Berzerkers basecoated

Black Legion Khorne Berzerkers' basecoats are finally done

Basecoating these miniatures en masse has, at times, been a tiresome process. While this factory assembly line approach to painting is certainly a quicker and more efficient way to paint a squad of miniatures, the method does have one serious drawback. Nothing spells BOREDOM more than having to paint the same colour on the same parts, again and again. That being said, it does help a noob like me paint faster so ... as a commissar would probably say ... suck it up soldier.         

As mentioned in earlier blogs, a detailed how-to-paint-Khorne-Berzerkers will eventually be compiled. For now, a quick step-by-step guide to what has been done so far can be seen below.

All the non-gold metal parts were given a layer of Boltgun Metal and a wash of Badab Black.

Gold metal parts were given a basecoat comprising a 1:1 mix of Scorched Brown and Dwarf Bronze

Finally, miscellanous parts were basecoated - eyes were painted with Dark Angel Green; chainsword tassel with Mechrite Red; leather straps with Scorched Brown; and.teeth on the helmet were eventually painted as non-gold metal parts

While working on the Berzerker squad's Skull Champion, I got an idea to also do a how-to-paint guide for the champion's power sword. Its going to be an obsidian blade with what hopefully will be a sinister-like green glow. If it fails ... we could call it the Nickelodeon sword. Word up?

Sneak peek of what will become a LEGEN ... wait for it ... DARY sword

Merry Xmas and Happy Holidays

May your Xmas surprises be merry ones,
May you be safe in the company of loved ones for the holidays,
May your new year be better than the last,
May you be well and happy.

P.S. A BIG thank you to my wife for making the little santa hats for my miniatures. =)

A slight detour to ... a galaxy far far away

They are still miniatures and it's still sci-fi ... but of a different kind. After a morning appointment at a local mall, I came across a mini-exhibition on Star Wars Lego miniatures. They looked rather cool so I snapped a few pictures for the blog. I am more of a Star Trek fan but Star Wars still holds a special place in my heart. Star Wars was the first sci-fi I ever saw as a kid together with those old black-and-white Flash Gordon TV series (Yes, I am that old). Reading Issac Asimov's Foundation books strengthened my love for sci-fi (as Lord of the Rings did for fantasy) and Star Trek sealed it. GW's Warhammer 40K is the icing on me sci-fi cake.

I actually snapped a lot more pictures than is displayed in this blog entry. But being the geeky nerd that I am, I probably messed up some of the photo-taking cause they were not saved on my mobile phone camera's memory card. Oh well ... to the pictures that did make it from warp.

Battle for Hoth
These, I thought, were the best of the miniatures on display. I am bit bias here as Empire Strikes Back was IMHO the best Star Wars movie ever made.

Imperial Landing
A scene synonymous with Lord Vader's signature theme. If look carefully, you can see that one of the imperial guards has fallen flat on his face.

Battle for Endor
Ewoks ... the less said the better.

Tatooine
Home of a young Skywalker.

Clone Wars
Why Lucas why ... did you have to spoil the romanticism of Star Wars with CGI !!!

That's all folks! Hope you enjoyed the pictures.

A sign from the Skull Throne

Khorne is displeased with the progress of his berzerker squad. A not too subtle sign in the form of a broken paint brush is the blood god's way of saying paint faster or else ... =)

So what has another week brought me? Well, the painstakingly slow process of painting multiple thin layers of Scab Red means only the basecoat for the berzerkers' armour have been completed. But at least I managed to tinker with some alternative lighting in order to brighten up the photos I had been taking. Budget constraints has put the IKEA lamp out of reach for the foreseeable future so I did the best with what I had in hand.

First, I used natural sunlight as a light source.

 

Then, I tried taking the picture using a car-emergency-kit as a light source.

For a future 'How-to-paint-Khorne-Berzerkers' tutorial that I plan to put up later, I decided to go with the second method of lighting. The following pictures are sort of a sneak-preview of what's to come later. I put them up mainly to show the huge difference additional lighting had contributed towards picture quality. On my previous blog entry, the pictures did not turn out too well due to bad lighting.

A behind-the-scenes look at my temporary lighting solution in-lieu of a proper work lamp.

Desperate times call for desperate measures. =)

Next up for painting will be the zerkers' metal parts (both gold and non-gold). With my son at his cousins' place for a couple of days due to the school holidays ... I should make slightly better progress at painting. But that's if I can get off my lazy arse and stop watching 'Supernatural' and 'The Walking Dead' marathon sessions on TV. Going slightly off-topic ... the ending of Walking Dead (Season 2) gave me massive goosebumps and spooked me no end. Superb writing for the series. Anyway ... back to the forges ... Khorne demands it.

