Welcome all to the 90th 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, the theme is A Helping Hand: Not every battle is won on the front line with blade and bullet, and no army can function without its support elements. Whether medics or engineers, planners or propagandists, your entry should feature models that act as force multipliers on or off the battlefield, rather than direct combatants.



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 June and will end at midnight BST on 30th June. After this, I shall compile the finished entries into a new thread, and voting will run for 5 days.



List of entrants:

Daia T'NaraL Warpsmith and Servitor


Captain Brown: Eldar Vyper


FrozenDwarf: Mechanic


theCrowe: Photo Reconnisance Aircraft


MrNobody: Tau Pathfinder


Ghost_Hedgehog: Crawling Claw


inmygravenimage: Sci-fi Civilians


Geifer: Imperial Droids and Comm Specialists


CancelledApocalypse: Eldar Spiritseer and Guardian



Lovej: Regimental Advisors


Jadenim: Bishop


KidCthulhu: Inqusitorial Retinue


Nevelon: Primaris Techmarine


JoshInJapan: Ashigaru Ammo Carriers


Yo7: Orc Drummer


Boringstuff: Rapier Weapon Platform


401st: World Eaters Apothecary


kurhanik: Ork Kommandos


Tallandra: Techmarine


Gulgog TufToof: Ork Comm Boy


Vejut: Animal Adventurers


ZergSmasher: Wood Elf Banner Bearer



Midget Gems:Ork Mek


Midget Gems Jr (6 yrs): Wood Elf and Stag


Midget Gems Jr Jr (4 yrs): Witch Elf


Maharg:Techmarine and an Apothecary


Viterbi: Biophagus

After a couple of months of Mantic SF, it's time for a break. I'll be painting these ashigaru ammo carriers (along with a rifleman that came in the set) from the Perry Miniatures samurai line:

Primaris techmarine this month from me.

5 of these Core Space dudes, I think

I've got a set of townsfolk for Burrows & Badgers that are perfect for this... or at least, they would be, if I hadn't painted them all a couple of months ago.

So, I reckon I'll pop open a blister of Regimental Advisors instead!



cheers
Michael

It's actually a stroke of luck that Sister's eligible - I spent a while some time ago putting together her 'icon of Slaanesh' (okay technically it's a corpse, the important thing is it's inspiring), sprayed her, put on the contrast paint for the armour, then realised I'd forgotten to attach a left arm, and hastily reached for one of the random tentacles I make out of leftover milliput whenever I'm using it because I always accidentally make more than I need, then the Helping Hand topic showed up in the poll and I realised using the tentacle meant she didn't have an actual weapon, so I gave her a fresh coat of primer and left her alone until now. Alongside her, the servitor which was my original idea for this month when I saw the poll (I've had this utterly tasteless idea for him for a while, doing it for the contest will just let me pretend it's not entirely my fault I thought of it), and on a whim I picked up the dark techpriest thing, I'll replace his pistol with something more utilitarian. While I was at the shop I also asked them to order in a Sister Dialogus, which I don't have a solid plan for but I'm sure I'll think of something to do with or to her, I'll take a proof of her when she arrives.

 Lovejoy wrote:
I've got a set of townsfolk for Burrows & Badgers that are perfect for this... or at least, they would be, if I hadn't painted them all a couple of months ago.

I’ve done that a couple of times this year too! It’s a bit frustrating at times but then again the randomness sometimes pushes us in unexpected directions toward pretty positive results. Looking forward to seeing your advisors painted.

For my entry it’ll be a long delayed return to 1:300 scale WW2 aircraft. Looking at Photo Recon planes.

Couple of planes here with a base coat already, hope that’s ok.
I’ll see how many of these I get done before the end of the month. I might even get a bit of the history written up to go alongside too.

Oh, man, I love the different ways this is getting interpreted. I think I've settled on the TV crew from Core Space First Born. Reportage, baby!

 theCrowe wrote:
I’ve done that a couple of times this year too! It’s a bit frustrating at times but then again the randomness sometimes pushes us in unexpected directions toward pretty positive results.

Yep, got to agree there - I'd probably have never gotten around to painting these Regimental Advisors without this challenge.
It's good to get forced out of my comfort zone now and again...


Anyway - the blister's now open, and the casts are... really not good. The artillery bloke's pretty clean, but he's not really that interesting.
The other two have lots of mould slip, and a few areas where the mould has torn. They aren't paintable as they are, unfortunately. So I'm going to dig out the Greenstuff and do a bit of remedial converting.

