Banners, Chaplains & Commissions

A few months ago JJ over at "How to lose at 40k" put up an offer, make him a banner for his website and he would paint up a mini in trade. After a few emails back and forth I managed to meet his expectations and create a banner design he was happy with. For my mini I asked for a single Death Company Chaplain is exchange. I have been following JJ and his progress over the last year when he started his blog and I thought that I would at least challenge him a bit with the project. Here is the result:

I am putting this gun into a Death Company squad which will all have custom bases, so I let him know that a plain base was fine.

I specifically wanted a Forgeworld type combi-flamer, scratch built (to challenge him a bit). Not only did he get that part perfectly, he free handed the blood angel symbol on the shoulder.

On the scroll work everything is done with minute attention to detail and all the test runs in clear lines.

All the highlights are thin and well done, this is truly an excellent addition to my budding Death Company and I greatly appreciate all the work that went into it. An excellent trade for my work on his banners, and something that a great many people could have taken advantage of!

Now I am not normally one to pimp for other people but JJ has treated me right, and the photo speak for themselves. I would encourage anyone who might be interested in getting some painting done to go over and check out his rates, hes quite reasonable in comparison to some of the other services out there and the quality is just as good (in my ever so humble opinion). His site is here:

Silver Gargoyle Productions

_still practicing

T

Hobby: Priming and Airbrush Trick

Very simple tricks are almost always the most useful. While painting my mini's before I base them I generally place the pins in the feet and then use corks from wine bottles to hold them in. I just find it easier to paint them with the ability to remove them from their 'holder' before I base them. Another benefit to doing it this way is when using an airbrush or priming.

I always use a flat piece of cardboard to spray against when painting, the last thing painted on this one was drop pods as you can still see the outline. I set my wine cork on the cardboard and run a paper clip through like so:

TFM: My Assault on Assault on Black Reach Part 16

With this weekend's release of the rulebook, I figured it was only a matter of time before the starter set follows. If I am going to meet my goal, something seldom achieved in the flight-of-fancy, army de jour, painting lifestyle of mine, I needed to get after it. All that stands between myself and the finish line is a dreadnought. So I started to take a swing at it.

TFM: Fire Warrior Needs A Base

From still practicing_

On Saturday I was hanging out at the park with my wife and kids. While my wife was following our toddler around, my son and I were hanging out a bench watching the bedlam that is play equipment at a public park. I noticed that the outfit my son was wearing would make for a pretty cool scheme. So when we got home later that evening I grabbed a fire warrior, because I have a jillion of them, and tried it out. In all I like it. But I always like painted fire warriors. That mini gets a huge pass from me because I think they look so cool.

TFM: My Assault on Assault on Black Reach Part 15

From Stuff I Have Painted: Space Marines

TFM: My Assault on Assault on Black Reach Part 14

From Stuff I Have Painted: Space Marines

If you followed me here from my other blog you may already be familiar with this series. If not, it is pretty easy to guess. I have had the AoBR marine contingent kicking around for ever, so I decided to paint them up in the colors of my favorite chapter, the Dark Angels.

Transmission from Mars: Alaitoc Rangers +

From Stuff I Have Painted: Eldar/Dark Eldar

Finished up a squad of Alaitoc Rangers yesterday. For those of you that are keeping track...these are not orks either. They didn't actually come out at all how I thought they would, which can also be said about the photography for them... The camo pattern worked way better in my head,and while I still like it, it isn't what I expected. I used the browns and purples to tie them into the base, however I was trying to keep them lighter in tone in order to contrast with the forth-coming Pathfinder squad, which I intend to be quite dark.

Transmissions From Mars: Wherein Mars is a Big Friggin' Liar

From Stuff I Have Painted: Eldar/Dark Eldar

So, maybe like a month ago at the game store, the planets alinged and there was an easy Saturday afternoon where a couple of folks I game with were all down there playing at the same time. It was awesome. And at that time I stated, "I am only painting orks in 2012." Immediately after that sentence left my mouth I wished I could catch it and put it back before it hit the ear drums of the guys collected. But I can't, and it did, and now I am looking for recipes for crow.

Transmissions From Mars: Wherein Mars Joins a Kult.

So I was working on Bad Moonz when last I posted. Since then, I have decided that I don't want to do that anymore. I wasn't unhappy with the way they were turning out. They just weren't getting me all reved up. I need some severe reving, because there is a lot of army to paint. So in the spirit of reving, the reving of engines has served as an orkish, siren's call.

Mob Up!: Bad Moon Slugga Boyz

From Stuff I Have Painted: Orks

Hello. I am Mars, new guy here at still practicing_. Not entirely new on the internets. I had a small blog called Mars' Project Blog. But real life catches up, and I couldn't post frequently enough to justify my own blog, so I was assimilated here.

I would like introduce my army project for the year. Year is pretty optimistic actually, but we will go with that for now. The optimism is based off the fact that I paint very slowly. Glacially slow. So it stands to reason that I should try and crack out a horde army in a year right?

