Into The Mech - the WiPs

Crikey - has been ages since I posted. Since last time work has been a bit mad and of course had a honeymoon to go on!! Went back to Ireland and then a week in Italy with the wife. Missing Italy again already!
While at home I was able to pick up the Mechanicum Castellax Battle Automata and the weathering powders that I ordered from FW. My first resin piece - awwww!!!

Anyways - back in Korea now since the middle of August and been hard at it. Got painting on the Castellax (after a ton of reading etc on how to treat a resin mini) and did him alongside GW's Tech Priest Dominus. If you haven't got one yet - go and buy one. Seriously gorgeous figure and for once, defintely worth the nonsencical clampack prices.

Kept with the colour scheme I've come up with from my homegrown forgeworld Achlys III and tried to improve on it a touch. So here are the WiPs (I'll put up the finished stuff in the next post) starting with the Dominus; well, he is the boss after all

Everything gets mounted on their own Jenga block and painted seperately

Getting the metals down first. For this scheme I decided not to base paint with metal as I wanted a darker more deep look. So I drybrushed 3 layers over a chaos black base. First Warplock, then Ghenna's Gold and finally Ironbreaker. Much later a little light dusting of Runefang was used to give a final gleem. Some of the metal parts were washed with Drak Blue Shade a few times to give a 'blue steel' look. The edges and some parts were then painted with Runelord Brass, washed with agrax and then highlighted with sycorax

Onto the greys. 10 (I think) thin thin layers later........

 The castellax comes with a multi-melta for his should mounted weapon but I really didint like the look of it so choppity-chop, off came the melta barrels and I pinned/glued on the eradication ray that was left over from building the Dominus.

 For the metals< I did a much rougher drybrushing on the castellax as I want it to look more worn and used than the Dominus. Another 10 or so layers of grey later....

The two boys are nearly done. The Achlys III forgeworld symbol on Cass's shoulder is half decal (the cog part) and half freehand.

So, with Cass & Dom done - decided i NEEDED to make a wee dio for them. But it should match in with the basing I'd already done for the Sydonian Dragoon. I'm not gonna say much about the dio WiPs but any questions - please feel free to ask :)

A Chosen Disaster

Back again! Been meaning throw out an update but things (as per usual) just kept getting away from me! Have of course been painting away like a lunatic! So, what's been happening.....finally finished the DV Chosen figs. Really really happy how they turned out and then DISASTER. I went to seal them with some Purity Seal spray and the damn stuff frosted the lot of them!!! Long story short - I found a brush on matt varnish at he local arts'n'crafts store that fixed them .....90% or so. But seriously.....that is not a good feeling when you spray on and see the figs I'd spent about 50hours or so painting start to look like they had taken a trip 'north of the wall'. I was gutted. Couldn't even bring myself to take a full load of proof photos. I have one....somewhere....I'll edit it in later if I can find it.
Anyways - I e-mailed CC at GW in the off chance they'd be able to help. I honestly wasn't really expecting much as at this point I can re-varnished them and only had one shot of one of them all frosted over. And no receipt for when I bought the DV boxed set last December. A few e-mails later though (with an incredible member of their CC staff) explaining what had happened and that it had happened (albeit to a very lesser degree) with the Harlie Skyweaver - I attached the one photo I had a screenshot of my Visa bill showing I had bought stuff from Orctown (a flgs, not an actual GW shop) they said they were sending me some replacement models. SCORE!!! I was however only expecting the figs that had got ruined. Nope..... a few days (yup - from Britain to Korea o.O ) later a whole brand new DV boxed set and a new Skyweaver boxed set arrived!!!! They do not muck around!! They didnt replace the affected figs but the entire kits that they came in! Dammnnnn - now that is awesome CC. There's one in the eye of all the whinning whinging maggots who incestantly harp on about how GW is the worst company in the 'verse et cetera et cetera!!
So, Chosen fixed and diorama built!! My biggest one yet too. Entered into Paradigm's monthly painting challenge (for June) over on DakkaDakka and thx to the nice folk who voted - I took 1st place :D   Anyways - less yapper and more photos eh?!!! Here's how it all came out (yes, I really do need to reshoot the photos but ...later..later ㅋㅋ)

. The posters I found about the net again, printed them on recycled paper and then tinted with shades. The unlucky guardsmen is from the Cadian squad box. The rest is all foamboard, sand/stones from the local river, mosquite screen repair patches, paperclips and plasticard for the marble tiles I painted to put in the back building. Oh - and a nightlight candle case for the podium that Draz is standing on :) Loved building this thing.
Hope y'like them

You can still see a few bits where the rescue varnish ( as I will now forever call it) didnt quite beat the frosting but overall, I think it did an amazing job.

Any questions, comments, C'n'Cs always welcome :)

Irish Steve

Chosen Diorama

Busy and yet not busy at the same time. School has been closed for the last week and will be until next Monday - well......closed to students, yet we teachers must still come in and sit in our offices. Mercifully I get to go home at lunchtime but sitting at a desk all morning is soul crushing. Anyways, due to this and also the wife is and has been away in Australia visiting friends till Sunday, I have gotten an inordinate amount of painting and modeling done in the last week.
Am working on the DV csm squad - 'The Chosen' for Paradigm's monthly painting comp over on DakkaDakka. These are seriously gorgeous figs. There is 6 of them in total, 2 of which are duplicates so it's five different and really awesome sculpts. If GW got rid of the standard CSM models and instead released a box akin to these Chosen - the whole Chaos contingent would be so much better. Anywho - The Chosen  - stunning sculpts of marines who have had their armour also start to be affected by Chaos; we've got daemonic faces growing out of armour plates, just the right amount of spikey and more vintage looking weapons. Such lovely figs deserve a diorama I thought, so have been building one for them as well. Biggest one I've made so far. As I built it I suddenly realised that it was really reminding me of the little campos or campiellos of Venice. I must be missing Italy again!! Anyways - here's a few WiP shots of what is going on. The Chosen are much further ahead now than shown here but I haven't gotten around to taking newer shots yet. I wanted to try and show their tabbards are having been made of flayed skin. They're very clean looking the now but I will be dirtying, bloodying and weathering them up at bit in final details.
Hope you like 'em
Cheers
Irish

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

'Run Mon-Keigh........RUN!!!'

