Finished: Space Hulk!

...so the last time I talked about my copy of Space Hulk, it was in a state something like this:

Well, I'm glad to say it's finally finished!  Since this is a board game (and will probably be played by non-wargaming friends), I wanted the finish on the minis to be extra-durable - I read in several places that this could be accomplished by giving the minis a coat of gloss varnish first, then a coat of matte varnish to knock down the shine.  As soon as I finished the paint job, I gave them a healthy coat of gloss:

...then I gave them a coat of matte varnish on each side:

Now, when I originally bought Space Hulk, I swore up and down that I was going to lavish every single model with a Golden Demon-quality paintjob - then, as usual, I primed them, looked at the huge pile of minis on my desk, and instantly felt overwhelmed.  Then, the possibility of needing to have the game finished for an upcoming game night appeared, so it gave me an excuse to get a bit more "quick 'n dirty" with my process.  The funny thing?  I had a lot more fun when I stopped stressing about making every model perfect, and I think the models I painted after this revelation actually came out better.  I was whining to lars4life over at Funderhammer one night about how I get overwhelmed and never seem to follow through with the high-quality paintjobs I want to do - he told me "Assembly line painting is a must if you want to make any progress on an army.  Assembly-line your troops, practice your advanced techniques on your sergeants, and try to do your best work on your named characters".  I thought that was great advice.

So anyway, here's some of the results (click to embiggen):

They're not going to win any competitions, but I see flashes of improvement in my technique - in particular, my highlighting is getting more precise, and I'm learning to use precise application of washes to a much better effect.  As far as color schemes and such, I mostly followed the GW painting guide, and just substituted equivalent colors if I didn't have the Citadel / Foundation version.  The only major exceptions:  I used my airbrush and based the Terminators with Mechrite Red first, then drybrushed them with Blood Red, and I didn't follow GW's formula for highlighting the Terminators at all - I tried their method first, and it looked terrible - I'm a fan of the "'Eavy Metal" style, and even I thought the highlights looked way too severe.  I used a 50/50 mix of Blazing Orange and Blood Red.

Updates, D&D Report

The wife was out of town last week, so I spent a lot of time bored to tears, but I did get more work done on Space Hulk.  I pretty much just need to do the highlights on about half of the marines and I'll be done.  I did get together with lars4life over at Funderhammer one night and worked on some conversions - we'll have some pictures of a joint project up soon.  (We also have an idea for an interesting take on a speed-painting contest).

On Sunday I got together for our weekly D&D game, and had a blast:

For the last few games in our campaign, our DM has adapted the Palace of the Silver Princess module.  Sunday's game involved tons of interacting with NPC's, bluffing, etc - you know, the stuff that gives "Role Playing Games" their namesake.  Sometimes these elements take a backseat in our rush to kill monsters and find loot (especially since we lost our player who tried to bluff constantly, and consistently had the worst charisma rolls of all time).  I felt this last game struck the balance perfectly. 

Near the end of the game, our DM's wife & son returned home from visiting family.  The boy likes to sit in Dad's lap and help him roll dice when we play.  This time he decided he wanted to play with the minis (or "guys", as he calls them) - since we were still in the middle of combat, I suggested giving him his own set of dungeon tiles.  With Dad's collection of minis conveniently next to him, he was free to set up his own encounter.  Let's just say this kid's gonna be a brutal DM:

...let's hope they're all minions.

Updates: Space Hulk, Tools

Work on Space Hulk continues:

...I was hoping to have it done this week, but I just didn't find myself in the mood to paint over last weekend, and pretty much blew off working on it.  I might have most of them finished in the next few days, but the Librarian and the dead marine on the throne will take a bit more work than the others - and since I plan to do a multi-step clearcoat process on these so they'll be more durable, it's probably still a few weeks out.

I did pick up some tools the other day - the first was a regulator for my airbrush compressor:

This was because I think I'm ready to move beyond moving the airbrushes for just basecoating, but the Badger 100 that is my "detail" airbrush seems to need a lower pressure than my Badger 360.  The problem is, the regulator above didn't work - I don't mean it didn't work out, I mean it was broken.  No worries, I exchanged it for a different model that works (and was actually cheaper).

