Astral Claws veteran sergeant

Here is my as yet unnamed veteran sergeant to lead my first Astral Claws tactical squad. He is kit-bashed from Tactical Marine components and parts taken from the Space Marine Captain set to give him a suitably distinctive appearance.

I’ve also been working on a Rhino. I must say, I’ve never really liked the Rhino kit. The design is very boring and I really didn’t enjoy putting it together. However, now that I have started painting it it is growing on me. The tank looks a little rough in places as this is its third paint job.

It started life as a Predator for my Death Guard before being converted into a Rhino for my Dark Angels and then stripped and repainted to join my Astral Claws. Also, a botched attempt to fill in the ubiquitous gaps along the edges of the tank adds to the roughness of the overall finish.I’ve tried to use battle damage and weathering to conceal some of the imperfections but I’m not too bothered about this as it is not a display piece and will only ever be used for gaming (if that).

A close-up of the symbol of the hatch. This is a decal from Forge World. Applying decals of this size was a first for me and it took a bit of practice to get it right as they are much harder to move around without creasing or tearing them.

Hopefully I will be able to get the rhino finished soon along with the final marine to finish off my first squad.

-Andy.

More Astral Claws

Over the Bank Holiday I have managed to get a lot of work done on my Astral Claws. I’ve very nearly finished my first Tactical Squad.

For those of you who have been asking about how I went about painting them the technique is as follows:

Silver

1) Leadbelcher

2) Wash with Badab Black

3) Highlight with Leadbelcher

4) Highlight sparingly with Mithril Silver

Blue

1) The blue is an old Citadel paint called Lightning Bolt Blue

2) Wash with Asurmen Blue and shad around the edge of the shoulder pad with Badab Black.

3) Highlight Lightning Bolt Blue.

Once the decal is applied (using Micro Sol and Micro Set) I give the shoulder pads several thin coats of Lahmian Medium to blend the decal in. This also gives the blue a more muted appearance.

Astral Claws progress

Just a quick update to show where I’m up to with my Astral Claws. Hopefully I will get plenty of time to work on them over the bank holiday.

Astral Claws

In addition to my Hobbit models I am also working on a small number of Astral Claws. I really like the new colour scheme devised by Forge World a few years ago and the background of the chapter really appeals. Now that I am nearing the end of the Dark Vengeance set it seems like a natural stopping point for my Dark Angels collection. Therefore the marines I bought at Christmas are now destined to become Astral Claws.

The reason for this is the fact that I am more of a painter/modeller than a gamer and therefore I would much rather just paint what ever I feel like at the time rather than working towards building usable armies. The Dark Angels were a nice little project but I don’t really want to carry on painting yet more green power armour. At times like this the gaming side of the hobby seems like more of a straightjacket to me than a source of inspiration and so, after much thought, I decided to break out of the army building mindset and just paint them as Astral Claws. I must say, I’m glad I did as these have been great fun to paint. The silver armour is much quicker to paint than the green leaving me more time to paint interesting details such as chips and scratches on the armour.

The chips are painted freehand over the armour colour using Rhinox Hide. They are then highlighted with a lighter mix of the basecoat. For the silver this is pure Mithril Silver and for the blue this is a 50/50 mix of Lightning Bolt Blue and white. This gives the chips the illusion of depth and really makes them pop.

The iconography on the models is applied using decals from Forge World and Games Workshop respectively. I applied a bit of wear and tear to the markings in order to make them look like part of the armour. As you can also see in the above photo, the eyes were painted amber to tie in with the leonine theme of the Astral Claws. At present the base has been left black as I am not sure how I am going to paint them yet.

I can’t foresee myself embarking upon any more army sized projects (or at least not for quite some time) instead I am going to focus on individual models and squads so this project should be fairly small.

Deathwing assault

I’ve finished Squad Barachiel from Dark Vengeance. For more information on the painting process see this post.

Ravenwing biker

I have finished the first model of my Ravenwing squad. As with my Deathwing terminators, I took special care with the Ravenwing to make sure that they are consistent with the rest of the army. Details such as the gold, eye lenses, scroll work and purity seals are painted the same way as on all of my other Dark Angels and the gun casings are painted in green to tie in with the tactical marines. In addition to this, the ‘feathers’ on the back of the bike are painted using the same palette as on the Deathwing armour.

I only have two more bikers and Master Balthazar to paint and I have finished the Dark Angels army from Dark Vengeance. Here is a shot of my little army all together (click for a bigger image):

All the best,

Andy.

Pre-Heresy Death Guard conversion

This model was created for an online hobby challenge on Twitter called #BitsBoxChallenge organised by Andy Tunley (@atunley). The challenge, as its name suggests, was to create a model using only those parts found in your bits box. My idea was to create my version of a pre-Heresy Death Guard marine in the modified mkIII Iron Armour that they are famed for. The inspiration for this came from an illustration in one of the fantastic ‘Index Astartes’ articles in an old issue of White Dwarf.

The inspiration.

