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Wow! This is really nice!

Beautiful fleshtearer. I really like it.

thanks, guys

now that i have finished the Ultramarines (for now), and Seth, i am back to work on Dante...
i have not seen anyone bother to paint any texture on the feathers of the Sanguinary Guard wings before, so i decided to give it a whirl...

so far, i am pretty happy with the result...
now i just need to finish the gold, so i can give the feathers the final white highlight...




thanks for looking...
i hope you like them...

cheers
jah

that little bit of subtle texturing on the feathers reallly works. Totally breaks up the monotony of the pain feathers. Lovely job

Those feathers look very nice jah.

Brilliant idea, well executed!

Very nice... Very, VERY nice.

 jah-joshua wrote:
thanks guys...

here is the nearly finished version...
just a few touch-ups on the cloak and backpack are needed, and then i will send him off to the NOVA Open foundation...






thanks for looking...
i hope you like him...

cheers
jah

Fantastic result. Is a really live model. Great paint!

I love all of this. Especially seth's armour and cloak.

There is something about the cloak that just makes me love it, and the armour looks so pretty.

Just curious, what are your general rates for commission for something painted to display level? I might splurge and get some commission work on a HQ or something later down the road.

awesome stuff, keep up the great work,

-Mikey

@gummyofallbears: thanks, i'm glad you like what you see...
HQ's start at $200usd...
my queue is normally booked three months in advance, so keep that in mind when planning a project...


after a two month hiatus from posting, it's time to get back on the horse...

thanks to my laptop, and my camera lens, both deciding to act up this summer, just doing updates for my clients made me want to throw them out the window (the laptop and lens, not the customers)...

now that i have things in some semblance of working order, let's get caught up...

i've had some cool projects come across my table this summer...
first up, i was hired to paint a Grey Knights Dreadknight...
this is a very complicated model to paint with a brush...
to make things easier for myself, i painted it in as many parts as possible...
the torso and the legs were my three subassemblies, while all the overlapping parts were kept separate...




this guy is for the same client with the Ultramarines army, so i used a couple of the same basing elements to tie the two armies together...



i finished the helmet first, just to give the customer a quick teaser...



thanks for looking...
i hope everyone had a great summer...

cheers
jah

This blog is so impressive. Love the OSL on that helmet.

Great work Jah. Good to see you back

Yay you're back! :-) I'm in the process of collecting my own GK force and will be learning any tricks from you as you go! the helmet looks the business too. I'm going for a green/white/black heraldry instead of the usual colours and my nemesis weapons are purple. may I ask what colour you suggest I do the helmet lenses? I'm thinking purple to tie in with the weapons?

@Stormwall: glad you like the blog...
i really enjoy painting the glowing eyes...

@Januine: cheers, mate...

@nerdfest09: i do like to match my power weapon glows to my eye glows...
no need for clashing glowing colors...
purple sounds wicked!!!


i seem to have lost a bunch of WIP pics of the Dreadknight while i was getting my laptop to cooperate again, but here is a few more...

i really like the shield on this guy's shoulder, with the Grey Knights Marine fighting a Demon of Chaos...
the torso was the section that had the most bright metal...
as usual, all paints are P3...
the bright metals are a basecoat of Pig Iron, washed heavily with Armor Wash, then a layer of Cold Steel, and a wash of Blue Ink...



i wanted to differentiate the GK bases a bit from the Ultramarines, so even though i am using the same basing elements, i went with rusty metals and darker soil...



the legs have a darker metal on the struts...
this is done with a Pig Iron basecoat, and then a wash that is a 1-1 mix of Armor Wash and Thamar Black...



last, but not least, what can only be described as big arse sword!!!



it was a real challenge to paint a glowing effect on this blade without an airbrush...
up next i'll have the finished pics, where you can see if i pulled it off, or not...

thanks for looking...

cheers
jah

Looking awesome (as expected!) Love the metallics!

thanks, P...

here are the last two pics i was able to salvage, the finished Dreadknight...
i have no idea why the front view is so skewed, but it is better than nothing...

i have never painted so much metal on a single mini...
sadly, this was a two week, budget rush-job...
i feel like i could have done so much more with the contrast and details...
i did enjoy the challenge of painting the fades on the big sword, even though it would have been much easier with an airbrush, and picking out the awesome relief on the tilt shield...




i would love to revisit this model, and actually do some conversion work to salvage the poor design of the pilot...
now that i have worked with the kit, i have a few ideas of what i could do with it...
with just a little bit of extra work, this could be an incredible model...

thanks for looking...
i hope you like him...

cheers
jah

With a little bit of work you could share your ideas :-) I've got one and another Dreadknight on the way i'd like to see what you believe possible?

