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Hobbying continues for me. I think I'm finally getting back into my groove. I put the finishing touches on that Sororitas Imagifier and got some decent photos taken, so here they are:


Overall not my best work, but far from my worst either. Army Painter Speedpaints are definitely a decent product, although as I've said I don't know that I would consider them better than GW's Contrast. I did use Contrast for the actual icon (specifically Apothecary White), as Army Painter has yet to release their full range of Speedpaints and there wasn't a white one in the starter set. Either way, that's one more model out of the pile of shame and onto my shelf painted. Unfortunately, that's only my 4th mini of the year, so I've got some serious catching up to do!

In other news, I did end up getting started on the Stormcast Eternal Vindictors. I've finished the gold armor using a method I found in one of Artis Opus' Youtube videos, and while the photo doesn't show it that well I'm very pleased with the results:

Of course, there's tons left to do on these guys (and gals, 2 of them are female), so expect to see more of them as the month continues.

Finally, I put a basecoat red on the Easterlings' clothing:

Not really very much left to do on these, so I need to go ahead and knock them out.

I'm hitting a bit of a crisis point here in terms of the sheer number of projects I've got in various stages. I'm working on Dark Angels, Stormcast Eternals, and Easterlings on the painting front, and I'm wanting to get started on the minis from the Ankh: Gods of Egypt game soon, as I've really been looking forward to digging in on that. I'm also wanting to get more of my Space Wolves assembled and eventually painted (this was going to be the Year of the Wolf for me, remember?), and I've got Custodes that need work if I want to have an actual competitive 40k army. Plus I'd love to work on my Lothlorien army for Middle-Earth so that I've got both a good and an evil army painted. And I want to finish off the models from Indomitus. So many projects, so very little time (especially since I also want to play video games too). I've already back burnered a lot of stuff (like my Guard and Knights, the small remainder of my unpainted Sisters, and my 3D printed Drukhari), but it's still too much, yet I want to keep working on all of those things. I definitely need to find a balancing point, and I don't need to take on any more projects. I've already got a Kickstarter that should be coming in later this year, although from what they've said it could get delayed yet again. Maybe for me that wouldn't be a bad thing. Anyway, I'm gonna keep on keeping on, thanks for listening.

Good progress! Like how the sister turned out.

Sounds like you have a lot of things going on. Unless you need to finish something for an event, just paint what you want. If you are having motivation issues about getting to the table, try to find your muse and roll with it. Look at what you have, see what fires your interest, and get some paint down. And keep at it. That I think is the key. Every day either put just one layer down, or clean the mold lines off one bit. If you feel like doing more, do it. But just sit down and plug away a little every day.

If you are playing more video games, work a little between maps/matches/load screens. I used to clean bits while the computer took its turn playing Civilization.

Tidying things up might help as well. If you have decision paralysis from looking at the whole picture, put most of it away.

Good luck and keep at it!

Nice work on that Sister. The icon really shows how effective Contrast can be.

As to the project overload, Nev's covered it pretty well. Just stay working, and things will get done. Avoid long lapses, especially. It is so much easier to feel overwhelmed if you are not engaged with the projects.

Imagifier looks great, easily one of the best sisters sculpts, loved painting mine last year. Other projects look great too!

@Nev: Thanks very much, both for the compliment and for the good advice, as usual. I'm doing my best to work a little bit each day, and it really is helping, as I've been more motivated to paint lately than before.

@YWS: Thank you! Honestly the Apothecary White was one of the colors I was least sold on at first, but having used it a few times it's now one of my favorite Contrast paints!

@Viterbi: Agreed about the Imagifier; it's one of my favorite Sisters sculpts as well. Thanks for the comment!

I'm still plugging away at stuff, and it's paying off, because I've gotten some models finished. Let's get right into it, shall we? First, here are those three Easterlings that I've been slowly working on:

Quick and dirty paintjob is quick and dirty, but honestly I'm pretty happy with them as a low-effort attempt. As a full army they'll do the job. Now I just need to paint the rest of my massive golden horde of these guys.

I've also finally finished my first Stormcast Eternals Liberators. Honestly the bases were what was holding me up, but I finally found some inspiration and got them done. Here are the pics to prove it:



I'm really proud of my swampy bases on these guys, for some reason. They weren't terribly difficult to do; I just had to acquire a variety of grass tufts from my FLGS as well as some Ammo by MIG Acrylic Water and they just kind of fell into place. The models themselves I'm pretty happy with too, as a first attempt at painting Stormcast. Nothing super fancy, but they'll look the part on the tabletop.

