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Not a whole lot of preamble. Sudden urge to build a marine army struck, my wife said to 'do it right'.
So its all getting some degree of conversion, customization, and scenic-ish bases. No crazy display base action.
Unlinked thumbnails for the moment - its all in my gallery anyway.

We start with Vulkan. He's since been ejected from my proposed list (blasphemy!) for lack of flamers and meltas (blasphemy). But he looked too cool not to paint.




The first layer of paint went easy enough over black primer.
The second layer 3:2:1 (yellow)VGC2007/VGC2006/Ceramcoat Color Float and (red)VGC72011/P3 Khador Red Base/CCF looks like this:





The black areas got a highlight of P3 Coal Black but it really hasn't shown up well in these photos.

As always, comments and suggestions are inevitable!

Edit: Due to popular request, great gaudy photos to come in all posts, rather than elegant thumbnails.

Nice conversion and nice paintjob, some people cant pull of the quarter paint scheme but you captured it nicely.

Oldgrue wrote: Sudden urge to build a marine army struck, my wife said to 'do it right'.

That, my good sir, is totally fething awesome.

Manchu wrote:
That, my good sir, is totally fething awesome.

Yeah, but she's going to kill me once the new PP plastics hit shelves. I'll have to stop painting 40k for months.

I respect your taste in women, my good man, but your taste in models is questionable to say the least. PP plastics--bah!

No photos for this entry.
The hobnails we see in the photo at the top are made by running a strip of .3mmx.8mm polystyrene around the bottom of the foot, then snipping 11 .9mm lengths of .3mmx1.5mm strips per foot. Four on the toe, three on the heel and two in the middle of each side. Its a little time consuming, but the marine feet now look a bit more all terrain than they did before.

Bases are similarly easy with 12.7mm square 1mm thick tile, sand, and dressing as desired. Most models will have their bases cut back to the beveled edge for convenience.

Troops will have the tile mounted directly to the bases, Jump troops will be pinned to the bases by their feet, leaving some room for a rise, and characters...well all bets are off.

Next character to be started is Kossaro Khan. I'm still deciding on what to do with his sword - whether to use a pata (far more elegant) or a panabas which is significantly more brutal looking. I will probably not be making a mounted version unless the marine bike fairy surprises me.

Very nice! I am continuously inspired by what people are doing for conversions and painting. The extra cabling adds a lot to the overall look.

4th and 5th color layers in place:



Now I'm off to work on the metallics.

Lovely work. Any chance of slightly larger pics?

want bigger pics too.

want more,

DC

Nice work. I have some renegade howling griffons I'm painting up .

Really awesome, I look forward to seeing more. But it'd be nice to have large pics so we can examine the detail

Holy... how did I miss this?

Great work from what I can see! I third the notion of bigger pics

Look forward to seeing more.

Cheers,

Jack.

I put the thumbnails in to save space. The full sized ones are in my gallery.

Great job doing quatering on painting is hard and you nailed it.

Wow... really nice conversion and a well executed paintjob, well done! If I was to collect SM I think it would have to be Howling Gryphon's or the Mortifactors...

I like the colors! so Knightly!

You have seen the Chapterhouse Griffon Shoulder Pads, yes?

Manchu wrote:I respect your taste in women, my good man, but your taste in models is questionable to say the least. PP plastics--bah!

Go plastics!

It's not really the material I'm all for, but the game

Due to an unscheduled absence of above character model, I've since been forced to start on the infantry.

Not a whole lot of awe inspiring work for now.

Edit:
I saw the Chapterhouse shoulders and I'm not fond of them. Not for lack of craftsmanship rather they don't fit in with my interpretation. I'm a great fan of aftermarket, and customization kits - these guys do a bang up job. I'd love to see some other accessories out of them. For now I'm going to stick to decals or freehand.

Nice to see more Griffon players about.

Someone has to make up for the abomination Cruddace published. So if I can keep above his work, all is well.

