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 Jaidyn wrote:
Love the terrain keep up the good work XD

Thanks, there's more a-comin'!

The only difference between the low-end paints and GW/Reaper/P3/Vallejo is the density of the pigment. Which, when painting on a small scale, becomes important.

For terrain (and also several coats on vehicles) you can swap out the cheaper paints no problem.

Looking sharp!

 Briancj wrote:
The only difference between the low-end paints and GW/Reaper/P3/Vallejo is the density of the pigment. Which, when painting on a small scale, becomes important.

For terrain (and also several coats on vehicles) you can swap out the cheaper paints no problem.

Looking sharp!

Good to know. I'm gonna have to get more of the walmart paints, especially black, which you can never have enough of. I've always found it good to use a wide variety of different types of paint and from different manufacturers. Maybe it doesn't really matter, but I tend to think it prevents your miniatures from looking too homogenous in their finish, and adds visual interest.

Did a bunch of drybrushing last night on two more rock outcrop pieces and now just need to add some flocking. Going to clear coat them all, too, so my hard work doesn't get chipped too fast. I found that adding in a red-brown wash creates a subtle effect that makes the rocks look more realistic, like they're oxidized, which nearly all rocks in real life are. I'd like to make some sedimentary looking rock outcrops too.

I'm thinking this weekend I might descend from the mountains for a sagebrush harvesting mission out on the prarie. After a recent business trip to Wyoming, I saw how absolutely cool sagebrush would be as miniature trees. It's almost perfect. Hoping I don't have to drive back to Wyoming to get some, though.

Also, I believe a trip to the hobby shop is in order. I've got a halloween hankering for some evil 40k or fantasy models. I'm thinking nurgle stuff, and some dark eldar.

Well, I've really been enjoying making this terrain!

I'm painting up the 2 story ruin now, and I want to give it a lot of detail with grime and rust in every corner.

Here's where I'm at with it so far. I just went with the institutional green color on a whim, and it does kind of look nasty, but once it's been weathered and rusted it will look sweet!





Here's the last 2 rock outcrops:









Here's some old OOP Dark Elf Corsairs that I've finally gotten around to painting. Think I got them for christmas last year from my buddy. I did a bit of conversion work on them, namely gave them some spikier weapons.

Man, all I gotta say is AK interactive paints are the bees knees! Just a terrific finish with this product line, and can make any sap look like a pro.

Oxide powders, man!

The scenery is looking very impressive, really like what you've done.

 GiraffeX wrote:
The scenery is looking very impressive, really like what you've done.

Thanks man! I'm looking forward to gaming with it, as I completed all the pieces this weekend.

Also I err, went on a bit of an impulse buy shopping spree Saturday. Procured more of the new citadel line of paints, which are excellent btw. Also bought three Nurgle kits: plague bearers, nurglings and the fantasy Nurgle chaos lord. I was pleasantly surprised to see that the nurglings and plague bearers are 2012 kits, and look very nice (can you really say that about them?).

The nurglings are kind of a fun kit, and I was actually able to create 3 extra bases of nurglings with the additional ones from the plague bearer box, which was a nice bonus.

I guess I've just got a hankering for an evil 40k army, and demons fit that bill. But I'm also intrigued by dark eldar, especially if the army was built to make use of some of the more monstrous creatures and aliens they employ. I think that would be a really sweet army, if not prohibitively expensive. So I bought the fine cast set of wracks as they looked the nastiest!

My thought was to actually field dark eldar force as the bulk of a new army, with a minor detachment of Nurgle demons. I believe this is possible after looking at the allies matrix in the rule book, but they are only allies of convenience, not battle brothers.

I'll really have to look at the dark eldar and what would appeal to me most is to have a brutal and deadly close combat oriented army with lots of nasty weapons and gruesome monsters and aliens. As it stands now I'm leaning towards a haempnculus HQ with wracks as troops. I'd also like the beast master and khymerae, as the models are awesome.