If they look good after that, I'll paint them. If they don't, I'll pretend I never planned to paint them anyway, and do an Enginseer or something instead.

Remedial converting? Like giving them a full Northymbran makeover and producing some royal advisors from the court of Othyr?

My entry: a trio of legion apothecaries.

I'm probably going to do what I originally intended last month and paint my wraithlord and spiritseer. More for the spiritseer, who is the one who guides the wraith constructs.

Either that, or I have a 30k apothecary that I've been meaning to paint for a very special kill team...

When you need that one last wound applied to a large enemy...you call on the helping hand of the Vyper to finish the job.



Cheers,

CB

 theCrowe wrote:
Remedial converting? Like giving them a full Northymbran makeover and producing some royal advisors from the court of Othyr?

That would be cool - but then, I'd want to get them cast, so it'd be months before I could paint them!

Flag and Trombone!

Also getting back to my usual, in this case also burrows and badgers:

May do the two to the left as a pub couple, or the right as the necromancer for my budding skeleton horde, or maybe both if I decide the necromancer is a regular.

I’m in. Need a helping hand? Call for reinforcements, or perhaps an aerial bombardment?
I’m going to focus on the comms boy since he fits the theme, but I like the cadence of painting two minis at a time so hopefully I’ll get ‘em both done in time.
Proof:

I'll be painting this Lecro-Maester this month.

I am elbow deep in World Eaters so I might as well add these to the mix:

A little progress

I've narrowed it down to the front row, I think. The alien prospector has 3 hands AND all the ones on its rig, so that's a... Helping hand. Stilts, the droid, is offering a hand... You get the idea

Some progress. Turns out that wasn't a robe that bat had on, just a hood though, so probably not going to end up in my undead army. Still a cool model though!

Not sure what I want to do yet, thinking either an officer for a guard army, a commissar or two, or a few Artel W ork kommandoz. I figure all 3 fit itne category, either leadership role, morale officer role, or saboteurs.

The Orks are actually primed already, so leaning towards them, but still on the deciding phase of this.

I've had these squad attachments for my Imperials sitting around in the back of my queue for about two years. May be worth finally putting some paint on. May be subject to change. I'm not sure what mood I'm in, really.

Vejut wrote:
Also getting back to my usual, in this case also burrows and badgers:

Well that pretty much guarantees you a vote from me, but I'm biased!

Anyway, I've managed to fix up the dodgy bits on the Regimental Advisor castings, and knocked up a couple of cyberskulls to go with them:







I'm still not sure whether to do these or not... I'm tempted to paint a Space Marine Drop-pod, for some reason!

cheers
Michael

I dunno, I think that mole just looks so happy to be included it'd be a shame to leave them out...

Decided to go with the Kommandos, largely because they give a bit more freedom to go a bit wild with the schemes. Plus, I have never painted an Ork before, so taking the chance to test out several different Ork flesh paints. Got one base coated in Waagh Flesh, and another is Army Painter's Greenskin, and the third one I'm going to test whatever the Ork Flesh Speedpaint is called.

Still very much a work in progress obviously but I figured I should denote what I picked from the group before showing the final product later in the month. Goal is to do 3 of them, but if I finish early I might try to do more.

I got the base colours onto my Apothecaries yesterday (alongside about 50 World Eaters). Time to start some details.

Done! I actually intended for the chaos icon sister to be this month's thing, but as soon as I got the Warpsmith out of his box he took over - something new, versus just another chaos sister (I'll get around to her eventually); I did think about waiting for her to be finished as well and making them a group entry, but a) aside from being in the same army she doesn't really have anything to do with this guy, so the relation seemed kind of tenuous, and b) I'm impatient. So may I present the Fleshsmith, who turns out is a character I dreamed up decades ago (I didn't have that in mind when I got the miniature, it was just 'this guy's a non-combat helper, why not?') - thought he'd been killed off, and to be fair he was, but Syl reanimated him to look after the machine shop, much to his irritation (being killed was his plan, long story - also in lieu of his old machine parts, which Syl couldn't be bothered finding, all those tendrils and stuff are made out of his actual body, which is agony for the poor guy). I don't plan these things, lore just kind of shows up while I'm painting, like the bit of my brain not directing the hands gets bored and starts inventing things on its own.

