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Theo- Thank you! That means a lot. The window is great, no doubt and natural light wonderful to have. The view however..... Not so desirable.
The little colour wheel was a freebie from GreenStuff World. It's nice to have it there not even so much as a resource, but it's delightful little weird colour splash that's good for catching the eye every now and again. I don't know why it's good. But the brain tells me it like it. So....

YWS - Thank you, thank you, thank you. I am quite pleased with the Dark Reaper as a highlight. It gives the black a nice appearance. Not quite a shiny look, nor pearlesent. But it gives it something that grey just wouldn't have. I'm looking forward to getting into the Cats as well. Quite lovely sculpts I think.


PROGRESS!

Right. So Cataphractii terminators. Assembled (mostly), Primed and ready. I also Threw in a venerable dreadnought as well.


I hit a snag before I even started painting them though. The question was do I paint the white first, then black in everything that needs to be blacked in or vise-versa? I went vise-versa and started with black so as not to potentially mess up any white later down the line. I feel this was the right choice, but It will defo make painting some of the small areas interesting later on. Anyway.
Two down, three to go!


And let me just say, the W&N brushes are paying for themselves already. Not a stroke out of place thanks to those fine-tipped little beauties. (well one. But it's a spot that looks like shadow so pfft.)
I also hadn't realised how similar the Cats are to the contemptor dreads in over all style. They're like mini versions of the contemptor. Can't believe I hadn't noticed before now.

Now as a motivational reward for painting the Cats, i've got this BAMF ready to go. These blokes will be done in record time!


This is one of the best sculpts GW has ever done I think. It's up there with the 3rd edition Stormtrooper models, the old metal IG command squad commander, and this guy
Absolutely frothing to get this guy table ready.

Oh yeah, that model is sweet. Some very cool stuff coming up now.

Always glad to see more Real Marines and dreadnoughts.

Just put a bird feeder out there and you’ll have something nice to distract you from time to time,.....though being on the upside down part of the planet it might attract drop bears and acid spraying songbirds, so do it at your own risk.

Sweet looking minis in progress here and a great painting station. Looking forward to see how the cataphractii and termy chaplain com out

Hello all!

I am pleased to say that the Cataphractii Terminators are, for all intents and purposes, done!
I've left the pauldrons off as I hope that FW will at some point soon release 1st legion shoulder pads for the Cats.



Sorry the lighting isn't great in this pic. But you get the general idea (hopefully).
I have to say, that despite my best intentions, and despite the awesome models themselves, painting these guys was not a fun experience for me. I did not enjoy them much. I can't say exactly what it was about them, but I didn't like it. That being said, I am happy with the final results. The brass and white is quite a nice colour combination and I think the green helps offset it rather well.
They're done now though, which means I can move on to other, blacker, terminator armour.


After the Cats were finished I needed a bit of a palette cleanser. So I took a step back to my roots and dusted off some old Lord of the Rings minis.

These blokes are all but done, just need to be based. I haven't found a shade of green that i'm quite happy with yet for the cloaks, so that's why there's four greens for four warriors.
Really simple models to paint. All done in lovely big blocks of colour with no need for any fancy techniques. Drybrushing and highlights was as advanced as I went with these guys.

I had forgotten how enjoyable this fantastic sculpts are to paint. They aren't overly detailed, but they don't lack because of it. I'm not sure how long they took me to paint, but the time flew by.

Buoyed by these initial warriors, I quickly jumped up a few steps in the chain of command and grabbed the good Theoden King, himself. Which you can see primed and ready to go in the above picture (you can actually see three of him )

Another days worth of painting and I'm really happy with the finished results. This was such a beautiful model to paint. Captured the detail of the movie character almost perfectly.



I decided not to put any green on this model, even though the undershirt under his red tunic is green in the movie. I just felt like the model itself didn't need it.
The only painful part about painting Theoden was highlighting each of the scales on his mail coat, which was the last part that I painted. That took longer then I would have liked. And even though I know I could have saved myself a bit of hassle if I had drybrushed it first off, that's just not how this model came together for me.
In total, at a guess, I think Theoden probably took me about 4 hours to paint. But again, I wasn't really keeping track.

