More Emperor's Children Land Speeders

Greetings folks and it is a farewell to something. A farewell to Slaaneshii TwiddlyBits, the project is done and so are they. Au Revoir TwiddlyBits, it's been fun.

These two form a wing of three speeders when combined with the other tornado from the last post. For the longest time I wasn't sure about heavy flamers on speeders from a practical standpoint, I figured that firing into the wind wasn't a great idea. While painting these though I got to thinking (this tends to happen when I am doing more mechanical processes like edge highlighting, try it, really helps to get inside the designers heads sometimes). The flamers are on turrets, they can be rotated down and around. Now think of this, land speeders are kind of like helicopters, fairly high speed, low altitude and fond of strafing. So you're an infantryman in cover, you think you are safe, then three of these things zoom overhead dumping burning fuel as they pass. Urgh, doesn't bear thinking about. I am no longer at all bothered about the practicalities! The combo of heavy flamer for anti-infantry and the multimeltas for anti-tank is a handy one in theory.

I'm not going to go into huge details on the painting, I went over that in the last entry on these lads. What I will mention is the lack of too much weathering. The tanks get plenty of dust and dirt but the aircraft do not. The reason for this is that it is way too easy to overdo aircraft weathering. Planes and the like are twitchy things and don't work so well if the parts get fouled with muck. I have seen dusty, dirty aircraft but it is a thin skim that gets cleaned fast. I've seen models recently that look like they would crash more than fly. A bit of chipping and dinging is fine, but go easy on the dirt.

I fear Mulder is about to be disapointed.

Next week I am off on holiday, Mrs PVP really needs a rest from work so we're going off with friends to spend a week near a pool. Relaxation for the win. I've got a couple of posts queued so I'm leaving Mulder behind to throw the switches and post them on time. Hopefully they'll go up as planned and I'll see all you lovely people a week on monday. Have fun folks.

TTFN

A trio of purple tank snipers

Arr shipmates, time for more purple marines!

This time it is a bevvy of Predator Annihilators. Three of these things caning out nine lascannon shots a turn at space marine accuracy is enough to make any armour commander's eyes water.

TwiddlyBits are back too, you'll also notice that the weathering is a touch more subtle than last time. I managed to kill off the ridiculously saturated Karak Stone's coverage by thinning it with a bit of dilute isopropyl alcohol. Isoprop is one of those handy chemicals in painting as it is excellent for cleaning things, thinning alcohol based paints and in this case: killing the acrylic medium a little to thin the paint coverage a bit.

While we are talking about alcohol based paints, I am growing less enchanted with the Vallejo Liquid Gold. As it gets older it seems to start to clag up and form clumps. This makes it infuriating to both mix smooth and apply, you have to fiddle around and inevitably spend time cutting in with the basecoat as applying it cleanly is a pain. Sadly, it seems to be brilliant for a few weeks and then it starts to deteriorate. Did I get moisture in it on some overly humid day? Who knows. Suffice to say, I think I'll be trying out the Army Painter gold to see if it is as much a straight copy of the old citadel metallics as their excellent steel colours are. Frankly, all I want is shining gold.

Something I am very happy with though is the lovely patina achieved by the AK Interactive Rust Streaks. The trick of being able to use white spirits to alter the coverage and location of the paint without harming the acrylics underneath is very nifty. I will do a review at some point in the future.

The TwiddlyBits have become a major part of the army's character and helps tie the crew to the tank through the shoulder pad decoration. Speaking of crew:

Something I had never thought of doing; using a guard torso in a space marine turret. I like it. There's no reason at all that space marine tanks should be driven and crewed by space marines. In fact it makes no sense, you spend all of the time and effort to select, surgically modify and train a marine. You equip this fellow in the finest protective gear known to mankind (increasing his bulk by about 30%) and then sit him in the cramped confines of a tank. Makes not even a little bit of sense. Surely chapter serfs and servitors would be the choice? Most chapters (and indeed the chaos legions to a lesser extent) have a traditional selection process and secrets that they must protect. Fail selection and you can never go home. You belong to the chapter and serve as best you can. How better than in a tank? Frees the marines for the kind of mobile warfare they do best and saves killing elite warriors when the tank inevitably gets annihilated by one of the 40k universes many lethal thingies. I think I'll be nicking this concept.

