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Welcome all to the 118th round of the Dakka Painting challenge. For the unfamiliar, this is a friendly painting competition open to members of all skill levels and experience, whether your entry is your first or you thousand-and-first time painting miniatures. Each month, finished entries are collected into a thread where the community can vote on their favorite pieces, and those votes go towards an annual overall League that runs for 12 rounds.

This month is the Open Round. Subject to the normal rules, but paint whatever your heart desires. This is a busy month for a lot of people so paint what you have time for. Have a hobby related New Year’s resolution you need to do a few more models for? Now’s the time! Let’s finish 2024 off with some fun and amazing entries!

How To Enter

- You may enter up to 5 MODELS as a SINGLE ENTRY, and are permitted one entry per member per month. If you enter multiple models, they should ideally be related in some way, such as part of the same squad, unit or scene if you are doing a diorama
- You may enter at any time during the month, up to the last minute. We do encourage people to enter early, as to be part of the community, but if you can’t start until the 11th hour, that’s OK.
- You MUST post a 'proof' picture of your entry in the thread of the state it was in before you started working on it; this must be either unassembled, unpainted, primed or coated a single colour. Entries that do not submit a valid Proof Picture will not be eligible for voting.
- After this, you may post WIP pictures in this thread and your own if you wish, and on completing the entry, you may post up to 6 final pictures IN THIS THREAD that will then be used for voting. Please note that pictures in a montage or collage picture will be considered individual images for this purpose, so while these types of presentation are certainly acceptable, please keep the image limit in mind when compiling them. For example, a collage of 5 images and one separate image would count as your 6 picture allowance.


So What Do I Win?
- Points... and points mean... bragging rights for the next month! Following the vote, points will be awarded to every entrant. This year, the Points you receive will be equal to the Percentage of Votes your entry receives in the final Voting thread; if you get 10%, you get 10 points, if you get 6% you get 6 points, so on and so forth.

These points will be used to form a league table, which will be updated month on month as the results come in.

How Long Do I Have?
This challenge begins 1st of December and will end at midnight EST on December 31st. After this, I shall compile the finished entries into a new thread, and voting will run for 5 days.

I had this bozo sit in a box for who knows how long. I should probably do something about that.

Alright, let's do this:



That was a few days ago, it's had its wraithbone spray put on, but no other work yet. About the back of the starboard track, it wouldn't fit right anyway (see the port side) and I wanted to have a couple of links stuck on the front like the old ones, so I ripped them out and just glued in random chunks of resin that were vaguely track-link-sized. Get a techpriest to bless it enough and it'll work just fine.

But that's being pretty ambitious, so in the event that I get fed up with trying to paint a big-ass vehicle in one go (or it falls apart, because I didn't assemble it carefully, it's just a whole mess of superglue), I've got a backup plan:



Heavy melee weapons - two aspiring champions, one regular legionary, who between them will finish off the eight I need for my current 1K list. They're unrelated to the Land Raider - it'll be Blood Angels, in Bantax desert camo - so my entry won't be both of them, just the tank if finished, the heretics if not.

Going to paint these barbgaunts. They should go quick and will let me field the combat patrol. I’ve got a few other projects I want to clear up by year’s end.

So… we move into the end of the year once again!

For this month I’m entering my customized Hive Tyrant modeled to replicate the version seen recently in the Space Marine 2 video game… steel impaled carapace and all.

I have spent a considerable amount of time trying to get this guy to look as close to this version as I could given my current skill level in the hobby… and I’m overall fairly content with the results so far. There are a few details that I lacked the skill/materials/knowledge to replicate but, taken as a whole, I really think I’ve come pretty close.

Everything rests on the paint job now, which I am already planning a slightly more ‘gritty’ feel for than the version in game while staying true to the general scheme and colour.

I’ll be writing up a Blog detailing how I managed to go about this later today but, for now, in the words of one hapless Cadian trooper upon witnessing the Hive Tyrant emerge from a tunnel:

Behold…

THE ATROCITY!”

P.S. I will provide a reference pick from the game if some are not familiar with this awesome depiction of a Hive Tyrant the artists involved in the game managed to dream up.

I plan to enter with vk.100.01 Mammut tank (not to be confused with Mammoth tank from Command & Conquer series). It was early concept of German WWII superheavy tank Maus. But the designers of this model let their imagination run wild, designing huge cannon and a secondary turret on the top of main one. In reality however the upper part cannot rotate on its own, it is just single two-story turret. It looks so ridiculous that I had to build it . So far suspension and lower part of the model is painted with base colour.
Proof:



It is good to see it is not the only tank in this month's competition

I'm struggling with some painting mojo, and I've been stalking the forums for the past few months after a (very) long break from them, and could do with the self imposed pressure to get on with some painting.

