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Feeling much better now! Currently occupied with forced labour for my lil' brother. I gave him some Painting Vouchers for his birthday a few years back and he's now calling it due on his new Kasrkin unit.

However, in my spare time I'm working on the KoS. I got my rotary out and a dust mask and spent a fun ten minutes grinding the vestigial breasts off her torso. I also have some new fun things in my toolbox:- mostly Vallejo's Poly Primer in Black (my spray primers never ever seem to work around here. Perhaps it's because we're next to the coast) and some of the new Liquid Green Stuff. The tiny holes in the KoS's leg should be much easier to fill now and I hear it even sands to an even finish! So I'll be sure to tell you guys how those went.

Also grabbed some spray matt varnish (Humbrol's old one?) and paint on gloss varnish to finish off my Chained one. However, I'm a wuss and therefore I'm going to test it out on my brother's Kasrkin first.

Pictures of the Kasrkin later once they've been basecoated with the various colours (I had to stop halfway and redo chunks because I realised it still had flash on it. ), and of the KoS once she's been greened to my satisfaction.

Hrmm, recently was exposed to a Kem Bromley artist's catalogue and after drooling over the brushes, a porcelain palette and the acrylic mediums, am considering upping my painting to a slightly more professional level.

Mother kindly gave me a porcelain palette she had but didn't use because it was too heavy (she's an on-the-spot watercolour painter mostly), and I'm not getting myself nice brushes until I stop ruining the cheap ones by getting carried away and not rinsing regularly enough.

Which leads me to the Acrylic Mediums. I mostly have my eye on the Liquitex Slow Dri Blending Medium, but a lot of people seem to swear by the Flow-Aid Flow Enhancer too. I read where someone had a general mix of 2:1:1 water, flow enhancer and slow dri.

And that leads me to the other thing I've been considering: Paint bottles. I use Citadel paints exclusively and as we all know their paint pots aren't the best. I mostly have the last edition's but it has the problem of measuring out mixes. While I've got a decent eye for replicating colour, I'm not brilliant at it and it would certainly make things easier to have dropper bottles and decant my Citadel paints and mediums into them. The War Store seems to have decent 17ml dropper bottles and pipettes, but I still think I might be able to get my hands on them cheaper elsewhere.

What do you guys think, should I use mediums, what's worth getting and what about decanting the paints?

Hmm. Labels may an issue.

Hey! Neat thread, and great discussion! I just joined dakka not a month ago and im still finding new awesome threads daily! Anyways, i think the slo dry and flow aid additions are worth it. While ive no experience with those specific items, just the use of a wet palette has dramatically increased my ability to paint, and the time it takes to do things. The ability to have a full spectrum of color available to you and properly thin and wet is invaluable. (I.e. From Shade to top highlight of a specific color). Anyways, that's my 2 cents on that. As far as bottles or jars go, it can get expensive and i only relegate that to very special projects (ie a GD tourney) or an army that has a mix base color. In which i case i make one giant batch of it.
PS amazingly cool mini's and painting

I get excited every time I see new comments on this thread, hoping to see more pics of awesomeness... Moar please

bebopdrums2424 wrote:As far as bottles or jars go, it can get expensive and i only relegate that to very special projects (ie a GD tourney) or an army that has a mix base color. In which i case i make one giant batch of it.

Ooh, that's a good point, if I do transfer them over, I can make up bottles of my common mixes for my army, name them silly things (ala this article) and label them up. I already own all the Citadel paints barring eight or so of the foundation paints, so it wouldn't be too much of an investment past the bottles themselves. My paint schemes tend to be of the "this is the colour I want" variety which means that half the time I end up with mixed colours for every stage.

Depraved wrote:I get excited every time I see new comments on this thread, hoping to see more pics of awesomeness... Moar please

Now I feel mean that I haven't shown any pics for a while. I'm working, I'm working! I just hate taking pics between stages.

EDIT: Oooh, I could get 50 dropper bottles (15ml or 1/2oz) for £12.75. That's pretty sweet. And Dad has a label machine somewhere.

EDIT EDIT: Hmm, I have 70 paint pots exactly. Well, guess it'd be 100 then for £23.78. Maybe next month.

Just for Depraved, some in-progress shots of the Greater Daemon and the Kasrkin, and a bit of review on the Liquid Green Stuff.

Firstly, here is my girl in all her mid-converted glory. As you can see, I've been a bit harsh with the lovely Forgeworld model. Gone are the spikes on the arms, the second pair of arms, the second pair of breasts, no spikes on her breastplate (badumtish!) or her leg. The divots for the spikes to sit into was what I got the Liquid Green Stuff to fill, as the shallow depressions would have been a nightmare to fill otherwise.



