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Welcome to my P&M blog, such as it is.

Here is the 'full' squad. Not much of a showing for 40K, but I'm working on that. In fact, I have to another picture as the army has grown since this shot was taken.

I like the weapon skins thing. Are you doing that across your whole army?

The skins turned out pretty good, so maybe. It was an idea that just hit me and I already have about half of my army finished.

Perhaps I'll go back through and add some skins over time.

I started working on a unit of suppressors. Their Accelerator Autocannons are pretty fierce. I sent some of these pictures to a friend of mine and he said that anything that can carry a gun that big and still fly has to be taken seriously.

Couldn't agree more.

I decided to paint their guns with different skins, sort of like camo skins from a Call of Duty multiplayer game.

I obviously still need to work on the bases, but I'm pretty happy so far.

Let me know your thoughts if you want to.

I've spent a lot of this quarantine painting. I'm trying to field a semi-decent Space Marines army, but don't have a lot of liquid capital to commit to it right now. That's left me with buying some starter kits and some used models, and not the power that I want. However, I'm almost at 1,000 points, so that's something. I'll but some WIP photos of the various squads here.

Here are the final based pictures of those suppressors.

Since they're flying above their bases, it seemed like a good opportunity to make them a little more complicated. I made some bigger rocks out of foam.

I bought the First Strike kit, which was a bad idea for several reasons, but now I don't have a full squad of Reivers or Intercessors. But I did get some pox walkers to cut up at peoples' feet.

I painted the sergeant on St. Patrick's Day, so that's why he's an Irish lad. But the Adeptus Astartes recruits from all over the universe, so any ethnic group is fair game, right?

I decided not to spend the time to do the same level of detail on the Infiltrators, but then I ended up doing most of the detail anyway.

And finally, the Terminator Squad. These are some of the models I've spent the most time on. The sergeant is my submission for the Dakka monthly paint competition.

Nice and steady work on your Space Marines! Love the Intercessor sarge, made me immediately think of Cpt. Carrot from Discworld

You're on a roll! I like your decisions on those bases... keeping them on the darker side makes the red armor pop.

 Viterbi wrote:
Nice and steady work on your Space Marines! Love the Intercessor sarge, made me immediately think of Cpt. Carrot from Discworld

I love Discworld. Terry Pratchett was a genius, and will forever live in my heart. I'm gonna call that sergeant Carrot and probably roll with a little flavor text while I'm gaming next. Whenever that gets to be.

McPhail - Thanks. I was looking back at my basing and thinking it was all garbage. I have a Lieutenant in Phobos Armor and an Eliminator squad to finish still, so I probably won't take as drastic a change as I was considering for the bases. Then, I have that Space Marine unit I bought on eBay to strip and repaint still.

I've been kicking the idea around in my head to scratch build a dreadnought of some sort so I can implement some heavy fire. I've only recently started with Warhammer so I don't have the stash of little fiddly-bits to really make it look legit (My massive MTG collection doesn't really cross over). Might have to take a page from Syro_'s blog and just mad sculpt everything. Of course, if I make one dreadnought . . . I'm a bit worried about floodgates.

Working on my Vanguard Lieutenant. His left foot is up on some rubble, there's even a piece of rebar sticking out. I decided that this was too cool of a detail to leave in so simple a state. It felt like sticking him on a plain base, even with a few rocks and shrubs, was underwhelming. So I built a bigger, badder base out of foam and matchsticks.

I sprinkled some sand on and tapped into the corners, then, taking a page from MacPhail 's bag and used an eyedropper to squirt in some PVA glue/water mixture. I have to practice it a bit, propbably have the wrong mixture or wrong technique, because it mostly washed out the sand. I had to reapply.

Anyway, here are some WIP pics. Final shot to come.





Next edition: Eliminators, my first crack at a conversion, and what I hope to be some cool active cammo.

I love this base! Glad to hear the PVA/water mix was workable. Mine is usually roughly 50/50 with a few drops of dish soap to help it flow, and I've seen it wash the sand away and also draw it in to the bead of glue and redistribute it that way... weird physics. Did you craft the spiral texture onto the rebar? It looks awesome, and 2-tone paint scheme on the base makes the contrasting textures pop. The big question... save it for badass characters, or put that much into everyone?

Great work on the Lt.'s base, really makes a difference and blends flawlessly with the GW rubble.

MacPhail wrote:I love this base! Glad to hear the PVA/water mix was workable. Mine is usually roughly 50/50 with a few drops of dish soap to help it flow, and I've seen it wash the sand away and also draw it in to the bead of glue and redistribute it that way... weird physics. Did you craft the spiral texture onto the rebar? It looks awesome, and 2-tone paint scheme on the base makes the contrasting textures pop. The big question... save it for badass characters, or put that much into everyone?

I didn't do the dish soap, though I now remember you writing that somewhere . . .

The rebar was another bit of GW rubble. I think it was "supposed" to be on one of the suppressor bases. But, I made those up from pink foam too. So I got another piece of rebar to throw in. I'll pop in another photo pre primer that will show the difference between GW and DJ rubble.

For rhe paint scheme on the base, he's one of the last figures that I even own, so save it for badass characters. I'm going to do some for my eliminators, too, and then I'm all out of plastic.

Viterbi wrote:Great work on the Lt.'s base, really makes a difference and blends flawlessly with the GW rubble.

Thanks.

The Lieutenant is finished. I think. Of course, it's only after I noticed and then touched up a few things in the last set of pictures I took that I can even say that.

Anyway, here are some final shots.

