Friday SOTU: the 6th

"GENTLEMEN. I LOVE THE NIGHT LIFE, I LOVE TO BOOGIE."

You just never know when a SOTU is going to sneak up on you. On this week's painting state of the union, I go into the sordid details of  First Sergeant Kallistus' cape, plus an almost finished Veteran Sergeant Daceus who has a penchant for fine cheeses. 

Is it even possible not to read on? Yeah, I didn't think so either. 

For when one Ultramarines symbol just doesn't cut it  

Wanting to do a snazzy looking cloak but possessing all the freehanding abilities of a crazed emu farmer with no hands, I once again turned to that great tool of cheaters and scoundrels: transfers. Picking out one of the two pattern lines from the Forgeworld sheet, I cut it up into small sections and carefully laid each section along the base of the cloak, with small gaps where it was unavoidable. 

I think the only part here that I brutally messed up was the last segment on the right. I should have cut it in two, since it goes over a dip without the proper appearance of bending inwards. Not a huge deal and after some further finicking about it came out okay looking anyway, but it's a lesson for next time.

This way... to the dry cleaners! 

And like all the great TV cooks say, here's one I prepared earlier. So after the decals dried I carefully joined up the missing segments with some white paint. It came out a teensy bit sloppy in places since it involved a bit more freehanding than I anticipated, but fear not! The next step was dry brushing on some dirt along the bottom of the cloak, and like the cunning weasel I am, I used this to cover up the worst of the blemishes. For the dirt I first used Calthan Brown, and then a very, very light brushing of Snakebite Leather.

Finally I gave the red highlights a bit of a boost, ran over everything with gloss varnish to seal it all in, and then gave it a last coat of matt. I think the end result is pretty decent.

Handshake?

Veteran Sergeant Daceus is also close to being finished now. Here he is looking resplendent in blue and gold with some of the same patterned trim along one of his shoulderpads. 

The sand is white because the glue is drying.
In case you were wondering. 

 And here is some more detail.


There you have it. I am actually hoping to develop some freehanding ability at some stage. Right now I'm still rocking the pain medication from a fairly extensive toe injury, so once I'm off that I imagine it'll be easier to get my hand in.

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Wednes... I mean Thursday SOTU: the 5th

Currently missing: storm bolter plus his left eyeball

Time for some progress pics of my command squad, plus the First Sergeant generic captain dude. Who I need to get around to naming some time soon.

It's been a fairly busy week so the command guys are slow going. So far I've got the armour up to the first highlight stage, and done the first level of gold as well as base coated misc bits. I tend to take a somewhat piecemeal approach to painting, as production lining bores the ever living crud out of me pretty quickly...

My pose is commandingly generic!

I realised how hard I made things for myself with the first sergeant's cloak way too late, unfortunately. It's going to be a real swine painting the inside of it behind his legs, and he's attached to those legs preeeeetty firmly. I tried a bit of an experimental wriggle to remove the torso, but no dice. I'm too worried about screwing the model up to give it a really good wrench, so I'll just have to accept that it's going to be a bit of a mission, methinks.

He'll take your gene seed when you're not looking

With the apothecary I'm looking forward to seeing how glassy looking I can get his vials. Also, I was never really a fan of the mostly white look for the medics. Much prefer him to just have the white shoulderpad. It's not like you see medics romping around modern day battlefields wearing full nurse kits and it seems a bit silly to make your specialised healer and gene seed extractor guy stand out.

Because that's an issue when you're a genetically engineered eight foot tall killing machine in shiny powered armour.

I guess when he runs out of bullets he can
stick the banner somewhere painful...

Company standard bearer is coming along nicely. Here he is with the banner precariously balanced atop the pole, since I haven't stuck it in place yet. Love how good the face already looks after one coat of flesh coloured paint and a wash of devlan mud. Oh ink, how I love thee.

"Gooooooldfinger! He's the man! The maaaan
with the gooooolden thuuuuumbs..."

Since taking this photo the veteran sergeant in the saucy mark 5 armour has had his helmet painted red with a white stripe. This presumably means that his head now goes faster than the rest of him.

