Clawed Fiend in one week - part 1

My local GW store has monthly paint competitions and this month's was monsters and mounts. Basically any monster or mounted bike/beast (cavalry?) model, space marine rhino size or smaller. Initially I didn't feel like bothering with it but after going through a few models I found a Finecast Dark Eldar Clawed Friend I had bought a few years back. It doesn't fit into any of my armies but it's such a great model I really wanted to paint it. Unfortunately my current armies always seem to take precedence over fun projects so I forgot about it until I was doing a little cleaning this weekend. In an effort to get more minis painted I figured why not just power through it and get it done for next weekend.

As Finecast goes the model was in pretty good shape, only a handful of small bubbles needed filling and minimal greenstuff work on the arm and leg. I also opted to paint the tail separately, I wanted to use the airbrush as much as possible and I think it would have been in the way a little bit during zenithal highlights.

I built up the base using a single cork and some old GW basing slate then added a layer of Vallejo brown earth to fill gaps and add texture. I finished by sticking a few extra bits of slate into the brown earth to make the base as dynamic as possible. 

I painted the fiend himself using Thunderhawk Blue as a base color, then Incubi Darkness for shadows on the underside and finally Vallejo Light Green Blue for the highlights. The only additional colors were Screamer Pink for the stripes, and Coelia Greenshade over the fur areas of the model.

For his base I painted a foundation of Steel Legion Drab, then a shade of Rhinox Hide on recesses and undersides of rocks, and finally Tau Light Ochre on the top in a mottled pattern, hopefully to keep things looking natural.

Here's the result after day one.

If all goes as planned I'll have a finished model by Friday.

Whoops, Tau Riptide...

As is to be expected with this hobby my focus was drawn from the Dreamforge Leviathan I've been working on to a Tau Riptide. After watching the Buypainted youtube tutorial for Riptide painting I just couldn't resist. I've had some Tau models semi-assembled (semi-painted in some cases) sitting on a shelf for some time now so I decided to get back on task and get an army's worth of models at least built and mounted on bases. I purchased the Riptide little over a week ago so I'm really happy with how fast it's been going together. I plan on getting this thing 90% done by the weekend so I can turn my attention to some of the new 40k Tempestus Scions.

Mr. Riptide is just held together with brass rod right now since I wanted to paint all his large components individually, but the details are almost wrapped up enough that I can glue everything together and get him attached to his base. I'm looking forward to fielding him with about 4 Firewarrior Squads and a pair of Hammerheads.

Zenithal Highlighting on Rhinos

I've been experimenting with my airbrush, and have begun applying zenithal highlighting/shading to my vehicles beginning with my rhinos.  Although still new to the technique, it never ceases to amaze me how quickly I can achieve the results I desire, and how easy it is.  The airbrush is the ultimate force multiplier for the 40k hobbyist; the below results took a total of about three hours total to complete on my four rhinos, and and to apply the initial dark angels green basecoat on two predators.

Here's an example of how the rhinos are coming along:

Applying that sort of shading with a brush would have taken me all day for each vehicle.  Now I need to begin all the detail work, and then its on to weathering.  The job is not yet done yet, but is coming along nicely, its heartening that I will be able to complete my vehicles in a reasonable amount of time, and move on to something else.  I don't feel so bad about spending twelve hours on one tac marine now...

Happy New Year!

I have been remiss in my posting duties for the last month or so, but I am back with a vengeance:

First of all, I have made a concerted effort to paint up my tactical marines, and have completed ONE WHOLE SQUAD.  I know, its impressive, 10 space marines in two months, but hold your applause; I also painted one additional sergeant.  In my defense, I have been spending an inordinate amount of time with zenithal highlighting/shading, and trying to perfect my wet-blending techniques.  This results in an average paint time of 12 hours per marine, usually over the course of three days or so.

I started out with the Henry Ford process--an assembly line that cranked out finished, but uniform, models--but wasn't really satisfied with the result.  I slowly added more and more wet-blending, and was eventually forced to reconcile the fact that if I am to be happy with the outcome, I need to paint each model as well as I possibly can.

The dearth of highlighting on models in the back 
transformed into an inordinate abundance by the time I 
made it to the fellas up front.

As you can see I've also been experimenting with battle damage, mostly on shoulder pads--usually to cover up imperfect decals.

Moving on...

I received a fantastic present for christmas from family and girlfriend; I am now the proud owner of an impressive Harder & Steenbeck Infinity airbrush (and amazingly silent Iwata compressor), so I'm experimenting on something I don't use very much (but depending on how they come out, maybe I'll start).

Arms are all magnetized on these guys so they can be 
switched to lightning claws

Graveyard earth base-coat for what will eventually be 
bleached bone Deathwing termies 

...and since I started on those guys, I thought I might need this:

And then, on a whim, I decided to use some spare parts to put together some objective markers:

From left to right: teleport homer with servo skull, 
decorative holy book and stand, las cannon-based 
searchlight, and field communication set up.

So that's it for now...  well, actually, there is one more thing.  All this work has been focused by a secret and insidious goal for 2011:

The shape of things to come...