Next I got some new bits:

I love the Micro Hand Drill that I mentioned in this post, but all my bit were from the hardware store and were to big to even fit in the chuck.  This assortment has sizes down to 0.5mm (I don't even have WIRE that thin!) so it should do the trick...

I'm In Ur Castle, Killin Ur D00dz

(Funky camera phone effect courtesy of FxCamera for Android)

Hey all -

     Had a D&D game on Sunday, and got a chance to play with my new cleric.  It was pretty laid back (we lose one of our regular players to football season every year, and another plays via webcam and wasn't able to join us, so it was just three of us + 1 NPC and the DM).  It just occurred to me that it was the first time in a loooong time that I've actually played with a model I painted. 

In other news, the Tyranids from my copy of Space Hulk are pretty much done, and ready for clearcoat:

...I'm gonna do my best to finish painting the Blood Angels in the next couple of weeks, since my wife is going out of town later this month - some of the guys have been talking about having a board game day, and when I mentioned that I miiiiight be finished with Space Hulk in time, some ears definitely perked up.  It's iffy, since the Blood Angels are a LOT more detailed than the Genestealers (which took me a month), but I also plan to use the airbrush a lot more, so hopefully that will help.

I also got my awesome Pirate Ork Heads from MaxMini:

I was seriously chomping at the bit to get these - I haven't checked the mail so much since I was a kid and used to send away for stuff with cereal box tops.  Literally an hour after I emailed Przemek at MaxMini to tell him I was ready to give up hope, I got a package slip from the post office.  Needless to say, I was standing outside the post office at five minutes 'till 9:00 this morning, waiting for them to unlock the doors.  They look absolutely fantastic & line up perfectly with the GW models, so now the Freeboota conversions can begin in earnest.  Stay tuned!

Brief Updates

Work on Space Hulk continues:


...the Tyranids just need some small details & highlighting done, and then they'll be ready for clearcoat. I don't know why, but I didn't take hardly any work-in-progress pics of them - it didn't even occur to me, for some reason. Originally I had wanted to try a different paint scheme for these, but I'm pretty much following the GW Stage-by-Stage Painting Guide for Space Hulk on their website to the letter, except for some other manufacturer's equivalent colors & a homemade wash - I'll post a paint list when I'm done.

In other news, my new brushes arrived:

I missed the brush sale at Art Supply Warehouse, so I decided to try the Dick Blick studio brushes - Les Bursley seems to like them, so they're probably good enough for me.  I report back when  iget a chance to try them out.

I've got a few tutorials 90% written up, but I've been waiting on one order from Europe to arrive to finish - i suspect nefarious activity at my local post office (it's a looong story).  I'm gonna go hassle them about it tomorrow...

Space Hulk, Odds 'n Ends

OH NOES TYRANIDS!!!

...just about every spare minute I've had this week has gone towards working on painting the models from my copy of Space Hulk. This was also the first time I worked with black-primed minis - thankfully, it worked fantastic for the 'nids. The black undercoat provides a perfect effect when used with thin coats of Game Color Imperial Blue and the purple mix, which is 50/50 GW Levithan Purple & Hormagaunt Purple. The 'nids served as a nice warm-up, since I haven't painted in quite a while - once the base coat is down, it's mostly just a few washes & some drybrushing until I can call these done.

In other news, I had to make some room on my painting table:


Yep, I finally got an airbrush booth. I've been wanting one of these forever, and when I first started looking at them, pretty much your only option was to drop $500+ on a stamped-steel booth with an industrial fan that took pricey filters. A little while ago I saw that Paasche came out with a compact plastic airbrush booth that was much, much cheaper - I came close to pulling the trigger on one of those, then I found that TCP Global came out with a spray booth that was billed as "the least expensive hobby spray booth on the market". The main differences I saw where that it didn't look quite as sturdy as the Paasche booth, and it didn't have the rotating turntable. I wasn't terribly concerned about the first problem, since it was destined to live a gentle life in my studio, and I solved the second problem by buying a $5 "lazy susan" tray. I've already used it a bit for priming:

Needless to say, I'm really pleased with the results - I am tremendously picky about having perfect conditions to use spray primer, so I usually wind up having a whole box of models waiting to be primed, and I have to spend an entire afternoon playing catch-up when the conditions are right. Now I can just grab a particular model or two that I want to paint next, spray it in the booth, and get to work. The only problem I've had so far is that I bought a few bottles of Vallejo Model Air primer, which is gray - kind of hard to see on gray plastic, so I got a few runs on my first attempts. I've got some of Reaper's white primer on the way, and will give that a try next...

