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San! Having had no internet i've been deprived of all the awesome going on here, Your praetor is simply stunning! The level of detail is breath taking! The zenith highlighting technique works really well, and yet I still slightly prefer your original method, looks slightly cleaner. (No offence meant!)

The jet pack engine glow looks amazingly good by the way, so realistic

Also the dark IF armour works really good too, making the fists a bit grimmer is always a good thing, can appease all the haters who say they have no depth!

Keep it up sir, also as the others said, thanks for the yellow tips!

J-Paint! welcome back sir.

thanks very much man. yeah the praetor was an experiment. i know what you mean, the shading definitely makes for a grimier model. i should put up a photo of the test marine finished next to my usual technique. mostly i was happy with his face, the armour...well, it was so-so.

im really torn now on how to proceed. the old style was like you say, so clean and crisp but the new style looks (to me) way more textured? detailed? maybe i should put some side-by-side pics up for comment.

in any case hoping to get some new pics up this weekend.

how are your Dolosians coming along?

Actually pretty well, I will put some pics up on my thread in a sec, I agree, before you continue you need some side by side shots to compare like with like, I for one would really like to see the difference, its interesting how two different methods give such drastically different results.

Will try and get a side by side up soon.

in the meantime, i finally finished my base for my Executioner. when i first saw this model in the store i thought it was full of the kind of grimness for which we all love 40k . I wanted to do something different for him though than an all yellow outfit - it just didn't seem to fit.

I was hoping with this model to concentrate on just a couple of focal points that tell the story. in this case, mainly the face and the axe. i figure, those two parts tell you nearly everything you need to know about this guy. most of the armour i painted with zenithal highlighted series of greys (which are bloody hard to photo it turns out!).

anyways, hope you like him. hopefully this time next week i will have his squad done as well and will get some group shots up.

Wow, that guy is awesome. Great job. You are right though, one downside to having such a detailed model is that the zenithal lighting does tend to get lost.

Doe that model come with any other head options? I'm already thinking about my own use for that guy.

You just keep raising the bar San, that axe head is simply stunning! I am starting to run out of patience with the blending on my power weapons, you have the patience of a saint!

I agree that it looks nicer than full yellow armour though, and it fits your grey assault theme nicely.

Thanks very much guys - he was a bit of a risk so I'm stoked to hear it came out ok.

@iceangel - sadly, the Mohawk is all comes with. I tried to put a beaky helm on him and found that a plastic beaky was actually far too large for the model. If you have any FW helmets they might work - the ones I got from FW were quite a bit smaller than the GW plastics

@ j-paint - cheers mate. I know what you mean with the blends. Mostly I was happy with the red gem - haven't done many

San, you've done that model a lot more justice than the GW team... Especially the face !!!

Those colours are really outstanding, and the axe is close to perfect... Damn you !!!

As for a replacement head, it seems the model has a Mk.8 gorget, it could explain the difficulties with changing the helmet !

Thanks so much Ygg! You know, I really should have noticed the gorget...../facepalm

Excellent looking figure..

 San76 wrote:
Thanks so much Ygg! You know, I really should have noticed the gorget...../facepalm

Lol... I hope you did take it as a pun uh ? Because it was... I wouldn't have dared to imply you hadn't noticed it...

cough...sadly, i hadn't put two and two together on that one. ahh well, live and learn

Stunning mate, absolutely stunning. That Axe is a masterpiece and the face is stunning, you’ve certainly nailed the grim dark on this one.

He does indeed look very grim. Love it

Cheers guys, I really appreciate it!

Awesome work mate..... really exuding menace and really grim! Glad i am not the one on the receiving end of that!

Cheers,

Thanks very much MagosBiff90!

Well, in an almost unprecedented moment i actually finished a squad today. to be fair, its a squad of five...but still, i feel it counts!

These guys i painted up to be the personal retinue of the Lord Executioner i put up last week. The squad is a set of MkIV armour i got from forge world. very nice models. I wanted to give them a similar colour scheme to the Exec, distinctive from other Fists. i'm not great at writing backgrounds, but i kinda imagine them as a body guard/ hand picked kinda squad. So, like the Exec i painted them with a series of zenithal highlights in grey, then used a blend of washes to give them some tone. Unlike the Exec, i didn't put the assault symbol on and instead when for a skull motiff. i figure, if the jump pack doesn't give their gig away, then nothing will, and the skull looked great on the grey

anyways, i hope you like them. im afraid you will need to click and zoom to seem them properly - i just cannot seem to find a good size to post these things.

