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Hello out there. I'm posting, so you know what that means - another finished project! This time a Dark Eldar army with a desert theme.

For the army the client and I had a good long back and forth on specifics and taste. Starting with two different schemes and a writeup on each of what I thought optimal, and then taking one and running with it. Essentially the idea was Dark Eldar with a Desert theme, balancing those two to get a worn desert raider look with the color and contrast often found in Dark Eldar armies. A little bit of Tatooine flavor and the Star Wars "used future" aesthetic draped over a core contrasting and vibrant Dark Eldar color scheme, with colors chosen to fit a desert raiding party. A group that in background might never leave the planet, living on their skiffs, fighting in between other groups and pillaging shipwrecks and anyone who crash lands or attempts to colonize the planet.

A lot of fun both in execution and result. It was a treat working back and forth with the client tweaking ideas between the theme itself, color theory, and his own personal taste. In the end a result I am quite proud of, a good balance of color in variety, contrast and theme. I certainly love set palette armies, but it is a fun and different beast doing such a mixed color contingent, both in the challenge of balancing each unit and each one also feeling new as I go through the roster.

Hope you enjoy, and thanks for looking. Next up will be the charity army for the Adepticon Raffle! See you then.

Dam, that is fantastic sir!

Stunning work as ever, props on maintaining a consistent weight and feel across those different hues, thanks to the weathering and etc. So many details to soak up in these shots alone!

Great work as always! I think this is one of my favorites you've done.

This is probably the best looking Dark Eldar army I've ever seen.

Thank you guys!

Excuse me sir, you are making the rest of us look bad!

Seriously though, so freaking cool. I want to start a dark eldar army now...

 DanceOfSlaanesh wrote:
Excuse me sir, you are making the rest of us look bad!

Seriously though, so freaking cool. I want to start a dark eldar army now...

<3

Another mind blower
Awesome.

Thank you as always!

Had a blast at Adepticon this year. If any of you were there, and we never ran into each other, I am sorry. But maybe next year. A guy could spend just a few minutes with everyone he'd love to chat with and there still isnt time in a 4 day weekend.

That is a mess of great looking Dark Eldar.

 thesilverback wrote:
That is a mess of great looking Dark Eldar.

Thank you!

Had a conversation recently with a friend about painting, both for others and for ourselves. What we find rewarding. Having not been a "casual" hobbyist in about a dozen years it's always healthy to stop and appreciate the situation. I certainly remember the days of doing the usual paint at night for the upcoming event, and fondly, and that conversation brought back those memories and how things have transitioned over the years naturally. I could empathize with him in his mention of having little time, and really only wanting to in order to relax. Over the years, and having done this for so long my personality has simply changed to one where I get more enjoyment out of painting for other people, and not so much myself. The relaxation still remains and luckily never fades even in long days of painting, but a new primary natural high and reward comes from essentially giving a gift of a dream army to someone who can generally imagine it, but doesn't have the time and/or skill to make it a reality themselves. I get the fun of giving gifts at Christmas multiple times a year and I enjoy that more than the reward of painting for myself these days. Spontaneous conversations such as those are nice to stop and smell the roses and appreciate my Santa complex that keeps me going and very fulfilled.



Within that, the moment of uploading pictures and sending them off is always fireworks. The only shame is that, while in terms of emotion it lasts especially in going back to old photos, digitally it is pretty fleeting. That said, hopefully you all don't mind a little revisit to the last project to keep it going a little. A few of my favorite pictures in many ways that I always assume get lost in the shuffle and giant drop of a gallery when a project finishes. So enjoy, let me know if you mind, or don't, and see you at the next one! Thanks for listening to me ramble if you got this far, and have a great day.

Fantastic

Hello out there! The Elysian airplane batch is all done, and for you today a gallery full of thick ladies to make a Mechanicum priest blush.

This project was pretty special to me because the scheme is similar to a Krieg army I did many, many years ago, and being able to revisit that in my modern style and quality was a real treat. A little extra rewarding in that regard. The client had the basic request of tan and run through heck and back, so together we came up with a color palette that is analogous but striking and an instant classic in it's simplicity.

The weathering is all done by hand and is a lot of fun. I really enjoy sitting and freehanding it all. On these large panel vehicles there is quite a large canvas to paint on openly and give character. Very relaxing and a different open challenge when compared to the other side of the spectrum, infantry.

Bases and flight stands, credit goes to Dragon Forge Design. I've used them for years and every time I get a big batch of these flight stands I really appreciate them all over again. Being able to vary the heights makes photography fun and are much more solid than the basic stand.

That's it for this round. Hope you enjoyed and thanks for looking. See you in the next one!

Love the Marauder

Really stunning airwing, crazy texture across the whole flight of them. Also had forgotten most of these models exist

Fantastic work. That is a lot of DAKKA!

Incredible. Absolutely incredible. Nice!!

Incredible, magnificent, awesome; basically any superlative applies to this wonderful work.

Simply amazing. I stumbled over here from a simple Google search of "Dorghar conversion" and landed on a goldmine I never knew existed just a few clicks on the go to menu away.

Thank you as always guys! It means a lot people enjoy the work I put into everything.

