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ditto

Try adding the sand to the paint, then rolling it on with a wall-roller. It'll spread nicely and look like concrete. You'll likeley ruin the roller, but they are cheap enough to be disposable.

The rubbed sand way is the one I like better.
Your Honor Guard is just over the Top mate, faces are superb!

Salaies look fantastic NF09 and the Flesh Tearers are coming along nicely too. Looks like you're a pro at the lens painting - it's usually one of the hardest parts to paint on a SM imo. Keep churning out the great stuff!

Thank you everyone for your replies! which shoulder guard detracts? the chapter badge or the gold one? I did one gold to differentiate them as Honor guard marines otherwise all my marines will look the same and i don't want to bore anyone! :-) and on the plus it'll be easier to see who's who quickly, originally I tried painting on a laurel but stuffed it up and painted over it using gold as I believe the blood angels honor guard have golden helms?

And I think i'll go with the rubbed sand texture, it looks more natural and i have lots of supplies for it :-) but i need to find a better primer, the one i grabbed 2 cans of is gloss!

The right gold(?) coloured shoulder pads - just can't live up to the awesomeness of the red...

I should add - it's not that they shouldn't be gold, it's just your red is done so well it is "outshining" them so to speak

Ah thanks for the clarification Arakasi :-) I know what you all mean though, the gold is a bit plain compared with the reds, perhaps I should blend the highlights up to mithril on the top? at the moment it's snakebite/gold then gold washed with devlan and re highlighted with gold. or should I just leave them as is? I've also just started on a Dev squad that I had for my sallies and stripped down to re paint :-)

NF09

I am so happy with what I've been mucking around with this week! I painted up 9 bare heads and started on a backdrop for my mini's to just experiment and see how the terrain stuff i got works and looks

so, firstly, what do you usually do when you get a remote control car? throw away the packaging right! not if you're a Nerd you don't a guy from security bought one and had it at work in the box and was going to throw the packaging out but i rescued it seeing potential straight away!
here's the plastic insert the car came on in the box:


I then grabbed some scissors and cut the two long edges off to make a shallow rocky mountain ridge like this:




I then cut some plywood to form a low backdrop which can be painted to resemble a horizon and anything i want to convey the skies of Evandalus Prime and then I used some pre mixed polyfilla or spackle to glue them on, it's still drying so i'm not sure how it'll actually hold them onto the board? I'm going to use more filler to create explosion craters where the models wheels used to sit:



And I tried my hand at making some cheap broken concrete, worked o.k I thin too, it's just plaster mixed with some black paint so when it breaks you don't get the white telltale showing!


Now, onto the head painting! I really tried hard to get work in progress shots but I couldn't get really good pictures so i'll just write as much or as clearly as i can to go with the couple of shots i did manage
firstly I undercoated them black and painted a slightly thinned coat of Tallarn Flesh on them all:

then i washed them quite heavily with Ogryn Flesh wash, this toned the skin and shaded the recesses so I can see where to highlight them next:

Next step was to create the first highlight we work with, it's roughly equally mix of shadow grey, dwarf flesh, bleached bone.

then I did the first highlight, don't worry if it appears quite rough, subsiquent highlights will fix it nicely and in the end we should have quite nice tabletop ready heads!

Next add some more bleached bone to the mix and water it a touch more so it blends better.

Next I added some more bleached bone, it's a really subtle method and as these pics show you shouldn't be able to see a really sharp change in colour, Once i'd done with the highlighting i added some black to the flesh mix and painted his shaved head and a little stubble.


I also added a small amount of Mechrite red to the same flesh mix and watered it down and painted the bottom lips on them all and the bared teeth on those that had them on show:
then lastly I just painted another wash of Ogryn Flesh over the skin on the face and did the neck seals metal and any bionics.

finally, here is how they all look when finished, i'd love to see which ones you all like and what you think of them? I have a good collection of different ones now!




Now, what troops should each one go on? who'd look best in Termie armour/assault marine/tac troops?

hope you liked todays update i enjoyed it immensely

until next week, and i'm working on something I haven't done before....


Nerdfest09

Thanks for the blow by blow (or should that be brush by brush?) - very useful!

This heads are just incredible.

I agree, very nice work.

Also the far right one of the bottom picture.


Probably a sergeant; brother Apis Mellifera or something.

lol :-) thanks for the positive feedback so far guys! and yes i can totally see Nick Cage in the last head, I should give him a flamer so he can be just that bit more like Ghost Rider....

Man, your work on the heads... will have to print and enshrine your instructions for later.

Those are some AWESOME heads!
Great work Man!
Thanks for the tutorial and LOL at the Nick Cage head.

Wow, the heads are looking great! I'll keep this in mind for when I have to do some heads myself!

Thanks for the heads minitut NF, will keep your instruction at heart for future projects

Ingenious terrain use man! Brilliant!

Thank you heaps guys! I'm glad you think they're good! i'm sorry i couldn't give a more detailed tute but i am getting a new camera this year and i'll remedy the situation then :-) lets hope you can follow how i do it? i'd love to see anyone's attempts if they have a go at it too!

thanks dsteingass, nothing to come close to your terrain yet dude! :-)

Now, should i attempt to give cool names to the bare head guys? any others resemble anyone?

cheers my friends!

Nerdfest09

nerdfest09 wrote:Any others resemble anyone?Nerdfest09

The on the right of Mr. Mutton Chops (2 to the left of Nick) Kinda looks like Bruce Willis..