G'day mate, really enjoying watching the journey so far. Echoing the praise for the base of the lieutenant, it really brings the mini together - and the mud on his boots is a great touch. Nice free hand on the scroll too - always admire people with steady hands. I think he needs another knife or two though

Love the toxic green blood on the other guys too, nice contrast with the red scheme.

I often find that taking photos is a great way to notice things you need to fix too - I should probably start taking photos before I pack up the paint station instead of after! Look forward to more

 tzurk wrote:
I think he needs another knife or two though

I want a knife here, here and here. You can never find a knife when you're mad.

I want to start with a massive shout out to MacPhail.
He dropped off a 40K care package on my porch the other day. Some terrain stuff, some Catachan Guardsmen, some Space Marines, and a kick ass little goblin bagpiper.
I wanted to start with some of those Rambo looking guys, but since I've entered my eliminators into the monthly painting challenge, I told myself to focus on that first.

Update Re: Eliminators

I liked the way the Lt's base turned out, and I got some positive feedback on it. Which I appreciate tremendously.
I wanted to do something similar with the eliminators, and I wanted a bit more rubble. It didn't make sense to me to have them sitting out in the middle of nowhere; snipers. seemingly, would seek out cover.
I don't want to imply a cover bonus, because I know they can't get it from their own base, but I ended up going all out on it.

I also went for a darker color to their armor. Bright red armor with a camo cloak seemed like an unreasonable combination. There are also lots of access points under the cloaks that I wouldn't be able to get to once assembled. The argument could be made that you won't be able to see them either, but in my heart I would know the details were missing from his belt pouch on his back under the cloak. Besides, if someone picked him up, turned him upside down, and looked real close at just the right angle, you might be able to see the corner of it.

Alright, so a rundown of the process and then some pictures:

I got them as part of the Start Collecting Vanguard kit. There are two sets of eliminator squads out there in plastic sprue land. The one that comes separately has a sergeant and two snipers, with a total of three poses.
-The sergeant standing
-A sniper kneeling and holding his rifle two-handed
-A sniper kneeling, one hand on the rifle, other hand digging in a pouch for something.

My set, from the vanguard kit, has two poses:
-The sergeant standing
-Both snipers kneeling and holding the rifle

Now, I don't think that multiple models with the same pose necessarily ruins the unit. I didn't do any conversions to my infiltrators or suppressors, for example.
But, seeing the differences in the two kits struck me as a grave injustice.

So, with some newly purchased green stuff in hand, and a sense of what's-the-worst-that-could-happen-? in my mind, I set about to remedy the situation.

I cut the rifle off from the shoulder and cut the hand off the rifle. Using green stuff I reattached it at a different angle. Then, repaired the hand and made a clip out of green stuff so he is in the process of reloading.

The two poses aren't dramatically different, but enough that they have a little unique character. They also were each kneeling on an identical little bit of rubble that added to their sameness, so I cut that off, too. I figured I'd be sculpting most of the rubble out of pink foam anyway. I did like the bit once I got them off, a little piece of an I beam, so I ended up using one of them on the sergeant's base.

McPhail asked a question about some rebar earlier and I wanted to make some to put sticking out of the junk. Floral wire was too thick for the scale, but I found some 8lb test fishing line sitting around that seemed to do the trick. The only trouble was trying to get it to stick to the stick. PVA glue wasn't going to cut the mustard and I knew I'd get CNA all over my fingers. So I settled somewhere in between with some foam/craft glue I got at Walmart.

Then while that was drying I snapped some more pics.

This morning I cut some lengths from the rebar. The line unravelled in a lot of places, so the glue wasn't the best plan. Might have to CNA the out of my hand after all.

Next up:
-Another stab at gluing sand to foam
-An attempt at active/holographic camouflage
-Some other minor details like giving them heads
-Finish painting

 DJJazzyJeff wrote:

-Another stab at gluing sand to foam

Some nice scout conversions there DJJazzy.

As to gluing sand to foam, it works best when the foam is painted so the flue has a sold surface to grab. You can also use epoxy as it is thick enough to hold the foam and the sand can be poured onto it and left to dry...it also will not shrink like PVA does as it dries.

Cheers,

CB

Captain Brown wrote:

Some nice scout conversions there DJJazzy.

Thanks, Captain.

Captain Brown wrote:

As to gluing sand to foam, it works best when the foam is painted so the flue has a sold surface to grab. You can also use epoxy as it is thick enough to hold the foam and the sand can be poured onto it and left to dry...it also will not shrink like PVA does as it dries.

And thanks, Captain.

Some custom COVID themed objective markers.

A first stab at some holographic camo. I didn't want to just paint some camo blotches. I found a post from another site where someone did a really cool cam like what I attempted here.

Here are his: https://imgur.com/gallery/TpiO06t

and here are mine:

There's some really neat things all throughout this thread! I'm enjoying all the things you do with you bases, it's nice to see such a variety.

Really like the active camo effect

Some updated shots of the Eliminators. Got the scope lenses painted, the purity seals written, and some rank insignia on the sergeant. It stands out as more of a target, but they are still Space Marines. And if you don't have your regiment and rank insignia, then what's the point?

I'm not sure if I like what I added to the camo effect. Sometimes I do, and sometimes I think I ruined the whole model.

Oh, well.

I love these guys. I've seen the active camo effect before, mostly on assassin bodygloves, but only ever in paint. Doing it with texture here is the next level... it's super effective. Also a huge fan of both the detailed bases and the painstaking conversions, especially the removed magazine. It's the little things, man... nice work!

Those cloaks look great - like MacPhail said, the texture really pulls it off. Looks like it'd give you a headache if you stared too long at it, like one of those holographic find-the-dolphin pictures. Really visually interesting effect!