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Looking great so far, always loved the LotD but never had enough money or time to make an army!
Good luck with your army!

Hehe, I mis read the title as "Lost and the Damned" and I was all WTF with all the Space Marines until I saw the "Legion of" ten seconds later.

Aye these are my first 4 models I ever painted so I guess I have to start somewhere, thanks for the blending advice, I'll give that a shot.

I don't think they look awful- but they could use some sprucing. That will come with the skill though. My first Tau squads compared to my Eldar Pathfinders- the difference is astounding.

You might already know about this- but maybe using more thinned out paint with drying retarders etc would probably be a big boon. That and not necessarily using a smaller brush, but not loading up as much paint on it each time.

That said- all that will come as you get your own technique. However, kill those mold lines! They really hurt the overall quality of the models.

Aye that's the main thing I'm doing now, before I prime my next tac squad I'm trying to go over everything with an exacto knife and try to trim as many mould lines and sprue clips as possible. Already stabbed myself a couple of times in the process hehe.

Though dammit it appears the weather here is too hot to spray prime them tonight...I'm guessing if your primer dries like black powder that's easily brushed off something is wrong right?

Might want to check out this site

http://www.kan.org/michael/mkp/index.php

Yeah-- that doesn't sound so good. What are you using?

Aye, I'm using Armory Black primer from my FLGS store. I bought instead of the Citadel brand since it was a solid 4 bucks cheaper per can, though lately now with this spraying I'm beginning to regret my purchase.....


edit: And checked your article on priming, good find btw! Yup, it appears my ambient must be over 85 degrees F, since it's literally drying like a black sandy powder all over them.

What the!?!!

MOLD LINES??? FLASH???

HERESY!

If you are going to go the distance on these guys (and it sounds like you are) then mold lines gotta go.

Yeeks good lord finally an update and a quandary to boot!

I finally got around to finishing about 2 tactical squads. My life has been quite hectic as of late so painting has been painfully slow but hey! Progress!

Here's some shots of the squad and my first sergeant.











And the good ol zombie sergeant close up:





As you can see with the exposed head of the sergeant, I'm definitely shooting for a "space-decaying-undead" look.

The way I achieved the flame effects were as follows:

A starting layer of Blood Red to create the darker red flame effect

A 60:40 Mix of Blazing Orange/Blood Red layered on top near the bottom-middle of the flames

Finally, a mixture of Blood Red, Blazing Orange, Sunburst yellow and Skull White for the core of the Flame.

Eyes were essentially done the same way with the last layer omitted.

The new washes proved to be a boon to me as I achieved some great zombified flesh effects with the serg. head by base coating in bleached bone and then doing a few washes in Ogryn Flesh and Thrakka Green.

Now here's where I decided to start some fun converting, I mentioned earlier that my scouts were the most exposed to the horrors of the warp so as a result, the most buggered up by the effects of it. I'm not completely done with them, but here's my two most progressed scout models as they are now...



What I'm shooting for here was a "Shambling Undead" approach, hence the mud spatters all over their lower half. I'm trying to convey soldiers that are so far gone into the undead realm that they still don't realize they're dead, they still wish to venerate the emperor, however that's about all they can think of at this point so their equipment is rusting and falling apartment but they're paying no heed to it as it were.


Which finally brings me round-a-bout to my next point.

Painting the Legion of the Damned is infuriatingly slow. I'm sure it has a lot to do with my relative inexperience, but between all the layers I have to do JUST to get the flames to NOT resemble someone's diarrhea, plus with all of the extra effects and bone motifs to accomplish, it's quite frankly daunting as all hell to continue. You've all seen my starter pic and I've only since acquired more since then. At the rate I'm going....well...suffice to say I don't think I could feasibly continue at this rate and ever hope to get a painted army done.

Now, having snagged my SM: Codex I came across this chapter that really spoke to me:

http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Aurora_Chapter

I am accumulating tanks more quickly than I am infantry and they're green too which does hold a special place in my heart. (I swear I love da dakka so much you'd think my marines were quite orky!)