Well, that is almost it for Project Purples, 6 predators and 2 speeders down. 2 More speeders to go. Hopefully they'll be finished by the end of the week. Until then...

TTFN

Chaotic Land Speeders (yes really!)

Greetings one and all from the house of Nurgle. Yup, the grandfather is currently visiting me and is doing his best to lay me low with his little bacterial helpers. I have prevailed though and actually got some work done today. Hurrah! That work is in the form of a pair of Chaos Space Marine Land Speeders:

I've always been a little confused as to the complete lack of land speeders in the Chaos armies. They were around in the Heresy and indeed anti-grav was more prevelant in the Heresy. So why no Speeders? Can only assume it was to distance the Codicies and prevent them being nothing more than spikey loyalists. However, if you aren't a tournament gamer then your hobby belongs only to you! Do what you like! In this case, the client had assembled the four speeders on the workbench as a trio of tornados and a very nifty typhoon.

Small alterations give them a chaotic feel, the icon on the front and the marauder helmets being the example here. These speeders were initially painted in the same way as the Predators - preshaded and then painted purple through the airbrush.

The four typhoon launchers make for a really nice "X-wing"-esque configuration. The only thing I would plead with any future commissioning clients (and indeed anyone painting one of these) is to not glue the crew torso elements in. Assemble the models - arms, head torso - but do not glue them to the hips. It makes it all but impossible to paint the very visible instruments and really tough to paint the crew. I did my best with these.

I kept twiddlybits to a minimum on these as there are so many cut-in areas that if I applied twiddlybits everywhere it would be a mess. Instead, I kept it to shoulder pads, the tail and the flaps.

Apologies for reletively terse post but I am tired. Nurgle's minions are putting up a fight. Another pair of land speeders and the second trio of Predators still on the workbench so plenty more chaotic armour to come!

TTFN

A Parade of Purple Predator Panzers

Hello to one and all, remember these chaos chaps [Emperor's Children]? Well to outfit them for the slightly more rough-and-tumble world of Apocalypse gaming, they are getting some heavily armoured friends. Rather a lot of them in fact:

These are the first three Predators for this army. Yup, you heard me, first three, there is another trio of Predators - this time Annihilators - to come. So lets take a look at some painting right?

These are the first marine tanks that I've used the airbrush with. Really speeds up the basecoating stage. With these I did some preshading (where you spray black into the recesses and leave the rest white) before adding a couple of layers of Minitaire Ecchymose - which, by the way, is the purple bit of a bruise and I only know that because I have a Biomedical Sciences degree. Seriously, what is it with stupid paint names at the moment? Why not add "Purple" to the end of that, descriptive while retaining that smart alec feel. Harumph. Anyway, tangent klaxon is sounding, on with the show. The result is that the edges glow white through the top coat and self highlight. It won't work for everything, but for Slaaneshii purple tanks, its a winner.

The TwiddlyBits(TM) elements of the scheme went a whole hell of a lot faster now that we have an actual paint to replace the dry Lucius Lilac. Hello Dechala Lilac (see? Obscure reference plus actual colour, that's how to do it, sheesh) and some freeform patterns. I deliberately kept them random but structured in the same way, mostly geometric with occasional curves and loops. In my mind these gradually change and shift with the mood of the crew. The weathering is perhaps a little heavy but I have a reason for that... beware Karak Stone. This thing is the most heavily pigmented paint in the damn range - I now discover - seriously, foundation paints weren't this dense. One swipe of a drybrush and I had inadvertantly painted a great swathe of Karak Stone over the purple. Well, you can imagine, sound the Panic-Tuba. Mercifully a combination of the client talking me down and realising that they could just have been driving though claggy clay mud and some remedial highlighting with bone fixed it. I think I just went into artist-meltdown a little as the result was so very not what I was expecting. Forgot my own advice. Everything is fixable.