Speaking of Stormcast, work continues on my Vindictors, but I'm way off the pace if I want to finish by the end of the month. Here's the latest WIP shot:

Most of the colors have been blocked in, at least crudely (some cleanup will be required). Three of them still need their white details blocked in though. I might also want to start working on the bases sooner rather than later, as they are somewhat more complicated than other bases on other armies of mine as can be seen on my Liberators above. Once I get these done, I'll reward myself by painting my Lord-Relictor; I'm trying to motivate myself to paint the grunts by doing 2 units of them and then doing a character, rinse and repeat.

I've also been doing some assembly. I put together a squad of Novitiates for my Sisters of Battle; they were fun little models to assemble, but they look fairly daunting to paint well. Here they are in their gray plastic glory:

I'll need to have a think about how to make them look really different from my normal Battle Sisters.

I've also put together some of my recent Forge World Middle-Earth acquisitions. Here's Rutabi and Brorgir, the two Easterling heroes:

I'm looking forward to painting these, as the sculpts are some of the best ME models I've seen yet.

And here are one pack of Easterling Dragon Cult Acolytes:

Sadly the guy on the left had his throwing knife blade snap off during assembly. That thing is gone into the nether, too. I might need to fabricate a replacement or something. And speaking of replacements, my other pack of Cult Acolytes had the wrong set of arms in it (it had 2 sets of C arms and none of the A arms). I emailed Forge World, and after a quick back and forth and a picture sent to them showing the problem, they sent me a whole replacement pack of Cult Acolytes! So now once I assemble the ones I can do, I'll have 8 of them instead of 6. Say what you will about Forge World, but their customer service rocks!

Finally, thanks to warmer temperatures I revved up my slowly dying Anycubic Photon S and cranked off a set of not-Tempestus Scions from Red Makers:

I found these at MyMiniFactory and just had to have the files, so I bought and downloaded them and ran a few off (all the parts for these barely fit on one build plate!). I then attempted to run off the final parts for my Custodes Caladius and my damn screen decided to screw up, so now I need to clean up a mess in my resin vat. I need to face the fact that my printer is probably not long for the world, at least its screen isn't, as this is the fourth time I've had the screen mess up. I'm hoping to save up some money and get a better printer, with a mono screen and a bigger build plate, rather than get a replacement for my current older machine. Been eyeballing the Elegoo Mars 3 mainly, but I'm also considering the Anycubic Photon Mono X. May not happen soon, as I don't have the money for a new printer right now. The old machine is gonna have to hold together a bit longer (Hear me baby, hold together...).

Rounding off the month of April, I've gotten yet more models done. I finished the Vindictors for the April painting challenge, so here are the final pics of those:



These really are cool sculpts, and were really fun to work on. I definitely need to work on learning to paint non-white people though; I wanted some diversity in my Stormcast so I decided to make the one helmetless guy black, but I think his skin ended up a bit too dark, or maybe it's just the highlights didn't show up well. I might need to look up techniques on Youtube or something for how to paint different ethnic skintones. Either way, overall I'm happy with the unit and think they'll look decent on the tabletop.

I also finally polished off my other Army Painter Speedpaints test model, a Deathwing Terminator:

This guy is just a stock Series 2 Space Marine Heroes model, painted in Deathwing colors using Speedpaints. I don't think I like this result any better than results I've gotten with Contrast; the bone color of both is too dark for Deathwing IMO. If I do further tests, it'll be with Contrast, using Contrast Medium to thin the paint so that I hopefully end up with a lighter color. Still, the model doesn't look too bad, and since it's not a model I'm likely to use there's no harm done if he doesn't match my other Deathwing.

Next month's challenge is Mayhem, and I'm gonna have to think hard about what I want to enter. I might 3D print some appropriate models, or maybe I've got some Middle-Earth models that would fit the bill. On the Stormcast side of things, my next model will be a Lord-Relictor; it'll be fun to do a cool character model as a reward for doing a couple of units of basic mooks.