So yeah, I realize the Legion of the Damn has fluff and awesome coming out it's arse, but given my current skill-set, I'm really unsure of how to proceed to get my army done. Any advice or suggestions would be appreciated.

Looking nice! Great job!

I just read through this thread for the first time, and I have to say the progress you've made from
those first pictures to the last is really good! Things like cleaning out mould lines and tags and using
washes give the latter ones a much cleaner, more detailed look. I like them! Flames have taken a
major step up as well, with much more clean-cut lines than before.

That being said, I can imagine these are a paint in the ol'hindquarter to paint! There's no doubt in my
mind you could pull it off and make it look great, but it will take time. Lots of it. The Aurora chapter
(A by-the-codex chapter *shiver*) is by far easier to paint. If you so wanted, you could just pick up
a few spray cans of green paint, and be about 40% done with all of them in an hour or so. I'm not
saying this will be remotely satisfying compared to having a large bunch of Damnedés (who look great,
by the way. Those scouts look the part for sure), but it will be alot easier. So question is; what do you
want it to look like in the end?

Oh, if you do decide to do Auroras instead; do one complete squad in the LotD colours. They're an Elite
choice in the new codex, which means you can still field them. This also means you can spend alot of time
fiddling with the details on them, instead of having to mass-paint hundreds of them.

Good luck, whichever way you decide to go!

al-Majid Agandhjin bin Ahfal al-Rashid

Agandhjin wrote:I just read through this thread for the first time, and I have to say the progress you've made from
those first pictures to the last is really good! Things like cleaning out mould lines and tags and using
washes give the latter ones a much cleaner, more detailed look. I like them! Flames have taken a
major step up as well, with much more clean-cut lines than before.

That being said, I can imagine these are a paint in the ol'hindquarter to paint! There's no doubt in my
mind you could pull it off and make it look great, but it will take time. Lots of it. The Aurora chapter
(A by-the-codex chapter *shiver*) is by far easier to paint. If you so wanted, you could just pick up
a few spray cans of green paint, and be about 40% done with all of them in an hour or so. I'm not
saying this will be remotely satisfying compared to having a large bunch of Damnedés (who look great,
by the way. Those scouts look the part for sure), but it will be alot easier. So question is; what do you
want it to look like in the end?

Oh, if you do decide to do Auroras instead; do one complete squad in the LotD colours. They're an Elite
choice in the new codex, which means you can still field them. This also means you can spend alot of time
fiddling with the details on them, instead of having to mass-paint hundreds of them.

Good luck, whichever way you decide to go!

al-Majid Agandhjin bin Ahfal al-Rashid

Thanks very much mate, I was debating about it over the weekend, and I am proud of how far I've come as a painter, (man was I forced to learn quickly) but aye, painting the legion of the damned is just too time consuming, I figure I'll give them a go and see how I can get my army up and running.

Thanks again for the tips on the batch painting, I'll be sure to update this again when I get some of those figs done.

if you are finding it time consuming there is a very quick and simple way.

Spray chaos black.
drybrush the whole model lightly with codex grey
drybrush the whole model VERY lightly with space wolves grey

thats the main base of the model.

metallics:

paint botgun metal
wash badab black
drybrsh mithril silver

Bone:

paint bleached bone
wash with brown ink
pick out the raised areas with bleached bone

flames: (i had to do a little experimenting)
this involves no blending while wet

paint the flame shape skull white
then paint it golden yellow (may take 2 coats for good cover)
mix a little golden yellow and fiery orange (80:20 mix) then water it down (70 paint, 30 water) and paint that onto the yellow so it leaves plenty of yellow in the tip of the flames.
this can then be spread, if done carefully it blends well.

then, do the same with red ink, making sure to leave orange and yellow.

then simply use watered down blood red (70 paint, 30 water) and apply a small line at the base of the flames.
dip the brush in water and take off most of the water, you can then drag the red upwards creating a much better blend.

i know it sounds like loads of work, but i used to be able to paint up a tac squad of 10 in around 3 hours.

The mould lines/flash really ruin it for me, you should walys have the stamina to remove flash, or most people will just see the flash and nothing else..

