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Hello Dakka!

I'm one of the people who buy too many models and don't paint and build at the appropiate speed, so I gathered quite some stuff that needs glue and brush. I'm hoping that by making a little blog, I'll motivate myself to get more stuff done and maybe receive some input or tips on how to proceed with some of the models.

I'm into painting miniatures for a few years, though I had a one-year break last year and was never a very committed hobbyist to boot, so don't expect too high a level of painting! I plan on getting better slowly, though.

For starters, I made some pictures of what I'd call my best models up until now...unfortunately, I can't seem to take proper pictures even if my life depended on it. I'm putting proper lighting and some lightbox construction on the to-do list!


Here we have my Big Mek - my favorite paintjob on orks until today - and a trusty boy to support him - actually the first ork I ever painted. Yeah, I realize, photos are bad, will be better next time.


Here's some of my Space Marines, painted in Iron Knights colors. I tried to get something out of the detail out on these guys to the best of my abilities.


And here we have the Company Command Squad of the 3rd Catachan Rangers, the main regiment of battlegroup Carnodon - which will be my hopefully expanding Imperial Guard force! Other models are either done or in the process of being painted. These guys and their Chimera are fully magnetized - almost every arm on the infantry - other weapon/arm options await being painted.


I tried for better photo quality here, without direct sunlight and larger resolution. A regular IG veteran squad with three flamers. That's what you need in the jungle!


And here is their half-finished Valkyrie, ready to pick them up from a hot combat zone. The cockpit canopy is masked with masking tape, the cockpit underneath is fully painted already. Once I get my airbrush running again, the Valk will get some Mil-Mi24 style camouflage painted on, then the masking tape can go off. Magnetized weapons here, too.


So, yeah, that's some of what I've done! Next projects might include:

- finishing the Valkyrie
- another Chimera (half-airbrushed already)
- finishing a Catachan scout Sentinel (magnetized)
- finishing a squad of Bloodletters (I just liked the models...no other daemons yet!)

And the big project coming up...there's a Shadowsword super-heavy in the mail that should be here soon. I'll magnetize the hell out of that thing, build it is as neat as possible and then try and get a nice camo scheme with the airbrush on that thing. Never built something that large, should be interesting.

I hope to update every few days so that I'll keep myself motivated. Thanks for reading!

Allright, in the spirit of doing SOME painting every day, I churned out another Catachan. Pictures of the squad I'm working on right now below!

Sticking with the description of veteran guardsmen, they all have kind-of different gear. No physical conversions here, but I tried to give them some slightly varying camouflage styles from previous battlezones and also different styles of lasguns. Furthermore, I thought I'd mix it up a bit and give them different skin colors, too - I have rarely seen Catachans painted as anything but caucasian and I think darker skin looks pretty good on some of the models.

These are not fully done yet and will receive touch-ups and of course basing!

Note: I primed these guys over a year ago and realized just this week that, apparently, I was too lazy to fix the gaps between arms and torsos with some green stuff! However, I couldn't stand them sitting there unpainted any longer so I just thought "It's only supposed to be tabletop standard regular infantry, just paint them and to hell with the gaps."




And here we have the Sentinel in-progress. Originally, I wanted to airbrush it, but that thing's broken at the moment, so I got to work with a good, old brush. Paint is not as even as with the airbrush, though. Very much WIP, it'll receive possibly camouflage and some weathering and chipping later-on. Other weapon options will also follow!


Nothing like a big chainsaw on a walker!



The weapon mount is magnetised. It looks a bit frigged up because of a little superglue-related accident, unfortunately. I glued the tanks right behind the weapons instead of the battery since they can pose as fuel for the heavy flamethrower, the multilaser or the lascannon (rarely see gas-based laser weapons in 40k, but doesn't mean they aren't feasible! ).



I painted the interior and the pilot before assembling the cockpit, only to realize that pretty much nothing of it is visible now. All the little buttons on the side of the cockpit are painted...*sigh*




Allright, that's it for today. Two guys left in the veteran squad - then there's a whole semi-primed other squad waiting. And I'm still waiting for the heavy armor support to arrive by mail...

Thanks for reading!

Allright, I wasn't able to paint anything yesterday, but I managed to get a little bit done on the Sentinel today!