While I kept the weapons nice and clean the trophy racks were lightly rusted with the AK Interactive Rust Streaks. (Given that I use a lot of different companies now I think I'll have to figure out a glossary of abbreviations), the trophies themselves were also weathered with a wash of very thinned Karak Stone, important as otherwise they stand out too much. An Imperial Fist and an Ultramarine graciously donated their helmets to the cause.

While we're talking trophies I thought I'd mention how I did the severed head as it came out nicely. If nicely is the word. A Rakarth Flesh basecoat was shaded with Agrax Earthshade and some patchy Athonian Camoshade followed that to give a mottled look. A quick rehighlight with Rakarth, some Pallid Wych Flesh eyes and then on to adding a discrete amount of blood. Given that this head was repeated on two tanks, I painted the service studs silver on one and as boils on this one. The boils are just Bugmans Glow with a Balor Brown "head", eww.

And that is your lot. Another three Predators and four renegade Land Speeders are on the painting table then it is back into more guard. Huzzah!

TTFN

Sonic Dreadnought

Hello to one and all. Today we have probably the loudest vehicle in all the multiverse:

An Emperor's Children Sonic Dreadnought! This badass lump of resin is a complete kit from Forgeworld (and haven't we seen a lot of them lately?) that I've painted for the same client that commisioned the purple chaos marines we've been seeing on the blog lately. For those who might be unfamiliar with the lore concerning these things, some of Slaanesh's chaos marines are so plumbed in to sensation that they modify their senses to perceive everything in terms of art and music. To them a sunset and the screams of the dying are the same. To further enhance this experiance they use musical weapons that use harmonics and resonant frequencies to burst and shatter their victims while adding to the music of battle that they are addicted to. This thing is a Noise Marine champion interred in the walking life support mechanism of a dreadnought but still attacking with his favourite weapon:

from the excellent Order of the Stick.

Following some painful painting experiances recently I decided to paint the gold first. Normally "inside out" sums up most of my proceedure decisions but the liquid gold is easier to apply in broad strokes. I then washed the Liquid Old Gold with Agrax Earthshade and got to cutting in the purple.

Just like the others gloss black weapons give a classy contrast to the rich purple and golds and the green gem spot colours provide a bit of visual interest. I resisted painting the Twiddly Bits that have featured on the other models in this commission because it is already a very, very busy figure. The clean purple plates are some of the only relief that the eye gets!

To try and reduce the "toy-like" appearance of such a bold model I rusted up the exhaust pipes (always cheap metal) and added plenty of oil around the joints and pistons. This created a really nice contrast between the grungy workings and the gleaming armour plates. The rusting was done with a new product for me: AK Interactives Rust Streaks. This is an enamel paint that means that you can mess about with it using white spirit that won't hurt the acrylics. In this case I just thinned it down and glazed it over the pipes and exhaust vents. It is translucent and created a lovely rusty not rusted look.

For the base I just used lumps of cork rubble, modelling sand and a few Secret Weapon bricks (I won some Secret Weapon stuff in a contest recently so picked up some of the bricks and the snow I used on santa). To my mind the bricks are a little thin but they help make the dreadnought look bigger so that works. The heap of tanks that I showed you in an earlier post are underway and will be finished over the next couple of weeks. Not next week though because Pirate Viking Painting is going TO WAR!

You might remember last year that I went off to the Beard Bunker in Oxford for a paintathon? Well, I'm going back for the campaign week this time! I'm just 21 half painted Dwarfs from a 3000 point horde of the little dudes and I intend to do some grudge filled harm. To top it off, the week of awesome begins tomorrow with our - sort of - annual pilgrimage up to GW HQ in Nottingham for the mad apocalypse events that we call Nerd Thunder! This time it is four 1st founding Space Marine armies facing off against a huge Ork horde in Nerd Thunder IV: Guns of Nuvverork! Pictures will, of course, be up here and on the Beard Bunker for all to enjoy. As this is one of my holiday weeks there will of course be not a whole bunch of progress on current projects but come March we will see the second titan stride forth and a host of purple tanks try to avoid his feet! See you soon folks.

