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I like the rock outcroppings. "Simple and basic" goes a log way to adding "realistic and awesome" to a table.

Good job on the yellow and grey-ness.
There's always a little touch-up required when painting anything.

Nice rocky terrain bits.

Your thatch looks like it came out well.
Thoughts, hints, tips on a good thatch?

Well if you want really good thatch I'd say finish painting whatever it is you want to put thatch on, leaving a flat plain roof of whatever angle it is you want.
Then go raid as many model shots as you can for woodland scenics "Field Grass: Harvest Gold". Cut each strand in half and bundle them up, lay that over the top with a bit of watered down brushed pva at the base in the same manner that you would thatch a roof with reeds.

You should be able to sculpt it, roll out some air dry clay to about 5mm on to a flat surface that it will come unstuck from, cut to shape and go over it with a wire brush or some such. Then stick it onto whatever building you are making.

However GW printed a book in 2003 called "How to make wargames terrain", In it they recommend using fake fur soaked in pva and brushed..

Tips:
Don't use too much glue, or make it too watery; Deluxe Materials make a glue called "Rocket Card Glue" that's about the right consistency.

One of these arrived on my desk yesterday: http://northstarfigures.com/prod.php?prod=8781

It's huge, I've dry fitted the lower section and now i'm wondering where i'm going to put it. There are some other things on NS atm which are 1/2 price or better, click "bargins" on the top.

Thanks Skalk, they are going to need some good layers of varnish on them

Cheers Big H, high praise coming from you, its good practice to try something new.

re: http://northstarfigures.com/prod.php?prod=8781 That model has to be at least 24" tall. I've been looking for something like this, a huge industrial sci-fi thing. When you have a chance please post a picture of WIP, I'd really like seeing how it scales out.

Sure thing Skalk

The image on the box is pretty much spot on as a size comparison.


I quickly assembled some of it last night, 4ground's kits are pretty easy to up together for the most part.


It's about 20" tall give or take 1/2 ". the base is quite large, here's some other models to give a comparison.


Most of 4 ground's kits come pre-painted this is both a blessing and a curse. It's great not having to worry about doing it myself, especially getting paint into fiddly corners, but the pieces are laser cut from pre-painted sheets so you get marks left by the smoke made by the laser, however on this kit it isn't something I'm worrying about as it actually makes it look like its a bit rusty. Also the edges of the cut peices are not painted, so that is left showing, the obvious thing is to just paint over them, 4ground do say what paint they used to colour the surface but it would still mean matching it up with something I've got, or trying to see if they have a lookup table (not something I've tried). This kit comes with pieces to cover the major joints so its not bad here, and in fairness many of the kits they produce have joint locations or colour schemes that the edges don't detract too much from the over all appearance.
Also for £12 (1/2 RRP) I'm very happy with this kit, since i'm only thinking of making a 4' x 4' table, one is all I can see myself needing otherwise I would have bought another.

I forgot to post this, I had a bash at painting North Star's Oathmark Dwarf heroes, these may be the first dwarves I've painted. Good fun, nice models. The one with the hammer had to have a big red beard.



I've got an idea to use these pieces that I've had for a while to make a small barrier that a few figures could hide behind, the idea is that they are big slabs of metal or prefab sections, just dumped and propped up rather than a deliberate piece of protection, but my imagination is failing me, any ideas?



Thanks all,
OMN.

Give them a small corrugated roof piece and it Isa lean-to home looks more natural.

Excellent work on the dwarves. Been looking through the site and they have lots of very interesting pieces, particularly like the cultists and they do a conversion kit, looking seriously at it for some fun, either Necromunda gang, or for chaos.

Pillion is definitely different. I like it, but just not sure.

That is MASSIVE. Wow. I'd love that on my table but it would be for aesthetics only. I'm going to pass on it but I really appreciate you taking the time to post those pics. I'm also certain you can upgrade the paint job significantly.

The dwarf with the hammer is excellent! It took me back to mt D&D days instantly. The muted colors are perfect. I really like that model, well done.

Regarding the plates, go with your vision of abandoned / unused. Maybe a brace that would have held them upright until used? Maybe laying nearly upright against a pile of other discarded junk? Maybe build 10 more and pile them flat with this one leaning against the pile ( ) ? Maybe these are an addition to another terrain model you already have, lean it against that. Whatever you go with I know it's going to be a great model when finished.

