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Hiya chaps!

This is my third try at a blog here on dakkadakka. Since I had no fun playing my planned Grey Knights force ( http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/380031.page ) and since my 2000 points of 'Nids are near completion ( http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/395830.page ) I was in search of a new inspiring army to build and paint.

My main force was always a huge Space Wolves Army (around 4500 points) I painted up some years ago.
They look decent but their painting standard just didn't appeal me anymore so I chose to use some of the existing space wolves minis for a new Space Marine army.
As I really liked the Forgeworld Badab War books and the corresponding Forgeworld models I painted up a first test mini in the Red Scorpions scheme.


He's still missing his Red Scorpion chapter pad and the paint job is rather sloppy but all in all I really liked to paint him up.
I used the traditional Red Scorpion scheme shown in the badab war books.
Vallejo Model Air was used for his Armor, black for the shoulder pads and Vallejo Game Colour Lether Brown and Vallejo Model Air Dark Yellow + Golden Yellow for the contrast colour.
To round him up some Vallejo Pigments were used for the weathering.


Next in the queue were an existing Space Wolves Rhino and two AOBR Dreadnoughts - perfect to try out the paint scheme for some vehicles!



In addition to the colours used for the Tactical Marine I tried some zenithal highlighting with some light airbrush grey and pure black.
For the weathering I went for heavy rust and battle damage to show the ongoing conflict within the badab war.
I'm still waiting for my next forgeworld order to add some etched brass / Rhino doors for some red contrast colours on the minis.
They all were really quick jobs (Las Cannon Dread 4h, Plasgun Dread 2.5h, Rhino 3h) and you can find a little speed paint tutorial for the Plasgun dread here: http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/412835.page#3632263
Sadly some details were already gone because they were painted in Space Wolves colours before but I'm still really really pleased with how they turned out.


Some more work went into my chapter Master, Commander Carab Culln. I love the sharp details of Forgeworld models and he was no exeption.





These are all of the minis I completed by now. To round this post up here are some quick shots of my current WIPs.


Land Raider Crusader. Nearly completed except the missing forgeworld doors which will arrive with my next forgeworld order (hopefully next week).



Bike Squad. Bikes will be equipped with two melta guns and a combi-melta.



Red Scorpion Veteran Squad, these will be my Sternguards equipped with 4 combi meltas and 4 combi flamers which I already started to convert.
I still need to get my hands on some more bits to make the flamer conversion which is a slight pain here in germany.

In addition to these models I will use around 12 existing Space Wolves Tactical Marines for the Red Scorpions.
Luckily they were built out of a standard Tactical Marine box so I only have to remove some small space wolves bits to make them look right.


That's about it by now, I hope you enjoyed my first post and leave some comments and critics!

I love your lighting effects
how do you do those?

i also love your weathering! hows that done?

Good work. keep it up!

Thanks, mate!

The lightning effect is both easy and fast.
Using an airbrush pistol you spray a slightly translucent layer of Vallejo Light Sea Blue followed by a final highlight using pure white - it's a matter of seconds to achieve it.

The weathering is a bit more complicated. First step is to sponge three different rust colours on your desired parts. I used GW Dark Flesh, a reddish light grey and some boltgun metal for it. Heavily thinned down GW Blazing orange is used for rivets and recesses, sponged dry Vallejo Iron Oxide pigments ties it all together in the end.

I just finished the first member of my Sternguard Veteran Squad.
He turned out quite good but I still need to work on my eye lense technique since I'm missing some contrast in them.
The front part of the combi flamer was painted with Vallejo Model Air metallics and it turns out rather bad when applied with a normal brush so I might repaint it with GW colours.

Comments and critics are highly appriciated!

Progress! 4/10 Sternguard Veterans finished.

Very nice work, A good hand on the vehicles wich will turn out fabolous once you get the details sorted out, I must say that I am very jealous of people who master the airbrush (I assume).
The marines turned out nicely but you might want to add a little definition to the colours on the infantry to make them 'pop' a bit more. A bit more shade and another careful and restrained highlight would work wonders I think, I have a feeling they will flow together a tad once viewed at arm's length.

