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I own a Airbrush so il give it a shot.

Thank you very much.

And another one - Brother Pythol. One more to go. Happy with the way he came out. Though after I took the photos I've noticed that one of the grooves in his plasma gun barrel, needs to be filled with black wash, so I'll correct that later. Also thinking about perhps adding a heat mark to the gun barrel.

I dont understand how this level of precision is attainable. This is truly astounding work! Im in awe!

I agree with lipsdapips the level of detail and fineness of the brush strokes is just outstanding. It all seems reasonable from the pictures until you remember that actual size of the mini, and then I am just agape with awe.

These Fists look outstanding.

Beautiful! The weathering is fantastic. And I really like your approach to Nids.

Absoluetly amazing work, I'm loving the amount of detail and precision with the battle damage, and that yellow is gorgeous!

I just can't get over how fantastic and realistic your weathering is. It really is brilliant.

The Fists are finally complete with the addition of the last member - brother Arnfried. I think he is my least favourite of the bunch, as he turned out just a little bit sloppier than the rest, but I am still rather pleased with the result. The whole squad took me a bit longer to do than planned, and has outgrown the initial "test piece for future customers" concept, but I think it was worth it. Next up - either Blood Angels or heresy Dark Angels.

The squad is now available for sale: http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/151300188314?ru=http%3A%2F%2F

Also if You like it, You can leave a vote on CMON: http://www.coolminiornot.com/357637

Cheers!

Back to painting after a longer break. I allready have couple of Astartes kit bashes ready, but first I wanted to finish a box of Imperial Scions, I bought earlier. Yesterday I finished the first two squad memebers. I went for a 'Eavy Metal'ish style, with lots of edge highlights on every detail. I also fitted them on custom resin bases, to give them that urban feel. I recommend the scions box to every painter. The figures are great and a joy to paint.

One of the biggest problems, at the begining, was deciding on the colour scheme. Couse the "sci-fi soldier" imagery is such a rich ground, for all manner of camos, and colour combinations. I had several versions in mind, in the end I went for a combination of blue and black (with some white insignias), as this seemed, like the most classical aproach to the "swat in space" theme. I do have a lots of other colour schemes in mind to try out, and this won't be the last Scions box I buy. Though I will probably paint the individual schemes on single, display minis, as painting a whole squad of those, takes a lot of time, due to all the gear and detail.

Here are the first two squad members.

The red OSL on the eyes doesn't work for me. I'd bring the yellow back up to very close to the pink edge highlight by the eye, and add a similar highlight on the brow just above the eye.
Remember that light is additive and can never make a surface darker, which is what's happening on the marine faces.
Otherwise, it all looks superb to me.

@Winterdyne

Yeah, I made the mistake of not really thinking about how a red light on a bright, yellow surface, would actually look, and instead I just applied a red glaze, like I would with any other colour.


Specialist gunner joines the squad.

Eurgh how are so good!
It depresses yet astonishes me at the same time, fantastic stuff mate

Had to take two weeks off the hobby, but I am back and the Scions squad is almost finished. Should be 100% ready tommorow. For now, here's the sergeant.

Finally finished the last Scion. Also made some small tweaks to the previous ones. Those bastards turned out to be more time consuming than expected. But I am happy with the way they turned out. The sculpts are such fine subjects. Will probably experiment with different colour schemes in the future, but only on single Scion display minis. Not touching a whole squad of those buggers again.

The figures are available for sale if anyone's interested: http://www.ebay.com/itm/PRO-PAINTED-Imperial-Scions-/151419369465?

Okay then. Back to painting Marines, I guess.

Cheers

When I did my Imperial Fists squad a few months back, the idea was to create a quick unit as an example for clients, of a mid-level painting quality I could provide. But I got lost in that project and it grew to be something else entirely, with a lot more work made on each model. That squad got me some attention, but I was still left without any examples of quicker painting levels.