Thoughts for the immediate future:
1. I need to finish filling in the gaping holes between the parts due to slight repositioning with another layer of Green Stuff.
2. I need to finish/fix the pendant, somehow. I was thinking of placing a gem in it, but the rim is a bit shoddy and I may need to redo it a bit first.
3. I should probably not have green-stuffed over the top of a quick Chaos Black undercoat.
4. I get to green-stuff some shiny tentacles into her hair and try to match(ish) the tentacles already there. Maybe sans veins. *idly considers shaving the veins off the other ones as well*
5. Brainstorm the rest of her look. She needs more chains somewhere on her, and I need to decide whether to give her a sash or a face-mask, or just fill it in for an organic mouthless look ala the Mandrakes.
6. General smoothing, priming over the areas that have lost their basecoat, etc, until she's ready for painting.
7. Probably wuss out and work on something else before trying to paint my ginormous HQ.

Liquid Green Stuff, the new substance sweeping the nations. But how did it go?


Click for larger pictures

As you can see, it does shrink as it dries but takes sanding relatively well. It certainly won't sand to a mirror finish, but a thin layer of the LGS over the top smooths it out nicely. I think I still need another fine sandpapering and then a very thin coat of LGS just to smooth it out but in comparison to trying to use Green Stuff for it, it's come at the right time. I used a cheap, tacky emery board to file it down, hoping to get some proper fine (2k-4k) wet and dry sandpaper later today.

And finally! What you've all been waiting for (not really), some pictures of the basecoat on the Kasrkin models I've been... commissioned?.. to paint. These guys are the main reason I just got brush-on primer. Every time I've tried to use spray primer over here it's ended in disaster, regardless of make. GW, Army Painter, Model Masterclass. Gah. Anyway, they have a really rough texture due to the primer sucking but the "client" doesn't care and doesn't want it done again so onwards we go. Colour-scheme is also my brother's, though I did mix it up a bit by having the tunic a paler colour rather than more Shadow Grey. They're supposed to be Guard who are associated with the Ultramarines and will have Ultramarine and Troop symbols on their shoulderpads rather than unit numbers (in freehand.)



And the Sergeant. My brother wanted him to be easily differentiated from the other Kasrkin unit so asked me to greenstuff a beret on him. I think it came out pretty well and the Mechrite Red/Blood Red basecoat came out beautifully in only two thin coats!

Greater Demon looks great, The model looks much better with only 2 breasts. Have you ever tried Squadron Green? fills gaps and is easy to sand... Nice start on the Kasrkin

Depraved wrote:Greater Demon looks great, The model looks much better with only 2 breasts. Have you ever tried Squadron Green? fills gaps and is easy to sand... Nice start on the Kasrkin

Aww thanks . All my Whispers only have two breasts as well so it seemed appropriate. The idea behind her is to have elements of the rest of the army in her so it looks like she's part of, even the centre of, the various shapes. She has similar horns to the Shadow Daemons, obviously her body is very much like the Whispers'. Still brainstorming how to make her more Obscuras-y and give her more shinies. Vaguely considering threading a thin chain around her tentacles and hanging small gems from it.

Vis-a-vis the Squadron Green, I've not tried it but I've heard about it. I'm not a big fan of toxic or noxious substances of any sort. I'm the kind of person who puts on a dust-mask to sand my FW model and hoovers up carefully afterwards


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Well, I've got a bunch of eBay stuff up today because it's free insertions on ebay.co.uk and ebay.ie over the weekend and... I am afraid to say my Wood Eldar are dying a death. Farewell noble savages. While I'm keeping the Woodlord to paint because he is so pretty, sadly I've put my Pathfinders up to see if anyone wants them. But before they go I figured I'd show off a bit first.



As you can see, they've had extensive conversions and I went a tad overboard on the basing. If they don't sell I'll paint them up for display, but unfortunately the Wood Eldar were just giving me too much trouble trying to get them to fit with the idea I had of them.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Hrmmm. Want to do some greenstuffing on my Greater Daemon but can't decide where to go on the face. What do you guys think? Mouthless face or ninja-mask?

Well, finally got around to round two of the green-stuff bout.





As you can see, I tried out the mouthless look. If I'm not happy with it I can put a mask on later. Filled in the arms and neck and sanded the LGS down to a very smooth finish. Turns out P2000 sandpaper will do the job with no bobbling! Also put some green-stuff in to support the joins on the hair, they're just the green-stuff basework however. Sanded the breast and underarms areas flat, due to the lack of detail probably going to give it some "clothing" in the form of a set of chains leading from a collar and a gem in the middle. Also need to put a chain around her lower back so she's not supporting the loincloth via piercings any more...