STC_LogisEngine wrote:Very nice work, A good hand on the vehicles wich will turn out fabolous once you get the details sorted out, I must say that I am very jealous of people who master the airbrush (I assume).
The marines turned out nicely but you might want to add a little definition to the colours on the infantry to make them 'pop' a bit more. A bit more shade and another careful and restrained highlight would work wonders I think, I have a feeling they will flow together a tad once viewed at arm's length.

Thanks for the critics, STC. You're right about the low highlights of the minis and I'm still struggling to find the right solution for it.
I'm not a fan of strong contrast edges so this is not an option for me.
I'm thinking about adding some battle damage and weathering to break up the huge grey areas - I hope this helps to make the minis look more interesting.

Here's a little update of the Sternguard Squad.
I added some battle damage on the lower parts of the armor and reworked the eyes with OSL.

I have only one minor nitpick. In such a great army, with amazing paintjobs and conversions, could you drill the weapons on those dreadnoughts? I find it to be an astonishing silly flaw in these otherwise gorgeous models.

I mean, you invest enough time to use OSL, and you don't drill the holes on these weapons?

2500kgm3 wrote:I have only one minor nitpick. In such a great army, with amazing paintjobs and conversions, could you drill the weapons on those dreadnoughts? I find it to be an astonishing silly flaw in these otherwise gorgeous models.

I mean, you invest enough time to use OSL, and you don't drill the holes on these weapons?

Thanks mate, you are absolutely right about the Dreadnought's weapons. I will give it a try and drill them out today, hopefully the paint won't be damaged in the process.
Funnily the OSL is the least time consuming part of the painting as it is done with airbrush and takes around 20 - 30 seconds .

Good news everyone!

I was able to finish three more Sternguard Veterans including Veteran Seargeant Haas.
Compared to the other two guys I tried some NMM (more or less for the first time) on the front eagle on his chestplate, the Powerfist OSL was achieved using my airbrush.

Three more to go, yay!

Good news everyone, the LR is finished! The doors took more time than I expected but I really like how they turned out.

Nicely done.
The chipping and additional weathering in the infantry really did the trick and broke up those large, flat areas to give the models more depth and impact.
The raider turned our very nicely, great job there. I would however reccomend that you go over the yellow areas of the raider and do a subtle, very careful shading with a slightly darker yellow.
Because right now it looks like you have slight accumilations of yellow in the recesses resulting in a slightly brighter yellow than on the adjecent flat areas. Might be the photos, but still; give it a quick run-over with a superfine brush and some dark yellow paint is my reccomendation.
Also, if you have time and stamina, give the headlights a final white highlight on the recessed glass areas, they kind of dissapear into the OSL-effect and such things looks much better if the lightsource is one shade lighter than the lightest part of the surrounding OSL.

But overall fantasticly nice work, I take off my hat to you good sir.

These are Golden Demon quality. Your weathering is perfect-just right. Details? You ace that. I have always been a fan of Red Scorpions (even though I play Xenos...), and even better, ones with great paintjobs. Consider me subscribed. Exalted, and bookmarked.

Wow, just wow. You should be very proud those are some nice minis

STC_LogisEngine wrote:Nicely done.
The chipping and additional weathering in the infantry really did the trick and broke up those large, flat areas to give the models more depth and impact.
The raider turned our very nicely, great job there. I would however reccomend that you go over the yellow areas of the raider and do a subtle, very careful shading with a slightly darker yellow.
Because right now it looks like you have slight accumilations of yellow in the recesses resulting in a slightly brighter yellow than on the adjecent flat areas. Might be the photos, but still; give it a quick run-over with a superfine brush and some dark yellow paint is my reccomendation.
Also, if you have time and stamina, give the headlights a final white highlight on the recessed glass areas, they kind of dissapear into the OSL-effect and such things looks much better if the lightsource is one shade lighter than the lightest part of the surrounding OSL.
But overall fantasticly nice work, I take off my hat to you good sir.

Thanks a lot for the comments and critics, STC! All yellow areas have a subtle shading from light brown, dark yellow to golden yellow. I think the problem is a yellowish weathering powder which went into some recesses (1st pic front side area). It has a very similar colour and doesn't look right on the yellow parts so I think I'm gonna remove it. Regarding the OSL you are absolutely right, I might give it a try!

Ogryn wrote:These are Golden Demon quality. Your weathering is perfect-just right. Details? You ace that. I have always been a fan of Red Scorpions (even though I play Xenos...), and even better, ones with great paintjobs. Consider me subscribed. Exalted, and bookmarked.