That's all I have done at the moment but I've got another 3 warriors half painted. So stay tuned for them in a day or two.

Anyhoo. That all for now. As always, thanks for looking and I appreciate any comments and critiques you might have for me!
Thanks!

The work on the scales paid off; very nice.

Hard to tell which green is best for the cloaks. They all work in different ways; depends a lot on what you are going for.

Theo looks fantastic. Great job on the armor.

Those cataphrachtii are nice models, though they look odd without the shoulder pads. Hopefully forgeworld/Shapeways allow you to finish them soon!

As for the cloaks my favourite is the bright green one, though it’s maybe not very LoTRs movies I suppose.

Theoden looks great too, his scales look worth the effort. His black and gold chest armour looks tricky to paint, well done!

@Nev - Thanks. Yeah, i'm a bit torn on what green I want. In the movies, it's quite a royal green they use. But i'm not sure that translates so well to this scale.

@YWS - Thanks, buddy.

@Gobert - Ooh, I hadn't thought about shapeways. Thanks for that suggestion! The bright green cloak is actually a bit of a throwback to how I originally painted them. So it does have a slight nostalgic hit for me, but as you say, isn't very movie like. The black/gold armour was a bit of a pain, but a Triple 0 brush makes a hell of a difference!



So something a little different from me today.
So i'm in the midst of painting that delightful terminator chaplain. He's not entirely done yet, but i've taken step-by-step photos as I progress.






The last four shots are just the cabling around his head getting brighter. But i'm rather pleased with how 's coming along. I've got a few more shots, so i'll post the rest of the pictures later.
I've used a couple of guides by the ludicrously talented Darren Latham on how to paint gems and purity seals and i'm super stoked with the results i've got. I didn't think I needed to be taught how to paint a purity seal, but I was mistaken!

That Chaplain is awesome, no doubt. He is turning out quite well. The work on the skull is top-notch.

So much progress Snrub!! The weathering on your knight turned out great, and your painting skills are really coming along! That Theoden, in particular, is looking steller.

Your chaplain's base is looking awesome as well.

Very nice work on the chaplain. My once concern is that he is very muted. Any plans on adding some “pop” or accent colors?

Great looking bone skull there, skeleton would be envious.

YWS - The skull was one of those delightful moments of completely fluking something excellent.

Zahnib - Hey! Good to see you back, mate. Thank you on all counts.

Nev - You're not wrong, he is very muted. Where i'm up to at the moment the purity seals do add some pop to him, but maybe not enough. He does have a bit of gold on each arm though and there will be some purple added. So we'll see how sparky he is when I get him together. Did you have any suggestions?

Theo - Thanks bud. Funny you should mention skeletons.... As I had a moment of weekness the other week after watching Jason and the Argonauts and may have quickly ordered the following...

I just watched the remake of clash of the titans. Not as good as the original Harryhausen one, but the skeletons and scorpions were good.

I know I still need to finish my Shadespire stuff, but with season three around the corner I think I’m done. I might pick up certain figs, but I’ve only gotten to play once or twice and most of the other figs are just sitting in various states including those skeletons.

The original Clash is an excellent movie. In truth, anything Harryhausen had a had in is worth watching, just for his distinctive special effects work.
That being said however, the remake did have Gemma Arterton in. Which is never a bad thing.

Ok more of the religious psychopath in the grinning skull mask.


At this point, the main body is all but done. So I moved on to the arms, which were already mostly done as i'd been doing them in concert with the body. They just needed their own details finished.
Namely, the green pauldron/gun casing and the purple crozius haft.




All that's left to do now is highlights on the black, a few touch ups here and there (metal models chip so easily) and to decide on the most importantt aspect of the model, the eyes! What colour to do the eyes on his scary as gak skulmet.

What color do you normally do eyes?

Red is classic, as well as ominous and threatening.

As a left field alternative, you could echo the blue from the stuff around the helmet, and go with ice/electric blue glow.

Green might tie in more with the traditional DA colors.

That chaplain is amazing.