Also did some major refurbishing this weekend on some very old, first edition eldar harlequins. They were in abysmal shape: broken legs, missing feet, missing arms, all needed to be stripped of,paint and cleaned of mold lines. So that required a fair bit of precision pinning and limb transplants from my dark elf sprues. But they turned out decent. As decent as these crummy old models can look, that is.

My plan with them is to run them with dark eldar, got 8 of them including a death jester, and 3 harlequins kiss, 2 fusion pistols. I might need to do more conversion work on them and give them all a kiss if they're worth it.

Would love to hear any advise on these matters!

Lovely terrain. The institutional green and corrugated iron roof will look amazing when weathered to within an inch of their lives. Have you seen this crackle paint craze that is going around? Check out Neil101 and Monkeytroll's thread for some pics, it would suit a decrepit institution perfectly. The interior furnishings are also a nice touch.

 Bruticus wrote:
Lovely terrain. The institutional green and corrugated iron roof will look amazing when weathered to within an inch of their lives. Have you seen this crackle paint craze that is going around? Check out Neil101 and Monkeytroll's thread for some pics, it would suit a decrepit institution perfectly. The interior furnishings are also a nice touch.

Thanks bruticus! I did look at those threads, and they're very inspiring, wonderful stuff to look at. I'll have to check into the crackle paint.

The rust turned out good, I use ak interactive rust and its nice stuff, however when I clear coated the models it got darkened a little bit. It's ok, but not as rusty as it looks I coated. But I don't want the paint job wearing off during games.

Gonna finish up these Nurgle models, which are a really fun change of pace. With them, you can pretty much be as sloppy as you want and it lends itself to the model very nicely. They're disgusting and I gave them a nasty blotchy green-brown paint job, with lots of gore.

I'm a little bummed to read that dark eldar and chaos can only be desperate allies, however. That's not so good and would make for very difficult games I think. Maybe I need to consider dark eldar and eldar if I want an alliance.

Just skimmed your thread, that scratchbuilt house looks great! Cant wait to see pics of it all rusty =)

 Two Spartan wrote:
Just skimmed your thread, that scratchbuilt house looks great! Cant wait to see pics of it all rusty =)

Thanks! It's actually all done, I just need to take some pics. Only have a 3-4hr window each night to do anything these days, and I've been painting Nurgle stuff. Taking pics, uploading them and getting the gallery all set can take a long time sometimes and I'd rather do other stuff. Or, I'm just lazy!

Just been through your whole thread and really enjoyed it. Your models are fantastic and terrain is really good as well.

Have sub'd as I'm looking forward to more updates including the new armies you are planning as you mentioned above

@spuj thanks that makes my day. I've been super hard at work every night makin stuff. Creativity is an amazing feeling when you hit the zone. I absolutely love seeing something made from nothing, and ideas in my head come to fruition. I really need to post the cache of pics in my camera. Tomorrow I promise!!

Speaking of the zone, I'm covered in pink insulation foam, gorilla glue and spackle. And it's great! Been working on 2 large pieces of terrain, plus finished my Nurgle plague bearers and nurglings, and have an almost finished Nurgle lord. They're disgusting, nasty and ugly. Love em!

So fun to pain gak brown and vomit green, and have it not matter. In fact, if you're painting Nurgle, the worst and most badly you can paint those colors makes the models look all the better, IMO. Nurgle models should not have clean edge highlighting and nuanced shading. They should looks like a slimy, muddy, bloody gross mess!

And as a parting thought, Devin Townsend is Canada's best-kept secret. This guy is one of the best musicians I've ever listenened to. Pure awesome win metal, if you like metal that is. Just got his Epicloud album and I haven't been able to stop listening to it!!

Well I still have a ton of pics I want to post, but I'm too lazy to get on my computer and do it.