A Caiman Master, for The Ninth Age.



There is a huge Ninth Age tournament in Feb in the UK. And concurrently, there is a painting competition. I doubt I'll win best army, but I plan to flood all the categories and see if I can go home with something.

 Zambro wrote:
I'm struggling with some painting mojo, and I've been stalking the forums for the past few months after a (very) long break from them, and could do with the self imposed pressure to get on with some painting.


There is a huge Ninth Age tournament in Feb in the UK. And concurrently, there is a painting competition. I doubt I'll win best army, but I plan to flood all the categories and see if I can go home with something.

Good to see you alive and kicking! Glad to have you back.

Facebook today is worthless. My feed is chock full of ads from Temu and suggested pages to follow. That said, every once in a while, something good comes up:



Here we see a five-stage character, going from Chaos Initiate to Daemon Prince, based on illustrations from this flow chart from Slaves to Darkness:



The models are from a boutique miniatures maker whose name I cannot recall at this moment. I'll try to get as many models finished as I can before the end of the year.

Right, indecision time!
I have still not got anywhere with the Mascareri:

Well, I put some skin on. Either I'll submit the 3 without any skin or, if our lord and master okays, the best 5 of the 6.
However... I also have a LOT of Shatterpoint to paint:

 inmygravenimage wrote:
Right, indecision time!
I have still not got anywhere with the Mascareri:
Well, I put some skin on. Either I'll submit the 3 without any skin or, if our lord and master okays, the best 5 of the 6.

That looks fine. Not serious progress, just a little splash. You can pick from any of them.

Link to a blog I’ve made for anyone interested in the building process of the Hive Tyrant:

https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/815237.page#11714180

This December I will finally attempt to complete working on the Doggy Henchmen Band



These will complete a full block of 20 For R-Mour Dogg and the Doggy Henchmen.

I think I will try the 'Arch Zealot of the
Redemption'



Cheers,

CB

Man, I wish I still had my Archzealot! That and the priest with flamer & sword are the only original Redemptionists I'm missing!

I had this neat idea with wooden boxes I want to try. Maybe move away from the tabletop and make something decorative.

Going to try to put some non-dead, legit GW models for the 3D wraith project. Hoping to pull off the sniper and an assassin/seeress at least.

 Mr Nobody wrote:
I had this neat idea with wooden boxes I want to try. Maybe move away from the tabletop and make something decorative.

That looks ripe for an underground scene with OSL from the staff, Sting and Glamdring; orcs are near!

Is the lizard a GW model i like it it gives a feel of a hunting predetor.

I'm going to try to get these three Stormcast done. Proof:

Vanguard-Raptors with Longstrike Crossbows are currently a hot meta choice, so maybe it's high time I got mine painted. Eventually I need to get another set of them, but these will do for now. It's been a while since I painted any Stormcast, so I hope I haven't forgotten how!

I'm lazy, but also stubborn, which leads me to situations like 'I can't be bothered getting an airbrush, I'll just paint this entire tank by hand instead'.

For the money you pay for large GW models, they really should paint themselves. I'm only halfway through basecoating Girlyman and I'm already sick of all the tiny swirls that complement the armor trims.

Edit: @ Daia T'Nara, hand painting a tank is the only way to go. The other only way to go is not painting tanks at all. Hmm. I don't have an airbrush either. I'm starting to see why so few of my vehicles are painted...

 Geifer wrote:
For the money you pay for large GW models, they really should paint themselves. I'm only halfway through basecoating Girlyman and I'm already sick of all the tiny swirls that complement the armor trims.

Edit: @ Daia T'Nara, hand painting a tank is the only way to go. The other only way to go is not painting tanks at all. Hmm. I don't have an airbrush either. I'm starting to see why so few of my vehicles are painted...

That armor trim on Guiliman nearly broke me. So much overwrote fiddly detail...

I also lack an airbrush and hate painting vehicles. Maybe one of these days. Until then fuzzy sticks and regret.

Yeah. The swirls also feel kind of shallow compared to the depth of detail I've come to expect from GW models. I'm hoping a good wash will give them solid definition and help with keeping highlights where they belong.

At least I started early. This one's likely going to take a while to paint.

It’ll be two years in December since I painted that first Stormcast Eternal my stepson had lying around and I will celebrate by having my first airbrush.

I KNOW it’s going to be a confusing and frustrating experience before I even lay my mitts on the thing but I also genuinely think it will help me paint more models when mastered.

In particular I know it is going to help with any models that have large flat panels. I’m even thinking of buying an Apache model kit (I love Apaches) simply because I will now be able to spray a nice even coat of olive drab.