TTFN

Bring the Noise (marines)

Hola fellows and fellowettes. Today we've got slannesh's favourite sons on the blog, more of the blasphemous Emperor's Children.

These are the second squad I've painted for the same client, part one can be found here. These went a whole hell of a lot faster thanks to using the Vallejo Liquid Gold rather than the citadel four pot method.

The purple is just Naggroth Night, highlighted a couple of times through Xereus Purple through to Genestealer Purple. Druchii Violet wash took them back to a proper "Cadbury's" purple. Then on with the Liquid Gold. Weapons were just gloss black, the skin tone is worth a closer look.

Now that is a face that only a mother could love. I used Rakarth Flesh - rapidly becoming indespensible - washed in Reikland Fleshtone and highlighted first in Rakarth Flesh and then a mix of Rakarth and Pallid Wych Flesh. As you can see the Twiddly Bits have made a reappearance made with thinned Lucius Lilac (pay £30 for thinned versions of a few of the Dry pigments? Ho ho ho, no. Just add a drop of Vallejo thinner and some water...).

The champion, once again, gets more Twiddly Bits in a stripe across Him/Her and a snacky sword. I was really torn about what colour to paint the sword in but am happy I went for a warpstone-ey green. The trick here is to rehighlight the sharp edges after you've glazed the colour back down. Gives it that bright, sharp quality. I was also really happy with the power fist (that I totally forgot to photograph seperately) the sharp talon ends in gold work really nicely with the purple fingers and the black casing binds it thematically to the other weapons in the army. Thats it for chaos infanty for now, there is only an ungodly amount of tanks:

These have all been basecoated with the airbrush and some of the fab new Minitaire airbrush paints (managed to get some slightly ahead of general release from Badger). First I white undercoated the lot, then sprayed charcoal grey into the recesses and then used their purple to effectively glaze the whole thing. The edge highlighting is essentially the white showing through the purple top coat. Works nicely. More on this soon folks, until then...

TTFN

Minotaur Lord

Greetings one and all. To those who have been dropping in on "Today I have mostly been..." (PVP's daily work in progress Tumblr feed) will know that I have been painting an Avatars of War Minotaur Lord for a client and hoo boy, this fellow is huge.

I gotta say, I'm not a huge fan of most of the Avatars of War range but this guy is something else. There's such a sense of weight and momentum to him (you can better see it in the later photos). That axe is the one we featured in the first youtube video so I'll skip over that and straight on to the biggest part of the model. The skin.

Now khaki tones are amongst the hardest to capture on camera so you'll have to look at all the pictures in this post and sort of take an average of all of them! Over the black undercoat I applied a nice clean basecoat of Dryad Bark. I sequentially highlighted the skin by adding increasing amounts of Ungor Flesh which is almost nice return of the old school Bronzed Flesh. I rarely use it for skin but it makes a lovely flesh basecoat for white furs. I kept going through the sequential highlights until the tone and contrasts felt right. Can't give you an exact recipie but I reckon there were twelve layers in some places of this model. I glazed the dried skin colours back down with Agrax Earthshade and then rehighlighted only the face with the top highlight mix to draw attention to it. The inside of the mouth was painted a mix of Bugmans Glow and Dryad Bark with a highlight Bugman's Glow and a glaze of Carroburg Crimson.

The hair also started from Dryad Bark but was shaded with Nuln Oil and then highlighted with Baneblade Brown. All the leather is my new favourite mix of: basecoat Rhinox Hide, highlight 50:50 Rhinox Hide and Mournfang Brown, second highlight pure Mournfang Brown. The various chains and lumps of armour are Jeffrust.

The belly armour also has a brass surround drabbed down with Agrax Eathshade. The brilliant Runelord Brass was used for all the decorative rings on the Minotaur. On that subject it is interesting that Avatars of War put a nose ring in, it is tres bull but a bit weird. See on bulls a nose ring is a control mechanism, it prevents the animal pulling away on its halter (nose rings on pigs are to stop them grubbing up the earth). Now on a minotaur a nose ring seems to indicate that this huge fellow was a slave of some sort. Or it could have just been a sculpting affectation. Am I reading too much into this? Anyway, with that I must fly, until next time folks.