Second part of today's postings. The finishsed product. Finally the Harlie Skyweaver is all finished and set into its mini-diorama (see previous post for a quick tut on that thing). Am really happy how the whole thing came out.


Harliequin Skyweaver

 Quick notes..... The motley was all freepainted after being lightly penciled on with a clutch pencil


Harliequin Skyweaver

The rider's hair was done with multiple glazes on a pure white base. Wanted to try using glazes to get that blended look for a change and gota say, glazes are defintely the way to go for hair. So much easier and a much better look. The blood streaming off the back of the zephyr black was once again BFTBG tech paint and a few more bristles snipped off my dog's toothbrush! I had a bit of a fuckup when I sealed the bike with a spray of purity seal and the metallics all frosted over as well as the gems. That was not fun. Everything else seemed to be ok but I had to repaint the frosted areas with was a pisser. Oh - the Chaos cultist (with my DV theme base) is just a proxy for the moment. The final mon-keigh that will be there is gonna be a running screaming Space Wolf marine. Need to somehow get my hands on one. Buying all the seperate parts for one on a bitz site ends up being kinda expensive just for one fig........if anyone out there has a spare screaming running SW they don't want....lemme know ;)

Anyways - there it is. Took about a month all told I think to do and finish which considering I'm supposed to be planning/organising/getting ready for my wedding in under 3 weeks, ain't too bad!!!

Hope ye like 'em

Irish Steve

Free-Basing

Double post today as am well behind. The Skyweaver is all done and dusted. Made a wee dio base for them as well. These dio bases are really easy to do but make a real difference to the finished fig.

 The primary base piece is 2 parts (I'll pop another photo in later if I remember) - The bottom is 2mm black plasticard and then the top part is 2mm foarmboard. Using a circle cutter I cut out the slots for the Skyweaver plastic base and a reg. small base to slot into. The steps are made from the same foamboard and stuck together with hot glue. The tiles are drawn out on 1mm card (should have used plasticard but didnt have any 1mm) then a circle cutter used again to get the one for the flying base. This way it ensures that the tiles on the flying base and those on the dio base will line up.

 The tiles, steps and a rock are hotglued on and then sand and peebles PVA'd on in the usual manner. Because of the foamboard and the card, I gave the whole thing 3 coats of PVA/water mix to make sure they were totally sealed in, as the spray primer would eat into the foam and paint would soak into the card and warp it

 2 light coats of the ol' Chaos Black spray and we're ready for paint :)

The finished base. The greys were done with mech grey as a base, washed with Nuln and then layered up through eshin, dawnstone and lightly drybrushed with admin grey and final highlights of ulthan grey. The tiles are based with tallarn, washed first with seraphim sepia, then agrax earthshade where the sand/stones meet the tiles and in the recesses of the tiles and steps and then layered up through usabti and screaming skull and scrub brushed to give a worn eroded feel. Think I may have used a little pallid wych as well.....Came out really well I think. All told maybe 6-7 hours at the most. And the final product is above :)

The Brothers Grimm(Dark)

Dark Angel's Deathwing Squad Barachiel

Up to my proverbial tits these days but still managing to squeeze it some painting. Mostly in the mornings as for some godbeknown reason I seem to like getting up at 6am! Anyways.....finally finished up The DV Deathwing squad and even made a wee diorama/scene for them to sit into. Really happy how they turned out. As I was entering them in a painting comp over on Dakka, I decided to make a backdrop for them as well. Piss easy and didn't take that long but sets them nicely into the fluff and I'm all about the fluff!!

That's the final dio. Thin foamboard topped with a sheet of the cobbled street I'm using for basing the DV figs. Circles then cut out of both for the figs to slot into. Stones and sand from the local river added in such a way so that it matches whats on the fig's bases. The wall is foamboard that comes with a layer of cork on top (makes for ace instant texture). The posters came from another artist's blog which I then resized and printed on the school's recycled paper which is much better as it's really gritty and soaks up the inks I used for weathering so much better. The came from Krautscientist's blog which btw I REALLY rec/mnd you check out - https://eternalhunt.wordpress.com/

Here's Vet. Sgt. Barachiel btw - haven't popped his finished pics up yet.

 

I cut a broken Aquila wing out of foamboard to mount him on. As the Sgt, I wanted up to be a little higher than the rest of the squad. I did his powersword in TMM as I'm really not a fan of NMM, esp for weapons; I just don't like the almost cartoony effect that it gives. It's hard to see here but the powersword has a blue sheen to it which worked really nicely just by glazing a few times with drak night shade wash.

 

Anyhow......here's a few other angles/shots of the final piece. Hope you like it :D Any questions/C&C -just hit me up in the comments box

 

Cheers

Irish Steve

 

 

Ohhhhh - There's 3(4) Fluff Easter Eggs or Flufter Eggs hidden in the diorama - see can ye find 'em ;)