And then there's the Slaaneshi servitor, which I feel like I ought to apologise for - okay look if there's any kids in the audience, he swings that arm around and punches enemies with it, okay? Sigh. I'm not proud of this, it's just, once the idea popped into my head, I had to go for it. Be grateful I can't sculpt and just had to source the 'attachment' out of whatever was lying around the bits box.



Behind the spoiler just so's not to clutter up the place, just some more angles on the Fleshsmith, who I'm pretty proud of despite, as always, zooming in with the camera revealing how much of an actual mess I'm making when my own ageing eyes have convinced me I'm laying down some really smooth edge highlights.

Fleshy. Nice and saucy. Looks great.

 Lovejoy wrote:

Vejut wrote:
Also getting back to my usual, in this case also burrows and badgers:

Well that pretty much guarantees you a vote from me, but I'm biased!

Anyway, I've managed to fix up the dodgy bits on the Regimental Advisor castings, and knocked up a couple of cyberskulls to go with them:







I'm still not sure whether to do these or not... I'm tempted to paint a Space Marine Drop-pod, for some reason!

cheers
Michael

You sculpted half a mini there and a cool mole! Most people's idea of patching things up isn't a great conversion like that. Can't wait to see how the mole turns out. Hopefully with glowing eyes since psychic moles are the best kind of moles.

Attached my entry this month. A mantic orc drummer. Only noticed the line down his face once photoed so I fixed that and he's ready for some speed paint shortly. He's got a cool bone drum stick if that even counts as a weapon.. not sure he could drum with the 8 foot tall axes and tank cannons floating around in the thread... Some of those minis might need a helping hand carrying those things!

Ah wait, it's the Orc Drummer round this month? Yeah, I'm in.

Working on core space civilians with the In The Line of Fire expansion.



And a bit of detail

Reporter, drone operator and filming drone from the Media team.

They can be an in-game irritant but have their uses glorifying your alien treasure hunting.

Prospectors, with extra hands for helping.

Again, can be a bother wandering around alien tombs looting or digging up samples but equally very good addition to your crew with a useful set of skills and unusual gear.

So, these are probably my final submissions, but might try to get better shots.

Okay, I'm in with some helping hands for my Inquisitor, Lorem Ipsum:



Yes, I know there's more than 5 models here. In the highly unlikely event I finish all 6, I'll post the best 5.
But let's not get ahead of ourselves here

These guys are essentially finished:



Their bases need some work, and I think I should go back and make sure the reflections on their helmets all match.

One 32mm mechanic is in the works, tabletop quality. (maybe i can do a second model entry, depends on my mood)

Your mechanic looks better than my mechanic. Stupid beeping trashcan.

Ah, the traditional workshop attire of hot pants and bikini top (!)

At least her protective boots are flat soled

Dont blame the painter, blame the artist and sculptor

WIP.

Because you cannot seal the model with the clear canopy attached.






Cheers,

CB

Hoping to get back on track with this Middle-Earth model:

This is a Lothlorien Wood Elf with a banner; carrying a banner to inspire and rally the troops is definitely a helping or supporting role rather than being a frontline combatant.

Finished...

A Helping Hand (When you need to inflict that last wound)







Cheers,

CB

Yaay, more blue camo! It should be on everything I say

 Gulgog TufToof wrote:
Yaay, more blue camo! It should be on everything I say

Surely it IS on everything. After you’ve nicked it…

 FrozenDwarf wrote:
Dont blame the painter, blame the artist and sculptor

Always tickles me when they complain about the mechanic in hot pants. But not that she's carrying a wrench most body building men would struggle to use let alone an average sized woman. Not my taste in minis at all but if youre complaining daisy dukes aren't suitable attire we should consider how functional a door sized sword is as well..

Got the orc drummer painted. He'll do nicely for a rank and file game. Need to do his basing to finish him up. He was quite fun to paint and a nice test for army painters new speed paints. Did not like the red reactivating under the silver. Should have varnished it so its my own fault but pink metallic shoulder details didn't seem very orcy. Not many orcs want to dress up as a pretty pink princess when they're looking for a dust up.

 Captain Brown wrote:
Finished...
Cheers,

CB

That model looks really cool. I don't know if you've painted a lot in the blue camo scheme but camo pops better with over lapping layers. Your 3 colours cutting into each other makes it more visually interesting. It reads as more camo than polka dots with a small adjustment to where you paint each layer.