Wow, has it really already been two months since I posted in here? I deeply apologize for that. RL has been keeping me on my toes. What painting I have gotten done in the meantime was covered over in my other blog (finished up painting 6 Imperial Knight models), so see that for details. I do have some other things to tell about here, mainly assembly and collection related.

First off, I now have an Orlock gang for Necromunda. A friend of mine sold his unpainted and mostly unassembled Orlocks to me very cheaply, so now I have 20 basic Ganger models (7 are already assembled with various weapons), plus a set of the Arms Masters and Wreckers (some of which are also assembled), and even a set of the old FW weapon upgrades. I recently added a pair of the Ash Wastes Outrider quadbikes to the collection, but haven't put those together either. No pics as there just isn't really much to show at the moment.

As you might have seen in my Imperial Knights blog, I actually won a 40k tournament last month. The prize for winning included the Kill Team: Octarius box set, which features Ork Kommandos and Death Korps of Krieg teams fighting over some cool Orky terrain. I've actually assembled both teams already, but none of the terrain as yet (that stuff will take up some serious storage space, so I'm waiting a bit). Here are the assembled Kill Teams:
Veteran Guardsmen:

Front row, left to right: Sergeant, Sniper, Spotter, Gunner with Flamer, Medic. Back row: Gunner with Plasmagun, Gunner with Grenade Launcher, Bruiser, Comms, Confidant Veteran
These were pretty fun to put together. Lots of cool characterful bits, including the obligatory shovels (no DKoK unit would be without their trusty shovels!), and there were even more potential assembly options that I didn't include, so a second box may be in order in the future.

Ork Kommandos:

Front row: Kommando Nob with Big Choppa, Slasha Boy, Rokkit Boy, Snipa Boy, Comms Boy, Bomb Squig. Back row: Regular Kommando Boy, Breacha Boy, Burna Boy, Dakka Boy, regular Kommando Boy, Kommando Grot.
I really like the models, but they were much more of a pain to assemble than the Guardsmen, mainly due to the parts for each model being scattered across the sprue instead of mostly being together. That might be my only real criticism of the kit, as the models go together pretty well, and they are full of character and will be fun to paint (really nice change of pace as I've never painted Orks before, and this way I'm less tempted to do a full army of them). All of the options are already here, so I don't really need another box. I might actually 3D print a second Kommando Nob (with a Power Klaw) from Ghamak's patreon so that I have both weapon options. Ghamak's Orks have a slightly different aesthetic, but it should still work okay with these guys.

The other thing that happened in the last couple of months is that I started to work on one of the gods from Ankh: Gods of Egypt. I was going to enter Set as my entry in the Mayhem painting challenge, as he was the Egyptians' god of chaos and war, but I ended up not really doing much (hence no photos). I'll need to rethink how I'm going to approach those models, as they are pretty different from other stuff I've done in the past (and Set might not be the best place to start, as he's pretty complicated; indeed I might be better off starting with some of the Guardian models rather than the gods).

My painting challenge entry for July is probably going to be Easterlings, as it'll give me an excuse to knock out a bunch of them (since the 5-model limit has been lifted for this month). That'll hopefully give me a chance to catch up a bit, as 24 models done in half the year is well short of where I should be.

I'm still alive, but I've been pretty busy of late with RL stuff so not too much hobbying. Mostly I've been cleaning my apartment, but I've also been actually working on my bitz boxes, clearing out some of those pesky extra kit boxes and sprues. I also had a death in the family to deal with (my grandfather), so that kind of took some of the wind out of my sails. It'll get better.

I did recently run off another print on my slowly dying Photon S. I decided to go ahead and print that Kommando Nob I was talking about in my last post, and as long as I was printing that, I thought I'd throw a couple more of the Orks from that patreon in there as well. Here's how they came out:

2 of the Bullboyz (just Boyz with Sluggas and Choppas wearing cowboy hats), plus the Commando Nob with his Power Klaw. Hard to see much detail in the photo as the white resin I'm using doesn't photograph particularly well. I'll probably need more resin pretty soon (in addition to needing a new printer), and I plan to switch to gray resin if possible.

For those who are curious, here's a comparison shot showing the size of the printed Kommando Nob next to the official GW model:

They are pretty close in height, but the printed guy has more human-like proportions, rather than the bigger body and shorter legs of GW Orks. Gives him a bit more of a long and lean appearance. He'll still be pretty badass once he's painted.