As soon as I find my other arm you're in for the bash

And champion. He has a sword. Currently debating whether to try for the glowy power effect or go for a nice simple metallic look. Decisions, decisions. I'm a big fan of this guy's red power sword effect, which I would try and replicate if I went in that direction...

Anyhoo, that's me for now. Peace out my homies.

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Belated Wednesday SOTU the 4th!

We wanna live foreeeever! Light up the sky
like a flame, FAME!

Well it's a bit late but I'm not planning on donning a hair shirt or otherwise beating myself up about missing updates. This is a casual blog yo! 

The scouts have been finished, and I decided that next up would be the second company command squad, since there's a decent amount of variation to be found there. Plus, a banner! 

I, uh. Yeah. Oh space marines, you're
just a bit Nazi-esque aren't you?

Talking of which! Look, it's a banner! So I tried freehanding this bad boy and it turns out that freehanding a large company banner as the first freehand experiment ever was more an experiment in frustration management and not hurling my brushes at the cat. 

I then realised that I in fact had all the components I needed to compose a real nice looking banner design by using my forgeworld decals so I did that instead. Here's the banner before I finished the highlights and completed the purity seals. Also the Ultramarines symbol up top is more gold and less bronze now.

If he ever learns to stand on his head he'll be
able to rest on his laurels. Boom boom! 

 Beginnings of banner dude! He holds the banner! And has a fetching wreath around his head if you look closely.

He just loves melting shit. 

Here is the marine formerly known as veterean sergeant dude and now known as melta gun dude! He brings the gift of melta fire to the command squad. 

I guess he won't be welcome on the GW
facebook wall, will he?

It's the Company Champion! Rocking the crested helmet look, he enjoys challenging people to single combat. Well not really, that's the Chapter Champion. This guy hopes to be the Chapter Champion when he grows up.

Mediiiiic!

Company apothecary! He heals people and also extracts the gene seed of dead space marines so that it can be implanted back into new recruits. Space marines = a bit gross.

Handshake?

And lastly tonight, here is the veteran sergeant (rules wise he's just a squad veteran) looking resplendent in mark 5 armour complete with a saucy crest and banner. His power fist came from the forge world character kit, I really like the detail on it. 

So that's the work in progress for this week. Shouldn't be too long before I have the command squad finished and looking delish. 

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Wednesday SOTU: The 3rd!

Welcome to Wednesday. The middle of the week may not have reached you yet, but out here on the edge of the world it's in full swing, let me tell you. Wild stuff. 

This week I totally meant to get my first tactical squad finished, but as you can tell from the pics directly below, I sort of got distracted by the arrival of my first ever dreadnought!

He was purchased second hand from TradeMe, (NZ's version of Ebay) and arrived in relatively good condition apart from two things. I hoped to deal with both, ie the lingering smell of stale marijuana (seriously, who keeps items that they plan on selling in a hotboxed room?) and the enormously bad, streaky undercoat with the same method: a good going over with some chaos black spray. 

As it turns out, sports fans, I only got rid of the stoner musk, and it wasn't until the painting was finished that I realised the streaky undercoat could still be seen through the Ultramarines Blue. Ah well, lesson learned. At some point in the future I'll give him a good detol bath and a toothbrush scrub and start over from scratch. In the meantime I'm reasonably happy with how it came out, and he's certainly very ready for tabletop play.

Not seen in these photos: streaks! Also I'd like to get better shots of the battle damage. I tried out some different techniques like stippling and experimenting with inks, and I'm pretty pleased with how it came out on this. I'll try to get some better photos at some point.

I did manage to get my tactical squad almost finished. Here is the heresy Mark 5 dude looking much more respectable. 

And here is formerly Headless Nick, now my new squad leader! The helmet and shoulder pads from Chapterhouse Studios arrived. Very happy with the quality of the sculpts, and I decided to use the crested helmets to show my squad leaders. But also...

My girlfriend wants one. No wait, the thing in the foreground. My company champion is getting one. I think he looks pretty neat with that helmet. 

Aaaaaaand finally, a bike! I was given this for my birthday from a sinister gentleman who has forced my hand into eventually purchasing another two for a squad. The fiend. 

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Wednesday SOTU: The 2nd!

