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Hey guys, I'm farely new to this hobby. I started up a year or two ago, played/hobbied for a few months and quit due to money issues.
I just picked all this back up and I'm back in business to work on my Ultramarines!

I just bought a Librarian in Termie armor for the centerpiece of my army. I went outside and got some slate for the base, got a little skull from my bits box and worked on fitting it all together. It came out really nice. I have him standing on 3 tiers of slate, with his high foot on top of the skull. (DISCLAIMER, the picture tricks the eyes. It looks awkward, but in person his heel is flush against a bit of stone with the point of his boot on the skull. The greed stuff mess was just filling in gaps or bubbles, filing it down with my emory board is still needed)


I only have one problem. I couldn't keep it in my pants and glued him to the base and everything before base coating. Uh oh. Not only that but I got some Liquid Green Stuff on my slate, and now it WONT come off.

They way I see it I have 2 options (but what do I know).
1) tape up the entire base, and base coat him. Leave the slate natural w/ no paint and cover up the Green Stuff blotch with some grass.

2) Base coat the entire thing (I would strip the grass I put on already, pretty easy) Base right over the slate then re-paint the rock...well as rock. It may look better in the end bc I would imagine the tones in the rock would then match the model, as both are painted. But I'm worred the paint will cover up the texture of the real slate.

I attached a pic. Please if I could get some advice I would love you guys, this is my first HQ unit and the Centerpiece of my first Army (Ultra Marines!) I want him to be awesome. If you guys can make that happen I will update this thread (or a new one) with my entire army when its finished, I may even add in a unit of Blood Angels or Crimson Fists with the new Ally rules of 6th edition! It's gonna look nice.

I also have attached 2 pics of my Dreadnaut and my Tactical Sq. Sergeant for some reference of my current skill. Neither is 100% finished. I need to buy the colors to paint flesh (his head), and need to base him, the Dread needs some detail on his banner on the leg, and a couple touch-up spots. But thats small stuff.

Also the dread is supposed to look worn/battle damaged. That's why there are 'sloppy' highlights and nicks of silver. My gakky phone camera didn't capture it well, it gave a weird blue hue to the silver 'scrapes' and idk. My detail work is still visibile but it looks sloppier than it is, the whole top-side of his fist is speckled with red as blood, I sprayed it on with finger+stipling brush. It also looks better in person. Keeping that in mind, it IS sloppy compared to a lot of you vets, if anyone has any tips (not looking for huge guides, I HAVE found the guide sticky haha just quick pieces of advice for things you see could be better)

Thanks guys, looking forward to your advice! Also, please ignore the "Hot Lips" file. I needed one in a pinch and my younger sisters room was the place to look. hahahah!

Well, i quite like the pose of your Librarian, but in all honesty you should never leave the slate in it's natural state, as it will never look to scale.
Undercoat the figure and the base together, then paint the figure, only when you have him looking how you want you can then concentrate on the base:
Dark volcanic rock, basecoat black then drybrush up with greys.
Desert typ rock, basecoat brown then drybrush up to bleached bone.

There are lots of good tutorials on youtube on how to achieve the effect, but what you are aiming to do is, to bring the slate down in scale and make it look like a rocky outcrop, rather than a piece of garden slate.

Hope this helps?!?

Doofry wrote:Well, i quite like the pose of your Librarian, but in all honesty you should never leave the slate in it's natural state, as it will never look to scale.
Undercoat the figure and the base together, then paint the figure, only when you have him looking how you want you can then concentrate on the base:
Dark volcanic rock, basecoat black then drybrush up with greys.
Desert typ rock, basecoat brown then drybrush up to bleached bone.

There are lots of good tutorials on youtube on how to achieve the effect, but what you are aiming to do is, to bring the slate down in scale and make it look like a rocky outcrop, rather than a piece of garden slate.

Hope this helps?!?

Ok that helps a lot. I was considering, heavily, just priming the entire thing and painting the rock back over, but I wasn't sure if that was a terrible idea or not. Now I know thats pretty normal. It just seemed odd to me to paint stone as stone haha.

I like the idea of the dark volcanic rock, I might go with that. I can def attempt to pull off the effects you talked about. I am aware of them, just still need practice. Thanks for clearing it up.

I noticed most people build their Librarians with the staff behind the model at a different angle. I thought it looked odd so I changed it up, then once it was finished I had second guesses so thank you for the compliment on the pose. It put my mind at rest.

Anyone have any tips to painting the librarian? Things to look out for, things to be careful on or nice effects in certain spots that you have seen that I could attempt, I'm still working out which parts should be what color in my mind.

Also any more tips on ways to clean up and improve my painting based on the Sergeant and Dread would be very welcomed!

Thanks!

UPDATE

Painted a terminator, looking for critiques/advice for future models.

Hey guys thanks for the tips. I'm buying a squad of CC termies with TH/SS and LC from a friend, so the 'normal' termie squad I have now doesn't fit. I figure they will be backup and great painting practice so I looked up a few glow/lightning techniques online and applied those too on his power fist.

Honestly surprised how well it came out, the glow trick is surprisingly simple, and if it looked like that on my first-ever then I can't wait to see what its like after an entire army of practicing

I also changed the Librarian and I primed it. I'm not going to change the bolter, cutting through that much detail (wires and all) and repositioning the elbow with green stuff is just something I'm not willing to first-time try on my new HQ unit. It looks ok in person, if a tad akward.

Thanks for the help, please keep the constructive criticism coming I'm improving with every model, and its been very fun so far. I don't have many people except my roommate to show these off to (until I go to my local GW store over the weekend:victory so it's nice to be able to show them to some other avid war gamers who can help me out, I appreciate it! Incoming new Termie and repositioned Librarian.

Disclaimers: In "termie3" pic there is a blotched highlight and off-color parts near it on top of his helmet/armor. I fixed all that shortly after taking the pic, so it's no longer really messy there (I only noticed it because of the picture, I'm borring my roommates Iphone for these pics and he went to bed couldn't take another). Also on the Terminator the shield as you can see has been gouged by mistake. I gouged it with my knife by mistake, god knows why, and never fixed it. It had been sitting in my case for almost 2 years primed and ready to paint, I didn't bother fixing it. As I said these guys are sort of my "test out techniques and improve models" I will field them until I get my close combat termies but probably not much after

When I first started out I thought it was weird painting stone as, well stone, but you don't really get a sense of scale from natural stone, they just look like pebbles etc. If you base coat black then drybrush grey for example, it makes them look much bigger in relation to the mini, and more on a par with its scale. If that makes sense. Try it and you'll see what I mean!

i like you take on a powerfist
if you wanna make your libby stant out inbetween of your UM, i suggest painting it with enchanted blue and layering it up to iceblue at the edges... it will be popping of the table

DijnsK wrote:i like you take on a powerfist
if you wanna make your libby stant out inbetween of your UM, i suggest painting it with enchanted blue and layering it up to iceblue at the edges... it will be popping of the table

interesting Idea, I will think about changing the color of my Libby thanks.

Thanks for the compliment on the powerfist, it was my first time ever trying an effect like that.

How do you guys like the work on it? I looked up some guides to lightning/glow effects and combined 2 of them to try something original. I started with black, made a thick dark blue squiggly then painted in lighter shades of blue to get the underneath effect, highlighting certain sections with white ultimately. I then went on and painted the squiggly lightning lines all over the top with grey. Then highlighted the grey lines with a little white.

I havn't done any glazing or anything on it. I have my blue space marine GW glaze, but I'm worried the blue glaze will actually bring down the 'pop' by tinting the white blue. Would glazing it over, and then re-highlighting with white on top of the glaze work?