I need to get right on the Easterlings if I want to actually finish any before the end of the month. They paint up fairly quickly so I'm not worried just yet, but deadlines have a nasty habit of sneaking up on me...

Work progresses slowly on my Easterlings. I'm gonna have to rally big-time if I want to meet the end-of-month deadline. Work has been burning me out pretty hard, though, so it's made it hard to find energy for hobbying. Anyway, here's where they are at so far:

The gold has been shaded, now it needs highlighting, then I can work on the cloth. The silver metallics (mostly the business end of weapons) has been basecoated, but nothing else. Plenty of work to do.

I also got a tiny bit of work done on my next Stormcast unit, a Lord-Relictor:

Not much here, just some black basecoat on some areas. I figured since several of those areas will have gold trim or filigree, it was a good idea to paint them black first and then work on all the gold armor and stuff.

Finally, just today I decided to put together one of my Necromunda Orlock Outrider Quads. Mostly I wanted to see how easy it was to put together (it wasn't easy at all...). Here it is all shiny and gray:

The driver and gunner are separate subassemblies that will hopefully make the vehicle easier to paint. The chassis and suspension are a real PITA to put together though; lots of tiny join areas that make it tricky to assemble correctly (the handlebar part of mine ended up slightly crooked because of this).

More to come soon, hopefully I can find the time and energy to keep on going.

Oof. Keep at it. I feel you about work, burnout, and deadlines. Need to get moving myself.

Lots of good progress.

@Nev: Thanks for the support!

Easterlings have been temporarily back-burnered due to, well, basically me just not feeling it with them at the moment. I hope to get back to them fairly soon though; they would be a good way for me to get my painted model count back on track. For now, though, I've switched gears as far as Middle-Earth goes and started working on some Lothlorien troops, in particular some Wood Elves. Here's a WIP of some swordsmen:

I'm trying to keep my color palette with these centered around natural-type colors; mostly grays, greens, and browns. All of the cloaks are going to be a greenish color to somewhat unify them, but other colors will vary throughout as they aren't wearing any kind of uniforms. Once I add a shade I'm hoping that will tie all the colors together a little bit, then I can get to highlighting each of them. In addition to these sword guys, I'm also working on a banner bearer as my entry in the August painting challenge:

The real challenge here is going to be some planned freehand on the banner itself; the pic on GW's webstore for this model shows a fairly intricate design that I want to at least somewhat replicate. Banners are something I feel should really pop in a game like Middle-Earth.

In other news, I printed another model for those Wild West Orks, this time it's a counts-as Nob on Smasha Squig:

There are 5 of these Squig Riders among the files I have; this is the size they print at 100%. If I want to make any of them into regular Squighog Boyz, I'll have to scale them down. I went ahead and brush primed this model before taking the picture because frankly the white resin I've been using hates being photographed; at least this way you can see the details of the sculpt. My favorite part of this one is, of course, the grot being held in front of the Smasha Squig's face!

Hopefully I'll have finished stuff to show by the end of the month, at least the Wood Elf stuff. Maybe I can also knock out those Easterlings too; we'll have to see.

Here comes mostly a proof-of-life post.

I have been making slow but steady progress on the Wood Elves and they are nearing completion. Hopefully I don't stall here in the home stretch. Here's the latest WIP shot of the banner bearer:

Still a few highlights to go, plus the skin and hair needs to be done (basecoated the faces of all the Wood Elves and then forgot the hands ). And, of course, the freehand on the banner; wish me luck on that.

Here are the regular Wood Elves:

Basically the same progress as the banner bearer; they are coming out a little darker than I had anticipated, but I'm taking that as a happy accident as they should be dark to blend in with their surroundings better. These sculpts are really showing their age though; I don't know if there's any salvaging these faces even if I really pour my heart and soul into them when I get around to finishing them.

I actually did find time to work on the Easterlings a tiny bit. I actually decided to try a silver drybrush on the armor, and I'm pretty happy with how it ended up looking. Here's a pic:

It actually toned down the yellowish color of the gold very nicely, I think, which fits the look of the armor in the movies (it was more of a whitish gold than a brilliant yellow gold on screen). These are Easterlings, after all, not Stormcast Eternals or Adeptus Custodes. I think I can probably call the armor done at this point and move on to the cloth.