Currently working on 2 large pieces of area terrain with hills, trees and lots of cover, and are large enough to provide cover for tanks! I'm exclusively painting them with the el-cheapo Walmart acrylics, which have a very serviceable finish, but are so damn thin the paint scratches with alarming ease. Will have to very thoroughly clear coat these pieces to prevent dings and paint chips. But for 57 cents a bottle, I don't think you could beat them.

More or less done with my Nurgle models, and need to put the finishing touches on the Nurgle lord.

I'm torn between wanting more Nurgle, enough to field a 1000-ish pt army, or dark eldar. They are both appealing but would play very differently, I imagine.


I think before buying anything more, I need to paint the Wracks and harlequins I refurbished. So easy to fall into the trap of constantly wanting more.

Progress!

Finally decided to pry myself away from the painting table long enough to upload some pics.

Here's some original RT era Eldar Harlequins, which as I mentioned were in really bad shape. I had to pin them extensively, including their legs and arms lol. I made a few improvised Harlequins Kisses for them.





Primed and ready to kill some stuff!



Also painted up a box of Nurgle Plaguebearers and Nurglings...great kits lots of fun.







I'm going to clear coat them and then add some more gloss coats to the swamp slime and blood n gore, just to make them extra nasty.

And also been making lots of scenery. Here's 2 large pieces, which are going to be hilly/rocky foresty areas with plenty of cover. I started with masonite boards that I had made attempts at painting on years ago, but well...let's just say I'm better at painting models than landscapes.



Next I glue down my insulation foam, usually with gorilla glue to ensure a very strong bond.



I do some rudimentary sculpting then add some basic terrain shapes, which will eventually be rock outcrops.



I then add more glue to ensure the additions are well-cemented together, and begin to carve them out.



I always like to place a marine on the terrain to get a general idea of scale, and make sure that the terrain will also be functional as well as aesthetically pleasing.



Next I use my soldering iron with a hobby blade attachment to partially melt the foam, so it creates the illusion of weathering. The glue seam actually was a nice accident, as it will look like a mineral vein when painted! Yay geology!



I actually cracked the knife blade attachment while doing this, hopefully it wasn't too hot!



This will even be good for tanks!



And here we are with some basic paint applied. Many more layers to go. One piece is actually like 99% done, I just wanted to buy more flocking to increase the detail level on the foliage, but otherwise they look sweet!

Wow that looks really cool! That high ledge the marines are on looks like a cool sniper spot

Also didn't mention before but your other autumn terrain with the pumpkins and buildings looks great!

an nice technique I stumbled across and just tried out is using spackle to make a surface then "etching" in strata lines with a wire brush.

 Galorn wrote:
an nice technique I stumbled across and just tried out is using spackle to make a surface then "etching" in strata lines with a wire brush.

That's a pretty good idea. I've looked,at a lot of different rocks in my career, and there are a staggering amount of variations that occur naturally. It's actually quite ridiculous.

Ok this Sunday I really need to photo some stuff, but I also need to make a trip,to the hobby shop and that's like 3 hours round trip more or less. I wish there was a hobby shop in the mountains where I live.

Your scenery is looking very nice so far, the Plague Bearers are great as well.

 GiraffeX wrote:
Your scenery is looking very nice so far, the Plague Bearers are great as well.

Thanks, I finally finished them and several other projects today. I'm in the process of building a daemons/csm army. Not sure which will be the primary and which will be the ally, as they both have advantages and disadvantages.

I'm leaning towards Nurgle daemons with epidemus and csm allies with typhus, plague marines and forgefiends, as I really love those models. I also bought the new csm codex and I must say its nice to see color, even though it was crazy expensive.

I gotta say I also really like the models for the chaos cultists in the dark vengeance box set. It doesn't appear you can officially buy those models yet outside the box set, but I did see some attractive auctions for them on eBay. The idea of painting a horde army isn't very attractive to me, however. Nor would be placing the on the table and moving them around.

So, here's comes a ton of pics!

Made these extra nurglings with extra bits!



Main nurglings models.



Bloody mess! Decaptitated eldar figure, very old. Was messing around with trying to convert stuff when I was younger, and now this fallen alien has served a higher purpose.




