Word Bearers Helbrute in a mini-diorama

After spending more than a month on the Helbrute, I have finally finished painting it ... at least I think I have. Some issues such as planning a mini-diorama in the Helbrute's base; incorporating the four Chaos gods' influence; doing some basic object source lighting as well as some repainting of the armour to show more depth resulted in this project taking longer than it should. And to add to my woes, I had to take about 150 over shots with various camera settings and lighting configurations (the Helbrute was too reflective but that's a story for another day) before I got the photos I wanted.

Word Bearers Helbrute and a warrior of Guilliman

Are you talking to me?

Side view (right) of the Word Bearers Helbrute

OSL effect from the vents is most obvious from this angle

Back view of the Helbrute with the Ultramarine's back armour on the ground

Initially I wanted to put a Space Marine head trophy at the end of the left arm's chain

Side view (left) of the Word Bearers Helbrute

From here you can see that the Ultramarine's line of sight is facing the Helbrute's face

I might still do some touch-ups/repaints later once I have had a fews days of looking over it. Overall, I believe I have done just about the best I could based on my current painting skill level. There are so many other painting techniques that I want to learn and utilise. I am taking stock of my shortcomings by doing plenty of soul searching as to the things I am doing wrong as well as the things that I am neglecting due to lack of patience, some of which I will write about and address in future posts.

Side view of the mini-diorama

Close up of the dying Ultramarine

Ripped off his back, the Ultramarine's back armour lies on the ground

I was very unhappy with my Dark Apostle which I completed previously as I thought I did some sloppy and lazy work which resulted in the armour looking very flat. I did the best repair job I could by painting in several layers of varying ratios of Red Gore:Blood Red.

My version of Marduk and the Warmonger (of the Black Library Word Bearers trilogy fame)

Back view of the Word Bearers Dark Apostle and Helbrute

With such a long time spent on my Word Beares army so far, my 2Q 2013 hobby schedule is dead on the water. While I am suppose to paint my Black Legion army concurrently, for some reason, I am not quite looking forward to it. I am contemplating taking a break from painting an army for gaming and re-starting my diorama project involving a Lord of the Rings Dragon and a Kingdom Death miniature, which will give me more opportunities to try out new painting techniques and improve myself. As always, thanks for reading and may your brushes stay pointy.

WIP: Word Bearers Helbrute with a quadpolar disorder

Unless you have been fully brainwashed by the false-Emperor's indoctrination, you would know that to be a Word Bearer is to embrace all the chaos gods equally. Upon close examination, the Helbrute seemed to have afforded me the chance to paint in all four chaos gods's influence - Tzeentch, Nurgle, Slaneesh and Khorne. I had to be careful not to overdo it or it would end up looking like a rainbow-coloured Barbie doll. First up was the many eyes in the Helbrute miniature. If that doesn't scream Tzeentch I don't know what does. So that one was easy ... one down three to go.

Tzeentch sees all ... whether you are naughty or nice

Another fairly easy one was the mouth/horns/tongue thingy sticking out from the left side of the Helbrute's body. To me, it looked like something that would adorn a Slaneesh daemonette. So I painted that thingy (for want of a better word) in purplish hues.

Slaneesh's influence but more pain than pleasure

With regard to Nurgle, I was a bit perplexed at first but later hooked on to the fact that the god of decay and death can actually be showcased by rotting flesh and rusted metal. So I focused on the fleshy right arm of the Helbrute which was carrying a multi-melta.

Nurgle decays everything at an accelerated rate

Finally, we have Khorne which is all anger and hate. What better to signify this than fires from the infernal engine that is powering the Helbrute. On a previous post I did a mini-tutorial on doing Object Source Lighting using the engine vents as the light source.

Khorne burns with hate fuelled by sugar and spice

On the unlikely event that you are not aware of how big the Helbrute miniature is, I took a picture of the model next to a 31 mm paper clip. The reason I did this was because the close-up pictures might give a false impression as to the scale I was working with.

