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So, I havent been overly motivated to paint for a while, health issues and shaky hands have made it a frustrating experience in general. But, I have all these converted Tallarns that look sad without paint

Add into that EmpChild had a lil paint contest for May on his blog- I decided I should try to paint something since its been over a year. So, heres the naked starter pic on sunday.



And the finished fig on monday. It only took a couple hours to paint up, but I had to wait for the lighting to improve(my cam sucks in direct sunlight- and worse under light bulbs).






C&C welcome, and any questions about the conversion process(I have about 25 of these guys done up- just need to get up to 50 ish and then I'll assembly line paint them!)

Lovely model, very "Lawrence of Arabia". Did you just paint the base, or is there some kind of texture added?

I like it, could we get some pictures of the back of the model? The bicep of his right arm looks a little weird, like he didn't get enough sun there or maybe he does a lot of driving on sunny days with his left arm out the window. Might just be the angle of the picture though. Are they all going to have sunglasses? You might want to play with that, making the leader's sunglasses shinier than the rest to stand out. How did you do the base?

I plan on doing textured bases for the army, just havent sculpted the surface mold for them yet. So this one is just a sort of 'faux' finish. My shaky hands actually were rather useful for doing the squiggly lines for the sort of cracked earth/dry lake bed effect.

As for his right arm, thats a lighting issue. I tired to work around it, but the sun just cannot be denied sometimes

And while Im ambitious enough to sculpt the keffiyehs & shemaghs for these guys, I dont yet have the patience to do sunglasses on all of them.

I was thinking about sculpting them to have a baggier smock like the older tallarn metals, but decided thats not really the look I want. Mixing in the sculpted headgear on cadian and catachans(with added shoulder armor) seems to be doing the trick- and makes them look more like soldiers rather than arabic raiders that should be riding camels

Great job. Looks like the break didn't hurt your modeling/painting skills any.

jbob5590 wrote:Great job. Looks like the break didn't hurt your modeling/painting skills any.

You only say that because you didnt hear all the swearing during the sculpting stages-- stick there stupid putty noooo not a fingerprint!

He looks AWSOME!
I like it, it's finally motovated me to do my IG desert raider themed army, all i need is GS, yes i still haven't done anything since your first post about your tallarn conversions a while back

lol I can relate to the motivation part. I sculpted up the first 25 or so guys. Then stalled. Then I chopped up a chimera to start a conversion. Then I started oogling my space marines since Ive learned to sculpt better, theres more conversion ideas popping into my head.

But, thanks to EmpChilds little painting contest, it sorta gave me a kick in the pants to see how the converted guys would look with paint on them.

My biggest hold up right now is the shoulder pads(the catachan based guys look like catachans without them-and catachans suck). The ones on the guy posted here I sculpted. And getting the curve just right- and the proportions is pretty tedious. I need to get a post up in the swap shop to trade for a few dozen of them from the valk/baneblade/new chimera kits. Then I can do a summoning ritual and make them multiply!

That looks great MoM, and I actually really like the faux finish base! It stands out from the usual flock and sand, and although it lacks texture, the effect is still quite convincing, great job!

Amazing, you have inspired me to dig out and finish my Tanith Army... Those Eldar may just stay un built for that much longer..

Im glad I can provide some inspiration

Now I just have to keep focused on them and get the army as a whole in shape...something Im not exactly good at....

Like the Warmachine figs that are calling to me....or my DIY SM chapter.....

Mistress of minis wrote:Im glad I can provide some inspiration

Now I just have to keep focused on them and get the army as a whole in shape...something Im not exactly good at....

Like the Warmachine figs that are calling to me....or my DIY SM chapter.....

I have this tendency to work on one thing for awhile and then get distracted by an new shiny army! Thankfully I don't do that with work stuffs or my freelance days would be REALLLY LONG.

MajorTom11 wrote:That looks great MoM, and I actually really like the faux finish base! It stands out from the usual flock and sand, and although it lacks texture, the effect is still quite convincing, great job!

I'll be doing actual textured bases, I jsut havent sculpted up the mold for them yet. I am happy with how the base turned out though. With a bit of highlighting it would get a lil better on the 3d effect, but once I get an open face mold- i just pour some resin in and stick the bases onto the surface. Makes the bases random and I can do up any size base I need

Wow nice

Someone sent me a PM about the techniques I used- figured it might help to share

Primed grey(Colorplace walamrt brand- 1.09 a can).

Airbushed Sand Yellow (Vallejo air) as a base coat. VMC Dark earth on the leather. VMC Light Grey on the rifle. VMC Medium flesh on the flesh.

Old school(as in 20 year old Citadel pop tops) Chain mail and Brass bitz on the metal parts.

Then I hit it with my home made 'dirty wash'. And once that dried I hit the darker shadows with a light black wash.

The only direct highlight I did was on the glasses, and that was a touch of mithril & blue ink.


The faux base was just an earth tone, and squiggly black lines with a few ink dabs to add some depth.

Finished off with an airbrushed matte coat(Testors Dull Coat- from the Model master line)

Where did you pick up old school colors and paints!!! I have to mix some custom colors to get what I need when I add stuff to my DE.

Ive had them for years, I still even have some Chestnut Ink I use on special occasions!

I have about 18 or 19 or so of the old pop tops left, mostly some oddball colors, some glazes & such that rarely get used. A few freinds of mine used to work at the GW warehouse in Baltimore, like around 95. They absconded with a box of paints that were 'outdated'- and many of those paints I ended up with when I was given a few hundred points of Eldar to get me sucked into 2nd edition in 98. Before that I just painted dragons, D&D figs, and some battletech stuff. I even still have some bottles of my old Ral Partha paints that are like 25 years old and still usable(but theyre stinky!!)

Mistress of minis wrote:Ive had them for years, I still even have some Chestnut Ink I use on special occasions!

I have about 18 or 19 or so of the old pop tops left, mostly some oddball colors, some glazes & such that rarely get used. A few freinds of mine used to work at the GW warehouse in Baltimore, like around 95. They absconded with a box of paints that were 'outdated'- and many of those paints I ended up with when I was given a few hundred points of Eldar to get me sucked into 2nd edition in 98. Before that I just painted dragons, D&D figs, and some battletech stuff. I even still have some bottles of my old Ral Partha paints that are like 25 years old and still usable(but theyre stinky!!)

Nice, I inherited all my eldar from a buddy in the Marines that decided to play only WHFB. He bought all the stuff in the late 90s early 00s and left them all boxed!! So I get to open them all and start to make my eldar army soon. Figure out what I need to buy to fix them up!

Anyway since Royal Purple was canned I have to make my own now!

Look up Coat De Arms, they made the old Citadel line, and still make many of the same colors(and I believe still use the same old last forever pop tops).

I remember when I used up the last of my Liche Purple and Nauseating blue :(