So I decided to paint another squad, but a simpler one this time. Without any airbrushed area highlights, with simpler weathering and focusing on edge highlighting for a more crisp 'Eavy Metal inpired look. The goal would be to spend no more than 2-3 days on each model.

I decided to go with Blood Angels Devastators. There's something in that red and blue combination, that I find eyeplesing, plus the simple nature of the unit, will go well with the idea behind this project.

So here's the wip. This what I managed to do in 2 days. As I said, I don't want to go beyond 3 days on each squad member. That's why I am posting the wip here now. To get some motivation, to finish the guy tommorow, or get some public shaming. If I don't post pics of the finished model by this time tommorow, You all have my permission to flood this thread with pictures of penises or Nicholas Cage.

The armour is more or less finished on this guy. What's left to do are metallic areas, the gems, some minor weathering touch ups, and a bit more blacklining.

Oh, and the varnishing, which I will do now, before the metallics (I don't want the protective coat to dull their shine, and the alcohol based metallics I use are supposed to be more resiliant to wear and tear than normal acrylics anyway). And that's something I dread. I've been having problems with varnishing lately. Up until recently, I didn't really had any need for protective coats, as with display models You don't really need to worry about wear and tear. But as I started painting gaming units for clinets and Ebay, I was forced to seal my minis and the effects were mixed. Frosting is a constant worry for my. Especially since aerosol cans varnishes is what I've been using so far. With the Blood Angels Devastators I'll be trying something new. First I'll cover them with GW ardcoat closs with brush, for protection. Then I'll try to dull the shine with Army Painter anti-shine I just bought, but I'll be applying it using my airbrush, instead of a spray can, so we'll see how it goes. Will try it on a test model first.

Nick Cage?



Other than that, Marine is looking good. Liking the blue helmet so far.

The stone crusher fex is just incredible man. If I had the patience and the skill to do what you do, I'd be so proud of myself. Really, really well done.

The Blood Angel is finished. I know it's way overdue, but I had to leave town for a couple of weeks. In terms of actual painting time, I've finished him over three days, which is within the previously established deadline.

I am really happy with the paintjob itself, but I almost ruined him at the end, while varnishing. I've been trying new varnishing method with this one. Thrown away the old Army Painter spray can (frosting :/), in favour of GW ardcoat gloss, followed with AP matt varnish sprayed through an airbrush. After the initial coat, I was really happy with the results. The matt/satin finish had a very nice silky feel to it, and it brought the mini together. Even the metallics weren't as dulled as I expected (though I did a quick retouch of highlights on the metallic areas). However, as LutherMax warned me - the red did lost some of it's intensivity and richness. Which was a bummer couse I was really happy with the initial hue of red I got with the paintjob. For me it was the perfect mix of orange and more scarlet tones and represented well, what I thought a Blood Angel should look like. But after the matt coat, the red went just slightly into more pinkish/fleshy tones.

So I tried another coat of varnish. This time a more satin mix of matt and gloss. And it brought some of the richness back to the red. However, the more varnish coats You buildup on the model, the smoother the surface gets (especially with the initial protective ardcoat gloss underneath it all), so the figure looked much more gloss and reflective than I wanted. Although the colours were richer, the mini lost a lot of definition becouse of light reflections overtaking painted highlights. It was especially bad in the crevices and all the shadow areas, couse thats were the varnishes pooled and collected, resulting in a very smooth surface and light reflections in areas that were supposed to be dark.

So I said, "screw it" and went back to the matt varnish. The red lost its original hue becouse of it, but the mini overally looks much more presentabe now, with the edge highlighting better defined. It's not completely matt, couse as I said - multiple varnish coats smoothed out the surface, so there's no way to go 100% matte now. There will always be a bit of shine here. But it's no longer as strong.

