Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Right the painting competitions over in the main painting forum have got me back into painting at a rate that resembles a turtle, it may be slow (1 model a month!) but is about as fast as I ever paint.

I'm going to use this as a place to keep updates on my monthly work and give people some insight into how I go about my painting. I'm in no way a golden daemon or crystal brush painter but I've learnt a few things over the past 20 years that may help some of you and at the very least there'll be pictures of completed stuff!

So March saw the creation of Para's competition thread, I entered my blood angels 2nd company standard bearer. BA where my first army and I have the entire 2nd company sat in a box waiting to be painted, I'm barely a few 5 man units in.





This was a great experience, a set deadline and an idea of what I wanted to achieve - freehand banner work. There are lots of things I dont like about it, the armour is a little darker than I wanted it to come out and some of the painting really needs reworking but I'm happy to leave it as 'finished' so that I can move on to new things.

April saw the second month of the competition and I entered my FW Ork biker. It's sat partly assembled in my box for a year or 2 now so it was a great opportunity to get it finished up. Sadly it didn't quite get done in time but it was nearly there. Main areas to work on still are the base and some of the bike needs another pass of details.




This months project is now underway. The BH weekend here in the UK meant that I didn't get started on the 1st of the month so will need to get a move on to catch up. I'm reviving an old wave serpent, it had been painted but with a basic blue and a few details. This time I'm planning something much more ambitious and will include lots of free hand work again as I really enjoyed that part of the BA model.


Simple coat of Vallejo grey primer through the airbrush followed by a base coat of dark blue mixed from black:blue (2:1 ratio)


Next up will be something a little more blue - possibly 1:1 blue:black as it is VERY dark and almost pure black, then I will start plotting out the freehand work.

Love that biker. Really should get a shift on that WS that's been sitting in my cabinet - doh!!

Ok so managed to get an hour or so on the wave serpent today. Mainly been blocking out the dragons head and body over the hull. Here you can see the blue that I initially used, this was difficult to see and I wasn't happy with how the body flowed, especially near the head so I grabbed some white and started with the head just sketching the shapes. I started with the head as I was worried I'd do the body to chunky and the head would either not fit the space or look to small compared to the body.


Next up was to add some more refined sketches and clean up the original mistakes with some of the base colour. This is still very much a wip, nothing is decided here. If I don't like something I will just go over it and alter till I'm happy. As I'm using light over dark I'm just building up areas where the light will hit, then I will look at going onto redoing the darker areas and adding some contrast. This is my first time trying to use just one colour and allow the shades to do the shapes rather than having the 3 dimensional model help it. Finally there is a quick shot of the body so you can see what state that is in at this point. As I'm getting the head right still I'm not wanting to commit to the body shape and still I know some areas need to be made fatter/thinner. Still unsure about the snake style underbelly, very tempted to turn it into the same style as the 'top' will end up having but that can be decided later. Anyway now to dark to paint - need a desk lamp bad! So will update again tomorrow with hopefully a more finalised head.

Well things have been a little quiet due to having our first puppy.

Have managed to find some spare time to get on with the WS, still have more details to finish off as not 100% happy with the dragon. I also have lots of other details still to go and not to mention the underside!

Your freehanding skills are sick! The dragon on the Eldar tank looks awesome, and I really like the checks on the Warboss. It's gotta take some balls to go weather over such neat freehanding

Your freehand work is truly mind-blowing. The rest of you work I’m sure is fine, but harder to see when my eyes have already popped out from the freehand. Love your work.

Thanks for the appreciation and lovely comments. Getting into the details on the WS now - gems etc and I'm looking at how to do the canopy for the cockpit and have it open/closeable.

After this I will probably hit up some of my BA's 2nd company tactical and assault marines. Maybe the odd rhino as well, rather than a single figure for the monthly contest.

Did you already glue the hull together? IIRC from when I put my falcons together, getting the canopy to open and close was just a matter of not glueing it. If you’ve already glued everything shut, I’m not sure how you’d manage. Or even get it in...

Wave serpent finished, still need to find time to finish canopy cover. Next up some Blood Angel tac's and assault marines - hopefully by end of the week!

that.is.stunnning. Beautiful work there

Well took a long break from the hobby again last summer as I was super busy with various other things. Winter has now hit the UK again and I've dug out my bits and ordered a few new things, mainly a replacement compressor as mine wasn't doing so great.
Here is my table currently covered in lots of projects!
Progress should be fairly quick for most of this,I expect to finish the assault marines this weekend and to start adding the detail to the rhinos with the aim to finish them early next week if all goes to plan.



The assault marines are nearly complete, heads are on corks ready for priming and the bases will be getting some sand once I've got some glue for it. Excuse the dust, they've been sat on the side in this state for 6 months!



The bookcase has a line of part painted rhino's on top, these will be getting some extra details added and the painting will be restarted from the primer again. I'm currently making some moulds for rhino extras, 3d BA logo shoulder pads and terminator shoulder pads (forgeworld is too expensive for an entire companys worth!)

Not been able to get on with much painting as I pulled my back and just generally ached to hell after trying to push a ladyies jag xk out of the mud over the fields while walking the dog last week, as such progress has been slowed to short 15-20min spells with big breaks. I have however finished the 5 assault marines, pics below. The terminators have been stripped and re-assembled ready for priming and I have laid down the base colours for the 5 devs that are also on my desk. The rhino's are taking a back seat for the moment as I'm doing some additional details that are just taking way longer than I first thought.