Something different

Most of my experience in painting miniatures tends to lie in the Games Workshop range, while this has been fun, I recently started looking outside their range for something a little different. This is where I found Kingdom Death, a WIP miniature game with some absolutely amazing miniatures. I ended up purchasing the Preacher Pinup mostly because I liked the flow of the model, plus, hammers are always cool.

After receiving the model, and realising just how finely detailed this model is I set about assembling and removing mold lines before priming white. I assembled the majority of the body, but kept the heads, hammer and front of the dress separate, as to make them easier to paint.

The original drawing of the model has her dressed in red, but I chose to go with blue, mostly because the cooler colour would give a more serene look to her, that, and I paint too much red with my Blood Angels anyways.

As for basing her I am tempted to try and give the base she came with a cobblestone effect, or I may just end up purchasing a cobblestone resin base, depending on whether I can make it look good enough myself.

Under the weather

As my collection of vehicles for my Blood Angel force grows, I find myself thinking about weathering and damage more and more, This can add a very real campaign look to your models, if done correctly. If you do too much, your models tend to look rather unrealistic.

Ater applying some damage to my terminator sergeant I decided to experiment more with weathering and damage with my assault squad, they are already part of a experiment with Vallejo and P3 paints being used on them, so I decided a little damage couldn't hurt.

 I tried to keep this around areas that would see damage, eg: kneecaps, feet, gauntlets and tried to include some near misses with the helm. this was done with a small area painted Vallejo's burnt cadmium red, angled out with boltgun metal painted inside, with a touch of P3's khador red highlight (you can tell I'm developing a preferred formula here.)
I plan on trying this on my dreadnought next, before trying it out on the drop pods with a little refining, stay tuned.

A few trials

I've recently been commissioned to paint the captain Sicarius and Vulkan He'stan models, upon accepting the commission I realised Ive never actually painted an ultramarine model nor a salamander, so I dug out two models that I had spare and painted them up in the respective chapter colours.

First up is the Salamander marine. this guy was relatively simple to paint, dark angels green base, followed by snot green, scorpion green highlight. At the moment its still a WIP, as I haven't highlighted the black and attached the bolter yet, but that will be happening shortly.

The Ultramarine was quite enjoyable to paint, starting off with a regal blue basecoat building up to ultramarine blue, followed by adding space wolves grey for the highlights. I painted him as a member of the second company, owing to that being Captain Sicarius's company.

Overall I look forward to working with Sicarius and Vulkan as I have always liked their models, and now that Ive painted at least one of their chapter, I should be able to work out the colours easily.

Terminator Sergeant finished

Well Ive finally finished the terminator sergeant, it took a while longer than expected, mostly due to the numerous layers of red I used, as well as my inability to decide what damage to the shield I'd do.

I tried out a marbling effect on the hammer, and while its not perfect, I'm satisfied with the results for my first try, as I find more things to marble my technique will improve.

For the weathering on the shield I decided to go with stippling dark flesh over the central areas of the shield followed by stippling boltgun metal over it, leaving some dark flesh showing around it giving the effect of both primer showing, as well as it being stripped away, as they would come under a lot of heavy fire.

And finally, for the base, I added a bit more sand and shale, before spraying it black and building up shades of graveyard earth and kommando khaki, to give more of the wasteland feel I painted the various tubes from the resin bits and shale tin bits, before stibbling orange back on, and a light drybrush with boltgun metal on small parts to give them a nice rusting effect.

Ultimately I'm quite pleased with the result of these various effects and plan to copy this over to the rest of the squad.

Warhammer 40k basing kit

I recently purchased the warhammer 40k basing kit from Games Workshop and I have to say it is actually quite good, a large assortment of various resin pieces to add to your bases as well as small and medium shale (I was mildly disappointed there was no large shale to stand a commander on, to give him that more menacing look) and the laser etched brass icon sheet, which has amazing detail, but I fear the detail is so fine, it would be lost with even one coat of thinned paint, but we shall see how it turns out.
My one complaint about the kit is the majority of imperial details on the resin pieces, and not many other forces are represented, this might make your space marine or imperial guard force look a little odd if theyre marching over a battlefield of their own fallen (how many helmets can a space marine chapter lose before they start picking them up?) but I digress, I used one medium resin piece and one small one as well as some shale for my terminator Sergeant, mostly I wanted to get the feel for using the resin pieces rather than making one stand out just yet, using sand to fill in the blanks as well as eliminate the height different between the resin and the base.

Once I paint this up ill get my Sergeant on it and see how it all goes, I imagine I shall need some greenstuff under the feet to give a more solid feel to his standing on it, but that shouldn't be too hard at all.

Terminator WIP and upcoming plans

At the moment I find myself still waiting for the majority of conversion bits and squads so these updates have been a tad bit slower than anticipated, but nevertheless once I get the parts in there will be more posts.

I'm about 75% complete with the terminator sergeant at the moment, having finished the majority of the main body, as well as the arms all I have to do to complete it is appropriate damage on the shield and the base, which leads me to my next topic.

I have read various tutorials on appropriate battle damage effects, and they seem to consist of two schools, firstly there is the idea to show the paint scratched off and the bare metal underneath, and secondly, there is the effect that gives the primer colour underneath, I'm not 100% sure which path ill take, so I've decided to try out both on a test piece of plastic I have lying around, I may even integrate the two, having paint stripped off to show light damage, and bare metal showing around areas of heavy impact. Once I have decided which method to take I will finish the shield and glue it to the arm. Stay tuned for pictures

A quick update, and what to look forward to.

Now that the terms exams are over I find myself able to invest many hours into my current project, being the assault terminators, I will be posting WIP pictures of the Sergeant once im able to find the time to take them.

In the meantime, a few of my brushes have been nearing the end of their lifespan, with the tips splitting or curling, and I've decided to steer away from the Games workshop line and delve into new waters, placing an order through Wayland for the Privateer Press studio brushes, as well as a few Army Painter ones.

As many of you would know, the Games Workshop paints tend to be rather hit and miss, with most people finding the reds and yellows to be rather inconsistent when it comes to opacity, with many coats required in order to get a solid colour. I decided to try out the P3 paints as well as Vallejo Model Colour, both lines having been recommended to me by various friends as a suitable alternative red without the hassles that come with GW colours, I will be posting my opinions and comparisons on all three once they arrive.