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I can definitely do that. will have to figure out how to compose the shot, though... will try to get something up later this week

by request, here's a shot of the entire army:



if the image looks a little funny, that's because I chopped out the original background and replaced it with white. my photoshop fu is weak, so it's not a smooth job

anyway, contents of the army are:

1x aobr 10-man tac squad
1x aobr dreadnought; magnetized
1x land speeder; magnetized
1x 5-man assault squad with magnetized sergeant
2x rhino/razorbacks; magnetized (turrets/weapons/radars/searchlights, rear hatch, front spikey bits), fully painted interiors
1x 5-man sniper scout squad with magnetized missile launcher
1x aobr captain
2x 10-man tac squads with magnetized special weapons and magnetized sergeants
1x terminator captain

this was all done over the course of 2012, in roughly the order I have things listed here. the tac squad on the left is the aobr one. my style definitely changed a lot over last year and I learned quite a bit along the way. looking forward to what this year brings

army looks awesome varl; i cant believe how quickly you've painted these guys to this standard...i think i have finished maybe 5 guys in the time you've been running this blog. top work!

thanks for the kind words! feels like it takes forever some times :p

I've got painter's block, I've made no progress for ages on mine, so I admire you greatly

Hope that clears up soon because you have some cool stuff in your gallery. I envy all your FW bits

Not a painting update, but I did finally play my first game of 40k ever tonight! 1000pts of hot, space marine on space marine action across a terrain-dense 4x4 board. It was a lot of fun. Nice to know that I'll be a player now in addition to a painter/collector. Oh, and I won: 7 to 4

Congratulations with your victory!!
hope you have a lot more games to play in the future!

Great looking army! Im almost at a point where I can say I have a fully painted force (which happens to also be Salamanders).

There is something special about fielding figures that you have invested time and passion in painting.

Now is your time to go forth and slaughter many foes. Good Luck.

well, despite me thinking I wouldn't be painting green for a while I ended up painting up these two guys over the weekend for a game I had last night:



I wanted to try out a different heavy weapon setup for my two tac squads over the missile launchers I took the first game. I started assembling these guys friday night and just barely got everything finished late sunday night so it had time to dry before packing them up monday morning. felt like a last-minute scramble before a big tournament

as it turned out, I didn't get as much use out of these guys as I'd hoped. the terrain was pretty dense, I made a bad deployment choice for one of the squads (blocked my own line of sight. oops) and then I lost one early in the game to some deep striking assault marines. I still have hope for them, though, and will be trying them out in my next game.

my original plan was to spend this year working on my night lords army, but now that I'm starting to actually play games I'll probably be adding to my sallies as well to give me list options.

as always, they look awesome. sorry to hear you didnt get to unleash them too well....

update time!

I thought it was time to add a flyer to my army, and here it is:



and here are some alternate angles (spoilered due to image size):

the stormtalon is a pretty straightforward model to build. no messy cleanup, warped bits or the like (way better than the landspeeder I built). if you're going to paint it in pieces and then assemble like I did, pay close attention to how everything slots together when you dry fit so you get the right color paint where it needs to go the first time. I did the pilot and the cockpit interior first, then assembled the hull and masked off the cockpit area so I could airbrush the whole thing without making a mess. I left the wings and all the weapons off and painted those separately. gluing the canopy in place was the very last thing I did, after all the varnishes and finishing touches. I didn't want to have to mask it off or risk frosting the acrylic.

one mistake I made was doing final assembly before edge hightlights and the oil wash. I should have left it in pieces for those steps; would have been easier to get into a few spots. another boo boo was in applying the exhaust pigments the first time 'round. I used some alcohol to set the pigments, but it ended up shiny after it dried and also interacted a bit with the metallic color underneath. I ended up doing a second layer of pigment and spraying some matte varnish on as a fixer, which worked much better. last thing I'm unhappy with is the base. I masked off the flight stand all the way down to base, then did my usual glue+rocks+sand layer and painted it up. when I want to peel away the masking tape, I ended up peeling up some parts of the sand/glue layer because they'd bonded to the tape. next time I do a flight stand base, I'll leave about 1mm of the bottom of the stand exposed and just paint it up like the rest of the base. should prevent the masking layer from removing anything important.

in other news, I also painted up 2 lascannon devastators and a dev sergeant. no photos of them at the moment, though. I'll post some when I get around to finishing the squad, but they're low on my todo list at the moment. up next is a drop pod (finally) and after that will be a biker captain w/biker command squad. that should keep me busy for a month or two

Very nice!

Hoping to get the brushes back out and get my Salamanders back on track

looks awesome Varl. i wouldnt stress over the base, i wouldn't have noticed it if you hadnt mentioned. how did you find the oil wash? ive heard of folks using oils but ive only ever used acrylics myself...

 San76 wrote:
looks awesome Varl. i wouldnt stress over the base, i wouldn't have noticed it if you hadnt mentioned. how did you find the oil wash? ive heard of folks using oils but ive only ever used acrylics myself...