Lesson learned. The next BA will be better. I think when applying the ardcoat gloss, I will avaoid crevices and areas of shadow, to prevent varnish pooling (also, such areas are usualy shielded and don't need much protection). In fact I am thinking about only applying the initial gloss, to places on the mini, that look like they would be handled a lot.

Brother Bellerophon

How do you do it! Your painting style is probably my favourite ever! Truly some of the best work i've ever seen, so careful and so precise. Love the rich blue of his helmet and the attention to detail in the eyes, and miniature scratches! Your work is awing, my friend, and I love it. Keep it up

Are you black lining every recess? or is that a wash? I really like how your stuff comes out so defined.

It's both. Dark purple wash in some places, blacklining in others. And also purple wash followed by a blacklining inside of it. Unfortunately a lot of the shading on the mini, got ruined by the varnish glare, I mentioned.

I'll be saving this to try and emulate your scratches when I eventually get started on my Fists army, Thank you.

Man, so much win going on here. I love love love (those three loves are not typos) your use of individual heraldry. A lot of people are great technical painters, but they overlook little touches like that. On Space Marines, especially, heraldry is so important to telling a story. I also enjoy your metallics. One, because they're actually metallic, and two, you're not afraid to use different colored metallics in a very small area. The plasmagunner's weapon in your Scion squad is a great example of this.

I really can't give you any advice about your technique, but I thought it worth mentioning that I think you might be too much of a perfectionist. You're going to need to find a place where you can compromise when it comes to commision painting; find places where you can cut some corners. Otherwise, you're either going to bid projects too low and spend way too much time on them, or you'll charge too much for your time spent and not book enough jobs.

Regardless, your stuff is fantastic. Please keep posting your WIPs and completed works. Your style is one of my favorites on Dakka

This is simply stunning. Your marines are some of the most realistic I've seen. And your Carnifex may be the best painted mini I've ever seen. Amazing stuff. Keep it up!

so incredible.. Amazzzzinng work makes me happy to look at these!

No hyperbole, this is some of the best work I have ever seen. Also, it appears that your commission website isn't working!

Your work is all very good, but Tyranids are what you truly excel at.

Amazing work! And very informative too thank you.

Yours is a level I will aspire to achieve someday

Thanks for the kind words everyone.

 Baron Von Eptastic wrote:
Also, it appears that your commission website isn't working!

Thanks for the heads up. Link should be working now.


New guy - Black Templar Crusader. This one turned out to be a bit of a suprise project for me. It originaly started as a super quick test mini, that I wasn't even going to post here. I wanted to try a quicker, simpler paint scheme, that would look more or less like the Eavy Metal painted troopers, we see on box pictures. So simple but crisp and clean looking figure, with less highlight stages, little or no weathering and no special effects. And I did that, finishing it in a single day. But then, as I was prepering to varnish it, I couldn't help but add a few details here, a bit of weathering there, some little freehand, some clean up and corrections, some other stuff. And well, here we are

Quite happy with this one, especially since it was unexpected. My only regret is that if I knew, I was going to spend more work on him, then I would have waited a few days to score some BT-specific bits, such as the torso with tabard and arms with weapons chained to the wrists. I tried some new things with him too. First I changed the way I painted eye lenses. This time I did them Eavy Metal style, meaning painting them like gems, with fake reflections (it's more noticable in hand than on the photos though). I also spend more work on the base. Adding a series of stone steps/slate rock that I carved from plaster, as well as a skull. Unfortunately I botched it a bit, by giving it one wash stage too many, which kind of ruined the paintjob on the stones, and gave the base a little less defined "chestnut ink drowned" look. And by that time the marine was allready glued to it, so repainting it was too risiky. But it's not bad, and a decent start I think. Working on replicating realistic, or Eavy Metal'ish, eye catching terrain is something I wish to explore firther, on my future minis.

I have no use for him now and wanted to sell him, but I got so pumped for Black Templars paintjobs, that I think I will do a 5-man squad of Crusaders, and this one will be the first member.