A) This is a very light-hearted thread, so don’t worry about those being serious complaints.

B) You’re obviously never seen some of the big torque wrenches that are needed in engineering. One of the funniest moments I’ve seen at work was one of our 17-year old female apprentices using a torque wrench about 2/3rds as tall as she was to do up some massive bolts (50mm/2inch-ish) on one of our projects. It wasn’t specifically her that was funny (she was doing fine), but the fact that she was surrounded by half a dozen burly guys, all at least twice her size, ready to get on with the rest of the job once the bolts were in. It was such an incongruous sight!

A little progress...



These two are pretty much done. Still working on the group, not sure how many I'll finish in time.

..and Mechanic is done. (Model dont have a name as it is part of a command squad)

Not painted for display, and it looks grainy up clouse as i use exlusivly rattlecans for the primer. When its on the table it looks good, but phone cam dont woork to well like that.

F-Dwarf, I really like how the skin came out on your mechanic.

She's an absolute smasher.

Here’s my entry. Maybe more of an eye in the sky than a helping hand. Though I’m sure photo reconnaissance is plenty helpful.


Here we have my selection of WW2 PR aircraft. I’ll tell a bit about each as we go along, just cause… you know, history.

Ki-46-High speed long range photo reconnaissance - code name Dinah.




Ju 86 P- Luftwaffe High Altitude Photo Reconnaissance -Eastern front.




AR 707 of 431 Flight -Martin Maryland- Flight Officer Adrian Warburton





B-17 E - Old 666 - The Eager Beavers- 43rd Bomb Group -New Guinea 1943





PR Spitfire - 16 Squadron -Low cloud-level reconnaissance -1944

It looks like I have some free time, so hopefully I can get something done in time.



I figure reconnaissance counts as a sort of support role.

He’s definitely giving a helping hand to that drone and the drones are also helping him. Help all round!

 inmygravenimage wrote:
She's an absolute smasher.

As in, "I'd smash'er!"

I'll see myself out.

I got halfway through painting my entry when I finally decided that the initial priming was too grainy. Stripping and starting over. :(

Good News: Making more progress

Bad News: I can't take a decent photo of any of these guys



Really, the finished scribe and the cherub look a lot better in real life!

Month half over, put the first basecoat down yesterday. Need to get moving here.

So, I have finished painting up all my Core Space... now I just need to pick 5.


Nothing new here, just on a better backdrop and slightly tidied up.

Civilians! The alien in the middle is a contender. Street-Punk Girl is super shiny for some reason.

Crew of the Ion Hope from the base game. Their captain, with his hand out flat (and sneaky pistol in the other) is a maybe.

Crew of the Black Maria from the base game. Snazzy sculpts, but none I think fit the bill for the challenge except maybe the mechanic on the left.

The inhabitants of Trading Post 5, otoh, has LOADS of potential. Yeti, the wee dude with many arms, has many hands to help with

The droids also. I am particularly happy with the NED-B (Kenobi) paintjob.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Right now my top 5 are Gan'eek (the alien in the group of 3 civilians), XL (the yellow droid), Stilts (the red droid), Yeti (multi limbed small alien technician) and Bullworth (the big alien with the prospecting rig). They all seem to fit brief.

 Nevelon wrote:
Month half over, put the first basecoat down yesterday. Need to get moving here.

I was thinking the exact same thing for my orks. About 3/4 of the way done with basecoating, buuuuuut, that doesn't include the massive "cleanup" stage I have at the end of that wherein I fix all of the mistakes I made along the way.

I'm having similar thoughts half of the time. Getting the models basecoated and ready for the real work was easy enough, but finishing them feels so drawn out. The other half it feels like they're really not much work and I'll be able to finish my models with time to spare. Odd month, this one...

Yep... I've undercoated mine, and that's as far as it's gone!
Hopefully I'll find time to actually pick up a brush before the end of the month.

My son, aka the boy, aka my artistic director would like to also enter this month if that’s ok.

To add to his “Halloween Army” we have created this helping hand.



I’m looking forward to seeing his paint job. I’ll try and be as hands-off as possible.

Good old blue plastic genestealers still coming in handy.

(Oops, few too many dad jokes!)

I gotta hand it to your boy, Crowe; he's got his finger on the pulse of what conversions work.

I confess I did the same exact thing for Crawling Claws in my D&D campaign. Old blue genestealers for the win!