Haha, thanks chap! It is by far not golden daemon quality as there are still lots of parts which could be painted with more detail but since this army is for the tabletop I'm very pleased with the look!

SpankHammer III wrote:Wow, just wow. You should be very proud those are some nice minis

Thanks!

Any more?

Wow, great work so far!! will be watching.

If you need some inspiraton why not check this out;

http://www.games-workshop.com/gws/content/blogPost.jsp?aId=17900003a

Ogryn wrote:Any more?

Sure thing!
I'm currently working on a small commission job (FW Crisis XV-9 Hazard Close Support Armour and two DKoK Commis) so there won't be any regular updates the next week or two.

Mortalitas wrote:Wow, great work so far!! will be watching.
If you need some inspiraton why not check this out;

http://www.games-workshop.com/gws/content/blogPost.jsp?aId=17900003a

Hehe, Redscorps' minis were my inspiration to start this army, absolutely love 'em!

Finally some progress!
After some commission work I was finally able to put some paint on my Red Scorpions.
Here are some shots of the finished Rhino as it was missing its Forgeworld doors in the previous shots.





Currently I'm adding some etched brass to the finished Dreadnoughts to get them in line with the rest of the army.

My next Forgeworld order should arrive tomorrow, this will complete my current 2000 points list so there's lots in the painting queue:

- 3 Sternguard Veterans
- 3 Bikes + Attack Bike
- 20 Tacticals including 2 apothecaries
- 2 more Rhinos
- Forgeworld Librarian Sevrin Loth with Honour Guard

Thanks for taking a look!

You have done really good job on these, especially the lighting effects, I like your bases too. nice job

I finally have some updates for you - Monsieur Chief Librarian of the Red Scorpions, Sevrin Loth is finished. It is my first mini which received a display base, hooray!
In the end I would have made some things different regarding the base but I'm pretty pleased with the overall look. Since the milliput wasn't totally dry it came out rather rough after filing.
It's a bad habit that I tend to rush things where I should just give them a bit more time to set .

Sevrin Loth itself was a blast to paint, it is the mini with the most detail in power armour I painted up to date.
I used five shades of blue for a zenithal highlight effect, to keep it bright I didn't use any washes for the armour.
It was also the first time I gave wet blending a try. The power axe and red parts were done with that technique. Once you get into it it ain't all that hard. Although some blendings turned out a bit blotchy I really learned a lot in a short amount of time.

The mini isn't 100% finished as I need to tidy up some minor things. I'm still a bit disappointed of the eye OSL, it ain't as sharp and defined as the one from my veteran sternguard searge.
I will give him a bit of time in the shelf and get back to him in a week or so!

Comments and critics? Pretty please!

Simply stunning! The OSL is especially well done.

Bash

Thanks, Bash!

Here are some better photos of Sevrin Loth. The light setup and background from the last photo was a bit unfortunate, the new photos should show the colours more correctly.


I'm currently assembling two more Rhinos and the Honour Guard which came with Sevrin Loth. Really nice models with some great detail, I will post pics as soon as they are assembled!

Man I love that axe and that vibrant blue.

Thanks Swordwind!

To be honest after taking another look at him I'm not really pleased with how some parts turned out. I can all blame it on my bad habit to rush things at the end of a project so I will go back to him and rework some areas.

In the meantime I have built two more Red Scorpion Rhinos and the Honour Guard of Sevrin Loth. Here are some pics:



Aren't they nice? The apothecary will join a tactical squad, thanks to HQ Carab Culln I can swap any searge with an apothecary for free. The minis were built from a tactical marine sprue, command squad, Sevrin Loth honour guard, Red Scorpion veteran upgrade pack and some phobos bolters - I hope you like 'em as much as I do .

It's been a while since my last update as my wife, kid and work steadily keep me away from getting this army up and ready. Luckily I had some spare time the last days so I was able to finally finish my last three veterans of the sternguard squad - picturrres:



Next in the queue are two commissions for a necron tomb stalker and a nurgle chaos sorcerer. I'm really looking forward to build the stalker as my client included lots of the chaos brass scorpion parts for a dramatic scenery base. When both of these are finished I will have some time for the honour guard.