I pondered whether I should keep that thing in olive drab or give it some kind of jungle camouflage scheme...I did some quick research on vehicle camouflage patterns and in the end decided to go with the M81 U.S. Army woodland pattern used mainly during the Cold War.

I used this picture here as something to work from:



I think vehicle camo and uniform camo for the M81 pattern are roughly the same, judging from this pattern:



Anyway, I aimed to apply this pattern to my Sentinel. I used Scorched Brown, Graveyard Earth and Chaos Black on the basecoat of Catachan Green.

This is still WIP, washes and weathering will be applied later.





I think it's reasonable close to the original, isn't it? It's not the cleanest paintjob ever, I'll admit that, but I think with washes and weathering it won't show very much.

I originally planned to leave the weapons with a different color so they stand out a bit more, but I liked the camo pattern so much that the guns will receive it now, too. Coated the multilaser in Catachan Green already.




Oh! And the reinforcements of battlegroup Carnodon have finally made planetfall! At the moment, there's lots of activity around a pot-bellied dropship in the LZ, with the noise of engine testing coming from the gloomy hatches...



DUN DUN DUN DUUUUN!

Really looking forward to building that beast. Should be fun!

I´d say good job so far
One thing I notice is all the vehicles look brand new. You might want to look into some weathering techniques. But for brand new vehicles they look excellent!

Thanks Yeah, I will definitely weather the vehicles!

The Sentinel will probably get some sponge-technique weathering. I got some Vallejo pigments here that I tested on old models already,those will be put to good use later, too!

Allright, slight break in between...I was in Cologne for three days, taking some tests at the German officer applicants' evaluation center. I didn't get much painting done in the last days, but I bought some new equipment today!

Finally a proper compressor! Yay!


It turned out that my little Revell airbrush actually as a gas leak somewhere near the connection thread AND that I can't properly mount the paint glass with this new, bigger pressure hose. Sooo...looks like I need to buy a new airbrush, too! I'll look into that the next days. If someone has suggestions for medium-cheap beginner airbrushes that are worth their money, I'm happy to hear about it!

Back with a little update. It's been three months now that I've worked my first "real" job, 40hrs a week. How do all you other people working 40hrs get ANY PAINTING DONE? When I get home around 6pm I really can't seem to be able to muster the concentration to actually work on a mini for a prolonged period of time! Meh.

Anyway, today a friend came over to base some of his Cadians, so I decided to be productive too - and got my Shadowsword kit 90% built! Here are some pics:




I found the kit to be remarkably easy to work with, probably thanks to the large and robust construction. Treads were easier to assemble than the old Chimera kits!

Now, there is some work to be done, of course. I aim to make the kit fully functional to act as ANY of the Shadowsword/Stormlord variants, so the next steps are:

- drilling out the bolter barrels of the TL heavy bolters in front
- add a support - either magnetized or by adding internal struts/beams - so the upper hull plate doesn't need to be glued to the "turret" assembly. This way I can change between turret in front and turret i back
- decide on whether to put a commander in the top hatch or not. Suggestions?
- volcano cannon, quake cannon, magma cannon and tremor cannon all work without further magnetizing thanks to a well-working press fit. The stormsword cannon needs some kind of support though, the extra gun part falls off all the time.
- magnetize the front armor plates on the "turret" assembly. There are two different variants, one for the Stormlord and its Vulcan mega-bolter and one for all other variants. A single magnet on each side should do the trick.
- determine how to make the Vulcan mega-bolter and the large main cannon assembly easily interchangeable. It's hard to put magnets on the back of the main cannon since it's kinda hollow - I'll have ot work that one out.

This should hopefully be achieved over the next days, then it's basically ready to be primed! I'm on the hunt for a new airbrush, too.

I'll try to keep updates coming whenever I get something done.
Thanks for reading!

After an exhausting work week, I hope to get some stuff done on the weekend. I will hopefully prime the super-heavy tomorrow, maybe post some fluff on it.

All options are actually available, I can build a Shadowsword, Banesword, Stormsword, Stormlord, Doomhammer and whatever the last thingy was called. Some parts are magnetized, some are left in their natural press-fit, which works nice in this kit.

A little teaser :