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I got the first batch of Liberators done last night. I wanted to get these done pretty quickly, but as the main armor is quick to paint and there's not that much detail I decided to do basically the same steps as I took with Steelheart's Champions. I did skip the highlights on black though, and was a bit more lax with mistakes. I'm happy with the results, they're really close to the Champions, and were painted in much, much faster!

While I was painting/looking at these, I noticed that the 40mm bases would really need something more to them than just sand and a piece of gravel. The flatness of the base starts to show. The tufts did a pretty good job of adding interest, but in the future I think I need to do some proper landscaping on bases this size. These models were always supposed to be rather quick projects though, so it's fine.





The one thing I couldn't color match was the cloak on the Prime. It ended up brighter than on Steelheart, but I think I like this more, so no biggie.



The next five Liberators are next in the painting queue and should be done next week.

They look great! The flash of red really makes these guys pop. I see what you mean about bigger infantry bases, I'm working on some Sons of Horus and they're based on 32's and my usual approach of sand and grass wasn't going to cut it.

I quite agree on the bigger bases, definitely a mixed blessing. Whilst they give you much more freedom to create a more diorama-style base, one does feel obliged to do it for every bleedin' model on a 32mm and above. It has really delayed the basing and painting of my Ork Nobz, and I'm starting to think it was a conspiracy to sell those sector mechanicus and hero bases

The purple handles to the weapons are a nice touch. All i do in this thread is praise the purple bits but dang it they are nice.

Tyranid Horde wrote:They look great! The flash of red really makes these guys pop. I see what you mean about bigger infantry bases, I'm working on some Sons of Horus and they're based on 32's and my usual approach of sand and grass wasn't going to cut it.

IGtR= wrote:I quite agree on the bigger bases, definitely a mixed blessing. Whilst they give you much more freedom to create a more diorama-style base, one does feel obliged to do it for every bleedin' model on a 32mm and above. It has really delayed the basing and painting of my Ork Nobz, and I'm starting to think it was a conspiracy to sell those sector mechanicus and hero bases

Thanks guys! I feel that on 32s sand, grass and skulls/stones still work, but definitely wouldn't hurt to add something more interesting. At some point in the future I'm planning on doing some models with scratch-built industrial style bases, which will also be pretty flat, but of course it's more appropriate in that case.

amazingturtles wrote:The purple handles to the weapons are a nice touch. All i do in this thread is praise the purple bits but dang it they are nice.

Thanks again turtles! Purple is a nice color (and this is a different hue than on the Skaven), so praise away! I don't mind

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Yesterady I took a break from painting and finished building a Devastator squad that had been neglegted for ages. The basic models were finished around a year and a half ago, but they lacked accessories and basing. The sergeant's arms were also originally pretty awkward (raised too high), which I corrected some time ago. So last night I added a lot of grenades, pouches and purity seals to the squad, and the sarge got an auspex to represent the signum. I don't usually add a lot of the accessories, as the size of especially the big pouches and holsters are pretty huge, but I think it worked out okay with these guys.

As for the models themselves, I wanted to give them heavier armor than the standard mk7, and used the mk3 instead. I'm not much of a fan of the mk3 helmets or powerpacks though, so I used mk7 for them. My reasoning is that the more advanced helmets would have better targeting and the powerpacks would be at least as powerful as the old ones but in a smaller, lighter package.





I'll probably start painting these guys after the Liberators are done, so next week. I'd like to get them done by the end of the month, so I could enter them in Azazel's February challenge, but that might be a pretty tall order..

Lovely job on the sigmarines dude

 JoeRugby wrote:
Lovely job on the sigmarines dude

Thanks Joe! Here's some more

So the next five Liberators are armed with swords instead of hammers. I happen to have a box of five multipart Liberators, and as it comes with both swords and hammers, decided to go for a simple weapon swap. Drilling holes for pins was a bit harrowing, as it left the weapon handles with 0.1mm walls, but amazingly I didn't screw it up on any of them. Finally, as I had access to a two-handed sword, I swapped one of the monopose models for a multipart one, and gave him the big sword. For some reason the arms were a nightmare to pose and required a lot of greenstuff.. The pauldrons were also really weird, so needless to say, my I didn't much like assembling a proper multipart SCE. Well, I still got four of them left for later, so I'll see if it gets better with a more standard loadout.

On the painting side, the only thing that differs slightly is, unsurprisingly, the swords, which didn't get a purple wash like the hammers did. I was originally a bit concerned that the large swords would be too similar in color to the armor, but the golden guards and leaving the wash off created suitable contrast. I played with the idea of some blue wash, but decided to leave it off as these are just standard swords.

Nice! The gold really does set the silver off well. A set of stylin' fellows.

Awesome work mcmattila! I love your remake of the old auspex marine from the 3rd edition command squad, one of my favourite models. Your Ork Dread is also great. You've got a very neat crisp painting style

Good looking bunch! I enjoy the red cloths, well done.

Not a huge fan of the fantasy muhreenz, but I must say: very well executed! I love the richness of the red in particular.

amazingturtles wrote:Nice! The gold really does set the silver off well. A set of stylin' fellows.