I've done major overhauls to two Dreadknights and they can be a bit of a pain in the ass, but they're doable. The major problem to me is not the pilot but the fact that the arms and legs are all solid pieces. It takes a lot of patience, but once you hack through all the joints you can get decent poses. I might recommend finding a cheap-ish Gundam kit that has a lot of articulation in its arms and legs for straight substitutions, or else buying a Frame Arms Architect kit so that you have an articulated skeleton over which you can cut and paste the 40k armor plates. Either of these options would run you about $20-25, and you'd have a major upgrade to your model.

If you were to use the Frame Arms kit, you could honestly redesign the entire Dreadknight model over top of it.It's worth looking up, as it would let you do some pretty cool stuff, with a lot of cutting and sanding of course. If I had a DK kit laying around, I would probably go this route myself.

That looks really good, jah! Regarding the airbrush for things like the sword, is there a reason you don't use one - is it just that you don't have one currently?

Also, if you don't update the title of this thread at some point I'm going to be tempted to

Great work!

@nerdfest09: the Dreadknight instruction booklet has an illustration on the back that looks wicked...
the legs of the Termie are more integrated with the legs of the walker...
i'm not sure how i would make that work, but it looks cool...
another idea would be to make an armoured cockpit, with the arms sticking out the sides, Appleseed suit style, or a completely enclosed cockpit...

@RiTides: there are so many reasons i don't use an airbrush, even though i have had one for 20 years...
1-because the airbrush is a whole different tactile feeling to using my hairy sticks...
2-an airbrush doesn't suit my painting style...
3-i don't normally paint such large things as i have in this army commission...
4-i need to be able to work while i travel, and i am not about to put my paints AND a compressor in my bacpack...

i'm sure i will switch from spray cans to the airbrush for large models and power weapons one day, but i still haven't perfected my brushwork, so i am a little bit preoccupied with that goal...
i'll work on perfecting the whole other skill-set when i am happy with my brushwork...


it's Throwback Thursday again...
it was a huge honor to be asked to paint an alternate scheme for the Escalation rulebook by my painting hero, Mike McVey...
it was a nice change to invert the Menoth color scheme, and paint more maroon than white on this group...



in this pic you can see the alt. scheme in comparison to the standard studio scheme that i was asked to use for the Zealots...



thanks for looking...
i hope you like them...

cheers
jah

hey Dakka...

still catching up on the last few months of work...

since my second plastic version of Dante (using the Sanguinary Guard) was finished a while ago, i should probably finish up his step-by-step...
when i left off, he was at the shading wash stage...
to recap, i had built up the base color, starting with a basecoat of P3 Battlefield Brown, then a layer of BB and Rhulic Gold at a 1-1 ratio, then a layer of 1-1 Rhulic and P3 Solid Gold, then the shade wash of 1-1 P3 Sanguine Base and P3 Flesh Wash...



to start building up the shadows and highlights i came back in with the 1-1 mix of Rhulic and Solid Gold...



next was a layer of Rhulic Gold and Vallejo Air Metals Gold at a 3-1 ratio, since the VAM Gold is such a strong color...



to finish the highlights, i used a 3-1 mix of VAM Gold and VAM Aluminium...





that's it, my basic standard gold technique...
i hope this is helpful...

thanks for looking...

cheers
jah

Very interesting (and nice) to see, as always.

I love the inverted colour Menoth.


Keep up the great work.

Very vibrant gold! Shame about the laptop and camera, I know that pain especially when you want to be able to show your progress to your clients.

thanks, guys...

here is the final result...
having a second crack at this version of Dante was a nice opportunity to address a few things i thought i could improve over the first version...
i tried to improve the glow on the axe, and add texture to the feathers...
switching to the 32mm base, instead of 25mm, was nice...
the slightly bigger base makes all the difference for the balance of these dynamic jump pack Marines...






now i just need to do one more version, using the Death Company parts, in conjunction with the Sanguinary Guard parts, to really play up the original style of the sculpt with the DC jump pack, and the inferno pistol in the hand, rather than wrist mounted one...
gotta respect the classics!!!

thanks for looking...
i hope you like him...

cheers
jah

He's glorious Jah. Really beautiful job. Treatment of the wings works so well. Great job fella

thanks, Januine...
i wish the texture showed up better in the pics on the rest of the feathers:(...
you can really only see the effect on the big ones in these pics...

i got the chance to re-base the Sanguinary Priest with the newer 32mm bases...
this guy was tipping over onto his face all the time, which is not good for a mini that a customer paid a lot of money for:(...
he's all better now, and not so tipsy...







i really like the look of Marines on this base size...
no more overhanging toes, and a little more room to make some cool scenics...

thanks for looking...
i hope you like him...

cheers
jah

Definitely improved an already epic model!

That's a really nice touch to the feathers. A real steady-hand job though.

And ...

jah-joshua wrote:...no more overhanging toes,

... is how it should be.

Yeah, the bigger bases make such a big difference! I'm working on Devastators now and it's the first time I have the new bases. They're so nice!