Well, I think I might have figured out the colour orange. My highlights are not looking great in this photo. I'll put it down to my own impatience.

That's VERY snazzy.
Have we had any thoughts for next month? If only to prioritize my paint queue!

I still owe my proof pic and already have made some good progress. Although I dread all his erlenmeyer flasks and other assorted liquids I need to paint soon

 inmygravenimage wrote:
That's VERY snazzy.
Have we had any thoughts for next month? If only to prioritize my paint queue!

Well, obviously one option for next month should be "That's Very Snazzy!" now.

Come on, we've had themes for trash troops lately, let's campaign for some style!

 Geifer wrote:
Well, obviously one option for next month should be "That's Very Snazzy!" now.
Come on, we've had themes for trash troops lately, let's campaign for some style!

"Fighting In Style"?
"Looking Good On The Battlefield"?
"Center Of Attention"?

That's Very Snazzy has to be it really now doesn't it?! 🤣🤣

The more I think about it, the more I can get behind "That's Very Snazzy".

It would allow me to paint that 1987 Ordo Malleus inquisitor I just got. That dude is FANCY.

I'm now thinking Skurge. Behold! My Stuff!

Oh, that's a problem. I have Skurge, too. We might end up with an actual competition.

 Geifer wrote:
Oh, that's a problem. I have Skurge, too. We might end up with an actual competition.

This vs That, DakkaDakka version!

Geifer wrote:Oh, that's a problem. I have Skurge, too. We might end up with an actual competition.

Amazing

 KidCthulhu wrote:
The more I think about it, the more I can get behind "That's Very Snazzy".

It would allow me to paint that 1987 Ordo Malleus inquisitor I just got. That dude is FANCY.

I paint Eldar, I can definitely get behind "That's Very Snazzy"! Unfortunately, I'm losing half of next month's painting time and I don't know how much I'll be able to do in the other half.

Oh well!

That sounds like a job for a single corsair or clown.Or if you're really constrained, one of those aspect statues.

 inmygravenimage wrote:

Geifer wrote:Oh, that's a problem. I have Skurge, too. We might end up with an actual competition.

Amazing

Now we only have to rig the poll and buy votes to make it happen. Democracy can be such a chore.

Some great stuff already in this thread, you're all really cracking on with it!

I've finally made a start. Only the skin so far though!



cheers,
Michael

Bishop offers both a figurative and literal helping hand in Aliens:

Still getting the basecoats down. But almost done with that. So many “helping hands” on this guy get in the way of getting a brush were I need it. Going to be a lot of touch up work...

Making some progress - finally got all my yellow finished! If I ever start talking about collecting an Iyanden army, though, you all have my permission to shoot me...

I think I'm going to be able to get Arienal finished (the spiritseer), but I'm most likely not going to have time to finish the wraithlord, so that's unfortunate.

So my painting is coming along great but my photography is somehow getting worse?!



Still painting a fifth while trying to get decent pics of these poor guys.

Have you tried taking pics without flash, KC? Flash tends to wash out the colours and destroy any nice gradients. I'd suggest taking photos in natural light as much as possible, or maybe investing in a couple of daylight lamps for lighting purposes.

Then again, my photographs have hardly been all that good recently...

The photos without a flash come out so blurry as to be useless.

I tried again with a background and tweaking the lighting, hoping that might help. It didn't.



I'll figure something about by the time I have a full five ready to go...

Sounds like a tripod may be in order. You can have a very slow shutter speed without blurring if you use a tripod.

Hi folks.
Here’s the finished entry painted by my boy, who for the purposes of this challenge would like to go by the name of Ghost_Hedgehog.

He’s gone for a rather genestealerish purple tone with a heavy blue wash and some gnarly blue claws.

 Pariah Press wrote:
Sounds like a tripod may be in order. You can have a very slow shutter speed without blurring if you use a tripod.

Sometimes all you need is something to brace the camera on, but tripods are good.

Another thing to try is to set a delay, so there is no motion of you pressing the button.

If there is a long shutter time, more light might help.

Attempt, err what month is this, to finish painting a single model a month for this comp.

Proof:


Progress, finished the crew and started on the rapier itself.

I think this set up might be the best I'm gonna get...



Thanks to all the shutterbugs for their camera advice

It's a big improvement. No over exposure and reflective shine and overall a nice set of models!

Thanks. I think the purple wash on the Navigator's cloak is too strong, so I'm going to highlight the folds again.

