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Should not really be commenting but have to say this is spectacular, yet again bud, immaculate work.

Thanks Cam'. to remain impartial you just have to visit everyone else's blogs and comment there too. No problem.
Good to have you pop in.

and with that, it's done.

Photo-dump:
All round angles.


High angles.


Torso and flag.


Plinth and head-shrine.


Signs of battle.


"Flavour" shots.


I'll let you all decide upon your own interpretation of the story to see if I've been successful in getting across what I have come up with.

That now frees up space in the painting desk so that I can now move the Hellblasters over... although I've still not decided on a colour scheme for them...

But first, I have a minor alteration to make to my airbrush extraction hood.
Tune in next time to see what unfolds...

and just to bring these over to the next page, my other outlets of thoughts, pictures and products:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TheMiniDetailsOfDrH
Twitter: https://twitter.com/Dr_Steve_H
Etsy shop: https://www.etsy.com/uk/shop/TheMiniDetailsOfDrH

I love all the tiny moment of colour. They each have their own narrative

Thanks Graven'. I did say I was going to add some colour to it...

That chaos sign made my eyes bleed a little, but it was worth it.

Excellent piece.

I have always failed miserably when trying to interpret art... IDK, wild guess: a lonely hermit, building an altar at the foot of the broken statue, found - and gruesomely treated, by the looks of it - by the desecrators?

Oh mate. Really ? Mate, just really

Excellent work Doc !
Love the marble effect, and how dirt has spattered up the marble closed the ground. Tea pot and cooked etc just super and the blood spatter is the proper shade of dark for an exploded person !

I assume getting the decal to stick into the banner fibres took a litre of MicroSol ???

Interested to see how you adjust an extraction hood, I like to live dangerously and don’t have one !

Thanks LT.
It is impossible to be wrong when interpreting art; it's your interpretation. Doesn't matter if it matches the artist's intentions, or anyone else's interpretation.
The good sign is that you can interpret it, and come up with a satisfactory story to what you see.

Thanks Big H. Really really.

Yeah, the transfers didn't quite fully conform to the surface. Probably could have used more microsol than I did. I used quite a few dry-brushing passes to make them look as rough as the surface, but they are still slightly smoother than the rest of the flag.

Big H wrote:...Interested to see how you adjust an extraction hood, I like to live dangerously and don’t have one !

I made my own a while back (page 50):
https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/1470/549077.page#9166790
The common cheap extraction hood just wouldn't have fitted on my desk, so I made one that would.
The build is documented in the pages before that link.

As it has been in use for over a year I was interested to see how much of a mess the rear section was in... and I was not disappointed.

I should probably clean it out more regularly.

Anyway, the modification I wanted to perform was to do with the power delivery.
It turns out that the 12V plug adaptor that I had used for it is from my network switch, and now that I have a purpose to use the switch again (new, network attracted 5.1 AV receiver) I had to find a new way to power these 12V fans.

It just so happens that I had recently watched a video on YT, by Bitwit, showing how to use a small voltage step-up converter to make a 12V PC fan run on 5V USB.
Video:

Link to the converter supplied with the video: On American Amazon
Link to what I actually bought: On UK Amazon, from China

And so I am converting my airbrush extraction hood to run on USB, with a mirco USB connector so even phone chargers will work.

It has taken a fair bit of fiddling and trial-and-error to get it working, but it is working and I've soldered all the connections now.
Here's a before and after of the wiring:

I even kept the switch in place so I can plug it in and then turn it on. Ooo, I hear you say.

I found that while the fans should be connected in parallel so that they both get 12V, they just weren't getting enough current through the converter and they work better in series (I can still tweak the voltage delivered even further, so that's less of a problem).

The next job is to mount the converter in such a way that I can plug in a cable without it coming loose.

Oh yes, and scale shots of the statue piece:

And for part 2 of the airbrush extraction hood upgrade; mounting the converter.


Pretty self-explanatory.

On to the next job...

Making it low power USB is a nice touch, you should go full sustainable and rig it to solar charged batteries !

Big H: Well we do have solar panels on the roof, so it is (kind of indirectly) solar powered as well.

And with the hood up and running I primed the Hellblasters.


I'm thinking of a unique paint scheme for these;
My first thought was to paint them as the Legion of the Damned, but with blue flames for the plasma. But I doubt they have Primaris marines... so...
I needed a colour to go with blue flames. I'm thinking red...

Thoughts welcome.

The next project on the chopping/modelling board is off the sprue and I'm now considering how to make changes.