Paper clips are useful for organising the many writings of Lorgar

Having to put so much attention into just one model is quite exhausting and it has thrown a spanner into my 2Q 2013 hobby schedule. It is very hard to resist painting in the details when the model is so beautifully crafted. But if I get bogged down with the details I will take forever to finish painting the Word Bearers Helbrute. And there are still so many things in this miniature that I need to work on.

Couldn't resist painting in the details for the Helbrute's wiring

Meanwhile, seeing that the base of the Helbrute is so big with a fair amount of empty space, I am also planning to do some minor miniature conversions to go along with this model. I am still undecided as to which chapter the space marine below should belong to but odds are it will be an Ultramarine.

Is that the Emperor's light I see?

Miniature conversions are completely new to me. So much so that I have never even used Game Workshop's green stuff before. I had better do some research before I start on the green stuff. I couldn't find any small sized sculpting tools so I got a cheap set of plastic ones that might just be a tad too big. Will give the humongous plastic tools a try anyway and see if I can make do. Wish me luck on my miniature conversion project and thanks for reading!

Some cheap plastic sculpting tools and the GW green stuff

Basic Object Source Lighting for Miniatures

While working on a miniature (Word Bearers Helbrute) that I hope to get done in time for a local painting competition called Golden Kris, I decided to try my skills at a simple method of object source lighting (OSL) which uses glazes. This method is based on the translucent nature of glazes which allows them to be used when painting reflected hues on top of a miniature's existing colours.

Bask in the light from the fires of hate

Stage 1: Light Source
Firstly, I needed a light source so I decided to paint the vents (or gills) at the back of the Helbrute as an outlet for heat emanating from deep within. To achieve that effect, I decided to use a simple three-step method, starting with dark colours and getting lighter towards the light source.

In short, Blood Red was first applied generously all over the vents to the extent that they spilled out of the vent. This was followed the application of Blazing Orange paint in lesser amounts with a little spillover outside the vents. Finally, Sunburst Yellow was painted at the centre of the vents signifying the hottest part of the heat source.

Stage 1 - Step 1: Apply Blood Red paint

Stage 1 - Step 2: Apply Blazing Orange paint

Stage 1 - Step 3: Apply Sunburst Yellow paint

Stage 2: Preparation for Reflected Light
Once the light source was established, I then finished painting (largely finished as there are a lot more touch ups I need to do) the area around the light source before applying the reflected light effects.

Areas surrounding the vents were painted up in preparation for the reflected light effects

In addition, I also had to see how actual light reflects from the painted surfaces. Because the light source was from within the miniature and I could not place a torchlight into the miniature and shine it out from the vents, I decided to do the next best thing which was build some mock-ups.

With that in mind, I painted up three sprues to represent the three main surfaces that would be affected by the reflected light i.e. bronze metal parts, silver metal tubing and the dead skin covering the silver metal tubing. Following that, I shined a torchlight (using a yellow bulb) at the sprues.

Before a torchlight was shone on the mock-ups

After a torchlight was shone on the mock-ups

Behind the scenes look

What the results showed me was that the surfaces reflected an orange-yellowy light. So now I at least had a rough idea of the hue that I wanted to achieve.

Stage 3: Painting the Reflected Light
Now, the things were set for the actual painting of the reflected light. Using a 1:3 mixture of Blazing Orange:Sunburst Yellow and lots of water, I created a glaze that best mimicked the effect that resulted from the yellow bulb of the torchlight.

As you can see from the picture below, the glaze has a low level of opacity that permits you to see the surface under the layer of glaze. To know if the glaze is at the correct opacity - swish some of the paint to the side of the palette and check if you can see through the layer to the palette itself.

No this is not an Egg McMuffin - it's the glaze preparation

Finally I applied the glaze on areas which were in direct line-of-sight of the heat source emanating from the vents. I will need to study in detail if there are any areas I missed out but it's largely done I suppose. If you think there are any areas I missed out please feel free to comment and let me know. This is my first attempt at OSL and while it may not be 'Eavy Metal standard, I am still happy with it.
Can I do better? Most definitely but it's a first step for me towards better OSL techniques.

