Welcome all to the 34th round of the Unofficial Painting Challenge here on Dakka. For anyone who's unfamiliar with the format, this is a simple community challenge open to anyone on Dakka, the aim of the game being to paint a model or set of models relating to the month's theme and win points for doing so!
As is traditional for December, this round is an Open one with no theme, partly because I know most of you will be busy over the holidays and partly so you have absolutely no excuse not to paint up the new shiny stuff you get for Christmas! You really can enter anything this month, from a grot to a titan, from a scenery piece to a diorama, from themed Christmasy entry to Just Another Solider for your army. All the usual rules apply, but in terms of what you choose to paint, go nuts! This is a chance to really show off how far your skills have come over the last year, so pick any model that sparks your imagination and get to work!
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 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 GMT on the 31st of December. After this, I shall compile the finished entries into a new thread, and voting will run for 5 days.
Here's what I hope December will be about. The Shadespire dude will be for a friend so I'll mostly paint in Starfinder sessions, Megaboss to finally finish my current army, and to represent my character in Starfinder, a "Not-Motoko Kusanagi" from Ghost in the Shell (Hasslefree Miniatures)
Due to failing to complete most of my entries in the last few months, I'm going to tone it down this round - especially given the amount of work mounting up for the Christmas period at Uni!
This time, it'll be one little Primaris Marine... all be it a space magic imbued Marine, but either way - one model!!
Spoiler:
Good luck this month everyone - look forward to seeing all the Christmas themed entries that will no doubt crop up!
I'll be entering some of my alpha legionnaires, very likely, but I have a lot of bits that will be coming in the mail in the next weeks to make them, so I'll post the proof picture when the pile of bits is here...
December is really me trying to finish the tail end of all my painting so I dunno what "new" stuff I'll be working on atm. I'll have to give it a look see!
I'm feeling either brave or lucky to try to enter this for December:
Last month I did some Death Guard grunts; this month I'll try to paint their Primarch! I need to get this guy painted anyway, so now is as good a time as any, right?
I'm probbably end up entering a 75 mm horse that will be a present for my dad, which will represent his childhood horse dragan. I'm not sure when the model will arrive though, so I'll paint other stuff until he arrives and possibly enter that as a backup plan.
Well, can't complain about progress. Had my first Starfinder session this month yeserday, and the dude is already base coated and shaded, ready for fome layering:
I'm torn. I really need to paint my venerable Dread, and build and paint my Predator. But I'm also about to buy a painted Tau army that I'll have to strip and re-paint something more my speed. I'll have a proof pic by next weekend either way, and I'll be sure to actually finish this month
I'm re-painting my unit of initiates and acolytes for an upcoming escalating campaign at my local store including a small inquisitorial force and will post some proof pics tomorrow.
I did start laying some paint down on a few so hopefully it's still a valid entry
Daemonscape General Purpose Buildings (Finished)
Added Battletech Scamm Heavy Trucks in the main picture,to give a better idea of the scale of the little buildings,Definately worth a zoom in.
Hopefully this is valid as a proof as I didn’t really get a chance to snap any pics before I started painting a layer on these guys as I just painted over previous paint jobs and didn’t even prime them though I will Be priming my two snipers before I start painting them.
I would have loved to enter again, but with Christmas on the way and everyone buying up onions like they're going out of fashion, my hands are pretty full trying to run the factory floor at the moment and the last thing I want to do is paint
The entries so far are looking great as usual, look forward to voting!
The open round has caught me out again. It makes me realise that each month i'm not having trouble finding something to fit the theme but instead I'm just quite indecisive...
This month its was a decision to do 5 intercessors or convert up/kitbash a banner nob. I went with latter as I'm not sure on how I'll be fixed time wise.
TheDraconicLord wrote: @Power Elephant - Those tiny free-hand warning signs are absolutely ace. Well done! It hads a lot of flavor to the weapon itself.
Thanks! But to be honest they didn't turn out as good as I hoped. I did them with my only detail brush which was in the process of dying at the time. Initialy I didn't plan on adding all these details on a mere cultist, but I ended up liking the model more and more as I was painting it.
I'm going to paint something different for the last month of the year. Gonna tackle this red dragon from Reaper miniatures.
