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Hello and welcome to my restart!

First of all the necessary background story, which began in 1995 as a little boy in Germany. My first army consisted of about 2000 points Ultramarines, I played the 2nd Edition and all painting attempts failed miserably. After I had dismantled about 50% of my army gradually with Grandpas air rifle, the hobby was done for the time beeing.
After a long break of many years, I started again with two friends and gathered various armies over the years. In addition to the game I was more and more fascinated by painting of the minis and so I started a little blog, which was about my own armies and a few commissions. Some old minis can still be found in Google Image Search under the term "Krautheadstudio" and in my Dakkadakka Gallery.

Dakkadakka informed me on my login today that the last one was done in August 2013. At that time, all the armies were sold, the bits auctioned on ebay and the colors dried. Changed priorities - wedding, kids, own home.
Now I start again, kept a lot of theory, unlearned all the practice. My first army consists of approximately 2000 points Deathwatch, which is now fully assembled. To get warm again with the brush, I painted one model from each unit of my army. Here are my first attempts after almost 6 years break!





Although I have tried different techniques, the minis are comparable to the look. Depending on the Mini, only the Drybrush was used for the highlight, in other edge highlighting, or a combination of both. I used almost exclusively Vallejo colors, since I was very satisfied with these in the past. The black basecoat and a coarse highlight with gray are made with the airbrush, the rest is done with a brush. Without basing I need about 2 hours for a mini, which makes me very satisfied. Of course, character models get some extra love, but first I want to be a little safer with the brush.

Beside the shown minis I already finished a venerable dreadnought and an Inceptor Marine. Since they are currently not based I didn't take pictures of it but will do so right after the basing is finished. I will try to keep you guys updated regularly, next up will be the completion of my Intercessor Squad.

Comments and criticisms are very welcome!

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Oh my, I could cry looking at my old signature.

They look good to me. Cool basing style.

 youwashock wrote:
They look good to me. Cool basing style.

Thanks!


As promised here are some shots of the finished Dreadnought and first Inceptor dude. I might have overdone the plasma glow effect a bit and should have practiced it on a less important mini but oh well - too late.





And a quick shot of the whole bunch:



As you might have recognized the right shoulder pad of the Inceptor is not painted yet. I'm still unsure wether I should equip the new Primaris marines with one dedicated pad color (would go for red then) or go full freehand and make pads for various chapters. The codex states that good ol' Roboute reinforced the Deathwatch with Primaris Marines in size of a full chapter. Were those dudes already part of existing chapters or were they sent to the Deathwatch directly after... "birth"? Any fluff help in that regard is highly appreciated.

Welcome back to the hobby! Your DW looks great, you've done a good job on the black and that's a tough color to paint convincingly. You're right about the plasma glow though, it's a bit overdone. Doesn't look horrible, but maybe a bit more subtle next time As for the lore question, I have no idea. The official primaris DW seem to have the pads painted just like the regular DW, and personally I would follow it to get a chance to paint little one-off freehand designs!

And just like youwashock, I dig the bases! I do something similar with my models, painting-wise, but yours seem to have more red in them. Would you mind sharing your recipe?

 mcmattila wrote:
Welcome back to the hobby! Your DW looks great, you've done a good job on the black and that's a tough color to paint convincingly. You're right about the plasma glow though, it's a bit overdone. Doesn't look horrible, but maybe a bit more subtle next time As for the lore question, I have no idea. The official primaris DW seem to have the pads painted just like the regular DW, and personally I would follow it to get a chance to paint little one-off freehand designs!

And just like youwashock, I dig the bases! I do something similar with my models, painting-wise, but yours seem to have more red in them. Would you mind sharing your recipe?

Thanks a bunch, mcmattila!

I was able to paint another Intercessor Marine over the course of this day and managed to snap some photos of the different painting steps including the basing.


Primed with Army Painter Grey, basecoated with black and highlighted with a light grey with my airbrush


First layers of colors including metallics


Full wash


This time I decided to go full edge highlighting without using the drybush. Still not sure which way to go, I kinda like both looks. I've also done a bit of shading on the red colors of the bolt rifle and knee pad, another highlight from above is made using the airbrush with a neutral grey.


Mounted on the actual base (Microart Studio Ruins). The base is airbrushed with a sand color, washed with Vallejo Sepia and then drybrushed with white.


