Ultramarine Terminator Squad

Well, I finally finished painting the Ultramarine Terminator Squad from Assault on Black Reach. It was meant as a mini-project to inject some variety into my painting schedule. But unfortunately it has taken more time than I intended and set me back on my Chaos and Ork army progress.

 

 
I tried using the simplest painting technique I could think off to finish painting the squad in the shortest time possible. Here's what I did.

1 Basecoat

 

For the basecoat I painted a thin-layer of Regal Blue for the main armour; Boltgun Metal for the metal bits; Chaos Black for the sword blade; Scorched Brown for the leather armour; Scab Red/Graveyard Earth for the Purity Seal; 1:1 mix of Scorched Brown:Shining Gold for the iron halo and bullets; Astronimican Grey for the white parts; and Bleached Bone for the skull.   

2 Wash

 

Badab Black wash was used on the armour/metal bits while Devlan Mud was applied on the skull.

3 Midtones & Highlights

 

For the Midtones, a 1:1 mix of Ultramarine Blue:Regal Blue was applied to the armour; successive thin layers of Skull white was painted on the white parts; Shining Gold was applied on the iron halo; Blood Red/Bleached Bone (purity seal); a 2:1 mix of Scorched Brown:Bestial Borwn (leather armour); Dwarf Bronze (bullets); and 2:1 mix of Chaos Black:Boltgun Metal (sword blade).

For the highlights, Chainmail was used on the bolter and sword blade; 1:2 mix of Mithril Silver:Shining Gold was applied on the iron halo; and a 1:1 mix of Space Wolves:Ultramarine Blue was used to highlight the raised areas of the armour. Details such as the wording on the chest area of the armour was done using a pigment pen (thanks to help from a local forum.  

First attempt at painting a miniature face (human)
The Terminator Sergeant was my first serious attempt at painting a human face using Game Workshop techniques so they turned out just ok with plenty of room for improvement.

Basecoat of 1:1 mix of Vermin Brown:Scorched Brown

1:1:1 mix of Dwarf Flesh:Vermin Brown:Scorched Brown leaving deep recessed areas in basecoat colour

Pure Dwarf Flesh on raised areas + Wash of Orgryn Flesh

Finished off with a 2:1 mix of Dwarf Flesh:Skull White

Guess I no longer have any excuses to put off painting my Chaos and Ork armies.
Thanks for reading!

Working with metal and painting better whites

Chaos Obliterator

Working with metal miniatures for the first time has been anything but a pleasant experience. I found it extremely difficult to glue the small minuscule weapon pieces to the Chaos Obliterator's arms. At times it felt like a hair-pulling exercise in frustration. Thankfully most metal miniatures are being slowly replaced by Game Workshop's Citadel Finecast. Nonetheless, it was good to work on the Chaos Black Legion army again having neglected my Chaos army for quite some time ... even if it was just to assemble and undercoat the model.

Chaos Obliterator ... my first and most likely last metal miniatures

Gluing the weapons on both arms was frustrating to say the least

With some modifications - most likely in the choice of colours - to the cool painting tutorial at Glued My Fingers, I hope to get both Obliterators painted as soon as possible, in between work on the Ultramarines and Orks.

Painting better whites

Based on advice by bloggers such as limp, vuel, snake88 and ron, I decided to alter the white painting process slightly to improve the smoothness of the whites and reduce chalkiness. Using Astronomican Grey as the basecoat, then washing it with Badab Black before painting Skull White in a couple of thin and watered down layers resulted in better looking whites.

Painting whites: First try (left), second try (right)

Painting more whites: First try (left), second try (right)

There is room for improvement, but that's solely due to my lack of skill. With three more Ultramarine Terminators to paint, I won't be short of practice so hopefully I will get better at painting the whites.

Other Ultramarine Terminators in various stages of completion

Progress on the Orks

Only managed to basecoat three out of the five Ork Nobz I have assembled from the Assault on Black Reach (AoBR) set and that's simply not good enough. With free time at a premium, I have to somehow find a more efficient way to paint up my son's Ork army faster. Short of 'sleep-painting' (heh heh ... wouldn't that be a sight for sore eyes), I am hoping experience will equal faster painting.

Front view of Ork Nobz - basecoats only

Back view of Ork Nobz - basecoats only

Outside of the AoBR Orks, I have 5 Ork Burnas and 5 Ork Lootas being lined up for assembly. Budget constraints seem to be turning the emerging Ork army to an infantry heavy one. Oh well, unless our local hobby stores start accepting Ork Teeth as payment, I guess it will have to do until more moolah comes my way.

Assault on Black Reach - First painted model

It has taken a long time but I have finally finished painting a miniature from the Assault on Black Reach (AoBR) set. While better late than never, I do have mixed feelings with the end result.

Ultramarine Terminator (Front and Back view)

Ultramarine Terminator (Side views)

I was reasonably happy with how the blue armour turned out, but I kinda messed up the whites. Based on the pictures shown in the AoBR manual, the Games Workshop team painted such smooth looking whites. One reason could be that I did not follow the advice given in White Dwarf No.359 which suggested layers of a mixture of Space Wolves Grey and Graveyard Earth before ending with pure Skull White. As I am in a hurry to paint as quickly as I can (before AoBR becomes yesterday's starter set), I just went with Skull White --> Badab Black Wash --> Skull White.

Does anyone know of a quick way to paint smooth looking whites? Any suggestions are most appreciated. At least I have three more Termies to practise on before I attempt to paint the Ultramarine Terminator Sergeant.

Other progress on the AoBR set included assembly and undercoating of the vehicles i.e. the Ork Deffkopters and an Ultramarine Dreadnought.

Deffkopters and Dreadnought primed for paint.

Book of the Week - The Red King
Taking a short break from Black Library books to indulge in some Star Trek sci-fi stuff I have had in my collection for a long time.

At the moment, I am trying to reconnect to the Star Trek reading materials by jumping in to the series in a chronological order. At the moment, I am at Star Trek Titan - The Red King by Andy Mangels and Michael A. Martin. I am a fan of the authors' earlier work i.e. Star Trek Excelsior:Forged in Fire.

As always, thank you for reading and have yourself a good week.

Preparing Ultramarine Terminators for paint

It has been a slow week hobby wise. Most of my free time was spent glued to Steve Parker's page-turner i.e. Rynn's World i.e. the first in Black Library's Space Marine Battles novel series ... a book about the Crimson Fists Space Marine Chapter that I bought two-years ago! Having just got around to reading it, I haven't been able to put the novel down long enough to do any proper painting.

Reason for an unproductive hobby week.

All I managed to do was to add to the number of Assault on Black Reach (AOBR) miniatures undercoated so far, i.e. five Ultramarine Terminators has joined the ranks of five Ork Nobz and 10 Ork Boyz that were painted with a black undercoat quite sometime ago.

Fresh off the assembly line

Skull White undercoat ... check

AOBR Ork Nobz that were supposed to be painted together with Ghazghkull Thraka

Ork Boyz still in their undercoats

So technically, I have three armies on my plate namely the Ultramarines, Orks and Black Legion Chaos army. While this will definitely slow me down in terms of getting an army up and running, it will however make the painting sessions less monotonous. That can only be a good thing in the long run ... I hope so anyway.