TTFN

Children of the Emperor

Greetings all, today we have Noise Marines on the bench:

These are the renegade space marines belonging to the Emperor's Children legion. Devoted to Slaanesh, their quest to feel every sensation and emotion in the universe led them to adjust their senses and use sonic weaponry to fully experience the music of battle. The client had already done all the assembly, including some marines that were starting to take on the aspect of Slaanesh's handmaidens. The Daemonettes.

Following the positive response that TwiddlyBits (TM) on the Daemon Prince recieved from the client, I decided to reprise TwiddlyBits on these chaps too. Most only have a spare shoulder pad to decorate but the Aspiring Champion gets a stripe of them across the entire model.

The Purple is a simple basecoat of Naggaroth Night, highlighted with Xerus Purple. The gold is the four step process necessitated by the new paints. Unfortunately, in contrast to the other new metallic paints the gold only works one way and it includes a drybrush step. I am thus commencing gold-quest to find a new basic gold colour to work on details rather than the broad strokes that you have to use with the new ones. Its fine if you have a whole model that you want gold but small bits are just a nightmare.

Love that head, the glee with which this mutant maniac is shooting is quite charming. Using bone as a contrast for the Emperor's Children shoulder pad icons works nicely against the purple and complements the gold.

The sonic weaponry, indeed all the weaponry, is gloss black. Slaanesh has a sense of style after all and glossy black looks great. There is a temptation when using gloss black to just paint it black and allow the light glinting off the gloss varnished edges to do the rest for you. Resist this temptation and edge highlight the black with a nice bright grey. This means that even in low light conditions the weapon is still defined.

There are another ten marines and a pile of armoured vehicles to go with these noise marines so plenty more purple in our future folks. Until then...

TTFN

Prince of Daemons

Hi folks, today we've got a big one to check out:

The daemon prince is for a Slaanesh chaos space marine army I am painting for a client. Now I am going to be up front here. This model and I are not friends. I've painted four of them over the years for different stores or clients and we still haven't made up. For some reason it is fiddly and some of the details merge together making it hard to figure where colours will look best. But enough grumping Jeff, you're paid for this!

Starting with the purple. Naggroth Night forms the basecoat. I then built up the highlights through Xerus Purple all the way to Lucius Lilac. I then shaded it back down with Druchii Violet. Finally I went back in and did some twiddly bits (technical term there) with reconstituted Lucius Lilac. I am starting to use dry pigments with added water to create a thin layer paint. Perfect? No, but it works well enough.

 I wanted the sword to really stand out so went for something completely different to the rest of the pallete. I loved the hot swords that the Bloodletters wield in the Space Marine computer game so I thought I'd go with that. Now I can't go into every stage as I used about twenty different layers. Mephiston Red formed the basecoat, highlighted with drybrushes of Kindleflame and Hexos Palesun. I then layered Nuln Oil onto the red to make that hot iron look. I glazed the whole thing in red ink and then ran thinned Ceremite White mixed with a little yellow into the runes. A glaze of Lamenter's Yellow made them hot and a coat of Water Effects finished the sword off. Gloss black is also going to be a feature of the army so it'll sort of tie in visually.

For the flesh I just used Daemonette Hide highlighted up with Slaanesh Grey, bone areas used the same mix but I added bone to change the texture without adding another tone to the colours. It also allowed the skulls to stand out from the daemonbone. You can also see more TwiddlyBits (TM) on the other shoulder pad.

As you can see from the back view, the overriding feeling is purple despite there being flesh, bone and armour in the same shot. The gold and yellow cabling balance each other and the green gems are tiny spot colours to add interest.

More chaotic goodness to follow folks.

TTFN

Loose ends

Greetings folks, today is one of those "finishing off" days. I had a couple of figures that had been half finished and then hung around for a bit. One of my failings as a painter is that I like to finish what I start in one hit (however many sessions it takes), if I have to stop and come back much later I struggle to get motivated again. The longer it goes on, the worse it gets. However, knowing this about myself I tend to grab a day or so a month to finish off half-done projects. Today is one of those days!