The red tones are added using pigments (Vallejo Dark Red Ocre and Burned Siena), after varnishing the pigments darken a bit. I also did my first freehand on the shoulder pad, go smurf!


Thats about it, the mini took me roughly 2 1/2 hours without drying times. Next up... more Intercessors!

New guy looks pretty darn awesome. I don't think the plasma is overdone on the Dread, either. Figure he is right in the middle of blasting fear of the Emperor into some xenos.

Ah, so it's pigments that give the bases that sweet color! I paint my bases pretty much the same as you, but haven't tried pigments yet. I definitely will some day!

Great job on the freehand!

 youwashock wrote:
New guy looks pretty darn awesome. I don't think the plasma is overdone on the Dread, either. Figure he is right in the middle of blasting fear of the Emperor into some xenos.

Haha! It's not that the look is totally off but I think the OSL emitting from the plasmacore should have a darker color. There are still 2 Plasma-Inceptors in the queue where I try to fix this.

 mcmattila wrote:
Ah, so it's pigments that give the bases that sweet color! I paint my bases pretty much the same as you, but haven't tried pigments yet. I definitely will some day! Great job on the freehand!

Pigments are just lovely as the effect you get is quite awesome for one minute of slobby brush strokes. Just don't inhale too much since that gak flies everywheeeere! Also be careful with the varnishing and keep a distance to the mini since you could easily blow the pigments away.

Some quick and dirty in between. Since our current rudimentary terrain is proudly sponsored by Fireman Sam and Playmobil it was time to put paint on some existing speed freeks terrain.
I left a few small details aside like the lightbulbs since I did the whole painting process with the airbrush to speed things up. The whole process took me around 90 minutes excluding drying times and I'm pretty pleased with the overall outcome.









1) Basecoat of two rusty brown tones with the Airbrush
2) Hairspray and Salt Combo
3) Blue, Red, Yellow and Metal with the Airbrush
4) Warm water to remove the salt
5) Rough black wash
6) Drybrush with light grey
7) Vallejo Pigment Magic

Finally a noteworthy update! After getting some more bigger terrain done (will post some pictures some time later) I was finally able to finish my first 10 man Intercessor Squad.
I painted the first six minis one by one and tried a bit of batch painting with the other 4. The quality isn't as good as it could have been with more patience but well... THEY ARE DONE!

Shoulderpads took me ages, some went well, some didn't - but I learned a lot in the process.
My personal favorites are Hamath of the White Minataurs and Tyronai of the Lamentors, who hopefully will play a tragic role in my upcoming battles .

Feedback and critics are always welcome!

Great looking models and I am a big fan of the presentation. Very slick.

Love it!! Great looking minis. Aren't soul drinkers backing purple though?

 youwashock wrote:
Great looking models and I am a big fan of the presentation. Very slick.

Thanks a bunch! Before I take care of the more interesting models I really wanted to finish a complete squad first although it got a bit exhausting at the end.
Not sure what to paint up next but I might go for my first vehicle and starting on the Corvus Blackstar.

 ghostmaker wrote:
Love it!! Great looking minis. Aren't soul drinkers backing purple though?

Ha! You are totally right, I screwed up the Chapter - should have been Blood Drinkers, datasheet is corrected.

O hi there.

My last sign of life was a while ago, over a year to be exact. It's not as if I didn't grab the brush during this time, I managed to paint a staggering amount of 2 minis!

My WH40k activity last year was limited to a few games.
Thanks to the current pandemic, a few friends and I discovered the tabletop simulator and have been playing WH40k battles almost weekly ever since - it's really amazing how well playing with TTS works.
So the motivation to finish painting my DW army is back and I hope to complete some minis in the next months.

Last summer I painted my Phobos Librarian during my holidays and today I put it on its new base. For the fact that this dude was created on a campground in a motorhome, I am quite satisfied.
For the first time I did not use an airbrush to paint the gradients on the blade - I was surprised how easy it is with the Vallejo ModelAir colors. Now it only needs to be done well enough on larger areas







Furthermore I have extended my HQ with Watch Captain Artemis. Small, fine mini which I painted in about 5 hours in one day.
Not the best highlights but I’m pleased with the overall look of him.








On my last post I had mentioned that I might start with the Corvus Blackstar, which I did. The project stood still for about 12 months, but I think I will continue with it now.
I can rarely motivate myself for bigger models, because at least a few days of work flow into it and I prefer to have fast results. But hey, the beginning is made, now it's all about the details.