MkIV assault squad


Lord Executioner and retinue

San! oh my word San! To say that this is awesome is a massive understatement, they are just so cleanly painted, they are perfect, do you mind if I pick your brain on the zenith technique? I know the basic concept (light from one angle) but how well would it work on black armour do you reckon?

The group shot is beyond cool, the grey with just the spot of yellow makes them look so grim and mean, simply gorgeous! You have outdone yourself, and also congratulations on a whole squad!!!

Because we all have to be super critical here on dakka, the only minor fault I could find was one of the transfers, but again thats not your fault, thats the problem of putting a round shape onto a curved surface! Have you ever heard of decal softener? I have no idea what it does, but I heard someone talking about it once when discussing this exact problem.

mate - after such effusive praise, how could i possibly say no?

i think the zenith technique would actually work really well for black armour - i think with black its easy for the model to lose depth and interest and zenithal is a great way around that. one thing to remember though is unless you are super good with the airbrush the grey will diffuse across the black a fair bit and you may end up with a duller, more natural look. like this example from KaraDavut - i dont think they did use zenithal but its a larger model and the actual lighting is giving you much the same effect:



personally, i really like this look.

to be honest, that's what the original plan for the executioner was, but the grey/back i mixed up as the base turned out to be more grey than black...and here we are. i think if i had started with a much darker grey (say 10:1 black to white, or even 12:1 - i started with 5 or 6:1) as the "main colour" these guys would have looked black. personally, these days i dont use pure black for anything. i have found that to my eyes, the dark dark greys look black and seem to "sit" with the other colours better than the pure blacks. maybe its a hue saturation or something...or maybe im just seeing things

of course, you dont have to have an airbrush...careful dry brushing/wet blending with thin paint will give you much the same effect, especially if you wash it with thinned wash afterwards.

the great thing about zenithal black is that you can do the whole thing in grey scale, then make a thin wash/filter of black, brown and your tint of choice (i used blue here, purple on my first chosen) and wash the whole thing - the tint will change the greyscale subtly and you don't have to worry about mixing colours into your greys to get black armour with some colour tone.

one important thing to remember is if you are going to paint first then assemble, maybe tack the model together, put him under a light and take a photo - so you have something to reference when you are painting each piece. nothing worse than realising you got the lighting angle wrong on just one bit...yes...it has happened :(

also, you don't have to do anywhere near as much edge highlighting - which i always find a drag!

anyways, thanks again for your kind words mate - stoked you like them. as for the decals...i used both micro sol and micro set on this model..i am just terrible at decals. i really am. micro sol etc are great products though and i highly recommend them - without them these would look much, much worse.

Great figures. A very nice group shot and addition to your Army.

As always good advice as well.

Thanks again for the advice on yellow I bought the codex today so I can plot my first IF army and hope to make you proud with the paint job

Always great to see more sons of Dorn bro! Looking forward to seeing them

Excellently dark squad.. now get painting!!

Thanks very much Solar!

Well, now for something different. Some time ago my good friend asked me To paint up a couple of his thunderwolf cavalry as he is short on time at the moment. I thought I might put up some WIP shots as I go as it's a different type model.

Primed!



First coats done (I totally didn't mean for the wrapping paper to be in the shot...yet, I kind of like it...)


Will be trying to get some more progress shots up over the weekend

Oh nice! the blends are very soft and very smooth! Even though I love your marines its always nice to see something a bit different, just highlights how well rounded a painter you are!

Looks almost real

Cheers guys! My apologies for the couple of weeks of radio silence- have been working away.

Well, since I got back have had a bit of time to work on the wolves for my friend. So far I've washed the fur and then spent sometime working on the faces. He doesn't want the fur highlighted beyond the blend/wash and personally, I think he has made a good call. Not highlighting the fur gives it a softer look I think.

Still far from complete but here they are for your amusement. At the moment have been working on blending up the face to make it an area of focus.

Ooh yes, now that is a very purty wolf! how many are you doing for him in total?

That is some beautiful paintwork right there

Cheers guys.

There are three wolves (with riders) in the unit. If they turn out well I think he has plans for some additional wolves without riders.

One rider and wolf is actually mostly done (just needs decals and dull coat) but that's with my friend so I can't show you pics. My friend was pretty happy with it though, which was gratifying.

They are great fun models to paint. Outrageous in that makes us love 40k; I mean really, marines riding wolves ... It's pretty OTT