Why yes Kirby those ARE leather bound books. Many of them :) do they smell of rich mahogany? Sorry inside joke, anyway after about 4 months of off and on again painting I've finished my first squad of Grey Hunters, Emir's Bane. All that's left is some minor touch ups I noticed in the photos, paint and glue the banner in place, cut a template out to do their left shoulder emblem (I'm going for a claw reaching for a crescent moon and star) andddddd finish their Rhino. Which will basically be this weeks project along with starting my next squad, the Masters of Roos Tertius. As for the models, I used the same color scheme and paint scheme found here, and I think it came out well giving them a weathered, worn look which is what I'm going for. I mean they've been away from the Fnag for years upon years and thus no Blood Claws (they've all died or grown up), and a lot of older warriors. Before I paint the next squad I will be doing a test model to find out whether I like the look of the doing the Devlan Mud wash before dry brushing (which I've been doing) or after dry brushing. I think if I do it afterward, it will give them a darker look and feel, so I may reserve that for the REALLY old guys: the Long Fangs, the Lone Wolves, Wolf Guard, and perhaps the Scouts. Anyway without further ado:
Cool how that was almost a full panorama of the squad, but I figured I'd give the Wolf Guard a little extra attention. Anyway, the first 3 guys are just regular Greys, though one of them will end up having the Wolf Standard attached to his pack. That old man is my first Wolf Guard with converted combi-melta and a decently painted PF.
Again a close up of the combi-melta, followed by three more regular Greys. You'll notice by now I used Liche Purple here and there for minor details as well as a 1:1 mix of Regal Blue: Liche Purple. Reason being is that this army is supposed to be a sort of homage to the Varangian Guard who served the Byzantine Empire back in the 9th-11th Centuries so I wanted that "Imperial Purple" feel to make an appearance.
The first two are my Mark of the Wulfen model. I don't know if you all noticed, but all the models have silver gauntlets that are splashed with blood giving them a more ferocious mark. After all, they ARE the bane of the Emir Mad Mekh II, also known as the Sooltan of Bad Daddy. To differentiate the Wulfen model though, I dry brushed / splashed a light mist of red over his armor to show him in the true blood lust. Everyone else decorates their gloves with the blood of their enemies as a means of intimidation, whereas the Wulfen covers himself in it. I need to dry brush a bit on his chainsword still to finish the effect. I also was trying to paint the Tiwaz rune in blood on his face....but that failed so I turned it into something akin to the war paint of Kronos from God of War. The last photo is of my converted meltagun. It's basically a shaved down boltgun that I took a few parts off of a multi-melta to make into a melta. It works I feel. I did mess up his face though. I went with a brushing of Elf flesh and then dry brush of Bestial Brown of it to give them all a weathered and aged look. It worked well on everyone bu the melta guy, as apparently I didn't wipe enough paint off. Live and learn.
The regular guys again with softer light and different angles. Also the Wolf Guard again.
Wolf Guard again with softer lighting.
A lot of the pics were somewhat small due to space constraints and the need to fit all these in, in a somewhat small space. I decided to leave these last two somewhat larger so you could all get a better look at them. The last photo is just to show how I made all the shoulder wolf decals silver to give them a more regal feel.
So one squad done! Two more to go. Now that I have an idea how I want to paint them and the techniques to use, my goal is to finish another squad and my Rune Priest this month, the last squad next month, and the do my Scouts and first LF squad in May, then the rest of the Fangs int June, and top it off with my TWC in July. Which would give me July and part of August to get my last few non-Counts-As games in before NOVA.
Hope you enjoy and I'd love to hear your feedback!
Logging you in...
M_orga_n · 735 weeks ago
Thin
Your
Paints.
The drybrushing's fairly messy (look at the blue on the edge of the bases, and the actual paint on the figure alternates between splashing all over the place and creating practically geological levels of cragginess and roughness on the figure. In future, I'd suggest just using washes to cleanly shade the models. Also, I'm not sure about the use of colour on the models - while the colours kinda make sense on their own, there's just too many of them plastered onto one figure, with purple, yellow, dark blue, green, red, and gold all painted (straight from the pot?) onto different parts of it doesn't look particularly good. This was better on your trial models - I think you should stick with a more simple, but striking, colour scheme.
There are a few cool bits, that really do work - I like the blood markings on the face, for example, and the silver wolf shoulderpads are cool - but in general I just can't get on board with the use of colour and paint on the technicolor/light blue Space Wolves. Sorry for being negative, this is probably a whole lot of self-righteous, ill-informed advice, but at present, I just don't really like these models.
My advice would be to
- try to practice painting/drybrushing more neatly. It's just something every painter has to work on, but practice does improve over time.
- prepare your materials better. Thin paints, remove mold-lines, try to glue things on a little bit less wonkily (eg meltagun dude), etc.
- plan out your colour scheme a bit more. The imperial purple might work, but, in general, I think you need to put some thought into what colours work well with each other, what's striking, what works well as a spot colour, etc. That should help give you a more unified force.
Kirby 118p · 735 weeks ago
Antebellum · 735 weeks ago
I like the silver wolf emblem as well and I think you are off to a great start.
Gx1080 · 735 weeks ago
Roland Durendal · 735 weeks ago
The mold lines issue is one...I honestly never thought of before. It didn't help either that I bought this squad already assembled from a friend leaving the hobby so I assumed he'd taken care of all that already :( Definitely a point noted for the future.
Painting-wise, it's funny but someone on Vassal told me about thinning my paints about a month ago when I was about halfway done this batch, but I figured I was too far gone by that point to start over and decided just to finish them off. As for the amount of color...haha after reading the technicolor comment I re-looked at them and saw with fresh eyes the knee pads and realized "Wow I somehow made the Harlequins of Space Wolves".
Haha I realize now I went overboard with the drybrushing, as I pretty much drybrushed....well everything at least once. I think I'm going to keep the drybrushing to a mum on the next squad and only really use it on details...mainly fur and bone and some weapons weathering. As for the bases...yeah they were a last minute thing I did while watching Serenity. I was trying to go for an ice-world type feel and rushed through the blue drybrush.
ARGGGG and here I thought they came out alright. I'm going to do a test model Wednesday, and break out the Devlan Mud wash and use it on the majority of the model.
As an aside, outside of buying washes, what's a good down and dirty way of making them? Only guide I saw was to thing them out to the point that they are extremely watery.
Alright, back to work and back to test model phase! I'll be a practicing some more come Wednesday night.
Antebellum · 735 weeks ago
As far as making washes, they prettymuch just are watered down paint. I have seen a couple places to add a bit of dish soap to the watered down paint to break the water cohesion and make it flow better, but I have never done that. I would double check online before doing that though.
Kirby 118p · 735 weeks ago
I'd check out some of Sandwyrm's posts here: http://theback40k.blogspot.com/
He does some awesome stuff on color which might help in terms of cutting the colors down whilst still maintain a look you like Rolly.
gavinmarkschofield 2p · 735 weeks ago
I do have to say, that's an excellent selection of books!