Playing catch-up on TOEMP Challenge #1, part 2

I was able to finish up the six Hardened Veterans last night, bringing me up to speed for the Tale of Even More Painters competition. Two meltagunners, three basic lasgun-armed troopers and the proxy Sergeant Harker, who in my army's fluff will be called Sergeant Janos. It seems to me that Harker is an analog of "Blain" from Predator, so I figured using Jesse Ventura's true last name would be an appropriate homage.

I have to say, being able to just focus on a handful of miniatures definitely made the whole process go much faster and kept my enthusiasm up. The trouble with painting horde armies is the sheer number of infantry, which I usually attack in large blocks of 30+ models at a time. While it certainly helps to get large swaths of troops done at once, it's awful boring painting the same thing over and over and over and over...

Here's a shot of the newly-armed veterans squad as an entire unit - I have another five painted veterans armed with various heavy and special weapons that I'll be using for the seeds of the next two veteran squads. One will be armed with plasma guns, and the other with grenade launchers and a missile launcher.

Lastly, I was asked to provide a comparison shot of the 'basic' infantry to show the regular paint scheme vs. the reversed scheme on the Vets. This is the 1st platoon/1st squad in the standard red fatigues and grey armor.

Overall, the vets are one of my favorite units - even though they die like dogs in every game they take part in!

Playing catch-up on TOEMP Challenge #1, part 1

As I was out of state over the week that the first Tale of Even More Painters event took place, I was unable to participate. However, after I finished up the Deathstrike launcher I dove in to try and catch up. The first challenge was to paint up 75 points worth of troops and as such I intended to finish off the second half of my Hardened Veterans squad, since I'd re-built the squad following the release of the new codex. Five veterans (including two melta-gunners) and a proxy Gunnery Sergeant Harker were assembled and primered:

Since I had my camera right by my painting table, I figured I'd document the painting process from the primered to finished states. I start off all my infantry with Vermin Brown on any exposed skin as the basis for the flesh tones.

After the Vermin Brown is on, I paint any exposed eyes white with a thin line of black for the pupils - In this case, only the proxy Harker fig has exposed eyes, the rest of the unit has FW helmets with respirators, so I decided to wait on the lenses until later in the process. Once the eyes are done I use bronzed flesh followed by elf flesh to pick out any extreme highlights. After that I got started on the main colors - My veteran squads have a reversed paint scheme from my standard infantry, with grey fatigues and red armor. I started off with a Shadow Grey undercoat on the fatigues, and Dark Flesh for the armor.

Once the base colors were on, I used a light drybrush of Fortress Grey on the raised areas of the fatigues, and a heavy drybrush of Blood Red on the armor. I find painting bright red over a black undercoat ends up looking very muted and streaky, so I usually start with a reddish brown undercoat. The reds tend to 'pop' much better that way.

At that point, the majority of the colors were done and it was time to delve into the detail work. I used Enchanted Blue for the weapon housings as well as the lenses on the helmets, then I went in with Boltgun Metal on the barrels and whatnot for the weapons, as well as the respirator masks. I picked out the meltagun barrels and the Aquilas on the breastplates and helmets with Shining Gold, but at that point I ran out of painting time and had to call it a night.

Not too much remains - I still need to do the backpacks, gloves, and webbing in leather, pick out any grenades and such in their appropriate colors and paint up the bases. No painting time for me tonight, but I'm hoping I'll be able to knock them out tomorrow evening, just in time for the 2nd challenge deadline!