Flying Pooo wrote:The on the right of Mr. Mutton Chops (2 to the left of Nick) Kinda looks like Bruce Willis..

and the one to the right of that one a bit like a shaven dr. Zaius .

Awesome work as usual man. You always inspire me with your skills, keep it up champ!

Yelling guy looks like racoom from dbz. RACOOM BOOM!!!!

Anyways, they look amazing. Wish I had the grasp of flesh highlights like you.

Hey nerdfest,
I started reading you blog but i'm finding that alot of your imgs are not working on your orginal post. I'm still going to trug through your 30 some odd pages, but I thought I'd let you know... I really like to see what I'm missing.

I will probably catch up by the time you get to page 35 keep up the good work.

Well, not trying to blow my own trumpet, but thanks to Styrofoam04 I went back and checked all my pages from the start to check the images and thankfully they all worked for me, I hope next time Styro you have a look and they work for you! :-) I seem to have actually improved quite significantly in the past year or so! my painting I feel is a lot cleaner and my blending is smoother imo, i'm very pleased with the direction i'm taking now and I hope I get more hints off everyone to help me improve further! if anyone has trouble seeing any pics i'm in photobucket under the same title and you can browse the pics in there, mind you there's a couple of other random shots in there as well lol

nerdfest09 wrote:
this one ==>[/img]http://i1239.photobucket.com/albums/ff505/nerdfest09/blog%20entries/BLOGPICS066.jpg[/IMG]


Next up I washed them with Badab black about 3 times, focusing on shading effect it gives the model without leaving visible brush strokes (always a good look)
a couple of examples so far.
this one ==>[/img]]http://i1239.photobucket.com/albums/ff505/nerdfest09/blog%20entries/BLOGPICS068.jpg[/IMG]
this guy has had three coats of Black wash over the skull white spray and edge highlights in pure skull white, as well as a bare head I painted last week, looks o.k so far and as I go one mini will take roughly 30 mins to get to this stage.


Terminator at same stage, this guy's obviously a bit darker but I feel the overall effect when their arms go on will be fine.

Finally for tonight I'll pop some pics of my w.i.p Venerable Dreadnought, this I got last year and then got lost and had no inspiration for a while, but I hope you can see where i'm going with it?
this one ==>[/img]http://i1239.photobucket.com/albums/ff505/nerdfest09/blog%20entries/BLOGPICS071.jpg[/IMG]


and many more

I figured out why i cant see some of these images, there a problem with your code you have [/img] in the front instead of [img] you have to remove the "/" from the first one. The "/" signifies closing of the code

I dont mean to be picky but I found it hard to get through it because of the lost images, but I copied the link and pasted it in the address bar so I can see what you were talking about. I enjoy your work and I really want to plow through your blog to see your progression, but your OP might deter new readers.

you probably read it but Gitsplitta wrote and excellent post on his Blog about bloging and fixing his OP. http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/8130/289929.page#4026806

I just started page two and I love your lenses for the eyes, I really like how you explain your painting process as well.
I was going to ask how you did that battle damage on the dread. but you answer that on page 2 with your Land Raider. Great work so far. Its a shame I'm supposed to be working.

Yeah, I explained to Damo how to post them up shortly after that post. It's just extra code (iirc, which I might not), not missing/broken pics.

Ahhh, now it makes sense, yes thanks to WM360 I was taught how to put the pics in properly as I wasn't very computer literate back then :-) don't fret, you haven't missed anything all the pics are there I just haven't thought to clean up the attempts that failed in the beginning of the thread, so feel safe in the knowledge that it's all as it should be thanks to Whalemusic! :-)

Damo

Deep in the Nerd lair on a stormy day in Australia, the steady sound of rain drowns out the mutterings and continuous 'tink' of brush on water glass as Nerdfest tends to his ever growing band of battle hardened brothers of the FleshEaters!

today I began working on my standard bearer and also managed to finish a running Tac marine and my devastator sarge! not a bad days work, first up the marine and the Dev sarge:




Now, something new! I needed to do a banner bearer for my command squad, now i don't think i'm a bad painter and always have been artistically inclined but the thought of free handing a banner was a bit beyond what i thought I could do, so a researching i did go! I saw someone use printed banners and I watched amazed as others totally freehanded designs onto the banner, then i saw someone mix the two methods to produce an excellent result that was still individual and involved using painting skills, so I put the word out there on Dakka land to help me design a banner for my army command squad, and someone came to my rescue! yes I need to put a big massive shout out of THANKS to Tib (or Tim as his family probably call him!) who offered to re size a pic I found on the web, well, not only did this re sized pic turn up in my inbox but he had also whipped up some other designs that i could choose from to use! one of which i liked more than the one i found and decided to go with it! so if you need something special done or designed then take the jump and ask him i'm sure he'll work something out with you, you won't be disapointed, anyway, I digress, once i had found my chosen picture I then asked my father to print it out in colour, i then cut it to fit my plastic banner and stuck it on using a liberal coat back and front of slightly watered PVA glue, once it dried I used the pic as a template to paint it on and to match the colours

here are the designs I got from Tib:


and the one i chose all glued down:


and here it is after some w.i.p paint, it's still not finished but i like the fact it looks good and painted


test fit with the bearer! what do you think?


And here's a sketch I did today, I want to do a pic for another friend of mine and wanted to do a rough idea of how it will work:


Well, that's it, I'll finish the banner tomorrow and get working on the 4 Plasma cannon Dev squad

Nerdfest09

Wow, that banner is awesome. This hybrid method might work for my low-level free hand skill. Do you print it on normal papers?

WOW! Your sketching is outstanding! Is that just ink over graphite?