Grey Knights

My first Grey Knight squad complete.  A little more interesting to paint than previous models.

Space Wolves Land Raider

 I just finished painting a Land Raider in a Space Wolves scheme. It was pretty much my first time working with my new airbrush, so it was rather fun getting to learn how to use it.

The main colours were done with a black primer, the fang, and a zentithal style coat of russ grey.  A little bit of fenrisian grey and a drybrush of etherium blue topped it off.  Liberal spraying with agrax earthshade finished it off.  The rest is pretty self explanatory.  Only thing left is some decals and a SW shoulder pad for the techmarine gunner.

Returning to painting

After a short hiatus, I have got back into some more painting.  A couple of weeks ago my Badger 105 Patriot airbrush arrived from the States, and I was able to test it out with some base coats on some Grey Knights.  I am still awaiting a shipment of Vallejo model air paints from the UK to finish off my test model.  I'm hoping to achieve a zenithal effect, using black priming, a steel basecoat and a silver highlight.  Over that I hope to airbrush the force weapons and get some OSL glow over the model from the weapons.

In the meantime, I have been painting the odd SoB, experimenting with darker ice bases and trying to get my 1500pts finished off.

Here's the collection so far:

Retributor squad, Penititent Engine, 2x(almost) troop squads, Canoness, Exorcist Tank, Saint Celestine, Repentia, Seraphim squad and an Immolator.  Also the beginings of a Battle conclave (1x crusader and 2x DCAs)

Here's my Grey Knights.  I intend to start them off as an allied force, thanks to 6th ed.  I have a Librarian as HQ, one squad of terminators and one squad of Knights.

And here is a selection of my more recent paint jobs.

Converted death cult assassin, battle sisters, seraphim and repentia.

Battle Sister.

 

Sister Repentia

Old Immolator

I finally got around to finishing the final piece of my old SOB collection: the old style immolator.

The model itself is a little worse for wear, from where I've had to cut off searchlights, grab rails etc. that I had glued all over the thing as a 13 year old.  I stripped all the paint on the metal sections using Dettol (24 hours in undiluted Dettol removes paint like a charm).  On the plastic body I used greenstuff, primer and sandpaper to undo most of the damage.

Rather than stick to the rather boring black and white colour scheme, I elected to paint a few structures gold, so as to try and tie in with the Exorcist tank, and add some small red panels fore and aft.  Other than that, it was a pretty standard paint scheme.  

Unfortunately, the old rhinos are an ugly, primative beast, and the turret is out of proportion to the tank itself.  The sister in the top has a full gas mask/goggles setup, so the whole thing lacks character, compared to the exorcist (see below).

 In order to get the turret to hold together (it used to fall apart all the time) I used some araldite epoxy glue.  For some reason, I only have the heavy flamers for the turret, so I'll just have to proxy for meltas.


An airbrush and compressor are on the way as well.  Can't wait!

Making a cheap death cult assassin

DCAs are one of the few close combat units in an SOB army that are any decent.  Having five attacks on the charge (when using Uriah Jacobus) at initiative 6 is quite a handy thing, along with a 5+invul and FNP. Unfortunately, the models from GW are horribly expensive and they often go for close to retail on eBay. 

Following advice from a friend, I bought some of the new Dark Eldar Wyches plastics and adapted them to double swords.  At the same time, I trimmed off their pointy ears and the majority of the spikey stuff over their armour.  I used a bit of the liquid greenstuff to normalise their swords and smooth out any surgical scars.  A box of ten of these figures cost about the same as two DCAs, and so far I've converted four of them.  Today I got round to finishing the paint job on one of them.  Although it doesn't look exactly like the original, I actually quite like the way you can pose the plastic mini, making it a little less static than the rather dated originals.

More completed models

Here's some more photos showing my progress since I started in April until today.  Since I started repainting the minis, I've tried wet-blending, using a greater number of shades and being more liberal with my highlights - as well as getting more steady-handed.  I think this has resulted in some slightly better looking models than my first squad.

I've tried being a little more inventive with my bases, using more in the way of grass tufts, rocks and grit to get a more varied look.  I decided to go with a snow base theme for the army, mostly because it is simple, but also because it matches the general colour-scheme for the army.  This has been fairly simple to achieve with GW Mourn Mountain Snow texture paint, drybrushed white and some snow flock.  This week, I used some blue shades and some gloss coat to attempt and icy rock effects, which you can see in the second model on the right in the above pic.

This week I also tried a bit more NMM with a couple of power swords, first on a Crusader (as part of a battle conclave) and a Sister Superior. 

As part of detailing my general progress, here are some photos from my Repentia, Retributor, and Seraphim squads.

Back in April of this year, my friend Ben started to collect Space Wolves, and in a fit of nostalgia, I suddenly had to go find my old Sisters of Battle who had been sitting in a box, forgotten for 13 years.  I hadn't touched anything Warhammer 40k (or any GW/tabletop game) since my Sisters had been stashed away, and had completely forgotten how incredibly fun 40k is.

My expectations of what I would find, as I uncovered my old miniatures, were not high.  I felt that my painting as a 13 year old had been fairly decent, but one glance at the Canoness, Battle Sisters, Seraphim, and Immolator soon corrected that misconception.

I had painted my orignal army as the Order of the Ebon Chalice, purely based on how good the white and red robes looked against black power armor.  This was something that my childhood self had got correct.  After studying several painting guides, youtube videos and paitning blogs I went into Wellington to splurge on some paints, and found to my delight, that GW had just brought out the new range of paints.  My next stop was the supermarket, to buy some Dettol, nail polish remover and some toothbrushes.

After stripping the models down, regluing and undercoating, I started the repaint.

Since then I have brought my points total up 1500, played a few games, and have got myself well hooked on 40k, Sisters of Battle and miniature painting.

My army, as of June

My first model of the repaint - not fancy, but not entirely crap either.

A couple more from early on.  A suggestion from the guy at the GW shop was to use Tau Light Ochre to highlight the edges of the red, especially the guns - you can see this on the flamer.

A view of the back, showing my difficulties with white robes before I started using Celestra Grey, Ulthuan Grey and White Scar to do the shadows and highlights

The original squad repainted.  Of course the new codex calls for 10 models per squad.

The canoness.  Not nearly as crazy looking as the later model with flames and stuff.  Also I prefer to use Celestine and Uriah Jacobus as my HQ choices, so she makes a pretty Sister Superior proxy.  I'm quite a fan of how the highlighting on her face worked out.  I'll get round to shading the armor a bit more - perhaps when I spruce up the base a little bit.

Saint Celestine.  First attempt at gold armor.  used a Leadbelcher base, Seraphim Sepia shading and glazes made up of red, brown and yellow.  Highlights were donw with Gehanna's Gold and Ironbreaker.  I also stuck her on a bigger base, as she tips over too much on the little base.

The cloak was daunting, but came up ok using various shades of red.

My Exorcist tank, which absorbed many hours.

Same again, but you can see where I tried to add a bit of verdigris to the organ.

My first of three penitent engines.  Yes, I stupidly painted the flame incorrectly.

That was my efforts between April and June, photographed on my phone.  I'll get round to posting some photos of the new stuff, using the D3100.