And we are done...

250pts of Grey Knights and their Inquisitor - painted in one month.

There are a few bits I could still tweak, but I am happy with how these have turned out!

I'll get some proper photos soon, but here they are for now.

3 hours left...

...and the tank is pretty much done!

Now back to the marines

Masking gone, and now some lunch!

Here it is with all the masking removed

Grey done...

I airbrushed the tank in a light coat of black paint and then worked on getting some grey shades and highlights in. I also added some extra black around the bottom of the areas of the tank.

That's the airbrush done now (I think) - time to now remove all the masking and the salt...!

Salt weathering... Done!

My tank is now a mottled silver with various areas masked off.

Salt added - next step, spraying it grey...

24 hours to go... Grey Knights final push!

So, it is the penultimate day of the month - crunch time for my tale of x gamers challenge.

What have I done?
-Painted 5 Grey Knights to 90% completion
-Painted and converted my Ordo Xenos Inquisitor 95% complete
-Built, prepped and done the initial silver coat on my Razorback

What more do I have left to do?
-Freehand loin cloth on Justicar
-Freehand details on shoulder heraldry
-Paint skullz(TM) on all 6 miniatures
-Hairspray and salt coat the Razorback
-Airbrush the grey on the Razorback and paint the rest of the details

And just 24 hours to do it... *gulp*

A quick Grey Knight update

These are the boys as they stand now. Ignore the blu-tac'd heads... I still have a bit of work to do on the inside of the neck area - needs some decent shading to make the helmets stand out. Stormbolters will be a dark red and I think the cowl of the Justicar needs some colour too.

This guy is the closest to completion. The first shot is the most accurate photo of the grey armour, but the blade is over exposed. The second photo is more over exposed on the armour, but the swords look pretty accurate. From a tabletop standard perspective, I am pretty chuffed with the way these have turned out

I think I need to knock back the yellow glow from the helmet looking at these photos. Its a bit more 'taxi light' orange in the flesh, but it might be a touch too much...

I still have a razorback and my Inquisitor to do before the end of the month... roll on Christmas break!


However, I do now have 5 bases almost ready for their occupants. I think I may need to add some skulls or maybe some spikes to add that GW/Chaotic flavour, but I am pretty happy with the way these have turned out. I also want to add some bolter shells etch strewn over the base.

Tale of Gamers - Grey Knights week 2

Second week down - more of the details on the Marines have been painted, and I have started work on the bases. There are two examples in the photos below - they are made from Super Sculpey, small (1:48) bricks by PK-Pro and a little bit of cork. They are not too tall and should be quick to paint effectively.

I do have a question though... the stormbolters - keep them black or paint them a dark red? The marine's eyes are going to be a dark green, weapon blades will me a silvery blue (NMM style but with a bright silver metallic paint as the base colour + blue ink to shade). I have also added a yellow light at the top of the helmets (not so sure about that, but I will get a proper photo up at some point and ask your opinion)

All the kit and caboodle that I was using on Sunday night to create the bases. (and of course, the boys themselves)

In other news, I played my first game of 40K in 8 years on Friday, at Warhammer World of all places. I was playing 1000pts of MrDee's Imperial Guard army with my ancient Crimson Fists and got my arse handed to me on a plate! Marine corpses lay everywhere... My Chaplain (and 10 Assault Marines) died in a huge ball of plasma, and my squads were all heavily depleted. However, in our scenario kill points were moot - it was all about capturing objectives and by the end of it, the score was 5:6 to me! Huzzah!

I completely fluked a win... but I enjoyed it. I definitely want to play a game with my Grey Knights when they are complete!

Tale of gamers - a little progress

I have progressed a little with my grey knights but don't have any 'proper' photos - just quick shots from my mobile phone, so I am going to keep them quite small. I wanted to do some gritty demon slaying marines rather than the shiny paragons of light that you normally see Grey Knights painted so decided to try a technique which I have seen armour modellers use before - the salt weathering technique.

First up, after undercoating the minis grey, I airbrushed a bright silver over all five of the models.

The next step, for which I don't have any photos, consisted of a thin layer of varnish (to protect the underlying metalwork) and once that was dry, I sprayed each part with hairspray and sprinkled over some salt. I then airbrushed the whole lot black. This will increase the definition of the weathering at the end of the process.

Once that has dried, its time to start painting the colours properly. So out came the greys and I airbrushed a gradient starting from dark grey and working up to a light grey at the top of the miniature. Here is a WIP shot of that process

Once the gradient was complete and the paint totally dry, I attacked the model with a toothbrush and some warm water. This knocks off and dissolves the salt added earlier and creates bare bits of metal (from stage 1) in a random pattern on the model. The following photos show the Justicar with most of the model glued together and few metallic bits painted, but it shows the battered armour quite well...

Each one of those dinks in the armour needs to be shaded and highlighted, and I need to add oil stains and other muck and grime. Hopefully this should contrast well with the tabard and shoulderpad heraldry which I have yet to paint... I am not 100% satisfied so far, but will try and finish these over the next couple of weeks and make up my mind if I want to use the technique on the rest of the army.

I do need to get some proper photos too!

Putty and Paint - I now have my own account

At the end of November I posted about a new website called Putty and Paint. It is still early days for them and registration is currently controlled and invitation only, but after my post I got an invite to join them (woohoo).

I really recommend that anyone interested in miniature painting and wants to look at some damn good examples head over there right now and peruse their galleries.

I've put up a couple of recent projects which I feel best represent my current painting standard - Dead End, Wolf and my Domaru Butai. I will also put the Avelonian bust up there, but I think I need some new photos of it again... still struggling a little with my camera.

I fully intend to put anything I paint to a decent level up on the site

Tale of Four Gamers... the beginning

Do you remember back in the day, White Dwarf ran a series of articles which basically amounted to painting a certain amount of models a month to slowly build up an army? It was called the "Tale of Four Gamers", and is a really great challenge for people like Toosh and I who are painters rather than gamers as we tend to spend a great deal of time painting individual figures, but jealously look at what wargamers can produce...

With that in mind, a group of us are going to do something similar. We have each picked our armies and started on the first batch of minis. There are few rules - must be at least 250pts a month (although MrDee as a seasoned army painting veteran is likely to do at least twice that... the bastard), and there are two wild cards that can be played for those tricky times over the next 6(ish) months -

1. the 250 points can be postponed for 1 month, meaning that you need to do at least 500pts in the following month and 
2. a free month - no models required.

250 pts isnt a lot, but the intent is to encourage T and I to paint more quickly and freely and we are being helped along the way by mrDee and Puppykicker who both play 40K and paint armies already. We may even get a couple of games in as we progress...!

The army choices are as follows:

Me: Grey Knights
Toosh: Dark Eldar
mrDee: Blood Angels
Puppykicker: Ravenwing

My first 250pts
1 x Ordo Xenos Inquisitor (=][= Avicenna lives again!)
5 x Grey Knights in Power Armour
1 x Razorback

Time for some photos.... firstly my Inquisitor - based on an old metal Commissar Yarrick model with the arms from the Inquisitorial walking throne thing:

This is a pic of 28mm Avicenna next to my 54mm Inquisitor Avicenna which was the first mini I posted to Cool Mini or Not and the reason I ended up with that as a username! Now I am resurrecting the character for this 40K army... at 25 points (35 including his power sword) how could I resist (yes, the bionic eye has switched sides, but I don't care :oP)?

And my Grey Knights on sticks....

Onwards and upwards!