Oh, and I printed out a gradient background to play with for my photos, and started using cut-outs . Whatcha think?

Love the mouthless face for now...

Great job !


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Love the mouthless face for now...

Great job !

how big is that Greater Deamon...

I think the gradient works well. Cutouts as well.

The gs mods are looking good.

Nightfall wrote:how big is that Greater Deamon...

She's a conversion of Forgeworld's Keeper of Slaanesh, she stands 6.5 inches tall. Here's a size comparison from their website.



EDIT: Oh, and thanks for the kind words. Still don't know about the mouthless/mask thing. It'll be easier to decide once I prime it and it's all one colour .

Going to do a chain thing on her torso to hide my unsightly rotary tool work a bit, ala the old Daemonettes.


"Daemonette in Pink" by mercenary ogryn

Only problem with this is that it doesn't hide that horrible spiky breastplate of doom. Considering covering it up with a half-wrap bikini, from another Daemonette..


"Daemonette" by nejoho

but then I've got a LOT going on in the neck or near-neck area. :\

There's always the option of a corset.

Don't think I'm ready for a corset just yet, especially one of that size. :\ It looked good on the Trygon/KoS conversion but that was a straight copy of the new Daemonette's ubiquitous corset.

Think it might be easiest to just make breast #2 into a normal breast again. A conversion of a KoS into Sarah Palin (no really) seems to have done it pretty well .

LadyCassandra wrote:

Think it might be easiest to just make breast #2 into a normal breast again. A conversion of a KoS into Sarah Palin (no really) seems to have done it pretty well .

Yeah I think that would be the best way to go.

Wtf at the Sarah Palin! Thats hilarious.

What was I thinking?

Decided to finally get rid of the Chaos Black as it was interfering in my ability to figure out what was smoothed and what wasn't. Used Fairy Power Spray as it doesn't melt green stuff into a sticky pile of goo but forgot one important thing. Two, actually. One, that my green-stuff was adhering to the paint layer that I just released from the model so I could scrape it off and two, that Liquid Green Stuff has no such immunity.

So yes, I still need to get rid of a lot of the rest of the black paint - only the left leg seems to have come off without a fuss. And most of the green stuff is only very loosely attached. The base fell off, the hair fell off and she snapped a finger. I think it loosens superglue bonds from the effect it's had. And then I have to decide what to do with the green stuff "bitz" I now have, reattach a bunch of stuff and redo all the LGS work all over again.

Oh dear thats not good at all

GiraffeX wrote:Oh dear thats not good at all

Nope. Serves me right I guess for not stripping it off the instant I wanted to do some green-stuff work, or for undercoating her in a normal paint before finishing the modelling stage. I just wanted to use her on the field at the local GW (basecoat+ rule) .

Got the head and arms soaking in Fairy Power Spray to try and get the rest off properly this time. The body is set to go in for a soak after these ones come out. The model is a lot easier to manage without the hair though, so will probably keep them separate until the body is painted.

On the bright side now I can see properly where I have issues on the curvature and a few mould lines I missed, plus where the rotary tool didn't quite go down far enough. It's a pity, but the green stuff is a goner. While it's in one piece, the very thin parts I used to meld it into the surrounding model have come off and there's no way these film-thick pieces of green stuff are going to superglue down properly :( Plus the arms and head fell off, so it's not exactly a seamless join any more. At least I can use what I learnt doing it last time to do it again.

Note to self: Never ever ever green stuff over primer. Never.

Well, after some time doing this:-



the paint seems to have mostly come off apart from those tricky recesses and some stained stuff on heavily sanded areas. I really can't recommend Fairy Power Spray enough for plastics and resin pieces. It is 'da bomb', though I find I have to let them soak overnight to get it off properly.



I got some very nice 24 links/inch brass chain and started working on the chain harness, but I realised that I needed to do the breast work before I could put the upper chains on, and really before I could put the righthand gem-to-loincloth chain the breastplate needed to be smoothed out into the skin. So, I've only done the rear and the lefthand gem-to-loincloth chains so far. Wasn't sure where to go next so after a lot of mould-line scraping, sanding with my super-fine homemade emery boards and sticking the ol' gal back together again, I decided to go obsessively over every inch and write down what needed doing. On post-its!



Transcript if you can't read them:-

[from left to right]
Body-upper: enlargen +add nipple right breast, change left breastplate to an unarmoured breast, finish chain harness, fill in neck.
Legs: Smooth & extend to simple finish on stocking'ed leg, fill in gap by loincloth on left leg, fill gap on loincloth, add rock filler.
Left arm: attach ring finger, fill in arm and shoulder, extend glove up and finish simply (fire in hand?)
Head: Fill in mouth and head holes. Leave gems alone.
Right-hand: Fill in shoulder. Fix bracelet, blade (LGS?) and fill gap in hand.