I actually have two bases like this. I did the blood with many layers of red + red ink and gloss coat, then followed up with tamiya x-27 glossy red, which really looks realistic!






Plague bearers





Chaos champ, will count as a herald of nurgle and lead my plague bearers





The family thus far



Festus WIP. He will count a a herald or possibly epidemius



And some WIP fine cast plague marines.




Now for some dark elf stuff....I'll finish this army sme day...





Sorceress on black Pegasus! This is a game zone mini, a Spanish company. Still not quite happy with it and I even repainted the sorceress. It's a cool figure but...something about it didn't quite turn out right.







Also completed a malifaux guild captain and guild hounds set, for my Ortega clan to give them a bit more variety. You don't see many fat bald guys depicted in miniatures, lulz.





Couple things I tried on him didn't turn out too well, for instance this unfortunate tattoo....



But overall they turned out decent I think




On to some terrain projects!

Been cutting a lot of foam and stuff, and my blade shattered finally. They're designed to do this but the bits flew all over the room in different directions!! lucky none went near my face, but I wasn't wearing safety glasses and man, that stuff is serious. I'll be wearing my PPE nex time.



This is the biggest piece of terrain I've attempted yet and it's eventually going to be a spooky keep and will be a centerpiece for games. I'm just not happy with the rocks yet, and I'm gonna do some more work on it.




Here's a completed piece of temperate forest, ready for the gaming table!





A large piece of woodland, I'm really excited with how these look and getting multiple types of foliage was well worth it!











They just keep getting bigger!












And finally my ruined building. Somehow that awesome desktop computer survived the apocalypse, and I wonder if there's any Mentats in that file cabinet...








Upper floor...observe the recycled skull candy earbud

Love the ruined building especially, the streaked green paint looks fantastic.

That is some truely awesome terrain, looks really good!

Any chance of a pic of all your terrain on your gaming table? Would be great to see it all together.

 Spuj wrote:
That is some truely awesome terrain, looks really good!

Any chance of a pic of all your terrain on your gaming table? Would be great to see it all together.

Sadly, all I have at the moment is my kitchen table! I need to draft up some plans for a dedicated gaming table, I'm thinking 6x4.

@bruticus, thanks man!

Wow! Nice work on both of those!
That building though, wow! The bullet holes, the furniture, the awesome paint job, really cool stuff!

That building looks spectacular. It's like you need a model for a Brotherhood of Steel Paladin stalking through it.

Malifaux is getting popular at one of the stores I'm at. That is a large man with very tiny weapons. Comically so. I think The Guild has some of the best models in the range easy. I don't see why you don't like the tat, I think it turned out pretty well, especially considering the size of the model.

@two spartan, thanks man I appreciate the feedback. I had a log of fun adding in those details and hope to make more apocalyptic type terrain.


@ chemical cutthroat, I do love me some fallout. Haven't played malifaux in a long time now but I do dig it. Tattoos Re just really hard to execute realistically, though practice makes perfect

I read somewhere that colored pencils work well for the tattoo look, but I've never followed up on it.

Not sure about that, Chem. But I do have a lot of colored pencils and am gonna be giving more models some tatts, so its worth a try.

starting a major nurgle painting campaign now. Just finished up some plague Marines and bought another box of them, more plaguebearers, and 20 chaos cultists from the DV box set on eBay.

I'm also working on a great unclean one conversion and daemon prince conversion.

btw, writing this from a new windows 8 phone and I don't know how k feel about it yet. Cool toy in some ways, but lacking in other areas.

The nurglings are really revolting. And nice blood btw, very liquid.

I think I would say that the problem with the winged horse and sorceress is that they need a big craggy rock to stand on. Make it seem more airborne and makes the composition look less wide. The wings seem a bit low to the ground.

Your terrain hillsides are really appealling to me - this is why I got into the hobby in the first place - to make tiny perfect little worlds. I must do a diorama.