This red dragon will not be red...alternative paint scheme ftw.
I'm kitbashing an Alpharius... This is one foreseen configuration, Not sure yet if I'm going to go with that or with a single spear with two blades... With glue and greenstuff, I'll see what I can make of him...
I did some building today, and there were a lot of interesting choices that were made, but in the end I'm quite happy with the build... here he is with a deamon prince and deathwatch marine for scale...
Can't wait to get him slathered in silver paint...
Guess I'll finally writhe out of the depths and flail my tentacles about for all to see. Got some old (RIP) Dystopian Wars RoF forces before everything went ploin-shaped. Here's to hoping Warcradle doesn't put cowcatchers on everything.
My entry will be the larger flyers in the Republique of France Bombardment Group.
I really need to get around to building myself a roight 'n propa lightbox...
Mine finally showed up so heres my proof. Snowman slayer from Scibor miniatures The blase od the weapon came a bit damaged so will fix that up and maybe add a wip pic it is christmas after all.
just a small entry from me this time, but I've had an idea for a simple little mini-diorama/display model in the back of my head for a good while now, but haven't gotten around to it...and since I don't have time to do anything bigger, I figure I might as well use this opportunity to get it done ...kitbashed Morsov, from mad max fury road...from the bit where he jumps off the back of the truck and blows up the buzzard's buggy... WITNESSSSS!!!!
Spoiler:
(reference pics, in case you don't know what I'm on about)
Spoiler:
Automatically Appended Next Post: ehh...well, done I guess...for future reference, maybe don't brush-prime with gesso...turned out kinda grainy ...I mean, I did kinda want a bit of a dusty look to it...but not quite that much
...also, the head was a bit of a hackjob I'll admit...it's actually a spare head from mantic's scifi zombies sprue...that head doesn't actually have a nose, so I carved one out of sprue and stuck it on! ...aside from that, it's cadian legs, catachan torso, 2 different catachan combat knife arms, some 1mm and 1.5mm styrene rod for the "thundersticks", and an ork battlewagon gunner hatch on an old paint pot
Here's my progress on dakkajet - about which I am giggling. This is my son's idea.
Behold the POWAH O DA PAINBOW!!!
mine's done now, got added to my last post ...ehhh...didn't turn out all that good, looks allright up on my shelf though, so meh
haha...can't wait to see that dakkajet finished, looking great so far! - it's got red so it goes fasta, blue so it's lucky, green so it's orky (da best!), and yellow for louder dakka...not sure what orange does, but dat's like red and yellow right? so I guess fasta and louda!
A quick WIP pic. I tend to be very bad at posting these. I usually take a few on my phone, but don't get round to uploading and posting them.
You'll notice Drycha is no longer glued to her base. That happened "organically" (ie I accidentally broke her off it when trying to get to an awkward area I was painting. Anyway, the bark is largely done. I might go back and make some adjustment at the end, but it's basically fine. I've also painted the runes, and for the most part finished the honeycomb parts as well. I might put a gloss varnish on the honeycomb to make it look shiny and full of honey. What do you guys reckon? I might just put a dot of varnish in each honey hole. I don't know what those things are called. Honey hole sounds like the name of a seedy strip club. The Honey Hole. Drycha would not approve of that. But I digress.
Those are some... enthusiastically-painted Eldar up there.
Progress report. After basecoating and drybrush with metallics, I slathered on my proprietary blend of Minitaire Ghost Tints to get the purple color. Now, to some of you this may be obvious, but I only just figured it out. You really have to make sure to seal over those ghost tints before you put another layer on top. They bleed. I finally figured it out after a layer of base gray and 3 coats of white. You would think, after running into this exact same problem months ago with the big airship, that I would have learned sooner.
Ignore the little guys on the right.
There is some serious cleanup work that has to be done before carrying on to detailing. Should be done by Christmas. Where have I heard that before? Oh yeah, 1914.
As someone with an Eldar army which features purple heavily, if you had told me "purple airships..." ahead of time I would have thought they'd turn out terrible. They look great, and the cold blue colour works a treat alongside the purple somehow. The coppery/bronze is an excellent choice too.
Dire Avengers finished up. Nothing special, but I love basic troops (hell, I just love Eldar). I now have thirty Dire Avengers painted up and ready to rock.
