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INDEX
This first post will now work as an index besides being my introduction: I'll be posting direct links to each project for your convenience because there's a fair bit of WIP or some friendly banter between projects. What first started as a blog for my Necrons, evolved to many different painting projects. I'm more of an hobbyist than a player, so I can't be focused on a single army As always, thanks for looking.

Warhammer 40k:
Ork Kommando with Burna, Guardians of the Covenant Space Marines and Tech-Priest.
Space Wolves: Njal Stormcaller
Necrons: Night-Scythe
Orkz: Ork Big Mek

Infinity:
Yu Jing: Oniwaban Shinobu Kitsune

Commissions:

Wow Board Game Miniature Commission:
Human Paladin
Orc Warrior
Troll Rogue
Tauren Hunter (and Group shot)
Orc Shaman and Human Warlock (together with a WIP Big Mek and some W40k Space Marines)
Troll Priest
Night Elf Warrior
Gnome Mage, Undead Mage and Dwarf Hunter (and some off-topic stuff: Anime convention)
Night Elf Druid

Space Wolves Army Comission:
Fenrisian Wolves and Old School Wolf Guard Terminators
ForgeWorld's Venerable Dreadnaught

ORIGINAL POST
Alright, here we go, my first blog!

So, after this long since I joined DakkaDakka I decided it was time to create a P&M Blog so I (hopefully) can get a broader range of C&C and act as a progress log for myself. A place where I (again hopefully) can see my own improvement

So, long ago (sure feels like a long time ago), when I was 14-15 years old, I was first introduced to Warhammer Fantasy. I did learn back then that I enjoyed painting. I painted several Lizardmen Warriors, nothing too fancy, but there was no way I could afford do regularly buy models. No money and I honestly didn't like it that much. Too much confusion with the movement rules. Funny enough, I only found out about 40k a few months after I gave up on Fantasy.

After that, I have been devouring what I could about 40k over the years. The Dawn of War was my first big intro to the lore of 40k. Loved it. Ever since then I was a big time fan of the fluff.
3 years ago after I started working I discovered a bookshop that sold BL novels near my workplace. First time I ever saw them for sale in Portugal. Bought one to check it out (it was Angels of Darkness by Gav Thorpe) and I have been hooked ever since. This fed me an enormous desire to actually start playing 40k.

And so last year I finally bit the bullet. And boy, am I happy now My only regret is not starting sooner. Started with the Necron Battleforce and some advice from a FLGS owner who has always been a great help to me, read the "How to paint Citadel Miniatures" book and off I went, to the wonderful world of painting.

I have noticed I truly enjoy the act of turning a lump of plastic into something, well, beautiful. My minis aren't still Golden Deamon standard, far from it, but I feel an immense joy when I look at them and think "Wow, they were just pieces of plastic before I painted them."

Well, that's enough about me Time for some pretty pics! I did post these pics before in my first "Showcase" post but for sake of completeness, I'm posting them here again. Like I said, I want a progress log since my beginning until where I currently stand and see my own improvement.

Necron Warriors (my first minis):



This is my Harlequin, also known as Bob the Blob. Say hi, Bob!


Poor guy was the one who suffered my many experiences until I decided I wanted a very simple scheme for my warriors to show their "lowly" rank. But I liked him so much, I added some extra colours and he was ready to kick some butt as the squad leader.

Group shot!



Scarabs:

These little guys were the next ones I decided to paint. After completing my warriors I felt a bit sad with the almost empty bases. I decided I was going to improve that:


Something that necrons really aren't famous for but I love are squad leaders. I felt I needed them, even if it's completely against the "normal" fluff. Hence my Harlequin and the 4 different scarabs here. Just for fun, I decided to create some very jewel like scarabs, each one with a precious stone as the "eye" (Red - Ruby, Green - Emerald, Blue - Sapphire, Yellow - Topaz).

Immortals:

These were my first real challenge. I just couldn't figure out how to paint them. I wanted to give the impression they were more badass, much more "colder", but I had no idea how. Thankfully my FLGS owner helped once again! 50% leadbelcher + 50% Vallejo silver. After that, Blue Glaze all over the miniature to give away a "cold metal" feeling. This is now my "Living metal" scheme. I also added much more blue to show how they were much more important than the lowly warriors (but still not important enough for warm colours):


And once again, a squad leader:



I really wanted this guy to stand out from the rest. Even his energy source is different from everyone else, and a warm colour to boot!
No Bonus point if you know where I got the inspiration from

Group shot!



