4 years of 40k painting in review, Part 13

This project was conceived of after the 2013 Standish Standoff but was not completed until Dec of 2014. I wanted to really spend some time and sub assemble and paint this in parts so I could paint the inside as well as the outside of the vehicle. I also wanted to do some LED light effects and this required painting and sealing the model before putting in the lights. I think just the build time to figure out wiring placement as well as how to house the battery switch and circuit board took me months real time. In the end I was able to fit everything in the hollow of the engine block in the rear of the model as well as the voids between the inner and outer hull along the sides. Dremeling out holes for the switch and battery into the frame of the model took some time and ended with me getting hot melted plastic frag in the face. 

I dry fit everything a lot to make sure all the parts fit before I even started to prime pieces. The hardest part was hand drilling out the back of the headlights to set the LEDS in while still leaving the molded plastic grill from the lights. I also had to cut into the frame for the side doors to create a hinge for the doors so they could open and close. I ended up using a dremel blade and cutting into them downwards to make a groove, then green stuffed back in to create the top of the hinge. The paper clip was simple drilled through the hing parts at the base of the door. 

This is the first time I really got a solid use of my Airbrush to paint this model, rather than just putting down a base coat. I used a technique I had started to use with some Rhino's I was practicing on as well as some terrain. I pre-shaded the model before laying down the red. Essentially I primed the model Grey. Then played down black first into the recesses and other areas I wanted to be darker. Then I went back and added white into the center of the flat areas that I wanted to brighten. After doing this I then laid in some light thin red coats being careful to allow the transparency of the red to show thru and not cover up the black entirely. It gave the model some great highlights and vibrancy. Having the model broken up into larger but separate pics really helped in doing this painting style. I had the top, sides, back and bottom as distinct separate sections. Along with the gun mounts and hatches as separate parts. This prevented over-spray from being an issue to cloud sections I had already painted.

Once I finished the base coat to the armor plating I did some edge highlighting all along the model and picked out details and painted in the treads and other elements of the model with a more traditional brush and wash method. This model really represents a HUGE step up in the quality of my painting. To see just how much go back and look at part 4 of the series with my Grey Knight Rhinos. This model also represented a huge change in time commitment. Although I only spent two weeks real time painting it, that represented 20+ hours of actual painting time. I ended up out of state on a business training trip and had plenty of alone time without my wife or other distractions to help me focus and do nothing else but paint this model.

I've tried to provide enough pictures to show every aspect of this model, and those elements that move, and change. Most the shots are with the LED lights off to photograph better. I plan to possibly enter this model in the Painting competition for the Standish Standoff this year. The only reason this is a maybe is as you will see next post I may have topped myself.

4 years of 40k painting in review, Part 11

Now for something completely different. Not really, this is the Marine side of my 2013 Standish Standoff list. My Marines are blood angel paint scheme but being fairly Codex Astartes generic they are also my vanilla marine army. As such I have some special characters and units that are vanilla marine painted up to match my Blood Angel force. Hence Tiggy here with the Blood Angel shoulders. I really liked how deep blue the armor came out. Makes for a great librarian blue. The red skull on the back really isn't a good choice. Should have gone metallic or bone. Its just to stark against the blue and draws the eye to it rather than complementing army color composition by providing another Blood Angel color tie in.  His eyes are great as well. The blue soft glow effect gives him that unearthly look to really strike home the fact that he is a psyker. I practiced with the list a fair amount before the event and had a pretty good feel for it. However one of my constant practice opponents played 6th Ed Eldar and I had yet to beat him in  game. I had come close but hadn't yet punched his ticket. Turns out as fate would have it he was my round 1 pairing at the Standoff. History it seems was not to be overturned and I lost that game. It was a great match up and we had a fun game. Some early shooting failures though spelled the doom of my list. What should have been able to kill 2.5 wave serpents a round given averages took 3 rounds to kill 1. Unfortunately for my next opponents this meant I hit the bottom tables, and hit them hard. I won my next two games but lost to many points game 1 to get to far in the standings. I did come out in 4th place overall. Not to shabby after a first round loss. It was a great day in the end.

Here is my first painted Marin Tactical squad all painted up. Its also one of the first time I've used decals on my models. They came out pretty good but the yellow ones especially needed a little post application paint assistance to keep the coloring solid. The red hues on these models came out really well. I followed the GW Blood Angel paint scheme for armor only modifying ti a little bit by using null oil wash rather than the crimson wash. I've found that although it can be tough to clean up afterwords as black wash can get streaky on red, it gives really strong color depth and is worth the extra time. 

 Perhaps my favorite painted unit of the whole army. First time I had ever built or used bikes in 40k. Being a command squad for the Blood Angels I felt these bikes needed to be binged up a lot to make them truly veterans of the Blood Angels. I used a number of the Dark Angel bike bits to get wings on the bikes. I removed the Dark Angel icons from those parts but felt the wings on the sides would work really well. Grav had just come out, but the bits where very hard to get a hold of for a reasonable price. I opted to use an alternate gun and paint it up with the green power source of grav. I really liked the way all the details on these models came out. They just look great on the table and great up close. I used the Death Company shoulder pads rather than decals to further "bling" them up. The golden helms came out fairly well. Perhaps a little flat in coloring without the depth of coloring I would like but still fairly decent with the wash.

Last Marine unit was a Thunderfire cannon. As seen from last years standoff list I already have a nice Techmarine painted up. Again I didn't want to drop some $50+ dollars on a fincast Thunderfire cannon. I opted for the Mantic space dwarf model instead. I had some older metal servitors sitting around and modified them to take the gunner seat and removed the dwarf. Nothign like using a third party model to make you realize just how good the GW models are. The details on this where soft and just a pain to paint and bring out. I muddled thru it though and cut a number of corners. Not a centerpiece model to be sure just a tabletop quality paint job. Servicable to be sure, but not the most crisp nor well highlighted.