Is solar power workable in England? I thought is was all dismal and dreary all the time .

Yellow marines with blue flames .You don’t see those everyday.

 Theophony wrote:
Is solar power workable in England? I thought is was all dismal and dreary all the time .

I'll have you know that we have 3 or 4 summers every year... they are usually only 3-6 days long each though. It's grey and/or raining the other 340-350 days of the year.

Yellow marines with blue flames .You don’t see those everyday.

I did also consider yellow. Was just leaning towards red.

Here's a quick "paint" job so we can all visualise...

I see I finally have a challenger to who can paint faces as bad as me .

I was half joking with the yellow, but I could go either way. You see less yellow armies on the table though.

What's wrong with those faces, are they not correct in some way?

Trying to match these to any particular army is just going to limit those that are interested in buying them. Therefore, making them stand out as different (like the previous 2 Intercessor squads) is the better choice.

Joking or not, yellow is a valid choice.
With Orange being complimentary of Blue, it's perfectly valid to go either way to red or yellow....

...

...That said, I could go orange?

I liked the Legion of the Damned idea, but could limit their sales appeal.....

Ta, Big H. 'tis a tricky business painting to sell; you're always going to be limiting options.
The concept still stands though, a crack squad that joins an army for one fight. These are just plasma specialists, hence the blue flames.

Anyway, the hole on the modelling desk has been filled by the first of the single figures from the box; the Noxious Blightbringer.

There's not much I don't like about the model, except for the censors on chains that are all sticking out at an angle (makes it look like he's doing a twirl)...
...and the gun hand is at a funny angle, and might as well move the other arm as well, and the nurgling can be moved...

First step; Chop chop.
Then start to reassemble.

The nurgling will be walking alongside him, dragging the bell.
The censors will be moved into a trailing cluster, possibly with a cloak to match that at his front.

On the marines- red scheme for troopers, yellow for officers?

Like where you're going with this squire !

If you are choosing between Red and Yellow, might I suggest Howling Griffons?

Unique scheme huh. Yellow gets my vote.

The statue looks amazing Doc

Meer_Cat wrote:On the marines- red scheme for troopers, yellow for officers?

Would that not get confusing on the table? Especially if they don't match the rest of the army.
Thanks for the input.

Thanks Graven'.

Thanks Stormwall. Yeah, unique. So that they can be inserted into any army.
They do appear to be heading in a yellow direction, see below.

Thanks Joe'.

Progress;
With the orange thought I decided to start basecoating them with orange so that I could go into either red or yellow, and I think I'm going to go for a similar yellow to Finnan's yellow eldar.
I doubt I'll pull off quite as beautiful a blend as he does, but it should be serviceable.

Currently, still a browny-orange, but only 2 coats of paint so far.

One more orange layer and then start introducing yellow to the mix.

and the Noxious BB has had some work too.
Started with a couple of thin wires and then glued some foil over them.
Glued 2 of the censors to that and started adding putty (and a third censor).

I'll tatter it once it's all solid.

Worn boots kicked up small puffs of dust from the debris strewn street, the slow footsteps sending a tiny, bright blue skinkette scurrying from it's basking place and into the cover of a fallen wall. Georgio Mac7 nodded in acknowledgement of the sudden movement. Obviously no-one had been through recently or else the lizard wouldn't have been out in the open. That was good, he knew it was only a matter of time before someone, or something, found his makeshift sanctum.
Georgio had found the statue of the Holy Emperor several weeks ago, damaged in one of the battles moving through the area, and it had awakened a pious streak in him he had thought long gone. The constant war, the loss of friends, family, hope, these had worn him down years ago, but something about the proud marble head had touched him.
Scanning the area around him, the old soldier satisfied himself he was still alone and stepping past the rough barriers hung his weapon on the hook he'd carefully placed in the remains of the plinth. It was an old bolter he'd won off an officer many moons ago, when he was young and wild, and one of the best scouts in the Glorious 93rd, long before he'd almost lost his legs in a firefight. The ancient weapon was still his prized possession, and he murmured a blessing as it swayed on the hook, above the grenades and knife he had left there partly as a stash, partly as an offering to the Emperor. Setting the pot of synth-caff to boil he lit the candles he had scavenged and placed around the head of the statue. It had been an effort to set the head on the table, and indeed an effort to erect the table, but he had been overcome with a sense of unease at leaving it in the rubble. Over the days following his discovery Georgio had created a personal shrine in the remains, and had found himself drifting there ever more often, finding peace in maintaining it, in contemplation, in prayer.
Today the candle flames seemed to be brighter, larger than usual, the light starting to hurt his head. He reached up to rub his temple, or tried to, finding he couldn't seem to move. The pain in his head increased, and he heard noises behind him, footsteps, grunts, and guttural speech. Today was the day, the day they found him. He was trembling now, moving not of his own accord, but at the behest of some dark sorcery. His head was a bright ball of agony now, and he could dimly feel his skin splitting, blood dripping from a dozen places. The Emperor was staring into his eyes, and that was a shield against the terror he knew he should be feeling, his main thought was one of regret that this place of peace was going to be desecrated. And that was his last thought.

