Painting Fall 2016

Fall saw me switching gears pretty radically from power armor to organic. I wanted to make Tyranids work in 7th edition. They where dog meat and not at all competitive but as my first 40k army I wanted to make Nids great again! Ahem. So I designed a list started to playtest it over the end of summer. Tweaked it a bit come early Fall and cemented it pretty shortly after that. I painted up nearly 1800 points of a Tyranids in 2.5 months. Was a speed run to be sure. The purple I originally used on my scheme no longer exists so I took the opportunity to step up the Tyranid scheme and improve on it.

I started with the core of what I would need. Already having 16 painted Hormegaunts and Termagaunts I used them to help bolster what I would need and instead painted up 20 new Termagaunts and 14 Hormegaunts to have 30 of each.

Next locked down list item was a pair of  Malethropes to provide Alpha strike defense and synapse to the ground pounders.


Next up I painted 6 forgeworld Meiotic Spores to be used as Myciloid Spores. I only needed 3 but figured I would just paint them all up in a batch. Used an airbrush and ghost tints to apply some faded coloration across the model. Worked really well.

Next I finalized on 3 Flyrants as the poular(?!) unit was known as. About the only effective unit in the codex at the time. For the wings I actually airbrushed in a red ghost tint lightly over the skeletal bone. Turned them a nice pink. I put more coats into the center mass of the wings. Then when applying the wash by hand I would let it dry 5-10 minutes then using airbrush thinner on a brush I would apply that to the center mass of the wings fading the thinner out to the bones in the membrane. Have it a nice transition  of color without to much spotting from the wash staining the wings.


I landed on a pair of Hive Crones to compliment the Tyrants. They provided some AA as well as some high strength AP 2 via vector strikes. I used the airbrush to do the green on the mouths. i Wanted them to be strikingly visually distinct from the Harpy models to my opponent.


I finished out the list by repainting (ran out of time) a trio of Tyranid Warriors to the new scheme. Just touched up the carapace, teeth and eyes.

Painting Summer 2017

Painting Spring 2017

Painting Winter 2017

Painting Summer 2016

Here we are again. Seems like about every other year I get distracted by life and skip updates on my painting progress for about a year or so. This time I moved and my light box for taking pictures ended up packed away for a few months. Yay life distractions.

A huge part of my painting tool box comes from joining the Facebook group 1houranight. I joined last year in January of 2016 as part of the Independent Characters hobby progress challenge. Basically every month you submit a painting commitment via posting a picture of your unpainted commitment to a pinned post started each month. You reply to your comment with a picture of your completed commitment. Gain raffle tickets win prizes at the end of the year. Yay loot! More importantly, keep hobby going all year round. So having moved I missed one deadline then finished it and the next move nuts the following month. Other than that I had painted a unit for every month. So far this year I've done better. Sometimes doubling my goals.

So where I left off I was painting up a trio of scout squads. Painting 8 for 1 month then 7 the next. (Finishing the lot of them the second month sadly). Painted them up as three 5 man bokter scout squads from the Ultramarines chapter. Wanted to do something fairly generic as part of a 7th edition Battle company formation.

Once I finished up the scouts I then painted a pair of HQ's. A captain of the Second company of Ultramarines and a Chaplain. Both are equipped up with magnetized jump packs. Meant to go with an assault squad. I submitted the chaplain in a local annual painting competition and took second place with it in the single figure 25-32mm category. Did some zenithal highlighting on the plates of these two via airbrush. Wanted a good clean look without putting a horrendous amount of effort into them. Think they came out great. If only I had an army for them.

Rockport Invitational 2016 look back

Put together a video teaser from photos of my last hosted tournament. Did this to help promote the new one I'll be hosting this April. Enjoy!