Finally, I picked up some useful allies for my Easterling forces. Enter the Variags of Khand:

I absolutely love GW's sculpts of these guys; they look like Mongols or something, which fits with what little Tolkien told us about them in the books (they were another enemy from the eastern side of Middle-Earth). The main thing I like about them in-game is the fact that they ride actual chariots; unfortunately the place I ordered them from only had the King on Chariot, so I'll have to get some regular ones elsewhere. I also need a lot more Horsemen. In addition to the models shown, I still have a second box of infantry that I haven't put together yet. I am looking forward to painting these (not sure how soon though); I love all the models that come from the books rather than the movies.

More to come, so watch this space.

Hey, I finally have some finished models to show off! Miracles do happen around here! Anyways, here are the final pics of my Lothlorien Wood Elf Banner Bearer:



I had a ton of fun working on this model. My freehand is still not quite up to scratch, but I feel like it's getting there, and I really enjoyed doing the design on the banner (it's not entirely original; I tried to at least somewhat mimic the one seen on GW's webstore).

I also finished those four Wood Elves with swords, so here are a few pics of those that I took as long as I had the lightbox out:


Honestly the plastic Wood Elf sculpts have not aged nearly as well as the metal Banner Bearer; I tried to at least make the faces look passable but a couple of them just don't make it, and this time that has less to do with my paintwork and more to do with the fact that these are 20+ year old sculpts. I still enjoyed painting them though; it was fun to do a slightly more muted color palette rather than the bright and garish colors of some of my 40k stuff (or the shiny gold of my Easterlings).

I'll have to have a think about what I want to paint for the September painting challenge. The theme is big guns, so it'll pretty much have to be something from 40k, but I need to look through my pile of shame and find something I actually want to paint that at least vaguely fits that category. I'm sure I'll think of something. In the meantime, take care and I'll hopefully be back soon with more hobbying to show.

Great blonde hair!

@Gwyn: Thanks! I use a very simple recipe for it, but it seems to end up looking okay.

I decided to go with a Space Wolves Redemptor Dreadnought for the September painting challenge featuring big guns. The base model is the Easy to Build version from a little while back, but I added a little bit of bling to it to enhance the otherwise fairly bland model. Here's a WIP shot:

Most of the basecoating is done; I still need to touch up the metals and the black parts, but the gray armor is done (including shades and highlights; hopefully I don't mess it up while working on the other parts).

I'm way off the pace as far as model count for the year; even if I get those Easterlings that have been sitting on my desk for the last few months done I'll still be woefully behind, so I need to step it up. I'm still struggling with motivation and more than that, distraction. I'm not giving up yet though, not by a long shot.

Elves turned out great. Dread is coming along nicely. I should probably grab one some day.

@Nev: Thanks, I'm actually pretty proud of the elves myself (not to toot my own horn or anything)! You should definitely grab yourself a Redemptor; the ETB one is no longer in production but I know the regular one is, and they look pretty good in Smurf Blue.

Progress has been made, slowly as ever. I should hopefully be able to finish up the Redemptor at least before the month is out. Here's where it's at currently:

I'm definitely in the home stretch on this guy; next thing I'm doing is the decals, then possibly a few more spot highlights, details, and touchups, and the base of course.

I've also made a small amount of progress on the Easterlings that have been giving me a death stare for the past couple of months. I've basecoated all the red clothing on them as well as some of the wooden details (like spear shafts and the back of the shields). Still more brown stuff to pick out yet though. Here's the latest WIP shot:

More work to be done on these guys for sure, but they are getting there.

More to come soon. I'll need to figure out a subject for the spoopy painting challenge in October; if all else fails I could just cheap out and do some of my Dead of Dunharrow (they are crazy simple to paint and would feel a bit like a cop out, but at the same time would boost my flagging numbers for the year...). Once I finish on this big batch of Easterling troops, I should probably paint a couple of leaders for them. We shall see.

AWOOOOOO!!! The Space Wolves Dread is finished! Here are the final pics of it:



While I am calling the model finished, I do intend to go back and add snow to the base, hence why it looks a bit barren. My big pot of Vallejo Ground Texture Snow was completely dried up and hard as cement when I got around to using it, unfortunately (guess that stuff has a limited shelf life...), and I won't have time to get back to the FLGS to get more until Sunday at the very earliest, so it'll have to stay this way for now. Other than that, I'm pretty happy with the model, and it was a lot of fun to paint.