Nice work on the Drycha, feltmonkey. I seem to remember your wood scene from a previous entry looked very good? Will be fun to see you apply your skills to an alive tree
Well done on finishing AUGmaniac (and welcome back) I always have a soft spot of the Valhallan troops
I always like to see old models recycled, great job Elbows
You have nailed the goat mercenary look there ninja pirate congrats
Well realised its the 21st an I still haven't posted my proof Pic or actually done much. Just trying to clear so much stuff up at work before the xmas break
Anyways, count me in. I'm going to paint another librarian. I actually base coated him before the start of the month (actually about four months ago, before it got cold...), can I still enter him?
Real life has been tough this month, so I've been very unmotivated to paint anything at all. I don't know how finished I'll get but hopefully I might be able to get some time over the next few days in between Christmas food and beer!
The very first models I ever painted were two elven spearmen from the 4th edition fantasy battle box set (given to me on the sprue by a mate in 1992!). I painted one in 'fire' colours and one in 'ice'...they were freaking awesome to me even though I'm sure the paintjob was laugh-out-loud-terrible.
So...I'm going to try and paint an elven spearman for 'open' month in 'fire' colours...if anything else in the proof pic gets done, I'll consider that a big bonus.
Lot's of nice entry's this month,will look forward to giving everyone a vote or two,looks like next month i'am going to be painting lord of the rings hero's should be interesting been a lifetime since i painted old gandalf the gray.
I reached the stage I usually get to with my character pieces, where I can see all these little details I could spend another 12 hours on but only I would notice. So rather than miss the deadline and completely satisfy my painting OCD, I submit my finished Bombardment Group. Maybe a couple months from now I'll go back and hit all the panel lines on the underside that no one will ever see.
Photography isn't optimal but it's the best I can manage with what I've got.
Month is almost over, good to see everyone still plugging away and cool stuff coming out. Finally go around to doing decals for my Hallblasters, so can call them done. Just did them the old fashioned way, I think I need to get some brush on matte coat if I want to use the microsol/set.
Just the basic hellblasters from the DI box, so duplicate poses. Looking forward to getting them on the table to purge some Xenos. Or traitors, heretics, or frankly anything!
Originally, I was going to go with some Soviet WW2 15s, because I needed them painted for my usual bolt action throw down with the cousin over christmas, but then I managed to get a reaper gnoll warrior I'd been bypassing for a year or two now done over Christmas, and I think it looks a good bit better, so...
proof (and also crappy pic of the 15s I was going to go with):
Finished:
Not nearly as good looking or as quirky as PossumCraft's entry though. I bet it was fun to paint, it's very fun to look at! One of the Dark Sword peices?
@Vejut: That model is cool, and I think it's your best paintjob yet in one of these challenges!
@Nevelon: Nice Hellblasters! I especially like the plasma coils.
@Jetpack_Octopus: Those things are really cool! When I saw the proof I liked them already, and your paintwork has really made them pop.
I'm calling my own entry done. I present to you Mortarion, Daemon Primarch of the Death Guard:
This guy was very challenging to paint. Between the sheer size of the model and the amount of detail, he's not for beginners. I'm pretty pleased with how he turned out. I perhaps could have picked out a few more details or added a few more highlights, but I didn't want to mess anything up so I decided to quit while I was ahead.
Some great entries in this thing so far, so the voting should be fairly exciting. Good luck finishing to all those still working!
Yes very glad you can join us again this month Chris hope you are managing to get some of it done.
Well done Jetpack_Octopus, the Bombardment Group looks really good. I really like the purple and icy blue colours on the planes.
Nevelon, how big is your ultramarines army now? I imagine it will look very good on a battlefield
PossumCraft, it is a random and cool frog mage, the skins to lips transition is very good
I liked how you have done the spots of the skin/fur Vejut
And really well done Zerg, its a big model to get painted and I am impressed how it matches your entry from last month with the dirty Death Guard armour. The different shades and colours on the wings is very nice too
My WIP
I hope everyone had a good Xmas and to add to the festive cheers here is some previous xmas entries
Once again great entries so far. I love that mini Possumcraft, where is it from?