Ghost Ark (oh, the pain!):

This one took me ages to complete. Again, a problem deciding the colour scheme. First I figured I wanted the "ribs" to be bone coloured to give the impression it was from an ancient animal long dead, but I figured it was too barbaric for a race such as necrons, so I figured it would also be done like the Immortal's "Living Metal"


Destroyer:



Necron Lord

I bought this old metal lord from another player and I actually painted over the previous paint scheme, didn't even strip. Painted red "seriously" for the first time using MiniWarGaming Kris tutorial and I'm very happy with the result. It was also my first time doing several layers, gradually changing the colors.
The small white symbol is now my "official" dynasty symbol aswell



Heavy Destroyer

Because they are Heavy Destroyers, I figured they should be shining with all the extra energy to power up the Heavy Gauss Cannon, so it was my first attempt at OSL Not a brilliant result, but the symbol and eye do look shining with energy. In short, I need more practice



Objective Marker

Because no one wants just random gak to serve as those important objective markers



Edit: Just trying to make the post more legible. It looked horrible

So, after painting all those Necrons I started painting some other stuff. Trying to improve my skills in other areas. The Necron Lord was a good start. Clothes! But there's a lot of stuff out there

These are some SW I painted for a good friend of mine. He's trying to start playing the game and he's one of those cases that HATES to see plastic or primed minis but hates painting himself. I decided I would help because it would be good practice for me and he could have his painted army like he wanted. So I took upon me to try and do a decent job on his SW.

This allowed me to practice on some power armor, attempt a wee bit of layering, furs, skin and even some extra free-handing.

First Space Wolves



He liked him, so I got the "GO" sign to paint some more.



it's taking some time, but eventually he'll get his army painted. It's taking some time as I'm painting my own Necron army at the same time... and random minis because I need to practice other stuff and I like them.

There's too much cool stuff out there that I want to paint

Cool stuff. try to put transtitions in your highlights as they are super stark, 'specialy on the legs. or is this something really old i'm confused. when did you do the sw?

 Largeblastmarker wrote:
Cool stuff. try to put transtitions in your highlights as they are super stark, 'specialy on the legs. or is this something really old i'm confused. when did you do the sw?

Thank you very much . No, I'm trying to post the minis in the correct order I painted them. They were a bit of an experiment, I admit But yeah, you are right, those highlights are quite extreme. Thankfully my friend still liked them so we were good

So after those SW my holidays started and had much more time to really try to improve my painting. Not only that another friend of mine was going to start playing 40k with Orks! I really wanted to give him something cool looking to start his collection, so that's why I decided to paint an Ork mini that I really like:

Ork Kommando with Burna!


Unfortunately, I never properly him properly because I have no idea how he's gonna base all his other Orks.

Thankfully I managed to paint some more My main army is Necrons, but I really, really like SM. One of my favorite "paint schemes" of all time is a descendant of the Dark Angels, the Guardians of the Covenant. This is the only artwork pic I ever saw of them, currently in the new Codex:



Beautiful, simply gorgeous paint scheme. The vibrant red contrasting with the metallic and black. I decided I was going to paint some of my AoBR SM to test the scheme. I decided to follow the DA lore and only the veterans get robes, but I needed to paint some of that beautiful red:

Guardians of the Covenant


Let me tell ya, free-handing that chapter symbol was a pain! great practice, tho!

My final mini from that period was a tech-priest. This one was a joy to paint and practice new things. Clothing, some skin, lots of tiny details.

Tech-Priest


Well, that's all for now I currently finished a unit of Heavy Destroyers and Destroyers, some old Metal Gauss Immortals and I have a WIP Necron Lord.

Soon I'm going to get more SW stuff to paint aswell not to mention Orks. Lots and lots of stuff to paint, so little time!

But what I really, really need to do ASAP:

- Get myself a Wet Pallete.

- Get a Light Box.

- Start using image editor programs to improve the quality of photos and make montages. IMHO it's way better a single pic with all the different angles than 5-6 pictures.

As always any feedback is highly appreciated! Thank you all for looking!

Do you highlight your metalics? they look good.

I do quite like the blue glowing effect you have going between the ribs of your Destroyer especially. Can we get a whole Necron army shot?

Largeblastmarker wrote:Do you highlight your metalics? they look good.

Thank you Yes, I usually wash them down with a mix of Agrax Earthshade + Nuln Oil and then highlight them back up with the respective metallic color.

Falhurk wrote:I do quite like the blue glowing effect you have going between the ribs of your Destroyer especially. Can we get a whole Necron army shot?

Thank you. I decided to add that blue effect to all my Necrons to represent the glowing energy that's powering them. When I saw those black slits they were just begging for some color.