I am thinking I will go ahead and paint my Dead of Dunharrow for next month's challenge, for the reasons I mentioned in my last post: they'll be quick and easy to do, and it'll boost my numbers for the year. It kinda sucks that we're three quarters through the years and I've only finished 30 models. I gotta fix that. To paint those undead boys, I'll be basically just using Hexwraith Flame over a Wraithbone basecoat, and drybrushing a couple of layers over that to give a greenish spectral look. Quick and easy, but not very fancy. I eventually need to get myself the King of the Dead to lead them so I can actually play the army, plus some Riders of the Dead for mobility in games. No rush on those though.

Looks great!

No shame in cranking out squads of easy ghosts. Undead yes, unperson no! Even the restless dead deserve their time in the sun. Or gloom, whatever; we don’t judge.

For snow I just use a big tub of woodland sceanics soft flake snow and PVA white glue. I have to mix it up every time, but it doesn’t dry out or go bad on me. Plus it was like $12 for a lifetime supply.

The dread turned out great! The panel lining is crisp, the edging sharp without being obtrusive, and the bones are top-notch!

@Nev: Thanks, and thanks for the suggestion to use Woodland Scenics snow. My FLGS is waiting for a shipment of Woodland Scenics stuff (got a whole blank spot on their shelves allocated and everything) so I'm hoping it'll come in soon.

@Josh: Thanks and welcome back!

Just a quick little proof of life post mostly. No real progress on the Easterlings lately; I've mostly been assembling this squad of Auto Bolt Rifle Intercessors for my Dark Angels (from last year's Christmas battleforce box):

You may notice the white shoulder pads; all I can say is 3D printer go BRRRR! on those. Found a whole set of Dark Angels shoulder pad files on Cults and downloaded them (for free, no less!), so I decided to print some for this squad (printed them a month or two ago and finally got around to building the squad). Not sure how soon these guys will get paint; quite probably not till next summer, if then.

I'm hoping to have the first WIP photos of the Dead of Dunharrow soonish. In the meantime, stay classy!

Great Dread, will look even better when the snowfall arrives

@Viterbi: Thank you!

I thought I'd put up a pic of what I've got so far on the Dead, namely the test model I did a while back (not sure if or when I took a pic of it). Here it is:

Unfortunately the pic is blurry, the camera just did not want to cooperate tonight and it's pretty late here so I couldn't be arsed to fight with it. Basically all I've done is prime the model with Wraithbone, paint it all over with Hexwraith Flame, then a couple of drybrushes with progressively lighter shades of gray (will probably do another one of Ulthuan Gray since it isn't really showing up well). I'll probably do at least a light drybrush with actual white at the end. It really is a simple scheme, but it does accentuate the detail on the models pretty well.

Just for funsies today I decided to try out the new Luxion Purple contrast paint on my Sisters of Battle Palatine, and I gotta say I really like it better than the diluted Shyish Purple I was using before. Here's a WIP shot:

Again, sorry for the blurry photo. I did all of this this afternoon pretty much (a couple of touchups this evening), and all I've really got left to do is to shade and highlight the non-Contrast bits (the metallics) and do a simple Astrogranite base. I only wish it was practical for me to go back and redo all the purple on my Sisters to match, but realistically that will require me to strip them all and start over, and that's just not gonna happen. Honestly, I'll sell all the old ones and start the army over before I do that, most likely. Also not going to happen, so I'll just have to live with there being a visual difference in any later models.

More to come, particularly on the Army of the Dead, so stay tuned.

Work continues on the Army of the Dead; in fact the models are all done except for the bases. Here's proof of that:

Extremely simple paint scheme is extremely simple, but honestly I think they look about like they should, since in the movie they were kind of glowy ghostly beings. The bases will probably be done with Armageddon Dust so that they look like they are at the Pelennor Fields.

In addition to working on the ghosts, I finished up the Palatine for my Sisters army. Here are a few lightbox photos:


Again, nothing Golden Demon-worthy, but she turned out okay I think. The new Contrast purple is a game-changer for me, as I said before; there's no going back to Shyish purple after this.

Final pics of the Dead of Dunharrow should be coming soonish.