Alrighty, the Corvus Blackstar is finally finished. In contrast to the freshly baked Primaris Marines I wanted to give the old veterans and vehicles a little more weathering, so I didn't hold back with scratches, rust and weathering powder. From past projects I know that I tend to exaggerate quickly, but I think I still got the hang of it.
Base coat, cockpit and red stripes were done with airbrush, the rest with paintbrush. Rust was done salt technique, scratches with sponge and brush. Only Vallejo Game and Model Air were used as colors.

Apart from that, as already mentioned, a cumbersome "mini", which offers little opportunity to be creative except for the front. I am glad to have finished it. I took the opportunity to take a small group photo of all the finished Deathwatch minis. In the pipeline are now 9 Reivers, 9 Veterans, 5 Inceptors, the Watchmaster, a Captain and a Repulsor. Let's go

My gosh, lovely force you got there!

Second that motion. They look great.

Very cool army! Love the individuality that you gave you DW! And the Corvus paint job is ace!

Great force, love the chipping on the Corvus

Looking good! Awesome job with the chapter symbols.

Thank a bunch!

After the complex Corvus Blackstar I wanted to see some quick results and decided to paint 3 more reivers "on the fly". First of all I know that the boys have put on one shoulder armor too much. Thanks to Plastic Glue the thing sits bombproof and unfortunately I could not revise it. Also all shoulder armour colours are red for now - not very creative, but I wanted to spare myself a freehand chapter symbols.



I think I needed about 3 1/2 hours for the three guys, spread over 2 days. The right Reiver on the photo was done last year as the first test model. Compared to this one I changed some things in the workflow, which you can possibly see. I used way less washes on the armor and airbrushed almost all highlights and shadows - much faster, but also brighter than the first mini. I think I like the look as long as you see the armor as a matte material and not as black metal with sharp highlights.
The result motivated me at least so far to start with the remaining 6 mini of the Reiver squad. Here is a short question - how do you fix your minis on custom bases? I use the ones from MicroArt Studios, despite thorough cleaning I have problems to fix the mini to its base.

Yesterday I was able to finish four more Reivers, I also painted roman numberings from I - VIII on the red shoulder armour because they won't be getting Freehand shoulder pads for now. On the photo you can't see it very well, but I will send a complete squad photo as soon as the remaining two reivers are finished, which will hopefully happen this weekend.



I'm still a bit undecided which mini I want to tackle next. For one thing I would like to finish my HQ department, the Watchmaster and a Primaris Captain are still in the queue. On the other hand I'm itching to start with the veterans, because I wanted to go full slow with weathering.

Really nice force you have here! Fellow Black armor painter here. I'm always mixed on how much I like airbrush for creating shades, but yours look very nice! I can second the Vallejo model air colors layering very nicely even from a brush! Probably have a lot more at your disposal than your previous army attempts!

Love it all, keep it up!

Thanks a bunch, @TheLastTemplar I always felt that I was better with airbrushing since you can get decent results in a small amount of time.
I guess I'll stick with it for the bulk of the army but will spend more time on HQs and the like with classic brushes to get some practice in painting hightlights, gradients and shadows.

Meanwhile I was able to finish the last 2 reivers so the squad is finished, yay! I spent about 12 hours spread over 4 days painting them and I'm quite pleased with the overall results.
I'm still undecided what to paint next. Could be the Watchmaster or another test mini for the Veteran Squad.

I have now decided to start with a veteran. Primary reason is that "around the corner", about 15 km from me, I discovered a model shop with the whole Vallejo line.
It has to be said that I live in the middle of nowhere at the Belgian border ... so that was a nice coincidence.
Here I stocked up on Vallejo Mecha Weathering Fuel and Oil Stains and also found Vallejo Crackle Medium. This will just be perfect for rancid veterans.

Here is a photo of a test of the Crackle medium on a storm shield.
This was applied after priming and then covered with thin airbrush layers.
Lovin' the effect, I'm just curious if a wash will draw into the fine cracks, otherwise the crackles would be too subtle.

That is a great Deathwatch force. I've noticed most Deathwatch forces tend to either look good close up, but too boring from further away, or good from further away but either gaudy or muddy close up. Yours look good at both distances.