I'm still very much in it at this point, here's a quick WIP:

I still need to finish highlighting, plus all the little gold details, the skin, and the hair. And then the really hard part: the freehand on the banner.

FWIW, my vote for next month's theme can most certainly be bought. I accept cash, minis, bits, teef, and gubbins.

 Gulgog TufToof wrote:
FWIW, my vote for next month's theme can most certainly be bought. I accept cash, minis, bits, teef, and gubbins.

"Beef, teef, and gubbins" would get my vote for next month's theme.

That just sounds like a Slaaneshi Minotaur to me.

 Geifer wrote:
That just sounds like a Slaaneshi Minotaur to me.

On the other hand, that category would make room for some ancient times barbarians.

Some more suggestions for themes (not at all influenced by things I want to paint, honest!):

Angels and/or demons
On holy orders
Death comes from afar/on high
It's dirty work, but...

I’m up for magic, mercs, heroes, wings, pirates, veterans, vintage metal, machines, cute and fluffy… not so many orks looking paint in my collection but whatever comes up I’ll try to find something to fit the theme. I want to make it to October to complete my first year of monthly painting challenge entries.

Subject poll for next month:
https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/0/806633.page#11422223

Here we go, my Helping Hands: Gan'eek (the alien civilian), XL (the yellow droid), Stilts (the red droid), Yeti (multi limbed small alien technician) and Bullworth (the big alien with the prospecting rig).




Final pics, these, I reckon.

Here's my finished entry: Astromech, medical droid and comms specialist unit attachments.

WIP

Need to do the blue ink stage, then a lot of highlighting and cleanup, but getting there.

Okay, I ran out of time on this (I'm not able to paint for the rest of the month). I managed to finish Iyanna, but I got nowhere near completing her wraithlord companion. Fortunately, I was able to build a quick eldar guardian to go with her (her helping hand - though really she's the helping hand, herself, as she's a spiritseer guide for eldar wraith constructs) and get him painted up quickly. So here's my entry:



And here are the proof pics. The guardian has a headswap from Artel W, but I forgot to photograph that bit before I started painting him (I was in a rush). Hope that's okay?

Finally got these finished. They've been a real slog, TBH... I just wasn't feeling the 'Helping Hand' subject. Back to something a bit more fighty next month, thankfully!

I've tried to go for some textural stuff on the various textiles, which was a bit of an experiment. It's gone OK, but I reckon there's a fair bit of development possible. I'll have to do a bit more, and see how it goes.

Anyway - finished pics:













cheers,
Michael

They look spiffy. I’m enjoying the purple and green combo, and the seeing-eye mole especially.

Wow Lovejoy! I really like the light tan leather, that's come out beautifully!

Here's my entry, Bishop, the artificial person always willing* to help you out:











* Obviously, by "willing" I mean "bound by programming"

Okay, looks like I only had time for four this time around, but I'm pleased with the results.









I went back in and touched up a few things (like the Mystic's cloak or the wires on the Scribe). I'm working on a project that involves four Inquisitors and their crews, so each of these guys "belongs" to a different Inquisitor. That's why the Scribe's purple wires/shoes got repainted red.

Calling him done. A helping hand in multiple ways, offering buffs and repairs to the chapter’s vehicles. Also more literally with mechadendrites and a servo arm for when 2 hands just aren’t enough.

These guys are finished:



I added a little static grass to the bases, but otherwise haven't done anything since I last posted. The solitary guy flat-out refuses to take in-focus photos.

After the spoiler, I have a couple of photos with these models as parts of the units they are meant to fill out. These are for context, not voting.


The teppo dudes are at least ten years older than the ammo bearers, and it really shows, at least in these photos.

Took a while to get him based but here he is. Mantic orc musician. Painted with speed paint for the red. Which bled like a stuck pig into the silver.. like it for blending highlights in, not for making my orcs shiny pink..

Yo7 wrote:
Took a while to get him based but here he is. Mantic orc musician. Painted with speed paint for the red. Which bled like a stuck pig into the silver.. like it for blending highlights in, not for making my orcs shiny pink..

I like that orc, especially the red armor. This guy, at least, doesn't mind standing out in a crowd!

Finished up my submission:

I struggled to get a good picture of this. And my other Apothecary wasn't finished in time so it's only the one dude.

Oooh, I'm liking that dude.

Ok, the Ork Kommandos are done! Threw on last coat of varnish last night and voila. Tabletop standard, but still good for me at least.