 Binabik15 wrote:
Simply amazing. I stumbled over here from a simple Google search of "Dorghar conversion" and landed on a goldmine I never knew existed just a few clicks on the go to menu away.

Thanks! I loved doing that guy, one of my favorite dragon conversions I have worked on. It's actually pretty intuitive once I got my hands on it. The rough forms of Archaon blend into a Stormcast fairly well with bits and putty. Same for the dragon.

Very nice work.


EDIT - Accidentally posted here a second time confusing this thread with another one, sorry...

 Stormatious wrote:
Very nice work.


EDIT - Accidentally posted here a second time confusing this thread with another one, sorry...

Hey no problem Thanks anyway/again!

(Hello out there! Recently BigRed over at Bell of Lost Souls asked me to do a couple of throwback articles to Titans I have done. Thought I would try and bring it over here too. Hope you enjoy and thanks for stopping by!)

Today join me looking back at some of the larger models I have done. Today we look at the “Sistine Sisters”, a Warlord and Reaver titan like you’ve never seen before. The release of Titanicus and interest in that, both my own as a hobbyist and that of clients booking Titanicus projects and working with them on color schemes, has me looking back fondly at some of the larger scale Titans and Knights of the past.

I’m a pretty focused person when I work, and on one project at a time, so when I get a chance to stop and look back at older things it’s a nice, fresh rush of excitement and fond memories. Anyway, let’s get to the pictures!



These two Titans were commissioned a couple years back. The client had one main broad concept he was after – a set of Titans that was as much a monument and testament to the glory of the Imperium as much as walking war machines. It’s also really quite fitting of the personality of man in the 41st millennium as GW has written it – war is glory, war machines embody that, and everything is quite on the nose. So it certainly seemed quite perfect and fitting to us that the Imperium would make such things.

The process of sourcing all the images for the freehand was quite fun. I essentially let him loose to find his favorite images, at a factor of about four times what we would need to cover it. Reason being each image needed to be composed both within the composition of the whole Titan, and within the frame of each panel. Not every image would work in every panel shape.



To work this out, I did a mockup or map of each panel part, and then took all these images and arranged them in photoshop as they would lay out on the titan. So I had an overall view of this “map” and how the colors would flow across it, how each panel would look and interact with the others near it, and also tell how they would lay into the panel shapes.

After this, it was as “simple” as zooming in to each panel and looking at it as I painted. I love doing freehand, so these weeks of nothing but painting panels was a lot of fun.



The Titans are assembled with the strongest materials possible. Epoxy for any part that carries weight or is bigger than your thumb. Large nails, with the heads cut off with bolt cutters, were used as giant pins. Finally each connection was bored out and fitted with a range of 1/2 inch magnets (all the weapons) to full 1 inch magnets (waist). The inch magnets work out great. With a little muscle and torsion, the waist comes off, but more than strong enough I could pick the Warlord up by the waist and carry it around.

The base is cut from plywood, and then sculpted over using a lightweight but hard Smooth On putty. After this holes were counter sunk into the bottom and very large screws attached the legs. I used screws instead of epoxy and pins so it could be removed if needed. Large enough screws with pre drilled holes are about equal grip anyway.



The models on the base were painted to match his existing army and to both make the base more interesting and to blend it in with his army on the table. This is a Warlord after all, so the Macharius I had sitting around was the perfect equally over the top base decoration to go with them.

That’s it for this round! Hope you enjoyed the little blast from the past as much as I did. Back to mulling over Titanicus while getting some paint on the current project. See you in the next one!

Dam Michael Angelo!

 FeindusMaximus wrote:
Dam Michael Angelo!

Holy ****!

Wow.

I've seen so many cool models and paint jobs I'm just hardly surprised anymore. But. . .

Daaaaammmmnnn. Those titans are really something else.

Hello out there! I am making a post so that means back from the distant galaxy of the space elves with another finished army. This time, Ynarri!



The main request of this army was a parchment and cherry blossom theme, keeping the palette limited. Similar tones in shading across the colors gave it a nice subdued feel, but powerful at the same time. A very unique scheme and a slightly different challenge and process made it something very special and a lot of fun.



The same color theory was applied to the display, which is all hand sculpted. Decided to do something a little different this time and post the in progress shots later on, with my thoughts after the fact. So look forward to that coming up soon.



The display is dual purpose - the front section is designed to fit over an existing wheeled cart for smaller tournament games. The back half locks together with the front with latches and aligning pegs for really big or team games. I am excited to share the whole process of how it was built, but will save more for later.



I always say I enjoyed painting an army, certainly because it is true, and I love painting anything. However this one was a little extra in no small part to the client. Wonderful person, has been a treat to work with him, and a good sport putting up with my flurries of texts at weird hours. Plus because of the display I got to do an in-person hand off and got to meet the guy, which isn't common, and had a great time and awesome conversation. Anyway, you know who you are and thank you very much.

Lots more fun stuff coming up. Thanks for checking out the pics, and see you later with the display blogging.

*whistles*

Wow dude, another stunner and a half - I didn't notice the wraithlord stepping through the mega-webway when I caught this on Insta Really sweet color scheme carried across soooooo many models. The extreme pop of the Yncarne is perfect, but I gotta shout out to that Avatar, amazing paintjob in its own right.

Just noticing the swirling canopies, not to mention all the freehand everywhere