Best get a move on Para, though I'm sure you'll have an award winning mini in about half an hour! =)
This is my Nob with Waaagh! banner. He is a conversion from a black reach nob with some orruk brute bits. The placard and pole of the banner are scratch built (the top bit is from the ork boyz sprue). This was my first time trying to do more with green stuff than just fill gaps, I made the straps holding the pole on his back... much respect to all those 'greenstuffers' just doing this had me pulling my hair out.
Quite happy with how he turned out though. I did originally have plans of something more inventive with the banner but chickened out, heh!
I have managed to throw something of an entry together, still a few details/tweaks to go that I'll sort tomorrow. It's hardly the best work I've done, but at least I'll have something to enter!
Moolet wrote: Once again great entries so far. I love that mini Possumcraft, where is it from?
It's a Dark Sword miniature called 'Frog Wizard' (who'd have guessed?) which I got sent as a freebie with some other models I ordered. He's been banging around for ages and I decided to finally paint through some of my grey mountain
ZergSmasher wrote:@Nevelon: Nice Hellblasters! I especially like the plasma coils.
Midget Gems wrote:Nevelon, how big is your ultramarines army now? I imagine it will look very good on a battlefield
Thanks. I put a little more effort into the plasma, doing some pre-shading before the wash. I should probably go more extreme with it next time, as it’s hard to tell I put in the extra step.
My Ultras are a little over 13k at the moment. On the shelf. I just did a quick tally, and while it’s rough (as some things are 30k, and/or partial units) I’ve painted about 2,400 points of Ultras in this painting competition alone over the time it’s been running. Not exactly a balanced army, as it’s very HQ/elite skewed. Although with the right detachments I should be able to get at least 2/3rds of it to the table in a legal list. LRR chock full of characters rolls up the table flanked by a pair of dreads, while the intercessors/hellblasters/devs and a captain sit in the back field and hold the fort down.
Need a pic of that, Nev! And not just so we can run clickbait ads for the challenge.
'I took part in the Dakka painting challenge for 30 months and I painted all this! And so can you!'
As for myself, here's the first (and possibly final, depending on how much time I can find and if I spot anything that can be easily tweaked) pass at my entry, a pair of Blood Angels doing nondescript Space Mariney things. A tad generic, but hopefully cool enough. And there's snow on the base, so Christmas!
Yay, the last mini of 2017 is complete, the Emerald dragon has landed. What a year this was and pretty happy with the projects behind me.
The dragon is my biggest mini to date. I've put quite an effort in highlighting all the scales individually, well almost all of them. The inner/shadow parts
are bluish in color while the outer are more yellowish. I wasn't sure what to do about the wings. I wanted to do some kind of free hand, like spots or veins.
I tried to paint spots and it looked awful and then I ran out of time to do veins, so I wet blended dark green with ivory and then glazed over a light green.
Turned out OK-ish.
I sculpted each stone brick individually and the column from fimo air hardening clay (quite nice material for this kind of application) and then build them
around a cork wall. Final touches on the base were done with pigments.
Well I wish everybody a happy new year, full of creativity and passion in the big world of miniatures!
Blimey Modock, you've outdone yourself there. That is something truly special and a great way to finish the year off!
Though perhaps oddly, the thing that impresses me most is that superbly realistic stonework on the base, any chance you could go into a bit more detail about how you achieved that look?
Cheers Para! Sure no prob, I can explain in few steps.
Base was primed in black.
First I did was a heavy drybrush with a mixture of dark grey with a bit of green (fieldgrey).
Second drybrush was done with Vallejo Model Color Medium grey.
Last and very gentle drybrush with Vallejo Model Color Deck Tan.
The secret ingredients are the three pigments I used afterwards.
Vallejo Burnt Umber, Dark Red Ochre and Natural Sienna. I didn't apply them as a wash but more
like a glaze, selectively to specific spots. Pigments are great cause they leave a dusty finish.
PS. Before I started to drybrush I painted some bricks in dark brown and black green to achieve a slight
color variation.
Trying to knock out a quick Frostgrave Team for New Year's Eve...
I think there's going to be a few changes... I think I'm going to use something other than the gobblers for thieves. Might also use a different Greylord.
z2 is too big, so I'll probably use Valachev from earlier this year's challenges as the wizard. The Man-O-War is only there to show how ludicrious z2's size is.
