and a New Project

So I've finished  the Confessor (minus the base). Only had his mace to do so I just needed to find some free time to do it. It wasn't anything too taxing.

I think this ranks as my best painted model ever and didn't take that long to do. Its a stark contrast to the first model I painted (sadly no pictures available as I stripped it a couple of weeks ago).

Also, whilst routing around in my bits box I found an old metal figure that I bought when I was using the Citadel Journal Genestealer Cult rules (so probably around 10 years or so ago). I think its an old Empire Light Wizard model (I ordered it when GW still had its bits service). The model was supposed to be used as a special character in the Journal rules but I never really got round to finishing him off. So after digging him out, I rustled together a few bits and made something that will hopefully fit into my cult.

Basically, I've replaced his sword with a fancy bolt pistol, and created an ornate staff head out of a cocktail stick, genestealer claw and genestealer head (the claw is supposed to be holding the head and it will all be a nice shade of gold). I also trimmed off the Egyptian bear that he was sporting. Not sure how he's going to look at the moment, I think I need to get some paint on him and hopefully he'll come to life and fit right in.

Substation Complete

Very quick post this morning, just to show the finished substation.

Unfortunately I realised that the grey paint I had was lighter than the one I'd used previously so it might look ever so slightly out of place.

Aside from that, its a pretty simple, no frills paint job (grey, black wash, grey drybrush) partly because it fits in with the rest of the battlefield but also because I wanted a quick and easy terrain piece that still looks decent.

So here it is:

Painting Update and a Little Scenery

Progress so far with the painting has been good. I've been mainly working on the Arch-Confessor and need to just finish his mace and he will be done. I've used the Games Workshop picture as a guide for how to paint it but since that model has a lots of effects that I haven't the steady hand for, I've simplified things down a little.

I am really impressed with the results and he looks inspiring enough to bring the rest of the Cult to arms.

I've also done a little bit of scenery.

There's an RSPCA near where I grew up and not too far from that is a small outbuilding (which I think is an electrical substation or something). I always thought that it looked kinda cool and fitting but would also be simple to construct.

Unfortunately I ran out of glue so I couldn't add the gravel, rubble etc (that's a job for tomorrow). I also didn't worry too much about lining things up nicely as it makes things look like they are run down.

Attempting to Scult a Hybrid - Completed and Painted!

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3

I've finally finished my sculpting and painting of my Hybrid for a sidecar and I'm pretty impressed with the results.

Here's an example of what I was aiming for:

Here's my results:

I only needed to do his upper half as he'll be sitting in a sidecar (which I'm still to make), though should I wish to give him legs, I'm pretty sure some Catachan or maybe even Cadian legs would work with minimal conversions.

I decided to give him a bolt pistol and power sword, giving him one Hybrid arm and one Catachan arm.

His bolt pistol is from an old plastic Ork (the ones that came in the 2nd edition 40k boxed set) and the power sword was a Catachan sword with the 'saw teeth' filled in and some wire glued into the groove for the power line.

I'm still not 100% sure what I'm going to do for the sidecar but I've got too much on my plate to worry about that at the moment.

The Father Walks Among Us!

So to end my 11 day holiday, I decided to paint up my running Patriarch (I also have the throned one but not the throne itself).

This was another early Genestealer purchase for me - I actually found it in a 'bargain bin' of models and only paid something like 50p to 2 pounds for it (nowadays you might have to spend about £20 upwards on eBay). Unfortunately though it was missing one of its claws which I replaced with one from a Genestealer - perfect size, though not a perfect match (though it still doesn't look bad).

I painted it as I painted the Genestealer, but with a few extra layers of highlighting and a less bright blue to finish off the carapace.

Whilst the general result is not bad, I was initially a little unsure about the end result - the carapace has a very strange 'cracked' texture to it which I wanted to try and preserve but felt it may come across as a little messy and initially thought my final highlight stage was again too bright.

I also messed up one of my highlights by mixing the wrong colours, though the difference is barely noticeable.

Finally, I finished off the model with a resin base from the Citadel basing kit which really added something to the model (like most of the other pieces in the kit).