Good work H.
The diorama is outstanding. The candles with the subtle OSL is my favourite part I think, and i'm generally not a fan of OSL. That and the actual concrete look you've achieved on the plinth.

Blightbringer is coming along nicely. Looks like he's pointing at someone. "If you don't shut up, i'm gonna come over there and club you with this here bell!"

Hellblasters are coming along nicely. What chapter are they going to be?

Can't help but think that orange is a nice base for a rusty, corroded squad.

Thanks MT. It's great that you got so much of a story from the piece. I'm touched that you took the time.

Thanks Snrub.
I'm of the opinion that OSL is best when it's subtle, and it should be on the majority of models that are usually painted in "daylight" (otherwise they'd be dark, and then the OSL can stand out).
Various layers of dry-brushing of various colours to get the stone look on the plinth. That's all.

Snrub wrote:...Blightbringer is coming along nicely. Looks like he's pointing at someone. "If you don't shut up, i'm gonna come over there and club you with this here bell!"

Yeah, that's my thinking of his pose.

Hellblasters are coming along nicely. What chapter are they going to be?

Unaffiliated. So that anyone can add them as "contractors" to their army.

Yeah, you would MT. These are goody-two-shoes marines. No corruption or corrosion present.
But may save the basecoat for a future Nurgle-ite.

No progress since last time. I did some FO4 settlement building yesterday.
But today I did knock out a quick side-project: organisation for my drill bits.

I bought some more pin-vices as my hobby drill (that I used for bits larger than 1mm) no longer holds bits firm enough.
These are what I got on ebay as they came with another set of bits that I already had (and had broken one).


More bits meant that I had an excuse to make something to arrange them in.
So I spent most of today measuring every bit (with a micrometer) and creating this:

Each bit drilled it's own hole (giving me a chance to use the new vices) and then sticks into some scrap foamboard at the bottom.
Plasticard top, bottom and sides, with a couple of support pieces down the middle to keep it rigid.
Left it open in case of mishaps.

That is both efficient and terrifying

I approve of the fact you didn't just put them in size order, but got the measurements down as well

Thanks Graven'.
What's so terrifying about it? My Mum made "you're going to stab yourself on it" noises when I showed her.
It's stored at the back of my desk, and the bits are close together like a bed of nails.

Unless you're talking about my organisation? Then yes, I like things to have homes in the right and proper place.

Thanks MT. So many of them look identical I felt I really needed the measurements noted. Just takes the guesswork out of it.
Some are the same to 2 decimal places, but are arranged in order to 3 decimal places.

While the two packs of bits were supposed to house identical sets from 0.3 to 1.6mm in (mostly) 0.05mm increments, it's interesting how few are what I would consider "correct".
But then, I've measured micrograms to 4 decimal places. mm to 3dp is nothing.
That's what you get for cheap.
They'll do though, good range of sizes for every occasion.


Progress on the Noxious fellow:

Much invisible work to get the cape fitted nicely; it's attached to the backpack and whole thing is removable at the moment (for painting). Just a few points were clashing with parts of the model.
Also tattered the cape and re-fitted the shorter dangle-y chains... and y'know, positioned them in such as way that they look like they are dangling and not sticking out at an angle.

Painting of the marines is progressing, but not worth showing yet.

In other news;
The LoER terrain contest has wrapped and judging is in progress.
This means the public vote is on. Head over and vote for your favourite piece and give us a good result.
https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/763287.page#10138559

Ta.

Excellent work on the cloak.

I have the same pin vices, got mine from Proops off ebay. Not bad. And I am terrified by your level of organisation, I have "cheap drill bits too, In fact got a drawer full. No way I am doing this with them, I would have a full bed worth.

Thanks Cam'.

Next few layers of paint on the Hellblasters.

Just the start of adding yellow to the mix.
Many layers to come.