As for the flames. Look at reference you like closely and then just try and match that as close as you can. Practise makes perfect and a big mass of flaming marines could be quite cool.

Good afternoon folks, I figured I'd give this WIP blog a full reboot since I put it on hold when life decided to kick me in the Jimmies, anyhow, I am back and am working harder than ever on getting this project restarted.

I've gone back over and really re-worked my approach to building and painting that's for sure. I've since then acquired a few more models which I shall post later, but for now, I've taken the advice from here and other posts and am attempting to apply it to my army once again.

I've gone back and cleaned off as many mold lines as I could find on pretty much everything, so that was an endeavor unto itself. And now I've finally started painting and converting again.

Anyhow, I finally finished my Skelly Scouts and uploaded the Pictures to my Gallery here on good ol Dakka. These were my first attempts at really solid converting so I can understand if they look a bit wonky. Still it definitely was an illuminating experience to say the least! On with the pics then!


Here I went for a mixed Zombie/Skeleton approach to my Scouts. My reasoning with these Legion of the Damned scouts would be that because they would be the least protected from the nasties of the warp, they would be the most horribly mutated forms of the troops that would make up the force. I liberally stole bits from the Vampire Counts Skeletal Warriors for the heads and helmets to make the look work.


Here you can also see my first attempts at using GW's water effects, when they say pour 2-3mm at a time, they mean it -_-. I was an idiot and tried to do 2-3cm of it at a time using masking tape as a mold, and all it ended up doing was making them look like they were standing in bathwater, ugh. Ah well, still much to learn with converting.


All Zombies here, no particular reason for the decision here, basically I couldn't remove the heads after deciding to skellify them, so I zombiefied them instead


I really really like how the rust came out on these guns. I used a base coat of either calthan brown/vermin brown followed by stippling some Macharius Solar Orange, followed by a liberal wash of Badab black to darken out the orange.


I really had a ball doing the converting work on these guys, they came out fantastic for a first attempt.


Here you can see I had some fun with the 2nd Sergeant and the Viking Helmet, I dunno it just seems fitting in some twisted sort of way. If the Sniper Scout 2nd from the right looks kind of odd, you're right, he's a conversion using a scout body but using space Marine arms as I ran out of scout arms midway through the assembly process so I had to improvise a bit, overall it came out quite well.


Another last minute conversion as well, the rocket launcher fellow I ended up using a devastator marine's crouching legs as I could not find the legs that matched the Scout marine's body. It sort of works, although on close looks they do look kinda wonky since they're about as thick as his body O_o

Alrighty then! So that's basically what I've been up to so far, next I hope to have a few more squads painted as I've gotten some great painting ideas for the troops from other gallery members here so I'll definitley re-prime a few figs in the process. All in all, it's good to be back in the saddle again.

Not too sure on the zombie scouts, but the skellie ones look really good. Did you decide whether you were gonna go with the Aurora Chapter with Damned allies, or just do the whole force as Legion of the Damned?

Dragonlover

Dragonlover wrote:Not too sure on the zombie scouts, but the skellie ones look really good. Did you decide whether you were gonna go with the Aurora Chapter with Damned allies, or just do the whole force as Legion of the Damned?

Dragonlover

Well after giving it some serious thought, I really did like the Aurora Chapter for their tanks and god knows I've bought metric craptons of armor vehicles, but the conversion possibilities were just too great, so I figure I'll stick with the Legion of the Damned through and through. I'm going to buy some better brushes and try to build up my flame painting skills.

Figure I'll probably buy an airbrush to finally start working on my tanks too.

Flamey boney Marines? Here, something to inspire/aspire to.

Nurgleboy77 wrote:Flamey boney Marines? Here, something to inspire/aspire to.

Oh sweet mother of pearl......


/humbled.....

NOT mine, BTW.

Aye, I've been looking at it, and I can't even begin to see how that flame pattern is achieved at all O_o

It looks like it's been built up from Bubonic Brown, or maybe Snakebite Leather. Where'd you get the pic Nurgleboy?

Dragonlover