I used a spare Forge World Death Guard torso which I had left over from doing my Chaos marines as the basis for the conversion. The chest plate had to be cut away and replaced with a suitably Heresy-era looking chest plate taken from the Tactical Squad set. I then had to sculpt the neck area in green stuff. The plastic arms are also from this set as is the studded shoulder pad. At first I was uncertain over which shoulder pad to use. I was toying with the idea of using one from the Chaos Space Marine set as it matched the look of Forge World’s Iron Armour more closely. However, in the end I decided to go with the ‘rule of cool’  and use the studded pad instead which looks much better.

The bolt pistol and backpack are ones that I have had in my bits box for a very long time and come from the previous Space Marine range (before the release of the current line of multi-part plastics). The legs are from an old metal veteran model which was sawed in half. The gaps were filled with green stuff and parchments and grenades from the Space Marine set were used to cover the join.

What started out as an idea for a simple kit bash became one of the most ambitious conversions I’ve attempted to date (I usually just build stuff straight out of the box). There was a lot more sawing, filing and sculpting than I anticipated. I really enjoyed this little project and hope to get him painted up soon. The next #BitsBoxChallenge is scheduled for 6th May so check out the hash tag and get rummaging through your bits box!

In other news, I have made some more progress on my Dark Angels army and I hope to share this with you soon.

All the best,

Andy.

Brother Librarian Turmiel

Another Dark Vengeance miniature is finished. I am really enjoying painting this set, the models are all fantastic. My one criticism of Turmiel is that he is perhaps a little too detailed. This made painting the model a bit of a challenge as there are a lot of different bits to paint and I wanted to avoid using too many colours as I didn’t want the model to become a confusing mess or look like an explosion in a paint factory. For this reason I used a lot of neutral colours for the details in order to allow the blue to really stand out.

My other concern when painting this model was that he fit in with the look of the rest of the force despite wearing the livery of a librarian rather than the dark green armour of his brethren. In order to achieve this I used a very dark blue (Regal Blue) as the basecoat and used the same edge highlighting technique I used on the tactical squad. In addition to this the robes are painted to match Raphael and the Deathwing terminators and details such as the shoulder pads and embroidery on the robes are picked out in green. Hopefully he will fit in with the rest of the army while still remaining unique.

The force sword was another area that gave me a bit of trouble. Initially I painted the pattern on it blue but this ended up too similar to the rest of the model. Instead I opted to go for an ‘old school’ look and paint the sword with a red pattern. I think there is enough red elsewhere in the army that this works.

I game terms I’m not sure which psychic discipline to give him. I may opt for ‘Divination’ or ‘Biomancy’ as I like the idea of psychic powers that can enhance other units in the army or debilitate the enemy rather than simply destructive ones. I’ll give this a bit more though once I’ve read through Codex: Dark Angels which I plan on purchasing at the weekend.

-Andy

Sergeant Raphael

I’ve finally put the finishing touches to Sergeant Raphael from Dark Vengeance. Here he is in all his glory.

For more insight into the painting process check out my earlier work-in-progress post.

All the best,

Andy.

Deathwing Terminators

Happy New Year everyone! December was a fairly slow month for me hobby-wise with Christmas, New Year and family visits occupying much of my time. However, I am now getting back into the swing of things and have completed my first two Deathwing terminators from Dark Vengeance.

The colour scheme is essentially the same as I used on my Saruman model, showing the different results that can be achieved using the same colours. As with my other Dark Angel models I used hard edge highlighting (rather than the gradual blending on Saruman) which I think works really well on power armour. The sharp highlights also help to tie them in visually with the green tactical marines.

For the bone armour I wanted a paler off-white look rather than the cream/bone of the ‘Eavy Metal scheme. This was painted as follows:

1) Over a white undercoat apply a basecoat of Dheneb Stone.

2) Shade using Vallejo German Camo Pale Brown (a great colour that could have been invented for shading Dheneb Stone).

3) After tidying up the Dheneb Stone highlight with Pallid Wych Flesh.

4) Apply a final edge highlight of White Scar.

The model with the chainfist was actually painted before buying Pallid Wych Flesh using a 50/50 mix of Dheneb Stone and White Scar for stage 3. However, Pallid Wych Flesh is more or less the same. It is slightly paler but this is hardly noticeable. The advantage of using Wych Flesh is that I don’t have to mix paints anymore allowing me to get a more consistent finish across the squad.

One of my fears when it came to painting a Dark Angels army was the different colours used by the units in the army. I was initially worried that this would end up resulting in a lack of consistency across the army and this was something I thought long and hard about trying to avoid. In the end I decided to use the same dark green as my tactical marines for the weapon casing to tie them together. I also painted details such as the eye lenses, purity seals and chest eagles exactly the same was as on my marines to further reinforce this sense of coherency. The chapter icons and robes on my other models are painted Dheneb Stone and highlighted up to White Scar to match the terminator armour.

Hopefully this photo of a terminator side-by-side with a tactical marine illustrates what I’m talking about: