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Those are some top notch venoms, loving the colour scheme.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Ezki wrote:
Maharg: One can't resist a few hazard stripes haha! Had to add something to make them a bit more interesting.

gobert: Glad you like 'em gobert! Yes, the next Venoms are a bit brighter. I was a bit afraid to push the highlights far enough on the first one, but managed to do so eventually.

Tyranid Horde: Yeah, they are rather fitting miniatures for 40k kitbashes!


Finished painting all the Venoms yesterday.
I painted the rest in batches of two, but instead of showing the similar vehicles in different posts, I decided to gather them all to one.
Make up brushes work really well for dry brushing! Don't remember where I heard that the first time, but all I can say is, that there is no going back!

The bases are some of my old creations, but work well enough as temporary solutions.






Most likely they will rarely be on the tabletop all at once, as the Raider seems to be the preferable choice in the new dex. But they are too cool to be left without a new paint job!
The extra guys hanging off the sides have been used for conversions and as spare parts ages ago. They would have looked cool and all, but for tabletop purposes they are a bit too much of a hassle.

Next up, I need to figure out how to paint the bigger vehicles.

I bought a few spare models for further conversions. Still missing an Archon, Haemonculus and Wracks, plus a few other things I would like to convert somehow.
Well I have a dozen of finecast Wracks and the old Haemonculus, but never truly liked the models. Been thinking about using the Ghouls I bought for Mordheim as a base for wracks and a Tomb Banshee as a base for the Haemonculus.
If I'm to use Grotesques in the army, I might use the AoS Vargheists or other big vampire monsters.

Pretty much every idea I have been thinking about, can be found already from the internet.
That usually is the case, so I must not fret about it, but instead use them as an inspiration. After all, it's nearly impossible to come up with something completely original.
Trying to avoid completely copying anything though.


Thank you for looking!
A friend is coming over to do some painting, so I'll most likely get some more done over the weekend.

Quoted for page carryover!

That’s a great squadron of Venoms, the bright highlights work perfectly! My stuff never sees that table and looks nowhere near as good. Surely they deserve a run out just for looking good?

Thanks everyone!

Captain Brown wrote:Loads of the models in my armies are painted and do not see the field right now...but wait for the next

gobert wrote: My stuff never sees that table and looks nowhere near as good. Surely they deserve a run out just for looking good?

They will surely see the board all together at least once. Most likely I will be using a couple of them in my lists anyway.
And gobert, especially your marines look really nice!

Meer_Cat wrote:The Venom Squadron is terrific- wonderful use of color! Dark Eldar are fun to work with (when you have your level of skill) because you get the benefit of three of the axioms of miniature figure painting:

* Color distracts the eye from detail (if used properly)
* Detail separates adequate from exceptional
* In mass lies perfection

Here you have highly detailed, colorful, numerous interesting machines; I likes 'em!

Thank you very much Meer_cat, that's a high praise! And I agree, Dark Eldar are a lot of fun to work with!


So, we had a little painting get together with a friend during the weekend.
Our goal was to work on our tabletop armies, listen to some music and have a good time.

While my friend was building and magnetizing some of his knights (with a 3D printed custom modeled magnet holders!, I kept on working the spiky elves.

First up is the squad of Wyches I repainted. They were the same models that this blog started with.
Usually I don't want to repaint models that have been completed, but I made an exception here. First off, I have a bunch of models in storage from that era, and second, I thought they deserved a new life. Few of them needed new weapons to fix the damages caused from years of storage.

Image back from 2011:


The bases are still the original ones. When I finally figure out the basing style I want to go with, I will do some slight changes.
I felt lazy and did not strip the paint from these, and just switched the armor and hair colors. Some slight fixing to the skin was also done.
I did not particularly enjoy painting these: the rather thick coat of paint did not help and half forcibly going through a unit is not my favorite way of doing things. I'm happy that they are done though, and I think they look a lot better now nonetheless.






Secondly I painted the squad of Kabalite Trueborn.
Like I said, most of these were kitbashed back in ~2013(?). Couple of them are new, like the Sybarite (knife guy).






These on the other hand were really fun to paint!