@Nev - With my regular green marines it varies. I probably do about a 70/30 split between yellow lenses and red lenses. And then every now and again i'll throw in a set of blue lenses just for variation.
With a model like this, red would have been my go to. It gives that nice visible sense of threat and danger. How ever i'm not sure if i've already used too much red in the gems and wax seals. Two more little spots of red might not stand out as much as they should among all that. As I think is the case with the studio paint job.
In regards to the blue, I did wonder about that. I feel like blue has a nice menacing feel of its own. A cool, soothing colour on such clearly dangerous individual is not to be trusted. It'd tie in nicely with the cables around the helmet as well, but would it be a little too much I wonder?
Green is an interesting choice though and one I hadn't given much thought. A nice bright green could give him an unearthly, alienesque vibe. One to look into.
I would have liked to have just given him black lenses. Give him that nice, dead stare, shark eye look. But black on black is just too black.

I might have a play around in GIMP, see what I can do with his eyes before I commit.


@Fifty - That's high praise. Thank you.

My first inclination was to suggest black for the eyes, as well. It looks really good in the WiP shots, and if you can make it work it could turn out very cool. Maybe just a hint of deep red around the edge of the lens and a catchlight in the corner, but mostly black.

I agree with youwashock that black, whilst incredibly difficult, would look awesome. Red would be the classic, obviously.

Thanks, YWS and IGtR.

So after getting the highlights on his armour done, i'm actually starting to think black eyes might not look so off. I used dark reaper to highlight his armour and it's made him look not so black and a bit more grey.



A couple of little touch ups on his helmet to even up some bits I missed, and maybe some very extreme corner highlights to give it a starker contrast against black pupils and I think it might work.


If anyone can see something i've missed or has any advice, i'm all ears!

Thanks guys.

Looking really good mate! Really nice to you keep chugging along.
Not sure on the black eyes to be honest, would make me think after a while I had forgotten to do it if it was mine. But as you have done red and blue spot colours I cant really think of what to do with them that wouldn't look a bit muddled.

Haven't been keeping up on your blog for a while (been in OZ for X-Wing) so will also say, I really like the finish you got on those termies and the Théoden is great as well. Actually prefer the Rohirrim (sp) with different shades on the cloaks as it never made sense that such primitive people had such fast (and uniform) dyes. Also, also Skellies! You loved painting your chaplain so much that you needed more bone in your life?
Keep up the good work mate!

I think I’m with ingtaer on the eyes, if you leave them plain black I think they’ll look unfinished. Perhaps you could highlight them like they’re gems, but with greys? As others have said it might be hard to pull off though. You could use a dark green with the black to do the gems too, that might be easier or look cooler?

Tough choices!

That chaplain is looking great! Personally, I'd go with red eyes, same as the gems you've done. Really nice paint job so far, I'd say its your best yet!

@Ingtaer - Cheers mate. You're bang on about the cloaks. A culture such as the Rohirrim wouldn't have uniform dyes. But I have uniform paints, and i'll be buggered if those cloaks aren't going to be all the same!
@gobert - Painting them like gems/lenses was the plan. But i've never seen a thing on how to paint black gems/lenses. Some experimenting is in order. Dark green is a nice idea though.
@Zahnib - Thanks dude, I have to agree. He is probably the best thing i've ever painted. Definitely in the top 3 for sure, one of my favorites to paint too since I love the sculpt so much.



Ok, so no progress to show at all on any front unfortunately. With that being the case, I think i'll take this opportunity to do a "State of the Hobby" style post.

If you remember at the start of the year, I set myself a list of goals I wanted to finish before the year was out. Now that we're 3/4 of the way through the year I thought it'd be a good time to review.


Lets see where we're up to with it.