As promised, here are some final pics of the Dead of Dunharrow:



These are the ones that I chose to be my entry in the painting challenge. Now here's a shot of the whole lot of them (20 guys total):

I'm pretty happy with how they turned out. Nothing fancy about them, but honestly getting them reasonably close to the look they had in The Return of the King isn't difficult, being as they are spectral entities. It was very nice to be able to add 20 more models to my 2022 total, which now stands at 51 (still very much off the pace to hit 100 by the end of the year, probably a forlorn hope at this point).

Your specters are impressively spectral. I struggle with ethereals, so yours are quite inspirational.

Very ghost-like. Well done.

If you make your goals all the time, it’s a sign you need to set them a little higher. Keep working towards it, but it’s OK to miss them. Just keep the faith and moveing forward.

@Josh: The idea that I could be inspiring to a talented painter like yourself is heartwarming, to say the least. The look I achieved took very little real effort, either.

@Nev: Thanks, and you're right about the goals. Onward and upward, as they say, eh?

Haven't really gotten much painting done lately. I took my Imperial Knights to another GT, this time the Mid-MO Maelstrom, and wasn't nearly as successful as last time (no complaints, I can't win them all), but I did have a blast. Ended with a 2-2-1 record (the draw was the first game, and probably one of my favorite games of 40k I've ever played, and it was against Tau, no less!) and met and talked with lots of fellow toy soldier enthusiasts. One of the main guys from my FLGS was also there with a bunch of 40k stuff, as usual, and I was able to trade in the last of my remaining Chaos models for some store credit, and with that I picked up something:

Yep, the temptation was just too strong, especially since one of the players in the tournament actually had a Leagues of Votann army (the guy owns a FLGS and therefore had early access to the models and had time to get a 3-color paintjob on them) and I got to see just how dead sexy the vehicles are in person. So now I get to experience the joy of starting a new army yet again! The downside is, I'm going to have to sell one of my existing armies in order to both finance the Leagues army and make space on my shelves, and the army on the chopping block is my Space Wolves. I've come to the realization that I'm never probably going to actually play them in an event and I don't really need two Space Marine armies; the Dark Angels are plenty. I've just kind of fallen out of love with the sons of Russ. RIP to one of this year's goals, but that's okay, sometimes those decisions have to be made, and I think I'll be happier with the Leagues than I ever was with the Wolves.

Speaking of the space dwarves, I've actually already assembled everything (well, the bikes are in subassemblies to make them easier to paint), and I even got one squad of Hearthkyn Warriors and the two characters primed on a rare mild not-too-windy day. Here they are:

As far as how I'm going to paint them, I'm actually taking inspiration from a video game I play frequently, that being Warframe. I'm going to paint these guys like the Grineer enemies seen in that game, as their armor is not entirely dissimilar in terms of aesthetics (obviously the Grineer in the game are taller than dwarves, but whatever). The camo pattern should be easily enough to replicate and I think will be fairly striking on these minis, so I'm very much looking forward to getting some paint down.

On a much sadder note, one of my local 40k club's founding members, a friend of mine, passed away earlier this week. While he and I were not super close or anything (I never hung out with him outside of 40k-related stuff), I did enjoy playing games with him and will miss him. He was always nice and frequently had helpful advice on how to play 40k better (he really knew all the tricks to getting the most out of rules interactions). He was a really good player and just a generally nice guy, so it's very sad that he died so young (I don't think he was even 40). Our entire group is kind of in collective mourning for him, as he was universally loved by us all. May he rest in peace.

Nice to see some more Votann on the forum. The colour scheme you have in mind sounds really interesting. I had to google it, but am I right that it is going to be a teal and grey scheme?

Sorry to hear of your mate passing away. Even if you didn't know them that well, it's always tough when a friendly face is no longer with you, especially in a group where they clearly made a big impact.

Space Wolves always hit some of the traditional dwarf notes, so I can see the easy switch. I guess it would be more fair to say they both classically pull from some norse/nordic roots. It will be fun ti watch yours come together. You have a theme in mind? Plans for bases? Googled the Grineer (never played the game) so teal hard amor over grey fatigues? Plans for weathering, or going for a clean job?

Glad you had fun at the tournament. I always have mixed feeling about even going to small ones. I love the time spent with fellow gamers, and am guarantied to get a number of games in. But it breaks out my competitive side in a way that I don’t enjoy.

Death sucks. Sorry for your loss.

Good to see you still painting and posting. Keep up the good fight agains the Pile of Shame!