I unfortunately don't have that much of the army painted but I would love to. I have some other minis that I need to take a pic off too!

Here it is, my painted army in all it's glory! They may be few but they are proud

(Apologies for the lack of ... proper background. The only place I can get a good shot of so many models at the same time is the kitchen).


The Gauss Immortals are old metal ones. I really like the model but the true reason I have them is because they were cheap but I had to do to a little bit of "salvage". I removed the green rods (and 3 of them actually are missing the blue rods. I'm still waiting for my order to arrive) and changed their paintjob. They looked like this:



You can also see my 3 Heavy Destroyers and 2 Destroyers back there. I love Hvy Destroyers, I know they aren't the most competitive unit in the codex but I really, really like them. It's my AP2 baby . One of the destroyers has my Necron Dynasty symbol. Here it is:



Yeah, I know, looks a lot like the Inquisition or other Imperium symbols there's a reason for that. I was searching how to create a decent looking symbol that would symbolize cold and still similar to the "fluff" dynasty symbols we see in the Necron codex. Then I found out this video about a crazy thing called Dscript:




I played around with the "letters" and added the 6 stripes so it would look a bit more like the classic snowflake image:


Everyone, What do you think? Should I try to change the symbol so it looks ever more like a snowflake and less like an Imperium symbol?

Moving on, this Lord is a WIP in a loooong time. Poor guy, I need to continue his paintjob. I really like how his yellow cape turned out but needs some corrections:





And finally, this is the reason I currently am not advancing on my necrons! A Njal Stormcaller I'm painting for a friend Still WIP but here's a couple shots!





As always feedback and C&C is GREATLY appreciated!

the rust color of the staff is clashing with the blue of the rest of the model. you might want to paint it a light or very dark silver metallic instead. The storm caller is really , really cool.

Oh my, that sounds like a great idea. As a bonus I'll have a Red-cloaked Lord with a gold scythe and a Yellow-cloaked Lord with a Silver scythe. Love it!

And thank you for the compliment

Dude, that Stormcaller looks amazing! Excellent paint job! Detail on the fur especially.

The symbol does look quite a lot like and Inquisitorial "I", but it's up to you really.

Also I like the deep blue in general for the colour scheme, it works nicely with the metallic necron bodies.

Thank you very much for the kind words

I like the idea with the runes. For my destroyers I was going to do something pretty cool but my time frame doesn't allow for it yet. As far as C&C goes, the only thing I think you may want to consider is the lord's face. If you paint it a bone colour and then highlight it with white it wouldn't look so stark and undefined. Although, that could be the camera too.

I like the paint job on the Stormcaller, I just don't like space wolf models lol.

Keep up the good work!

Falhurk wrote:
As far as C&C goes, the only thing I think you may want to consider is the lord's face. If you paint it a bone colour and then highlight it with white it wouldn't look so stark and undefined. Although, that could be the camera too.

I like the paint job on the Stormcaller, I just don't like space wolf models lol.

Undefined? HERESY. post more things please

 Largeblastmarker wrote:

Falhurk wrote:
As far as C&C goes, the only thing I think you may want to consider is the lord's face. If you paint it a bone colour and then highlight it with white it wouldn't look so stark and undefined. Although, that could be the camera too.

I like the paint job on the Stormcaller, I just don't like space wolf models lol.

Undefined? HERESY. post more things please

I'm really not quite sure what you're trying to get across here.

Looks pretty damn good if you ask me, that's all

@ (since @ seems to be a blog thing to avoid quotes everywhere )Falhurk - I appreciate the idea and I may try on another miniature but I think it won't work that well. I already tried painting my Ghost Ark with some bone color
At first I was thinking of painting the "ribs" as if they were old bones from an ancient dead animal that the necrons carved into something more artistic. After it was all base colored I started to notice how I didn't like the mix of bone / Metal / Blue. Ofc this was with massive quantities of bone color, if it's only a "mask" it may work.
Only way to know for sure is if I try it out

You could also do a 50/50 bone/white base colour and highlight with white. This way, your definition shows through quite well. It all depends on how bright you want it overall but there's no way to highlight on top of stark white.

Well, I admit I took my sweet time since I was a wee bit lazy this last Thursday and Friday and yesterday it was pretty much the whole day playing 40k but Njal was completed and based today! Tell me what ye think everyone!

