Hey everybody!
It’s been another pretty exciting week for hobby progress, which is something I haven’t said often enough lately!! Let’s start with the best:
That’s right, it’s more Deathwatch! After last week‘s armour business, I’ve now done a lot of the details over the week, starting with the silver arms, but then I’d decided I wanted to just focus on the chaplain out at the front there. I based all of the gold barding and details with Retributor Armour, which I’m not the biggest fan of where my Stormcast Eternals are concerned, but with the black here, I have to say, it looks incredible! The gold has then been shaded with Reikland Fleshshade, and a very light coat – almost an overbrush, if I’m honest – with Auric Armour Gold. I think it look amazing, anyway!
Like I said, I was intending to work on just the chaplain model, mainly because I found myself kinda intimidated by the level of detail on these guys, and I was finding it difficult to find a starting place. As it turned out, I’ve had some really bad trouble sleeping this week, so one night I painted all of the gold details on the other six models I’ve somehow chosen to work on (of the ten I currently have built), and have since done all of the silver arms and three guns. There are clearly a lot more details to work my way through, and I have missed a few gold details that will need to be done, but for now, I really love the look of these guys!
I’ve also done the leather pouches (and one of the Ultramarine guys has some pteruges hanging at his waist) with Rhinox Hide, Agrax Earthshade, and Doombull Brown. I’ve mainly been following the GW scheme for these guys, anyway, though I’m sure that, as I make my way through the rest of the details, I’ll be doing my own thing on some of them!
Returning to the chaplain, I’ve also painted his head with essentially a drybrush of Doombull Brown, focusing it around the face for a lighter colour, and I think the effect really looks great. It still needs some more work, but I like it – in painting the armour, I’d gotten some Eshin Grey on his face, which threw it into a really nice relief that eventually made me want to paint him as a black guy. Aside from the fact I feel there isn’t enough ethnic diversity among GW models, it’s also allowed me to work on my brush control as I drybrushed and overbrushed in a very confined space.
Indeed, these Deathwatch marines have been quite the exercise in improving my drybrushing techniques. I’d tried to edge highlight the armour and it didn’t work out on the first couple of miniatures, so I’d used drybrushing there to focus it on the angles, and have basically continued in this vein, trying to really focus my technique and whatnot. While it may or may not be evident from the photo above, I do feel that my technique has improved tremendously, as I’m not just all about trying to get colour onto models anymore, but really taking care over them. I think the fact that black armour will pretty much show any mistakes I make has a role to play here, also…!
So what else has made this an exciting week?
I’ve been building more models, first of all getting the rest of the Blood Angels Death Company models finished. In all honesty, if I’d planned it better I would have done these a few weeks ago, and essentially used them to practice painting black armour, but never mind. They look fantastic, and I’m looking forward to getting round to them. The kit is also replete with Blood Angels stuff, as well as some stuff I think I could use on other things, so stay tuned for some kit-bashing to come from this!
I mentioned a couple of weeks back that I was going to enter Armies on Parade this year, and will be doing so with my Stormcast Eternals. Well, I thought I’ll do at least a few more miniatures for the board, so have finally built up the Knight Heraldor! In addition, I had a box of Liberators that I’d weirdly built one of and left the other four, so have gone for the sword-and-shield guys. I’ve already got one built like this, so thought I’d best make a full squad, but I’m not really relishing the idea of painting four more Sigmarite shields, as the raised boss is not my favourite thing to do! Still, they can look really great when they’re finished, so we’ll see. It’s about six weeks until Parade Day, so hopefully I can get these guys done – my Lions of Sigmar scheme is actually pretty straightforward, when it comes down to it, anyway.
Finally, I’ve stipped the paint from the three Electro Priests that I started at the beginning of the year. I’d primed three with Corax White, and it really didn’t turn out well for me, going on the models all powdery and stuff. I’d tried to paint them anyway, ignoring the cardinal rule of miniatures painting (making sure the model surface is good enough to paint on), and it was really horrible. After having stripped the Vanguard Veterans last week, I threw these three into dettol, along with one of the Necropolis Knight heads, those models also suffering from a bad undercoat, and this time left them overnight. They’ve turned out quite grey, as if the primer hasn’t quite come off, but the surface is smooth now so I’ve accomplished the objective, I feel!
All of the recent builds have been primed this afternoon, so they’re ready for some paint now – again, as mentioned last week, I prime models in my hallway and I think leaving them in the area allows all of the particles in the air to settle on the wet primer, not helping the situation at all. I also mentioned it to the manager at my local GW store, and he suggested holding the can closer to the miniature – I’d been holding it almost two feet away, as I’d heard holding it too close can obscure details etc. So I’ve tried both a closer priming, and moving the models to dry, and I do believe that has done the job for me! Everything I’ve primed now looks pretty great, so that’s going to be really useful in the coming weeks and months as I move on to painting this stuff!
Finally, I’ve spent the afternoon building up more Necron Immortals, while listening to the Tabletop Minions live show that Adam does every other Sunday, and that was really great. If you guys don’t already, I highly recommend checking out that channel and subscribing, as he has a lot of awesome, top-notch content! In fact, in these week’s live show, I even get mentioned! Check it out!
In the coming week, I’m looking to get at least some of these Deathwatch chaps finished, with the chapter insignia and other remaining bits finished, and perhaps get the Stormcast Eternals base-coated, if nothing else. Since I worked out how to use those flat brushes from GW, I’ve been feeling much happier about painting guys in general. I mean, there can be something quite intimidating about having a lot of guys that you need to paint with one colour but the brushes you have aren’t exactly huge. So that’s cool. I’m going to try to focus like this more in the weeks to come, and see if it helps with getting stuff actually finished. I did have success when I was only working on the small numbers of Alpha Legion marines, but have a lot more stuff built up and primed, so we’re really getting into intimidating-territory now!
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