(NOTE: neither the Paasche or the TCP Global airbrush booths should EVER be used with anything flammable. They both use standard fans, as opposed to fans with brushless induction motors, which are specifically designed to not generate sparks (that's why the industrial-grade booths are much more expensive). This isn't an issue for me, since I only use water-based acrylics & water-based airbrush cleaner).

Updates: Space Hulk

So the last time I worked on my copy of Space Hulk, I assembled & de-flashed the minis, and started the Green Stuff work. Since I can finally see the light and the end of the tunnel with my Ultramarines (only the librarian is left), I decided to get back to it.


There were relatively few models that needed any green stuff at all - the 'nids only needed it because the top & bottom halves didn't snap together completely, and you could see daylight between the gap. Most of the Marines were probably just me being picky, with the exception of Sergeant Lorenzo - for some unknown reason, they saw fit to cast his cape in two halves, which meant it required pretty extensive work. Since we were supposed to get another week of record temperatures stating tomorrow, I was determined to get everything primered today:


My original plan was to prime the Marines in white and the 'nids in black, but my can of white ran out halfway through the Marines, so I guess I'll find out what it's like to paint black-primed Marines...

On Deck: Grind, Space Hulk

So I had a busy week here, and the next two weeks don't look much better, so not a lot of progress was made. I thought I'd show the next few projects that are going to be occupying my time:


I bought Space Hulk at Origins, all the minis have been assembled and de-flashed, greenstuff work has been started, a bit of sanding and they'll be ready for primer. I'm a little torn about trying new techniques on the Marines - while I definitely want to get away from the basic basecoat/wash/drybrush method, it's the technique I used on my Techmarine (see the "Mini-Friendly Light Box" post below) and it came out great. It would be easily adapted to the Blood Angels from the Space Hulk set. Maybe I'll do the Marines in my traditional method and mix it up for the 'nids - I don't think I care for the standard GW black/purple color scheme that is usually used, so I'll probably change that. I saw a scheme over at Warseer that used Elf Flesh & purple ink that looked fantastic, so I might try to duplicate that.

The copy of Grind was acquired from a buddy of mine who decided to thin out his collection a bit - the minis are assembled, but unpainted. It actually worked out pretty well - I don't play Warmachine, but have been dying to try painting some Warjacks. the last thing I needed was to start playing another game that would require me to buy sourcebooks and build a whole new army, so this is a perfect way to give some Privateer Press models a try. Plus, one of the regulars at my local shop (who also serves as their painting guru) just became a Press Ganger, so I might take the models to one of his seminars to get advice on color schemes, etc. Either way, my friend assembled the models with his personal choice of arms (the game includes 30 different weapon arms) and I want to have options, so I am waiting on some neodymium magnets to arrive in the mail so I can start chopping the models apart and greenstuffing them.

The Ork Nobz are just one box out a full Ork army (1,000 points or so) I bought last year on Craigslist for peanuts, which is all unpainted and mostly still unassembled. It was all thrown in a box and it took me forever to sort it out and bag it up so I knew what went where, but that's finally done, so now I can start assembly. Since the Orks are going to be my "second" army, I plan on having lots of fun with the fluff and trying some ususual stuff with scratch building. I also recently bought a couple of airbrushes & a compressor that I've been getting the hang of, I suspect these will be invaluable for the Ork army in regards to weathering & stenciling.

...on top of all of the above, I have an 18-gallon tote in the closet that's completely full of Armorcast resin terrain I bought at Origins 2009 that I haven't touched yet, and a Zuzzy 4'x6' Terra-Flex terrain mat that has been sitting in my office for months. Oh, and a box of Tau somewhere that I got in a trade...