While waiting for the washes etc. to dry, I played around with by bits box trying to figure out how to build the Haemonculus and the Wracks.
I have never been a fan of the original models. Their design is cool in theory, but there is something I don't quite like. Maybe it's the static poses, not sure.
Plus I wanted to do something a bit more fitting to the whole vampire / stereotypical horror style.

The Haemonculus body is from a Tomb Banshee, and the scissor arm is from the Wych Aelf shrine kit.
The wings and the other arm are just blue tacked together. Typically a Haemonculus has four arms and can't even fly, but I kind of like the winged look.
Will have to ponder that for a little while. The sword arm will be most likely swapped to something with a gun.


A concept build of a Wrack. I have a bunch of leftover Ghouls, from which I could conveniently build them.
While searching for inspiration, I came accross with Larsonic Miniatures blog. I got inspired by the Wracks and decided to borrow the idea of using Kabalite legs. I also noticed that the Haemonculus in there had the same body, which was pretty cool!


A quick shot from the newly painted models for the army. Lot's done, but lot's more to go!



In addition to all these, I helped my friend to build new bases for his new Knights and Armigers. They a primed, but I will show them when they are painted.

Oh, and I finally got around buying a new phone. It has a lot better camera, but I still have to learn it's quirks.


Thanks for looking!

Great updates, the Venom squad looks amazing, lovely color scheme. And yeah, cheap makeup brushes are the best for drybrushing. Your kitbashes look great, the cloaks with scales are my favorite element of them.

The army is coming on apace now. The first unit looks much better than the original scheme I think, but it doesn’t have the love the others do. A finished unit is what counts though! The cloaks on the 2nd unit look fantastic, and their armour highlighting is great too, you can really see you enjoyed them more. The conversions look cool, I believe most flightless birds have wings, so I say go for the wings on the lady. The ghoul with kabalite legs looks very suitably sci-fi monster. A unit like that will be great on the table top

That red is superb, one thing I definitely need to get better at is colour blending. Yours looks flawless. The ghoul/wrack conversion looks brilliant, can't wait to see them all done up.

The conversions are all fantastic! Especially the ghoul/wrack, I can't wait to see what a whole unit of that looks like!

Drukhari are looking absolutely amazing. So much fun watching this army come together!

I want to echo Viterbi, the scale cloaks are fantastic.

I'm glad you were getting to enjoy your new gaming table. It's great that it's nice and sturdy. I hope the lock down isn't too harsh or long. It's been a while since I was on, and you are blowing me away with how much you have been getting done of your Dark Eldar.

Army is coming along Ezki.

Cheers,

CB

Thank you very much guys! Glad you like the conversion concepts!

Olthannon: Thanks Olthannon! The Venom hulls did half of the work for the blending: the shape makes it a bit easier to make smooth transitions.

Syro_: The plus side with remotely working and everything cancelled is that I have more time to build and paint minis. Trying to get as much done as possible before the summer: when I usually spend a lot less time at my desk.

gobert: You are absolutely right about most flightless birds having wings! Maybe she can fly, but it would not be as entertaining to hunt from the air?



As a little palette cleanser, I wanted to finally paint up the MDF terrain pieces I put together a couple of months ago.
Following Captain Brown's tip about using cheap acrylic spray paint to paint a few layers, I ended up priming them white. I wanted a really dirty concrete kind of look to them while being really quick to paint.

I used pretty much the same technique as I did for the Krieg Sentinel conversions: dark brown enamel wash on top of the base color, which was then wiped off with white spirit using a rag / brush / cotton stick.
Added some small details on a few of them.










Also finished painting the bases I build for my friends new knights.
I have done in total seven smaller bases and three Knight sized bases for that army.








But not to worry, some Drukhari stuff is also happening!

Started working on the Wrack conversions. This is how my hobby area usually looks like when I start kitbashing stuff. Luckily the missus is away for the weekend, so I have plenty of time to clean up
Trying to make use of all the half used kits I have laying around, instead of buying more stuff


Decided to use some of my old Kabalites to fuel these kitbashes. I thought that it's better to use these minis rather than store them half painted without any real purpose.
Gotta think about the storage limitations every now and then.


All the leg + torso combos are done for the Wracks.
Still need to figure out their heads and arms. Being monsters and all that, I think I'm mostly going to use the Ghoul arms, but a few of them might have something resembling a weapon.