I found a massive gap on her sword hand and a good few nicks here and there that could do with some smoothing. I also realised that the necklace would interfere with the collar and collar-to-gem chain, so I removed it and smoothed it down. Pretty impressed with myself there actually, I think it really looks like the chain was never there.

Next stage is to figure out the order of things to do. Some aren't reliant on any other work, like the majority of fills. Others are very reliant on previous green-stuffing. Hopefully I should have some finished greens to show you by the end of the day.

Oh, I like the model chain idea. I shall have to nick that from you. Everything else looks great by the way.

Nick away, Sersi! I used a little blob of Loctite Superglue Gel just to hold one end in place, attached the other end the same way, waited for those to dry and then ran liquid superglue on a bit of brass rod on either side of the chain, just to solidify it into place. Worked pretty well

I will do some work with your torso soon, I promise. I just need a Nightbringer that's not going for £15+ on eBay.

EDIT: Filled in the gaps, waiting for it to set before actually sculpting. Progress was made, of a sort.

Off-topic a bit, was re-reading this thread and realised I still haven't told you guys about the new names for the various units.

The Shadow Daemons, Shadowphytes, generic Obscuras daemon #1...



are now called Shades. I'm pretty pleased with that one.

Zarakynal's counterpart (I just got IA Apocalypse 2nd Edition for her stats. Oh my god she's nasty) will be called the Night's Wind.

And the generic Greater Daemon of Obscuras will be called a Shadow Walker ( still not 100% on this one, but I kinda like it.)

Still working on the Shadow Walker/Night's Wind and find myself in the odd position of studying breasts.

Haha lol!

Nice names though, very fitting.

All of my previously primed (with Citadel Chaos Black paint, not spray) models have gone into jars with Fairy Power Spray so I can use my new favourite thing on them, the Vallejo Poly Primer. And because their green-stuff work sucks. (No practice, no water, no vaseline and no clayshapers...)



Really impressed by how it hugs the curves and details of the model and it goes on very easily - and covers a LOT with only a bit of the primer. Absolutely beautiful, dead-smooth finish with a slight satin sheen, even on an old mini which had a bunch of handling. Did lose some of it on the test model I did when I gave it the thumbnail test perhaps a mite harder than was absolutely necessary. Going to do it again after it's fully cured by tomorrow, see how it goes, and how it takes touching up.

Wow! is that a brush on primer or did you airbrush it? With winter coming I wont be able to spray prime anything. That coat looks good. Interested to see how it takes paint

Depraved wrote:Wow! is that a brush on primer or did you airbrush it? With winter coming I wont be able to spray prime anything. That coat looks good. Interested to see how it takes paint

Brush-on but can also be airbrushed. In my case, I just brushed it on unthinned. Apparently if you thin it, it ruins it, so don't do that!

Well, I am doing it for painting tests, anything particular colour(s) you want to see? I have lots of scales after all. Only the top "ridge" is marked for trying out DE schemes.

EDIT: Tried the thumbnail test once it had cured, and it's just the same. Fine for normal handling, but don't scrape it across anything.

No particular colors, just interested in brush on primers because I have never used them. I use a lot of Vallejo paints so its a name I trust.

I love the idea of brush-on primers, the climate around here really doesn't drop below 75% humidity except on the best of summer days and I'm not allowed to spray inside. Really happy with my purchase. Not painted the test model yet as I've caught the plague just in time for Hallowe'en (it's a cold, but I'm a big wimp).

Thinking about getting rid of my "furies", which are dark elf harpies, and selling them on eBay. I never really liked the fluff about them and the models aren't the best either.

EDIT: How rude, I talked about something and forgot to show it. Feast your eyes upon my old colour scheme for my "dark furies". I painted two and collected another eight, and never painted them again. It doesn't help that their wings were a pain to assemble and needed greenstuff work most of the time.



For those who are interested, you've seen my old Whispers and Shades, so here's the others which did get painted. The rest have never had a pre-painted version. Hopefully this time I will actually have a painted army before the end of the decade.

A Night Terror:

I want to keep more or less the same scheme for the Night Terrors, but have much better blending going on and really get a smooth gradient on their wings. And of course, the scales need a lot of love.

and the requisite Chaos Space Marine I had to take in order to get my lovely daemons before they brought out the Chaos Daemons book. I called them the Lords of Oblivion and they had a reasonably cool backstory of being Night Lords who defected to Obscuras. Kind of glad I don't have to buy, model or paint these guys anymore though.