Mini-anniversary ... progress so far and a future project

Mini-anniversary

Exactly four months ago, to the day, I began my journey into the world of miniature painting. In this mini-anniversary of sorts, I find myself looking back at that fateful day which has resulted in me spending many long hours hunched over a table with a paint brush in hand, miniature models up close to my eyes (thanks to a bummer combination of short-sightedness and middle-age), paint all over my hands as well as aching shoulders. BUT it has been absolutely worth it! 

It started innocently enough. Having been a long-time fan of Black Library’s Warhammer 40K publications, I decided to find out more about the lore and background story of the sci-fi novels I had been reading. That brings me back to July 27, the day I bought a copy of the Warhammer 40K Rulebook. Flipping through the pages, I found my eyes invariably drawn to the beautifully painted models instead of reading the lore that I had initially sought. I was hooked … the rest is history.

Painting miniatures is a great stress-reliever. After a hectic day at work, it’s always nice to lose oneself for awhile in the hobby. Moreover, I am very lucky in that some fellow hobbyists have been very helpful and supportive of my attempts at miniature painting. That has inspired me to work at becoming a better and faster painter.

So after four months and only 12 fully painted miniatures, I decided to take stock of my situation and see what the future holds for me in the coming months.

Progress so far ...

Firstly, my main priority is to complete the Chaos Space Marine and Ork armies. On that front, progress has been slow over the past three weeks. Using watered-down Chaos Black, I finally managed to fully undercoat my Khorne Berzerkers.

Following this, I applied a basecoat of Scab Red on the armour of one the ‘zerkers using a ‘Eavy Metal technique I read about. For the benefit of fellow noobs that may be reading my blog – the ‘Eavy Metal team is a group of expert painters from Games Workshop.

 

In this case, the basecoat comprised up to five or more, very thin coats of Scab Red. The reason I did this, instead of using just one thick coat of paint, was to ensure an even and smoothly-coloured basecoat. It worked but was rather time consuming process. One ‘zerker’s armour basecoat finished … just seven to go. O_O 
Anyway, when I am done, I will be compiling it into a step-by-step how-to-paint guide.

Future project ... Citadel Finecast

For future projects, I got a great idea for a blog topic from Alvin of HobbyForge. He suggested I do a blog on a Finecast model project. So far, I have only worked with plastic models so it will definitely be a challenge to work on Finecast’s resin models.

Over the past four months, I have managed to amass a collection of Finecast models, all of which I have yet to do any work on.

But a recent acquisition from Hobby Forge i.e. Ghazghkull Thraka has given me the confidence to finally assemble and paint a Finecast model. It’s the biggest model of all the Finecast models that I have, so it should be the easiest one for a beginner to work with … I think. 

So coming soon are blog entries on the trial and tribulations of a noob’s work on a Finecast model … warts and all. Should be good for a laugh =)

Well, that concludes my lengthiest blog entry yet. Hopefully my future blogs will have more pictures and less blah blah blah ...  

Primed and ready for painting

It has been an unproductive two weeks, painting-wise. I did, however, manage to semi-assemble and prime the following miniatures:

Five chaos space marines and (including an aspiring champions with power fist and plasma gun; one marine with a melta gun and another with a plasma gun).

Eight Khorne Berzerkers (including a skull champion with a plasma pistol and power sword).

Ten ork boyz (armed with just sluggas and choppas).

Unfortunately, the can of spray paint already feels so much lighter. I hope I will have enough to paint up the Chaos Rhino, Land Raider AND Defiler before the can runs dry (fingers crossed). The spray paint gives a more even coat of paint which always a good thing for vehicles.

All thats left to do with these miniatures is to paint on a coat of watered-down chaos black from the pot to cover the spots that I did not manage to hit with the spray can. After that ... its time to countinue painting. =)

Main focus of my painting over the coming weeks will be on the chaos army with some orks to break up the monotony. Might even try to finally assemble the Rhino transport in between the painting sessions.

Must phsych myself up ..... Gambatte! (Do your best) Jiayu! (Be stronger) 

Oh well, you know what they say about the best laid plans ....

Getting organised

The more I paint, the more I realise just how much this hobby rocks. With that realisation also comes an epiphany, if you will, of what this hobby will entail. For one, my current workstation is a temp one located in the master bedroom (I don't know how my missus puts up with me but she does, bless her) and I will need to eventually find a proper place in the house to paint and work on the hobby.