Been posting a bit more regularly now than I usually do, and I noticed that this thread is getting quite long (almost 30 pages, who would have thought).
It's getting harder and harder to find some of my old stuff from this thread, so I guess I should continue updating the separate army threads on the showcase forums (I'm way too lazy to start separate hobby blogs for each army). Been a bit lazy on that front, and I have not even started one for my Krieg

Anyway, thank you for looking!

Loving the Haemonculus mini. All the Dark Eldar are coming out great. Awesome dragon cloaks.

Looking good Ezki, the ZMDF pieces certainly look like dirty painted concrete. The bases look cracking, good use of random bits. I hope your friends Knights enjoy their new places to stand.

As for finding projects, I created an index to all my completed projects in my first post. It’s then usually a quick trawl backwards find any recipes or steps I took. I had been thinking of cataloguing my recipes too, but most are spread over several posts given how slow I paint

Dark Eldar looking snazzy

Thanks for sharing

The bloody hand print on the terrain is marvelous. And that is a lot of kitbashing material, excited to see how your army will progress.

As always, I appreciate the comments. Thanks.

gobert: Wow, that index is pretty cool. Gotta do something like that when I have the time (quite a bit of stuff to go through haha). Thanks for the suggestion.



Alright, quite a bit of stuff done. Or not done, but in the making.
The Dark Eldar project slowed down a bit, as I got an unimaginable urge to build more terrain.
While I was working with the Wrack conversions, I was listening to a random Cyberpunk music mix (synthwave, electro etc.). Add to that a few inspiring images in Pinterest, and I just had to get building.
Like I previously said: just like a kid in a candy store.

Still got the Wracks and the haemonculus built though, as I could not let myself leave them hanging.
So let's start with those:

For the wracks, I used heads from the random Wych Aelf kits I had in store.
I pondered the weapons for a while, but settled for using Ghoul arms for most of them. I chose those holding a bone, which I then cut and replaced with a dagger.
Some of them still have the other end of the bone remaining: I thought that they are using the bones of their enemies as weapon handles.
For a few of them, I used one or two Wrack arms, but they look a bit wonky. They blend well enough in the unit though.





Decided to go with the winged look for the Haemonculus.
For this guy I also pondered what to do with the right arm. I tried a scythe from a zombie kit, which I kind of liked, but the scale was a bit off.
Then I tried one of the original Haemonculus arms, but they were too small compared to the other one (even if the arms is unnaturally long with the spikey glove).

In the end, I combined two different arms together. For the upper part I wanted something with a sleeve, so I cut a piece from the Dark Elf Corsair kit, which was then combined with an Escher Death Maiden arm.
As a small detail, I decided to add a skull on her hand.


Still need to prime these guys. When I get back to painting (might be a few days, or a couple of weeks, not sure), I'll either paint these first or the kitbashed Wych squad.


Alright, then to the other part of this update.
As mentioned, I just had to grab my stuff and head to the rented garage to do some building.
I did not manage to finish much, but I started a few projects. I wanted to try a different tactic: I would first do the daunting part of building the foundations for a few projects so that it would be easier to start next time.
My favorite part in the building process has always been adding the details and weathering them, not the actual measuring bit.

On the left is a random quick concept of a ruined building, which I did not fall in love at all. Will most likely still finish it at some point.
The cuts are bad and the measurements for the windows are off. That's most likely because I did not measure anything
The other two are some basic foundations for a Cyberpunk / Brutalistic style buildings. Oh, and the beer can will also be turned into something else.


Then I built two quick shacks from some of the random leftover pieces from different projects.
Thought about making a small "futuristic slum" type of village using similar designs. They might also work pretty well for Necromunda.



I wanted to get something actually done, so I painted the MDF sushi joint that I got with the terrain pieces shown in the last post.
I followed the same procedure as with those pieces, but I wanted to practice some freehand painting and added some graffiti style scribbling.
Making them was actually really fun: I felt like a kid drawing all kinds of shapes and random letters without thinking about it too much. Will definitely experiment some more!









I'm really happy how the back side turned out, but as you can see, the other sides did not get that much attention.
For the metal bits, I played a bit more with the weathering powders and different tones of enamel paint.
And the experimental weathering on the signs failed totally, but maybe I'll get it next time.