I think the brush will always be my favourite way to paint and an airbrush will never change that, but I’m super excited to know I have such a potentially useful tool on the way!

 XvArcanevX wrote:
It’ll be two years in December since I painted that first Stormcast Eternal my stepson had lying around and I will celebrate by having my first airbrush.

I KNOW it’s going to be a confusing and frustrating experience before I even lay my mitts on the thing but I also genuinely think it will help me paint more models when mastered.

In particular I know it is going to help with any models that have large flat panels. I’m even thinking of buying an Apache model kit (I love Apaches) simply because I will now be able to spray a nice even coat of olive drab.

I think the brush will always be my favourite way to paint and an airbrush will never change that, but I’m super excited to know I have such a potentially useful tool on the way!

I think if I ever get an airbrush (if I can ever afford one), it'll mainly be used for putting down basecoats quickly, and maybe for masked off stripes and things like that, so it wouldn't be for any special kind of effects or anything. I wouldn't use it for fades, or blending colours or anything like that. Just a useful tool for speeding up the basics. Because lord knows getting a solid basecoat down often takes a bloody age! Especially for colours like yellow and orange... Which would mean actual squads/armies of Iyanden or Yme-Loc would suddenly become a possibility for me. And, like you say, vehicles, of course...

 Jadenim wrote:

 Mr Nobody wrote:
I had this neat idea with wooden boxes I want to try. Maybe move away from the tabletop and make something decorative.

Spoiler:

That looks ripe for an underground scene with OSL from the staff, Sting and Glamdring; orcs are near!

You know, that's not a bad idea. I was going to do a basic, sunlit fantasy forest, but that sounds much cooler.

CancelledApocalypse wrote:

 XvArcanevX wrote:
It’ll be two years in December since I painted that first Stormcast Eternal my stepson had lying around and I will celebrate by having my first airbrush.

I KNOW it’s going to be a confusing and frustrating experience before I even lay my mitts on the thing but I also genuinely think it will help me paint more models when mastered.

In particular I know it is going to help with any models that have large flat panels. I’m even thinking of buying an Apache model kit (I love Apaches) simply because I will now be able to spray a nice even coat of olive drab.

I think the brush will always be my favourite way to paint and an airbrush will never change that, but I’m super excited to know I have such a potentially useful tool on the way!

I think if I ever get an airbrush (if I can ever afford one), it'll mainly be used for putting down basecoats quickly, and maybe for masked off stripes and things like that, so it wouldn't be for any special kind of effects or anything. I wouldn't use it for fades, or blending colours or anything like that. Just a useful tool for speeding up the basics. Because lord knows getting a solid basecoat down often takes a bloody age! Especially for colours like yellow and orange... Which would mean actual squads/armies of Iyanden or Yme-Loc would suddenly become a possibility for me. And, like you say, vehicles, of course...

I got a basic airbrush a few years ago (Amazon deal complete with tanked compressor, etc.) and that’s exactly what I use it for, and it helps no end. Not just because it speeds up the process, but because you can at least have base coated units, rather than a sea of grey or primer when you play a game. Also saves you a ton on rattle can primers.

Mr Nobody wrote:

 Jadenim wrote:

 Mr Nobody wrote:
I had this neat idea with wooden boxes I want to try. Maybe move away from the tabletop and make something decorative.

Spoiler:

That looks ripe for an underground scene with OSL from the staff, Sting and Glamdring; orcs are near!

You know, that's not a bad idea. I was going to do a basic, sunlit fantasy forest, but that sounds much cooler.

Glad I could help?! Either way, look forward to seeing the end result!

CancelledApocalypse wrote:
I think if I ever get an airbrush (if I can ever afford one), it'll mainly be used for putting down basecoats quickly, and maybe for masked off stripes and things like that, so it wouldn't be for any special kind of effects or anything. I wouldn't use it for fades, or blending colours or anything like that. Just a useful tool for speeding up the basics. Because lord knows getting a solid basecoat down often takes a bloody age! Especially for colours like yellow and orange... Which would mean actual squads/armies of Iyanden or Yme-Loc would suddenly become a possibility for me. And, like you say, vehicles, of course...

I hear ya. I think the thing that ultimately made me take the plunge was attempting to think of something for my partner to get me for Christmas. Frankly, I’m gonna say it, I have enough minis. A surplus you might call it. If you were to be a master of understatements that is.

I also have a lot of paint. A lot of brushes. I have an excess of lots of things.

So, given that and the fact I don’t want any more socks, deodorants, books or jeans….

Airbrush seemed obvious.

I will be happy if I can achieve consistently smooth priming and basecoats. That alone will be worth the effort. That said, if I like it enough, I’ll for sure experiment with other techniques.

I'm going to enter this month's competition with Blood Angels Inceptors.