Painting: Metallics Gold

Gold Basics
GW Paints:  Tin Bitz, Dwarf Bronze, Shining Gold, Burnished Gold
Best basecoat: A dark brown, a dark brown mixed with some Shining Gold, a dark gold (I use Tin Bitz or the dark brown with Shining Gold mix).
Best washes: Devlan Mud, Sepia.
Basic recipe: Dark brown basecoat, Shining Gold, Burnished Gold Highlight.

My go-to gold recipe:

• Dark brown (Scorched Brown or similar paint) mixed with a small amount of Shining Gold
• Layer Shining Gold
• Wash the entire area with Devlin Mud
• Re-layer Shining Gold, bringing back some color while preserving the shading from the Devlan Mud wash
• Layer on a Shining Gold/Mithril Silver mix for highlights.
• One last layer of Shining Gold/Mithril Silver, this time with more silver mixed in.
• Wash the entire area with Sepia, pulling the wash to the areas you want to be darker/richer.  You can really see this on the Spear Elves in the Silver section; check out the gold bits right below the spearheads.   

Painting: Metallic Silvers

Metallic paints are great, and that is what this post is going to be about.  I won't be exploring everything, but this should be a solid foundation

With metallic paints, you can go from really easy to really intricate in your techniques and recipes.  How intricate depends on how much effort and thought you put into the process.  Let's jump right in, shall we?

There are two basic types of metallic paints: silver and gold.  For generalization purposes, bronze/copper go under gold, steel is under silver, et cetera.  I'll start with the silver stuffs and cover golds and rust/weathering in their own separate posts.

Silver Basics

• GW Paints: Boltgun Metal, Chainmail, Mithril Silver 
• Best basecoat: Black
• Washes: Badab Black
• Basic recipe: Black basecoat.  Boltgun Metal.  Mithril Silver highlights.

Game Time: SPOCON army list progress

When I put together my list for SPOCON, the annual local geekery convention with 40k tournament thrown in, I thought the majority of my army was done. What a horribly wrong assumption that turned out to be! After reviewing my army list and laying out the mini's I came to the dramatic realization that I have a bunch of work to do in order to get this force ready to my standards prior to the tournament in a month.

Painting: Guard Color Selection

Painting your guard: a topic of much potential disaster. Everyone will, no doubt, have their own opinion on the subject about what they think looks good, but simply looking great is not a realistic selection criteria for Imperial Guard camouflage, and here’s why. Criteria one: complexity. Look at the photo below, does the cammo look great, heck yeah it does. Does that cammo pattern take some time to create, again – heck yes it does. Now, do you want to paint that pattern on every trooper in your 60+ infantry model army? Probably not.

Image used without permission

Hobby: Color Selection Help

Meet Shamus and Angus, the two names I was not allowed to give my first born son, the Squad leader and Platoon Leader of my newly levied Veteran Platoon. On the left is Shamus; the dapper looking Sergeant that has a drinking habit, not a drinking problem mind you, as you can clearly see by the leather bota bag in his left hand. And Angus, the equally dapper Platoon Leader with the bolt gun and faith that his cloth shirt, and refractor field generator, will save him from harm. Obviously years of combat have rendered their thick skulls impervious to enemy weapons as both have decided to leave their helmets safely attached to their belts. Both of them are sporting their combat kilts from Victoria Lamb's fall line of battlefield accessories.

Painting: Brush Soap

Why, hello there.  Tallarn has twisted my arm to get me to delve into blogging.  Given that out of all the aspects of the hobby I am most proficient with a brush, posts from me will involve painting more often than not.  If there is anything you would like me to explain or do a tutorial on, do let one of us know!

Right, so, for this I'll be showing you the wonders of brush soap.  Yes, they make soap for cleaning your brushes, and this kind is $5 give or take.

Painting: Alternative to brushes

I got an idea from washing dishes the other day, I decided to try using a sponge to make a wet pallet / tank brush for blending large edges...

Fear is the Mind Killer

I'd like to begin my blogging endeavours with thanking Tallarn for the trust to write in his space. I'm not the caliber of painter, gamer, or writer that he is but I try and he understands that about me.

Fear has stopped me from writing on occasion. Why? Criticism. I often take things waaaay to personally in real life and that bleeds over into the internet as well. I have to remember that I will be harsher on myself then anybody can ever be and not to worry so much. We all have to go with it most of the time. Our hobby almost demands it as a prerequisite!

I'd like to share with you a 'one off' piece I've been painting in my spare time over the last month. With everything it has to begin with a good model and the Warp Wolf Stalker from the Hordes range is outstanding in my opinion. From the very first time I saw the model in previews I knew, actually knew, I was going to get this model just to paint. Another first for me since I have this thing about 'power armor'.

The base isn't done because I want to write a quick tutorial on how to do bases since I think basing is also part of our hobby. People, even when they paint well, tend to let this last step go by the wayside.

I've named him 'The Great Wolf Nigel Humperdink'.

Deep Thoughts: Paint Etiquette

In a typical weekend I might play two games, multiply that by playing two or three weekends a month and I get to play around four to six games per month. In the last few months I have played against one fully painted army while the rest were all either partially painted or straight GW plastic grey. Which begs the question – where did all the paint escape off to?