Not going to get time to finish my apothecary but the cheerleader is done.
@Para, you've not included my cheerleader proof in the OP, only the proof of the model I'm not going to finish! It's back on page one, but for convenience...
Spoiler:
Here are the finished pics. Sorry they're so grainy! Should get better when the missus buys a new camera
Some really great entries as always- that dragon is just plain amazing, Modock!
I managed to push through this month and get something finished, though the photos are pretty flat. Bit of a struggle this month but I think this makes 12 months in a row, so I didn't want to miss an entry! Probably shouldn't have tried NMM with such a short amount of time!
Anyhow, here are the Guardians of the Shrine of Asur.
Now i get why this month is "Open Round".Too little time for miniatures in December. I do see some really good miniatures though.
Unfortunately I couldn't finish both miniatures so the centaur will have to go to war without his purple elf lady.
So anyway here is the Centaur. And happy new year to everyone!
Here we go... made it on my first attempt, it was good working to a deadline, especially at this time of year! Now just got time left for a G&T before New Year's Eve starts properly.
So finally got it all finished and photographed. I'm really happy with how this turned out, hope you guys are too. So without further ado here he is THE SNOWMAN SLAYER. Have a happy new year guys and let's get cracking for the new year.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Here are my finished pics for the month. I painted the world's angriest Christmas Tree, Drycha Hamadreth. This model, in an unpainted state, has single-handedly (single branchedly?) decimate n1ceguypaul's forces on more than one occasion, so I knew I needed to do a good job. If a model kicks arse on the tabletop, it needs to look the part. My favorite parts of the paintjob are the colourful iridescent insect wings and, oddly, the brambles coming out of her crotch. The wings because I ummed and ahhed about how to do them for days, and the crotch brambles... I don't know why I like the crotch brambles. I just do.
Some great stuff here, poll/final OP update will be a bit delayed as my computer just chose the most inopportune moment to die to death...
Note to self for reference, everything on this page needs to be added to the OP
@CREEEEED: I like OSL Think you're confusing me with someone else!
Paradigm wrote: Some great stuff here, poll/final OP update will be a bit delayed as my computer just chose the most inopportune moment to die to death...
Note to self for reference, everything on this page needs to be added to the OP
@CREEEEED: I like OSL Think you're confusing me with someone else!
You're right, it was Peregrine who was complaining about my desire to have plasma.
@feltmonkey not too sure getting eaten by a mourngul and his undead buddies constitutes a decimating encounter. Think we will have to let nag ash and alarielle duke it out for the decider.
Cracking job on the chick with the crotch brambles. Loving the honeycomb effect it really brings out the loathing on her face. Can't wait to see all the entries up. Happy new year
Its late so I'm just going to post the finished pic and look at the posts I've missed tomorrow.
The last pic is me having a play with the LED lampposts they work but had a bit of a drama towards the end of the photos when the camera toppled over and knocked all the Models off! I couldn't get the Xmas tree to stand back up, the snow was absorbing the glue :(
Anyway enjoy and hope you all have a happy new year
Well after a rough month I finally finished them. Not my best work but tabletop enough for the inquisition kill team escalation league in starting up in this new year!
Got a few more blokes done earlier today. Will post revised pic in the morning if that's cool. Just got back from some celebratin' so I'm a bit bleary right now.
Here's the rest of the blokes. I have to say I'm not super happy with the bendy plastic used in PP's Undercity models. They are mashed together in awkward poses - hot water doesn't always fix the bends - cleanup is impossible, so the paintjobs suffer accordingly.
The Team
Closeup of the Widomaker Marksman
Changed the Greylord from the original proof picture: (New proof if anyone cares)
You really can enter anything this month, from a grot to a titan, from a scenery piece to a diorama, from themed Christmasy entry to Just Another Solider for your army. All the usual rules apply, but in terms of what you choose to paint, go nuts! This is a chance to really show off how far your skills have come over the last year, so pick any model that sparks your imagination and get to work! 
WITNESSSSS!!!! 
...I mean, I did kinda want a bit of a dusty look to it...but not quite that much 
but the cheerleader is done.