And as a last thing: I forgot to put the step by step shots from the terrain pieces last time, so I'll spoiler them here:



Thank you for looking!

Love the skull, and that she's not looking at it! It avoids the "Horatio" look. Beautiful!

The wracks are a really cool kitbash idea, the kabalite legs really do good work to tie them in to the drukhari line, very escited to see these guys painted up. The Haemy is sweet, nice combination of parts, that one arm is terrifyingly cool. The Haemy also looks like it'll tie in to the wracks you made much better than the base Haemy model, will very much make a nice cohesive Coen force. I had to do a double take on that Ramen shop! Caught the name after I admired the graffiti and had to give a chuckle. Naruto is such a classic, great work!

The terrain work is excellent Ezki.

Cheers,

CB

Thanks for the step-by-step on the terrain!

The graffiti on the terrain looks great and much like the real thing you would expect.

Thank you guys!

Gwyn chan 'r Gwyl: Haha, that's a good point! Glad you like the kitbash.

Inevitable_Faith: Thank you! I'm glad that the haemy and the wracks look like they fit a similar theme.


Well, like I thought, the pace with the Dark Eldar project slowed down a bit.
One reason is the urge to build and paint some terrain.
The other reason is the sunny weather that has shifted my focus on getting my summer car back on the road.
May is getting close, and usually I have it up and running by now. This year, even with all the extra spare time, I have somehow managed to prolong all the repair and restoration work a bit too long.
Maybe it will be on the road by the midsummer's eve

Bit off topic, but while I was sanding the engine fan for a new coat of paint, I realized that it started to look awfully lot like the color scheme for my ork vehicles. Some parts are even as rusty



Anyway, back to the matter at hand.

Finished painting a couple of smaller terrain pieces.
The first one is the first "scrap shack" I built out of leftover stuff.





The second one is an older piece, which I started building a while ago.
I could not come up with anything interesting to add to it, so I decided to give it a coat of paint as is.





Also started working on the other two.


I have a few concept builds a bit similar to these, but no pictures yet.
I'll progress these terrain pieces step by step when I feel like it. Currently I'm trying to get the Haemonculus, Wracks and Wyches painted next.
Jumping between projects keeps things fresh and interesting.


I could not however fight the urge to test the new codex, so I did the naughty thing and played with unpainted models.
It's something I used do a lot when I was younger (actually every single game had some unpainted models), but not so much anymore.
For that reason, I only have one picture:


The new codex was really really fun to play!
The army finally felt like how I've always imagined it: dangerous and hard hitting glass cannons flying around the board. I'm super excited about how good the wych cults are this time around.


Thank you for looking!
Will most likely finish painting the haemonculus next. I started adding some base colors on her already.

Life imitating art, right there.

Looking forward to seeing those Wych conversions painted.

For some reason I always thought your summer car was something fancy. I now see it looks like a Volvo of some kind?

The shacks look really cool and seem straight forward to build. You’ll have a nice shanty town pretty soon by the looks of it. Hopefully you’ll get the DE painted up to battle through it soon enough

Thank you youwashock and gobert!

gobert: It's a 1980 Dodge Aspen. Far from anything fancy, but their numbers are definitely getting lower.
It was in quite poor condition when I bought it seven years ago as a daily driver (as my first car), but over the last few years it has only been driven in the summer.
Mostly because of the salt on our roads in the winter, which tends to corrode everything it touches.
I have been slowly restoring and fixing it, while at the same time trying to practice some mechanical skills. Not trying to turn it into a show car, but to just something that is a joy to drive.


I do have two Volvos in addition to that however, a 240 sedan and a 940 estate.

Sorry for an off topic post


Edit: For this post not to be completely off topic, take a quick WIP shot from the Haemy:

WIP shot looks cool and it's interesting to see and read tidbits about your car. I just hope, it doesn't imitate your orc vehicles too much

My god, the Wracks and Haemonculous conversion are utterly perfect, just brilliant, brilliant work!

Excellent scratch built terrain there Ezki.

And I think I am also supposed to say "sweat ride".

Cheers,

CB

I completely didn’t picture it as a Dodge! Looks cool and retro though. The Haemonculus is a very good return to topic, she’s looking absolutely fantastic and she’s only half done!