Puppykicker's first 250 - Ravenwing

Here are some picturs of Phill's 250 points - some rather nice Ravenwing bikers

And some photos of our models together - 500pts of marines - not that many all things considered!

The next 250pt batch!

some initial pics of 250pt block #2

Grey Knight Terminators

and a Finecast (!) Jokaero

I've still got a lot of prep-work to do on these guys, this month is going to be a real challenge! Part of me wonders whether I should just buy Kaldor Draigo and paint only one mini this month :)

But I will give these guys a go and see what happens!

I managed to get some photos of my first 250 with Puppykickers 250 points of Ravenwing and will endeavour to get some photos up soon :)

Some better photos of the first 250

Right, I know its the second month of the challenge, but I just wanted to post a few more photos of the first 250 points. I've gone back to the blue-white gradient background and have been tinkering with my camera settings and am quite happy with the results.

So, what have we got?

A close-up of the Justicar

A pic of all the Grey Knights together

Inquisitor Avicenna in all his 30mm glory

The line-up showing all 6 of the models in this first 250 points

Coming up... photos of the next 250pts!

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!

Tabletop Standard Marine...

Yup, you read correctly, 'tabletop standard'...

The bunch of guys Toosh and I paint with are all recovering wargamerholics and I have been spending a lot of time recently coveting their beautifully painted armies. The one thing I struggle to do these days is paint multiple miniatures to a decent standard, but I would definitely like to, but I get a bit bored of batch painting, and find a whole army a daunting prospect.

But there is a light at the end of the tunnel - when we were up at the Golem studio there were a number of small personal project around the room which turned out to be a 'Tale of X Gamers' type thing. I remember this sort of thing from White Dwarf a few years ago - those involved would start a new army and set monthly targets of a number of points to complete. This number of points always seemed a reasonable amount to tackle and I think the Golem guys had settled on 250pts of a 40K army of their choice.

I think we are going to take on a similar challenge, and in advance of that, I wanted to try my hand at a very quick Space Marine. I intend to do a small Grey Knight force so have painted this marine in grey with steel and brass details. He is a normal space marine, but just a test so it doesn't matter too much...

I got my Airbrush out for the first time to lay down the initial colour - a grey gradient - but painted the rest by hand.

here are a couple of photos:

As a test piece, there are a few things I'd do differently for my actual army. I would leave the head and backpack off, and possibly the gun (although with Grey Knights there are only a handful of models holding guns across their bodies), and I will also be making some more interesting bases for them. They'll never win an award, but its a start and hopefully should help me learn to paint faster and understand where I can cut corners most efficiently.