Great work on the Dwarves.

Yeah, I'd go with a pile of random junk with them leaning up against it. These are why I have boxes of random household junk bits.

Pick some out, pile them up.

See my "shield/hide" piece for inspiration.

You don't have to build anything with it, like I did there. Just an example of the pieces.

Or my little junk pile:

So many good ideas! D:

@Skalk: Thanks. The pylon took less than 2.5 hours to build, unfortunately I won't be re-painting it, I hate painting large models so it'll do as it is.
What do you mean by braces?
I should have more as I cast a bunch of them, I must have misplaced them.

@Doc: I'd forgotten about those. I'm not much of a hoarder lol, but good point, I must remind myself to keep my eyes peeled for things that could be useful for things like this

Right now I've narrowed my choice down to two ideas:
Making some sort of holder, like a pallet that would have contained a number of them, that they sit in, leaning against each other. On the plus for this is it wouldn't need a base so could fit in any board style.
Or
Something like Cam suggests and a make a small shelter that some one used as a place to catch some sleep, just how to prop them up is a question atm. I do have some styrofoam that could be used to make some small concrete pillars like for a ruin or something under construction or whatever.

finished blocking in the main colours on the drop pod. Took me a while to decide on how to paint this.


I've also nearly finished painting the inquisitor, I wanted to try painting the power weapon with an airbrush, what you a re seeing is my third attempt after my airbrush started stuttering at the last stage on the previous two times, and i must have diluted my blue down too much and it seeped under the masking tape. Just noticed I've missed the wrist consoles otherwise I'd say he was finished now.


One thing that I've been wanting to add to my inquisitor's force is a rhino, well it's more felt I had to have to stop the arco-flagellants and death cultists dying to a stiff breeze. So I had one of my tanks spare and needed a way to stick a pair of stormbolters on it, so ordered a set of land raider hurricane bolters, I thought they were smaller than they turned out to be. Here's what I came up with.


The tracks want finishing, there's loads of gaps to fill and I need to find somewhere to glue the smoke launchers but I'm happy with how it's turned out so far. Originally I'd planned on making a pop up cylindrical turret, that the guns arranged in 2 x 2 would start up pointing vertically before turning to horizontal, however when the bolters arrived I found they were bigger than planned so had to come up with something new, after a month, the above is what I thought up the other day.
It's the only model that I've not finished making, and one of two left to paint, to finish the army off so i'm looking forward to drawing a line under it, and the scorpions, so I can move on to the next two armies.

Thanks all
OMN

That is a very nice take on the Rhino - a mini Land Raider!

Also I have to ask - what is your paint recipe/process for painting skin? The face on your Inquisitor is, well, lovely.

Yea I use the following paints for flesh:

VMC Black
Citadel Foundation Tallarn Flesh,
VMC White

I just mix a bit of black with the flesh to make a base layer and leave that as shadows, then adding more flesh to the mix I add more layers over the top to build up parts that would be more illuminated, mixing in a bit of white for the really light parts.

It's the same method I use for all my flesh tones. If I want to paint darker flesh I'll mix in a dark or light brown into the base and work my way up, maybe leaving out the white, maybe adding more. Just picture what is going to be in light and what in shadow.

Since GW nolonger make Tallarn flesh any more you can use any middling flesh tone, like VMC Flat Flesh or Cidadel Layer Kislev Flesh.

I had a go at making a pallet to put the slabs on, I'll add some straps going over the top made of paper and/or greenstuff. I also ordered some packs of strip plasticard to make some more pallets simular to this.


While I was at it, I messed about with some chunks of styrofoam I found lying around and made two concrete pillars ...


... and two standing stones. The styrofoam has been painted over with some textured paint to protect it when I spray them. Also I found some old barrels lying around so gave them a base. On the right is a water tank that I made using some bits and pieces I found lying around, I found the base while looking for soemthing else (it's plasticard, I think I made it around the LoER Shrine competition), and inspiration struck.


Should be fun to paint once I work out the colours.

Busy guy. Great plastruct-fu there.