1. Finish Dark Angels 5th company
Hasn't happened yet. With 1 more Tactical Squad, and Assault Squad and both Devastator squads left to go, this one looks unlikely to happen. I have however finished all the other squads I had already that needed to be painted. So not a complete failure.
2. Paint 1st, 2nd & 10th company Aux forces
Did much better with this one. Painted both my scout squads and the Black Knights as well as one of the deathwing squads (cataphractiis) Still have a RW attack squad and 2.5 deathwing squads left. So there's still time to complete this one.
3. Assemble/paint 2 Imperial Knights
Got one done. The other can sit and languish in it's box for another year or two I think. I don't see how people tackle more then one of these at time or in a short time frame. Or anything else of that size for that matter.
4. Paint some LoTRs models.
Done! I left this one a bit open ended. But seeing as i've painted Theoden and 4 warriors, it's RAW done. Will definitely paint some more before years out for sure though.
5. Make head way with at least 2 other armies
Yes. No. Maybe. I don't know. Not really. Kinda made a start on the Lost & Damned with those poxwalkers. But not really enough to call "head way". And work on the Imperial Guard was practicably stillborn. We'll see....
6. Make some Terrain.
Not yet. Soon though!
7. Paint some Terrain.
Not yet. Soon thought!
8. Paint something not 40k/GW related.
Seeing as I have very little that isn't GW base, this one was always more of a "do yourself a favour and branch out" goal. I have few kickstarter things that would fit this bill nicely though.
9. Paint something Random
Bit of a cop out, but I painted some faces at a kids party a while back. Not very well it must be said, but it was more for gaks and giggles then anything else.
10. Play some games of 40k
This was one I was really hoping to get too. Hasn't happened so far but might yet. Not holding my breath though, if i'm honest.

So in total i'm calling this a (very) dubious 3 out of 10 golden Aquilas. (really 2 and 2 half completes and 1 of those completes is a really poor excuse for a complete.)


On top of all that I still have a few unfinished things to attend too.
-Left uncompleted are the camo cloaks for the sniper scouts.
-Tactical squad sergeant w/custom bionic leg.
-Basing for the full company is yet to be even started. The scouts, assault marines and command squad is based. Everything else is not. I have everything I need. I'm just being lazy.
There are others, but these are the 3 that my mind keeps circling back too all the time.

This post has so far been leaning heavily on what I haven't done. What I have done over the last few days though, is go through my hobby area and clean and reorganise. I've shuffled and sorted and moved and ordered just about all of my hobby related material. Which has been good, because now I have a better idea of how to tackle the things I want to in an order that is manageable.
Maybe the largest benefit of doing this has allowed me to get all my terrain bits and bobs into one place. I have a fair whack of GW terrain, but I also had an obscene amount of cardboard and other detritus that i'd accumulated over the years, the vastly overwhelming majority of which i've never done anything with. Funky shaped bottles and lids and gak that at one point I thought would make for good terrain features, but which never eventuated.
Well that overwhelming majority is now in the bin.

There's more I wanted to say but i've been writing this post for an inordinately long time now, so i'm going to leave it there for now.
In short, hopefully look forward to some more LoTRs minis and some terrain to go along with them. (I've started planing out a Rohan village.) Some painted shadespire warbands and probably some more Lost & Damned.

Cheers all!

Nice summary. I should do one myself, while there is still time in the year to actually check things off. Sometime around November everything just starts to get crazy and not slow down until mid-January; it’s good to plan ahead if you want to make those yearly goals.

For larger and more open ended goals, those partials count for a lot. Give yourself the credit you are due for making progress.

Alright guys, I've been pussyfooting around with the eyes for too long now trying not to commit to something that wouldn't have looked good. I should have just listened to the people who said red in the first place.
I was worried that they'd be lost among the red gems and purity seals, but having done it, I worried for naught.



Followed Darren Lathams glowing eyes tutorial minus the "glow". Essentially just gave him a set of T-800 eyes. Somewhat fitting given that he himself is in terminator armour.
Only thing I might do is give the wax seals a black wash to darken them down some.

He wants your clothes, your boots, and your motorcycle.

Eyes look good. They definitely don't get lost.

Roooight. He's ACTUALLY finished. Glued together, based, touched up. All that good gak.


Interrogator-chaplain Ephrek of the Dark Angels Reculisam








Now that he's done he can be put on the shelf and never touched again. He's not a gaming piece, that's for sure. Far too fragile. His arms are way to heavy for even with a good super gluing.
As always, i'm open to any comments (good, bad or indifferent) so let me know what you think.


Also received my Made to order LoTR Orcs and Goblins. Fun fun.

I got a duplicate of one of the orcs by accident, so they (quite promptly) sent me out a replacement for the missing orc. GW customer service killing it once again.
They've got me in a middle earthy mood, so definitely gonna have some LoTR content coming soon.