Remember that flag from the NMM tutorial? Well, until recently, that was all there was! I finished off chappy holding the flag and added the Imperium Victrix motto to the flag. Not much more to say about him really!

I started the seeker when I painted the daemonettes the other day. Due to some heinous casting problems (so glad they've been replaced with the plastic ones, they always had problems) the detail on the face is a little soft but I did the best I could to merge the colours of the bony ridges and the purple flesh.

The steed of slaanesh she is mounted on needed to fit in with the daemonettes without merging with the rider. To achieve this I used the pale purple tone of the daemonettes on the underbelly and a stronger purple using Naggroth Night as the base.

The model is sculpted with irritating grassy bits attached to the feet. These are fine - sort of - on a grassy base, but on the grey rubble that my client likes they look ridiculous! Cue some thinking, in the end I decided that the speed of the daemon steed would be causing flames to spring from the ground. As a result I used some yellow drybrushing and glazing of the basing material to add a fiery glow to the feet.

Until next time folks

TTFN

Something gribbly this way comes...

Greetings all, I am back from the wilds of North Wales and thus have shiny models to show you all! Oh and good news, I'll have my own internet back on Monday so updates will be a bit more forthcoming. Anyway, on with the show, and today it is the horror of Chaos Spawn:

I've always liked these weirdos so when one of my clients sent me two of the bonkers wee guys to work on I was delighted. I have Opinions (captial O intended) on Spawn so forgive me if I come across a bit dictatorial here! I find Spawn weirdest when they are displaying either their recognisable origins (some poor swine who incurred the wrath of the gods) or some piece of naturally occuring biology in totally the wrong place. As such I decided that both would have an unhealthy flesh tone and recognisable eyes.

The flesh is fairly easy. The wonderful Rakarth Flesh forms a base coat which is shaded with Reikland Fleshtone to warm it up. I highlighted up all the way to Pallid Wych Flesh and then turned my attention to the weird bits. The eye was the only draw in the centre of this spawn so I had to go all out. Zoom in and take a look. The trick is using a mix of Pallid Wych Flesh and white as the sclera (the white bit) with thin washes of Carroburg Crimson around the edge. I then used Casadora Yellow to form the iris and a goat pupil in black finished off the nasty look.

The arms reminded me of hermit crab limbs and so I went with it! Over the Pallid Wych Flesh I layered two or three coats of Fuegan Orange, you gotta wait for each layer to be totally dry. Hairdryers are your friend! I then gave them a drybrush of Eldar Flesh and recoated with Fuegan Orange. Painting fleshy bits between the sections finished the legs nicely.

The second spawn was a riot of heads with one massive arm so I knew I would have to minimise some details and bring others to the fore otherwise the model would be a gaudy monstrosity. Less is more is an important rule with spawn.

I made use of Seraphim Sepia and Agrax Earthshade's translucency on the large horns to make a lovely blended tone. There are probably about fifteen layers of feathered washes on these to give the proper gradiation. The all too human eye was coloured with blue glaze which gave a nice watery blue.

The tangle of heads on the back was too much if I had painted each to stand out. Instead I gave minimised the impact of each with drab colours and merging skin tones and let the sculpting and conversion speak for itself. Mass effect is often more useful in these situations.

Once again on the beak I used Seraphim Sepia and Agrax Earthshade over a base of Averland Sunset to create the shading on the beak. Doing this tied the beak and the horns and balanced the colours on the model. Likewise the tongue on the bird and the wierd horned head thing were both treated the same way, Bugman's Glow shaded with Carroburg Crimson.

Hopefully you agree with me that by applying "less is more" and recognisable biology to the alien wonder of a chaos spawn adds a lot to the model. I see a lot of them in a riot of colours and they never quite work. My advice is always, in addition to the above, to theme your spawn when making them. Have a spikey spawn, an eyeball spawn etc. Works much better than a riot of different parts. Both of these work for that precise reason. Anyway, enough chaotic wibbling, see you next time!

TTFN