That'll do nicely. Good job.

The face on your Inquisitor is stunning and emotive. Very well done.

Looks like you figured out what to do with the panels. Nicely done.

I like how you just go with whatever inspiration hits you. Some of the best pieces come from moments like that.

Thanks all.

I'm still putting off doing any real meaningful painting to finish the scorpions off, but I did pick up some more strips so I can make a couple more pallets just to add scatted around, piled up, leaning on things etc.

What do you think?


The 'black' is supposed to be black highlighted with a blue-grey, unfortunately I've messed it up and sprayed over the darker shades, whilst the lighters parts are too dark, so I'll have to go over it again.
Also the top hatch, headlights and smoke launchers are supposed to be painted black when I get around to it. The red looked much better irl.

Pillars prepped for painting


Straps made, just a matter of cutting 3mm wide strips of 0.25mm plasticard and folding them.


Lastly I was reading up on something and it reminded me that during the Devonian period there were a group of fungi that grew rather large called Prototaxites, thought it'd be fun to try sculpting a few of the artist's impressions that pop'ed up on google, so i'm taking a bit of creative licence.


Cheers for stopping by.

Mighty fine sprue work there chief.

Agreed. Your scratch builds are well done and interesting.

Nice work.

I like your choice of the placement of the boundary between the red and black on the back of the tank. It's the obvious place to put it, but it pleases me for some reason.

Not much modelling this week, besides making a few pallets and finding things to put on them, along with some bits to put on the shelves that I made a few weeks back.
I know I'll be having to make some of my own boxes etc so I know I'll be going back through Cam & Doc H's blogs for "inspiration".

Whilst I was making them I decided to snap a few pic's to make a tutorial for anyone who is interested in making their own.



I wrote this in the voice of the North Korean TV announcer Ri Chun-hee.

Maybe it'll be of use to anyone..

OMN.

I knew there was something odd about the tut narrative, My "go to" is usually Werner Herzog but it just wasn't happening for me this time. Now I know why.

Excellent tut! Inexpensive and easily obtained materials, very clear instructions, and even a novice would have decent results. Well done sir!

Excellent tutorial sir. Thank you. Off to make me some pallets.

Nice tutorial.

Much simpler than the pallets I've been making recently (because of course I'm going to over-complicate the things I build).

Another week, another distraction.

Thanks Doc, your pallets are probably better, and more accurate to most real world designs, I didn't want ones made from wood so...

@ Skalk: Cheers.

@Cam: Thanks.

Found some boxes and barrels to go on the pallets:


While digging around for something to put onto the pallets I found some land raider and vindicator parts and made this, engine, machine, pump ... thing.

I'm thinking of adding some pipes out of the sides that will attach to something else or go into the ground, not certain yet.

Also I came across a prototype for a rapier design that I'd made, tracked forklift maybe?


I managed to get a spot of airbrushing done so the razorback and dreadnought are ready to oil up, I'll be gloss varnishing them after, and I'll be trying to get some more work done on the drop pod this week, I am planning to paint the interior of the doors to be metallic gunmetal. It's going to be fun adding the re-entry scorching.




Thanks all.
OMN.

Brilliant idea. Random nothing turned into a excellent tabletop piece. Looking forward to seeing what comes of it.

 OneManNoodles wrote:
...Thanks Doc, your pallets are probably better, and more accurate to most real world designs, I didn't want ones made from wood so...

Not the ones I've done recently; very rough jobs with strips of cardboard and cubes of foamboard. Give a good enough impression of a pallet once painted.

Nice pallet-loads.

Good pump thing.

Nice start to the little tread thingies. That's how the Taurox ones should have looked (not to mention a possible change to the method of attachment that is also needed and not addressed here).

Good colouring-in too.

Oh consider that generator stolen

All looking awesome bud. Particulars for me...generator, and the tiny ickle tracks, giving me an idea for my current project.

Love the genny- I may have to find a way to add one into my next build- too cool the way you have it rigged! And thanks for the tutorial on making pallets- definitely going to use that!

 OneManNoodles wrote:

While digging around for something to put onto the pallets I found some land raider and vindicator parts and made this, engine, machine, pump ... thing.

Ya gotta love those random engine parts so handy!