Basic OSL for the Word Bearers Helbrute

Building a W40K Chaos Army - 2Q 2013 Schedule

No more pussyfooting around, it's time to put up or shut up. More than one-and-a-half-years into this hobby and I am no closer to putting up an army to game.So I sat down and finally put to paper a rather ambitious schedule over the next three months to finally get something on the gaming table.

Almost unachievable but it does spell out what needs to be done to get an army up in 3 months

Some 18 months from my very first miniature till today, I have only managed to complete painting roughly 53 miniatures and assembled/primed about 35 or so. Not exactly a blistering pace, which makes my 2Q plan above that little bit more crazy. First week of April will either see me triumphant in completing the Word Bearers Dark Apostle thus kick-starting my grand hobby schedule, or simply crash in flames filled with utter humiliation in seeing a plan fail before it has properly begun.

Kinda hurt my arm (I think I pulled a muscle) while cleaning my grandma's grave during the Qingming festival so my hands were a bit shakier than normal this weekend resulting in me doing more assembling than painting. Even then I kept dropping pieces all over the place while the super glue was still on the separate pieces. Sigh.

Nonetheless, I still managed to finish assembling and priming a Black Legion Forgefiend. As I lack the skill to use magnets, I guess blue tacks will have to suffice for the time being when utilising the various weapon choices available to the Forgefiend.

Forgefiend with various possibilities in head and weapon choices

I also have a Word Bearers Helbrute fully assembled and primed so that will at least make my life that bit easier in April's punishing schedule.

This Helbrute is going to be in Word Bearers colours

Looks like I have my work cut out for me. While I am itching to get off the blocks, I am also partly dreading the amount of work that lies ahead. Am gonna need all the luck that I can get. 

Rise of a Chaos Space Marine Alliance

It seemed as if the Gods of Chaos themselves had gotten into my head over the past few days. I started assembling one Chaos Cultist to see how it would look ... two days later, the Chaos miniatures in the GW Dark Vengeance starter set were all done and ready for priming.

Finished assembling all the Chaos minis in the Dark Vengeance set in a 2-day mind-blurring haze

Now I am usually a "paint the separate pieces and then glue them together" kinda guy but I was thinking that if I went that route for the DV minis, I would never finish painting them in a timely manner. So for the most part, the Chaos minis in this set will be painted fully assembled ... nearly all of 'em anyway. Old habits die hard so the front of the Hellbrute, the Chaos Lord's sword and the Chaos Chosen Champion's backpack will be painted separately before being glued on.

Awesome details all round ... Chosen will join Abbadon's army while the Hellbrute seems destined for a Word Bearer army

Chaos Cultists awaiting an undercoat and the teachings of a Word Bearer Dark Apostle

After a lot of thought, I decided to use Abbadon the Despoiler and a Word Bearer Dark Apostle as the first leaders of my Chaos Army Alliance. There will be other HQs down the road (Typhus and a Daemon Prince seems the more likely future projects) but for now, a Black Legion / Word Bearers alliance is one I am going with. Abbadon was one of my first HQ purchases many moons ago while the Dark Apostle was just grabbed yesterday.

Abbadon and ... err ... Urkel? Not sure what to name the Word Bearer Dark Apostle yet

Other Non-Chaos Projects
Such is the power of the Gods of Chaos that I haven't been spending much time with my other projects. The Ork Loota aka Rokkit Mek remains very much a work-in-progress ...

Early stages of the Ork Rokkit Mek

... while the Dragon in my future diorama has barely been painted. On hindsight, choosing a white undercoat for this model might not have been the wisest thing I have done because the many small nook and crannies in this Finecast model has made it very difficult to paint an undercoat without some white showing underneath. Not unlike the problem I faced with Lelith.

Initially a homage to The Hobbit but now part of a Diorama with Kingdom Death miniatures

So it has been a rather busy week hobby-wise. Pretty physced up to accelerate my painting for both the Chaos and Ork armies. It's finding the time that's hard now.