Much appreciated turtles!

zahnib wrote:Awesome work mcmattila! I love your remake of the old auspex marine from the 3rd edition command squad, one of my favourite models. Your Ork Dread is also great. You've got a very neat crisp painting style

Cheers zahnib! The auspex sarge is one of my faves as well, hopefully he'll be joined by the captain soon enough! As is probably evident, my painting (marines especially) has taken a lot of cues from WHTV, but staying "between the lines" has always been important to me. We'll see how my painting evolves as time goes on, but I'm definitely happy with neat and crisp! Thanks!

Ezki wrote:Good looking bunch! I enjoy the red cloths, well done.

CommissarKhaine wrote:Not a huge fan of the fantasy muhreenz, but I must say: very well executed! I love the richness of the red in particular.

Thanks Ezki and Commissar! The reds were a joy to paint!

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On the painting front, I've primed and started basecoating the Devastators. There's not too much progress yet, so no pic this time..

Last week was more busy than normal on the "real life" side of things, so I didn't get as much painting done as I would've wanted. Still, even a little progress is still progress.. I got gray, black and steel basecoated and washed on the Devastators. Next thing will be to layer the gray armor with Dawnstone, which frankly I'm not really looking forward to, though the mk3 armor looks like it might be more fun to paint than mk7? We'll see.. One thing I've not yet settled on are the lips/trims on the armor panels: whether to paint them gray or metal. I'll start with gray, but if that looks dumb I'll repaint them to steel.

Those Sigmarines look sweet! It's a nice break from the norm.

I have a soft spot for MkIII armour, if it wasn't for the fact Primaris marines are about, I'd want an army of them, heresy or otherwise. The only issue with them is the amount of edges!
I like the mix of armour marks too.

 Tyranid Horde wrote:
Those Sigmarines look sweet! It's a nice break from the norm.

I have a soft spot for MkIII armour, if it wasn't for the fact Primaris marines are about, I'd want an army of them, heresy or otherwise. The only issue with them is the amount of edges!
I like the mix of armour marks too.

Thanks Tyranid Horde! I've seen some Primaris with mk3 helmets, they look pretty badass! I haven't got to highlighting the armor yet, but it seems to me that while there are a lot of edges, most of them seem to be so prominent that you can just use the edge of your brush, so they would be pretty quick to do.. The rivets though! There's at least 100 per model? You're bound to miss some..

Small update today, I've layered the Devastators' armors. Judging by the pictures, looks like nothing much changed, but nonetheless, it took me about 1,5h per dude.. I should probably change to a bigger brush? Anyways, next update will probably take some time/be a small one, as I'm on a holiday trip and won't be painting again until Saturday at the earliest.

I can tell the difference! That's a good grey, and the lighting shows it off well. I think that armor is my favorite for marines and it looks especially good for these guys, all standing around and being tough. Possibly tuff.

Wait, no, never that.

 amazingturtles wrote:
I can tell the difference! That's a good grey, and the lighting shows it off well. I think that armor is my favorite for marines and it looks especially good for these guys, all standing around and being tough. Possibly tuff.

Wait, no, never that.

Thanks! Tough armor for tough guys!

Coming along Great McMattila

looking forward to more progress pics

 JoeRugby wrote:
Coming along Great McMattila

looking forward to more progress pics

Cheers Joe! I'm hoping to get back on the painting track this week.

While I didn't paint anything last week, I did build a couple of models during the weekend! Long ago I stumbled upon Eric Sexton's Imperial Skaven, and wanted to give it a try myself. Now I have! I'm liking the sergeant, but I'm not a 100% sure about the neck/head pose of the rifle-rat.. I may try to reposition the head to be a little lower. Also, I'm going to go into a new and bold direction with these models, and paint the models and the bases separately! I built some industrial style bases which I'm pretty happy with, and should be fun to paint as well. Speaking of painting, the Devastators are still at the front of the queue, and I have yet to settle on a paint scheme for these guys, so it might be a while before they get any paint on them.

Oh these are looking mighty fine! That's a cool concept.
If I remember correctly, the Skaven are one of your favorite races? If so, this must be a fun project.

As a suggestion, the rifleman's head could be a little lower? As in a shorter neck.

Are you planning to make a bigger force out of them?

 Ezki wrote:
Oh these are looking mighty fine! That's a cool concept.
If I remember correctly, the Skaven are one of your favorite races? If so, this must be a fun project.

As a suggestion, the rifleman's head could be a little lower? As in a shorter neck.

Are you planning to make a bigger force out of them?

Thanks Ezki! The Skaven are up there, yeah! I don't know if I'll ever collect a whole army of them, since I don't really fancy painting hundreds of rats, and a lot of their core models are really starting to show their age.. But, with this project I get to explore them a bit, along with the Imperial Guard (towards which I have very similar feelings ). My plans are to do something Kill Team-sized (around 10-15 models), though as I don't play the game and don't know much about the rules, this will be more like building a bunch of cool models. Currently, I have bits to do three more rats and the next one will be armed with a flamer. For the final two I'll have to decide if I'll make more rifle-rats or something else. I'd like to make a sniper using a Skitarii rifle and a heavy bolter team (I know they're not legal in KT, at least not yet..), but don't have bits for those yet. I've also been thinking about a Commissar to lead them and maybe a Sentinel or a Chimera for support (again, waiting for that eventual KT - Vehicles expansion!).