I may redo it at some point, since it should be easy to strip the sand layer off, but for now it's "done"

oil washes are freakin' awesome. great for little details like grooves, rivets, seams, joints and such. they aren't great for dulling down an entire surface, though, like you might do with badabb black over boltgun metal, for example. the two big pros for oil is that (on a properly gloss-coated surface) the surface tension does all the work for you by seeking out all the nooks and crannies and cleanup is super easy. just hit whatever spot you don't want oil on with a brush dipped in mineral spirits and it disappears. the cons are that oil washes take a bit more prep (you have to gloss varnish the surface before the oil wash, wait a couple hours and then go clean it up, then wait a day for it to dry, then varnish over the surface again to seal the oil in) and you need a dedicated brush. the pros definitely outweigh the cons for me, but I have an airbrush so applying layers of varnish isn't a big deal. I wouldn't want to try it by hand, but I'm sure it can be done that way.

oil washes aren't a replacement for acrylic/ink washes, but I think they are vastly superior for lining in shadows and such.

ahh nice mate, i might have to try it.

i too have an airbrush but ive never tried varnish through it. do you thin the varnish with anything?

I use the airbrush-ready vallejo varnishes, so I don't thin them at all. for gloss coating, though, I use future floor polish. works great and super cheap. definitely want to wear a mask if spraying a lot of it, though.

cheers varl, will have to try and find some round these parts

This has finally given me the boost I need to start taht salamander army ive been meaning to do. These are some of the best examples I've been able to find. Simply great.

Also have you got a tutorial on that green.(sorry if I missed it) Thanks in advance,

LordCommanderCorvus

 lordcommandercorvus wrote:
This has finally given me the boost I need to start taht salamander army ive been meaning to do. These are some of the best examples I've been able to find. Simply great.

Also have you got a tutorial on that green.(sorry if I missed it) Thanks in advance,

LordCommanderCorvus

thanks for the kind words if you want to see some really kickass salamanders, check out pyriel's gallery. his work is amazing and was a big inspiration for me early on.

the armor recipe has changed over time, but now that I use an airbrush it's dead simple:

1. prime with vallejo gray surface primer
2. base coat with vallejo goblin green
3. edge highlight upper surfaces with a 3:1 mix of white and goblin green
4. black oil wash in all the recesses

I've experimented with doing two-color priming (prime black, then prime white/gray just from the top down; there's a fancy term for this technique but it escapes me), zenithal highlights with a mix of goblin green and white, shading using a darker green or wash in the recesses, etc but so far haven't been happy with any of the results. I think part of that is due to my lack of fine control over the airbrush, though. lots of practice should sort that out eventually

Just gone through this blog and I have to say it is brilliant. I love the Salamanders and you are doing them justice.
Very much looking forward to more of your work

Hey Varl, great to see someone doing the Salamanders, and doing the faces properly one might add!

Your army looks great!

thanks for stopping by I have to say, I hate painting salamanders skin. getting the highlights to look right is a pain. I'm enforcing strict helmet discipline on all future marines :p

I tend to brush rather than ink wash these days, for "black" skin I'd do a black base, with 2 or 3 progressively lighter brown layers for the highlights.

My daughter has enforced helmet discipline on my BA assault marines, I also magnetized them so I can swap the special weapons and sergeants weapons, she packs a sad if the sergeant has anything but a power sword and plasma pistol.

Me "But I'm fighting the Orks today princess, he needs the power maul"

Maia "No mamiko (Georgian for dad, she is half Georgian), Sergeant Rafen needs his power sword. PUT IT BACK ON!!!!"

can't argue with a girl that knows her weapons

Love your work...

 varl wrote:
and here's the terminator captain:



this guy was an ebay rescue. I've never seen so much glue used on a single model before. luckily, most of it disintegrated when I dunked it in super clean (or whatever it's called) for a couple days to strip the paint. I had to chip the rest of it off, though... some kind of epoxy, I think. anyway, this was my first time working with a metal model. what a pain in the ass... I'll stick with plastic, thank you

I've got to say I love Metal, and the reason is the ease with which you can strip them. I buy lots of Job-lots off Ebay and such strip them and ditch them/ my collection is large enough that I can mix and match metals. A bit of Green-Stuff and some additional details and they look Amazing. Plastic is simpler, but you cannot strip them easily and reliably.

Nothing beats a miniature given a second chance at life, they always look better and they make you feel good when you remember what they were and how they look now.

I can see where you're coming from. it was definitely satisfying to see what I ended up with relative to what I started with on this guy. that said, at this stage in my painting I'm much happier starting off with a clean slate (that I didn't have to spend two days stripping and fixing) it'll be a while before I try another ebay rescue, but I'm sure I will sooner or later. that's where all the best deals are, after all.

I began playing back in 2nd edition, I used to modify figures all the time. Explains why I can't feel my fingertips any more though :-D :-D :-D

A small saw blade was a must for those lead figs (they were lead before 40K became popular in the US, then they changed to pewter)

quick update today. finally put the finishing touches on a drop pod I started last month:







weapons are magnetized, because I just can't help myself.

I remember reading a post about a guy who'd paid about $160 each to have a pair of drop pods painted for him and it blew my mind. I couldn't understand why, as it seemed like a fairly simple model (I hadn't started building mine, yet). a few commission painters that I respect posted in the thread that they thought it was a fair price, sighting that drop pods were a pain in the butt to build. having just completed my first, I can't say I understand why. sure, getting the doors to line up is a bit fiddly, but really? building a landspeeder or rhino seems far worse, in comparison. makes me wonder if I just got lucky with this one...

anyway, next up is a biker command squad. didn't make nearly as much progress on model prep while I was traveling as I'd hoped I would... only 3 models out of 6 cleaned up and ready for assembly. probably won't get paint on them until the end of the month, at best, as I'm having to do more conversion work then I'd planned.

Nice work loving the green and flames you've got there