I learned a decent amount from these guys, first of which was that while going with varied garb looks good, it would probably be easier to paint a handful of them uniformly in one go and then just mix them into units later, instead of remembering who got what paint where. I also learned how to, and not to paint Ork skin. Believe it or not the one whose skin kind of looks blue and splotchy looks really good from a distance, but zoomed in not as much.

Tested out a bunch of new paints, learned that Army Painter's Speedpaint isn't for me. I'm too sloppy and it spreads too thin, so cleanup took too long in some places, and on others I gave up and essentially did a different color on top. The guy in the blueish green onesie was originally both skin and onesie Speedpaint, but ended up throwing a light blue on top of the outfit since otherwise I'd need like 5 coats to cover up the spots on it. That outfit is also where I experimented with "how would it look if I threw a green wash on this light blue", to which the answer was surprisingly not terrible.

While the Speedpaint isn't for me, I rather like the Army Painter Metallic I had bought on a whim and tested. The blue metallics are that, and I liked it enough that I bought 3 or 4 more of them at the shop a few days back even though I have no immediate plans for them.

All in all, a pretty fun time toying with various paints I've had laying around for ages that never got used.

Speaking of ork kommandos, I just finished my comms boy and I’m dying to enter him since I finally finished on time for once. Now I just have to carve out the time somehow tomorrow to take and post pics.

Actually managed to finish something this month, here's my Techmarine:


Proof picture:


Finished:


And some more pictures in the spoilers:

Damn, I finished on Sunday, but haven’t taken good pictures. If possible I‘ll take nice ones tomorrow, but here is the proof that he‘s done.

Hi All

I took this Bank holiday in the UK to paint with my "Little Helpers" was really nice being able to share this with them and they seemed quite interested in it, i didnt get much painting do though I as I was just mostly helping them

Midget Gems Proof
A Ork Mek who keeps the Waaagh running with his Grot Helper


Midget Gems Jr (6 yrs)
A Stag that helps carry around its rider and a Witch Elf who helps Morathi


Midget Gems Jr Jr (4 yrs)
Another a Witch Elf who helps Morathi


Will get the final photos up tonight/tomorrow

Managed to get some photos in the nick of time. My ork comms boy in case you need to call in "A Helping Hand".
I've been wanting to generally up my painting game, and I keep telling myself that I'm going to try new techniques like creating volume, and NMM, and OSL and such, but I never remember to when I'm grinding away trying to get these things done. This guy actually had a light on the underside of his gun, so I had no excuse; this is my first attempt at OSL and I'm pretty darn happy with how it turned out. I followed the basic idea I saw on a couple of videos that suggested adding blue tones to the rest of the model to suggest a night time scene which gives reason to the red light shining so brightly. I hope you like it, and good luck to everyone still trying to finish last minute!

Oh, yeah, I needed to take final pics of these guys:
proof in case I forgot:


Finals:

Lectro-Maester finished!

And coming in just under the wire, here are the final pics of my Lothlorien Wood Elf Banner Bearer:



I'm actually quite pleased with how this Elf turned out. My freehand still needs work but I did have a lot of fun putting the design on the banner. Mostly I need a smaller brush to make the lines a bit finer; my brushes don't keep fine points for long unfortunately, hence why I won't buy the expensive ones like Windsor & Newton Series 7s. My potato camera is still a potato but I'm loathe to spend my precious hobby dollars on a better one, so pics like these will have to do. Some pretty cool entries coming in, so it should be the usual fun experience when it comes to voting time!

Here are the 3 entries from me and the kids

Final Pics
They both enjoyed painting with me with was the main thing

Midget Gems (old git and runtherd to the little ones)
A Ork Mek who keeps the Waaagh running with his Grot Helper



Midget Gems Jr (6 yrs)
A Stag that helps carry around its rider and a Witch Elf who helps Morathi, this was she first attempt at dry brushing on the hair, I was proud of her for trying it



Midget Gems Jr Jr (4 yrs) only her second ever model
Another a Witch Elf who helps Morathi



Bonus shot of us all togther


Hopefully we can keep it up and they can join in more challenges in the future.

More Iron Warriors from me this month, a Techmarine and an Apothecary

New round is up.
https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/0/806740.page#11426093

This one will stay open for pics for a few more hours.

Hope these are not too late, a bit better than the ones before

Vote is up:
https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/0/806916.page#11432093