On the hobby side, I ripped the head of the rifle rat, cut it a bit more and repositioned it, I like it much more now. I still have to greenstuff him a new neck/collar. I also got some painting done: highlighted the Devastators' armor and washed all the rivets. I'll post more WIP photos when I get some more P done..

Okay, time for another update. The Devastators are coming along pretty nicely, though there's still plenty to do. I've now basecoated and washed pretty much everything except the sarge's head and the bases.



And I did some more work on the Skaven. As I mentioned in the last post, I repositioned the riflerat's head (still the same head, the skull's showing on the other side). I also built the next rat, with a flamer as intended. Came out great, I think, the head especially is fitting. Now after sculpting the necks and collars of the two rats, I've been thinking about redoing the sarge's neck as well. Doesn't need to be reposed, but maybe giving him a collar like the rest.. We'll see..



Closer look at the sculpting:


The group so far. I think they look pretty good together.




I'm also counting these guys as a square for the bingo card. They could have worked for a lot of different squares, but I'm going with "sculpt something on a model".

Those skaven are neat! The one with the head's pose changed looks a lot better, a lot more natural.

Also i missed seeing that bingo card, it's a fun idea.

Cool idea on the skaven, the flamer dude and the sergeant look a particularly good start!

Nice looking Devs too, crisp and clean highlights are coming together already

Clean and crisp Devs, great job on splitting the colours on the helmet. Add me to the list of people liking those Skaven! I'm impressed with how well the guard arms fit to their bodies.

amazingturtles wrote:Those skaven are neat! The one with the head's pose changed looks a lot better, a lot more natural.

Also i missed seeing that bingo card, it's a fun idea.

Thank you! I very much agree with you on the repose! And yeah, the bingo card is a fun incentive! I found it at the tail-end of 2018, and thought that I'd try to fill it in 2019. Curiously, Warhammer Community also seemed to find the bingo card a good idea, as their Middle-Earth Hobby Bingo card looks suspiciously close to this Rob Hawkins one..

gobert wrote:Cool idea on the skaven, the flamer dude and the sergeant look a particularly good start!

Nice looking Devs too, crisp and clean highlights are coming together already

Thanks for the compliments and for dropping by, gobert!

Tyranid Horde wrote:Clean and crisp Devs, great job on splitting the colours on the helmet. Add me to the list of people liking those Skaven! I'm impressed with how well the guard arms fit to their bodies.

Cheers! To be fair, the guard arms are attached to guard bodies! But there was a possibility of the heads not fitting in when the arms were attached. Some arms probably won't work, but thankfully the flamer fit just fine (had to do some minor cutting where the head touches the flamer strap).

Finally! The heavy bolter Devastators are now done!
Not much to say about the painting, it was a bit of a slog, the gold shoulder pad trims especially took a little back-and-forth (Auric Armour Gold is terrible..). My Raphael brush that I had been using for general purpose painting lost its tip (or got so bad that I didn't tolerate it anymore) while I was painting the lettering on the banner, so I pulled a fresh one for the face. Oh my word, I think I never had this good tip on the last brush! Well, I probably ruined it right the first time I used it.. But this was the first time I could paint the eyes without having to clean up the eyelids afterwards! Makes me kind of want to try and do eyes with dark outlines, like the big boys do! Just got to keep this one in good shape..





The next project will most likely be an Ironclad Dreadnought, as I've had one in my queue for a long time and it happens to fit Azazel's April challenge. Though I'd also want to do something really quick for a change, as the Devs took a whole month, so I might paint some one-off model before painting/finishing the Dread..

Okay, I ended up doing a quick project before the Dread (though I have built it). I thought that my one Warzone 1st ed. figure would be perfect for this. It’s either a Capitol Special Forces Trooper with M516D Shotgun (according to the Warzone rulebook), or a Light Infantry Captain #2 (Prince August).

Painting him was pretty fun, and as this was a single miniature, I could try out some techniques that I wouldn’t have tried with a whole squad. I painted a camo pattern on the clothes, chipping on the armor and a freehand shoulder pad design. I’m very happy with the chipping and the armor panels, but the camo pattern didn’t work out as nicely as I had envisioned. Part of the reason I think is the fact that the sculpt was completely flat (and weirdly blocky), so that washes didn’t really help.

I thought about the paint scheme for a good while (the figure had been primed since last October!). I originally thought I’d go for an urban camo, but when I found PDF-copies of some Warzone rulebooks, I spotted a cool illustration (see below). The American flag design really caught my eye, and I decided to go for it. The camo pattern might not be the best fit for the base, but it’s not an impossible match. The trooper could be in some industrial complex in the middle of a jungle.





Inspiration:


Again, one square off the bingo card! I’m calling this guy a pre-painted model, as I don’t think I’m going to repaint any factory pre-painted models any time soon..


Okay, back to that Ironclad..

Gem of a blog here - great variety and all really well painted. Looking forward to seeing what you do next