(P.S: My friend absolutely hates my Necrons. Constantly complains and calls them OP. Now, I love it, I feed from his hate and bitter tears, but I decided I would give him a Njal with a fitting base )

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Close up of the base:


For the next project, more Space Wolves. I'm going to try and improve 6 Grey Hunters that my friend painted but because he HATES to paint, well, the results weren't exactly the best


P.S: I was going to work a bit more tonight but I just found out there's a new DLC for the Walking Dead. Nope, no can do, I have to go play more of one of the most emotional games of all time!

Someone who recently read one of my blog articles had this useful article on his blog about stripping paint off models that works on plastics as well as metal. Instead of trying to improve the Grey Wolves, try stripping them and starting again, especially if the current paint job has been applied too thickly.

onlyonepinman wrote:
Someone who recently read one of my blog articles had this useful article on his blog about stripping paint off models that works on plastics as well as metal. Instead of trying to improve the Grey Wolves, try stripping them and starting again, especially if the current paint job has been applied too thickly.

Thank you very much for the tutorial. One day I'll probably need to do this, specially if it's stuff from eBay but not with these guys I'm just doing some very quick touch-ups to improve them a bit but overall I'll leave them be. I have plenty of mine to paint

Next Stop, the Flying Croissant!

Hey everyone, just a quick update!

Like I said I'm going to paint my Night Scythe now (even tho I swore I would never attempt to paint a vehicle ever again without an Airbrush) and I'll be using the "Wet Blending" technique for the first time. I thought the several plates of the Night Scythe were one good place to practice it for the first time. What do you guys think? (oh, and sorry about the background mess, it really was a couple of quick pics )

Hmmm... Raspberry gatorade flavored croissant... *drool*

 AnakinSkywalker wrote:
Hmmm... Raspberry gatorade flavored croissant... *drool*

Well, that's what I get for using so many blues in my army

The Night Scythe is being a pain to paint x_x painting characters and infantry is so much fun than these massive vehicles. I'm hoping to have it done this next weekend but the base is going to be another challenge.

The colour merging works and is very subtle, I tried out something similar for my raider and I couldn't quite get it to work how I wanted.

Blue croissants!

I like what you're doing so far. Keep up the good work on that tank and keep experimenting!!!

Nice fallout boy bobblehead.

 Largeblastmarker wrote:
Nice fallout boy bobblehead.

Ha, I was going to post this too when I saw it.

Did you get or make a wet palette yet?

I made a couple poor-mans versions from sandwich containers and 1.5 common sponges gotten from the dollar store. I cut up a bunch of 5" x5" squares from a roll of parchment paper (used for cooking, mostly baking). They seem to do the job pretty well. I don't really have a problem with paint drying anymore, but the paint does separate and sometimes becomes useless at some point. This could happen anywhere between 1 and 24 hours later, I think it all depends on the color and brand of paint it is.

Largeblastmarker wrote:Nice fallout boy bobblehead.

Michael Bishop wrote:

 Largeblastmarker wrote:
Nice fallout boy bobblehead.

Ha, I was going to post this too when I saw it.

Haha, thank you guys. It's from the Fallout 3 Collector's Edition (the lunchbox one) and is one of my favorite goodies I ever got from a special edition

Did you get or make a wet palette yet?

I made a couple poor-mans versions from sandwich containers and 1.5 common sponges gotten from the dollar store. I cut up a bunch of 5" x5" squares from a roll of parchment paper (used for cooking, mostly baking). They seem to do the job pretty well. I don't really have a problem with paint drying anymore, but the paint does separate and sometimes becomes useless at some point. This could happen anywhere between 1 and 24 hours later, I think it all depends on the color and brand of paint it is.

Hum, interesting, I didn't know about that last part, the videos I saw about making a wet palette all say how the paint stays ok for a very long time and even if it dries a bit, they just add more water and it's ready to go again.

And no, not yet, haven't really found the "Need" but I bet once I do, I'll probably see what a utter fool I have been

But not all are "bad" news:
- Got myself a lightbox from Amazon.uk. Yes, I could have made my own thanks to the excellent tutorials, but I really, really don't have the space to have a huge box lying around without any way of keeping it out of the way. This one can be stored away in a small backpack. It's this one:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B0064MRG64/ref=oh_details_o00_s00_i00?ie=UTF8&psc=1


- I'm almost done with the frakking Night Scythe! I hate it, I truly hate the model D: I swear I'm not painting more vehicles without an airbrush ever again, the frustration and time consumed for basing and making sure that base color is smooth and consistent all over the vehicle with a paintbrush is too much.

What's making me keep on pushing to finish said NS is thinking: "I'm going to paint my first Infinity miniature after this is done"

Very nice Necrons you have here!

I love the metallic blue idea because I always see Necrons painted either silver tones or bronze tones, plus it works really well with the snowy bases!