Edit: I can make a link. really.

Editorial opinions aside, there's been some forward motion.
Color layer 2 is in place - pure VGC yellow/red. Base is Codex grey tiles, P3 Bootstrap leather/vgc desert yellow dirt all followed by a 50% wash of Devlan Mud
Both Squads:






Edit: Big photos to eat your bandwidth. Muahahaha!

Very nice, I really like the cleanness of the models, makes them look very, very sweet! Would love to see more pics, keep them coming!

that hand flamer is pretty damn snazzy isnt it.

very nice mate.

Oldgrue wrote:For now I'm going to stick to decals or freehand.

Then if you're interested, the fine folks over at Taco Bell have created a Howling Griffon decal sheet that can be printed out onto transfer paper.

Assuming you didn't already know about this, that is.

I'm about to go back to a few brush control classes. I mangled that thighplate.
And the troops have layer 3. Metals/wash to go before a clearcoat and we get into the home stretch: Squad markings!

@hmbc- I hadn't thought of that until now. Its going to be stuck in my head for some time. Well done!

And the hits just keep coming!


larger images in the Gallery as always.

The 'lightning' didn't turn out as well as I had hoped meaning there's more practice on this effect for me in the near future. In retrospect I probably should have cut each of the colors involved with some thinner or glaze medium so it'd be smoother. All the freehand practice I can get is good practice however.

I'd been thinking about the fluff for the Howling Griffons and parallels to the Black Templars: Zealotry, Oath Fetishes, the knightly associations they have, and the proposed daily schedule of the Astartes.

Seeing how hard these guys train at home they have a significant infrastructure keeping their gear in working order. Their supply lines to the theater of battle have to be significant to support their serfs and servitors. While this suggests that the serfs are doing all the work and leaving Astartes to the heavy warfare, there are several blocks of time where could easily be doing cosmetic work or low level cleaning on Astartes equipment. Theoretically marines could have that factory fresh look during any non combat downtime, or returning from patrol. Thus my take on the Howling Griffons - crisp and neat over a messy battlefield.
(The no nonsense 'all out of bubblegum' look LBursley is knocking out is the other logical extension. I bow before his skills.)

Another logical extension is all the hanging geegaws and doodads hanging off characters.

What the devil is this? A cape under your life support pack? The one venting heat and gasses, filtering your environment, and storing the fuel cells for your armor. Tabard yes, cape WTF? All the dangly cording and baubles are only going to get broken, or cause the Astartes trouble. Paint it on, and save it for dress armor. Purity Seals only make sense if the marines don't care if they fall off. Rivets seem to be a bad idea for the most part. (in the grim future of the 41st milennium welding seems to be a dying art.) It seems to me that most of the Astartes Iconography should be paint, rather than labor intense bas relief and sculpture appliques.

Taking this and the 'Imperial Armor 2' into account it appears I'll be marking units as follows:
Squad markings: Black, rank markings TBD.
Company Number: Yellow to match shoulder pad much like cut outs in a stencil. Font to be determined.
Vehicle markings : Yellow. Side hatches and top hatches quartered. Double digit vehicle numbers: company/squad.
Characters to have personal heraldry instead of squad markings.

insaniak wrote:Lovely work. Any chance of slightly larger pics?

Ha! If insaniak loves it, it must be awesome!

Troops got ground away at:
Layer 3: Being base VGC 2007/2011 over Devlan mud:

came out fair. Not a lot I can do to them for the moment until I get some more supplies - Decals for the shoulders, and first layer of metallics.

Layer 4:
Metallics: PP Pig Iron, PP Blue Wash
1:1:1 VGC Glaze medium /(yellow)VGC2007/VGC2006 or (red)VGC72011/P3 Khador Red Base
In comparison to the Vulkan:

And the squads on their own:


From here I have to hit them with clearcoat to set decals and even up the colors before moving to the pure highlights, eyes, and highlighted metallics.