Greetings once again my loyal filthy readers and welcome to the second State Of The Union post for the boys in blue. I feel a little bad posting this right on the tail end of Gravitas' excellent Deathwatch guest entry, and so to assuage the slight guilt I'll include a link RIGHT HERE and tell you to go read it and then get back to me.

Okay, so this update is mainly focused around tactical squad Vorolanus. I've been working on getting them completed and will be finished this time next week. What with work and other things going on though I'm not quite there yet, but I have taken some update pics that I'm pretty happy with. Whoooo yeah.

Here are the four lads I've been working on to complete the squad. There's technically one more missing, my Heresy era dude, but I haven't started him yet. I was debating keeping the Mark 5 armour for a seperate squad, but eventually decided to spread them out instead. So he'll be added with the rest by next update.

Beaky sergeant! Pretty happy with how he's going. I had to tone down the highlights this morning after realising the orange was way too harsh, and I think the final effect looks pretty well blended. Especially happy with the decals, and I think the glow effect on his plasma pistol doesn't look too bad.

Of note is the enormous speckle highlight in his eyes, which I accidentally made way too big but decided to keep. I realised I kinda liked the anime levels of Big Eye he has going on, heh. Around 85% finished. 

Auspex dude! He has an auspex, you know. More importantly he nicely shows off the new method I'm using to paint my bolters now. The black wasn't working for me (I need to practice my black highlighting), so instead I started out with foundation battlegrey, and worked up to codex grey. Much better in my opinion. About 90% done.

Flamer guy. He's flamey. Decals look nice and tidy. Scout head is working well methinks. Around 85% finished.

And for the first time here is the entirety of tactical squad Vorolanus, 2nd Squad of Company II of the Ultramarine chapter. You can see the thoroughly unpainted mark 5 guy in the back row, looking a bit embarrassed. And rightly so. 

Finally here is an assembled veteran sergeant, in mark 5 armour with his beautifully sculpted forgeworld powerfist and helmet crest. He'll be placed into my command squad. 

And that's it for this Wednesdays state of the union update. Next post I'll be making will be about other blogs that I find inspiring and interesting. Stay tuned, sports fans.

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Wednesday State Of The Union. The First!

So I figured Wednesdays could be a good day to go through my collection and show the highlights, current projects, points of interest and so on and so forth. Mainly because today is Wednesday and I just thought of doing so.

Take note people, this is how genius works.




...anyhoo, first up is the scout squad! As of yet unnamed, but I wanted to show them for two reasons. Firstly they're over halfway finished, but more importantly BEHOLD the awesomeness that is the new heads I ordered for them! They are from the good people at Pig Iron Productions. I never really liked the original scout heads on those models, though amusingly I've now put one of them onto my flamer guy in Squad Vorolanus. ALSO it's hard to tell in the light but I did my first ever blending job on the green visor. It looks pretty cool in person. You'll have to take my word for it.

Next up are three of my homebrew entries for Squad Adamantus (shamelessly stolen from a White Dwarf article, in your face Crimson Fists!), my Sternguard squad. The rest of the squad including the five awesome resin dudes that a certain fellow blogger got me for my birthday follow...

Though after having found out that storm bolters can't use the special ammo that the Sternguard have, I'm going to have to change the weapon on my veteran sergeant. Waaaaah. 

Some unpainted guys!  I gave the banner bearer the wreath around his bonce. I think it looks pretty cool. With the Missile Launcher I'm hoping to accomplish a relatively simple conversion of having a missile firing out from the launcher with a trail of smoke behind it. Pretty sure I have the technology. Stay tuned!

Say hi to the friendly folks from Squad Gladius. They enjoy long walks in the park, romantic candle lit dinners, and tearing the spleens out of heretics as they simultaneously bite the faces off alien scum. In their spare time they... haha, I kid. They have no spare time. Ever. 

Finally on this week's State Of The Union, I present the sergeant and flamer dude, as of yet unnamed, from Squad Vorolanus. I've decided that all my sergeants are going to be Beakies... it's a nice simple way of tying them together. You'll note the afore mentioned scouts head sticking out from the flamer guy there. I had to fiddle around with a little bit of plastic to give him a neck, but otherwise I think it works quite nicely. 

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