For now, I am going about getting things organised first.

Paint pots have finally been placed in a small plastic drawer/shelf thingy. It's also a great mood setter cause looking at all the paint pots just makes me want to paint.

Previously, I was also haphazardly working on some models without a proper plan. Now thanks to an inspiring discussion about the hobby with a fellow hobbyist who blogs at thewildhost.blogspot.com I have decided to organise my assembling process into little 'manufactorums'.

However, manufactorum output is still unsatisfactory with the chaos marines and orks being produced at 37.5% and 31.25% capacity respectively. If only both armies had commissars ... the factory manager needs to be made an example of ... heh heh.

I haven't done much painting lately but I did get to play with the liquid green stuff.

It was fairly easy to use. By using a small brush, I managed to fill up a huge gap in this ork boyz's left shoulder. It's funny how GW gets to sell products to cover up manufacturing defects whereas lets say in the case of a Japanese/Korean factory, such defects may end up in a reject pile. Oh well ... gotta hand it to GW ... they sure know how to make more moolah!

Squad anhrefn du lleng un

After some frustrating moments with the highlights and decals, the first five-man team in a future 10- to 15-marines chaos black legion squad is finally done.

I decided to go with Games Workshop's Chaos Wastelands base and added a mixture of Citadel Green Grass and GaleForce9's static grass. Was looking for a combination of green grasslands under initial corruption by chaos. Highlights not really noticeable from afar because the mixture of codex grey and chaos black had too much of the latter. 

Decals gave me a tough time ... tried using Mr.Mark Softer ... something I got for building my "One Piece Ship Model" (Its a Japanese Anime model), but the decals did not smooth down well. It kinda creased a little bit which was a real bummer. I also toned it down a little with some gryphonne sepia wash. The Alpha Legion shoulder decal markings look a bit muted but I suppose it would be preferable to it being to bright and yellow.

 

Well, its a start ... barely. I am currently assembling another five-man team, this time including the aspiring champion, icon bearer and two marines carrying speacial weapons. I have never played a game of W40K table top gaming before so am not sure which weapons would be good. For now I will likely go for a plasma gun and melta gun. They seem like safe bets ... at least I hope they are.

Waaagh! Meet Ugg and Ogg ...

Fnished painting the first two ork boyz today. They are essentially complete with perhaps some highlighting on the leather yet to be done. They are the first pair in a potential army of 40+ ork boyz horde.

For Ugg (picture, left) I tried my hand at battle damage on his helmet.

I also tried to do some bad moon markings on Ugg's right shoulder armour. It didn't come off too well as the wavy black flames were not consistent and were leaning in all directions.

Leather on the back still need some highlights but not too sure what to use on a calthan brown base. Did a bit of snakebite leather on the upper shoulder straps (not too noticebale in the picture) but it seemed too much of a contrast.

Footnote: One whole pot of goblin green was sacrificed in the making of Ugg and Ogg! Unfortunately for me, the paint was not used on them. Instead, through a freakish combination of clumsiness and lost of focus, I "catapulted" 2/3 of the paint in the pot up into the air and all over my hands AND then proceeded to drop the pot and lost almost all the remaining third of paint. My arms, hand and fingers were completely covered in green ... should have snapped a picture but was to angry at the time. =P

I have primed another 2 orks as a project for my son and me. They are both similar-looking so I guess it will be easier for him to follow my steps as I paint. Not too sure how to go about teaching him miniature painting as I am no expert myself. Moreover, he has the attention span of spongebob squarepants so it will be tough to get him to focus. =) If any of you guys have experience teaching young kids how to paint miniatures, any tips would be most appreciated.

These orks were primed before I got my hand of a can of citadel chaos black spray paint. I had used Krylon Fusion Spray Paint. but personally I was not too happy with the result as it seemed powdery. I guess it was due to the paint-plastic bonding process.

First pair of Chaos Space Marines

Managed to get some work done on my Black Legion Army. Below is the first pair of space marines that are still work-in-progress but about 80% done. Have yet to place the Black Legion decal on the shoulder pads, put in the final highlights of the black armour, and base it.

Gold parts are a tad bright because I was too enthusiastic when highlighting with burnished gold. Plan to go easier on the bright highlights on later marines. But after some trail and error I kinda liked a mid-tone layer of 1:1:1 ratio of tin bitz:dwarf bronze:burnished gold, which I discovered from a tutorial on you tube - Black Legion Tutorial by GirlPainting