Slowly but steady

Slowly but steady.....kind of fitting with the character of the death guard.
Then again I'm busy with quite a lot of different stuff so my hours spent on painting last month are rather rare. Furthermore I also do not want to rush these. In past projects I've often cut corners for a more rapid 'end' result. This often results in the finished product being just that sliver of quality off of being really good. Or so I keep telling myself.


Anyway....what did I do?
Well for the biggest part the first quarter of my breachers are done. There's quite a bit to do yet: freehand markings, finishing touches on the metals, weathering and combat damageand the eyes. But they at least start to look the part and are allowing me to appreciate a bit more how the finished army will look.

You can already see a hint of my basing idea. As I wanted to use both Typhon & Mortarion on their bases as they are delivered with them, I needed to find a way to fit the bases of my army with these 2 characters. I'll be aiming for a wrecked concrete floor: Think bomb craters & combat damage to an industrial locale. The byro-lines on the base will be replaced by some plasticard shape echoing the edges of typhon & Mortarion's base. Hopefully this will result in the illusion of a floor resembling this:
stelcon platen
I have good hopes that this will look pretty cool....but we will see. Bear with me and please remember: Slowly but steady!

Quick update

Pictures that blogger didn't let me post on the previous post

Test model almost done.

Slowly I'm getting there, slowly the first test model is growing in something that I imagined as how my Death Guard should look.
There have been quite some moments of doubt: Will this method work, can I get enough contrast with that barely noticeable glaze of colour, etc... But while there is still some weathering needed, the bronze needs to be highlighted, a lot of details need to be painted, etc... I'm really starting to dig this colour scheme/method for my death guard. Yes, it is pretty intensive. And for sure, much cursing will be done after tactical marine number 15 :-/   But then again, I'm pretty sure that if I keep this up, keep myself motivated and stay away from sloppy shortcuts, I'll end up with one kick arse interpretation of Lord Typhon's first grand company. I hope you agree with me, but even more so after finishing the model and basing.
Additionally I've included my "mood board" scrapbook that I've created as a means to find an interesting twist on the colour scheme.
And on a side note I'm buzzing with excitement for the Adam Wilder workshop that I'll be attending this weekend. Something else, but as a history nut I'm really looking forward to learn more techniques to grow in that branch of our lovely hobby!

Motivation brings progress

I'm terribly busy at the moment. At home we've torn down an old veranda and we're building an extension. Aside from physically helping a couple of days (moving a lot of bricks and basically taking care that the brick layers could focus on what is their talent), there is a lot that needs to be arranged. Next to that there is also a kid to raise. Our little pirate turned 2 last Halloween and what a piece of work he is! Which is great, but tiring. Considering all this, hobby has been a bit quite. But I'm really bursting at the seams with motivation to dig in my death guard army project. So in small bits and pieces, some progress was made.

Starting from Vallejo grey primer, I airbrushed some black from underneath and some white from the top. This resulted in some basic light situation on the models as you can see.

Now I've decided to paint 2 models as test model. Either I end up repainting 1 of them to match the army or both methods lead to comparable results and then I just have to decide which way I like best for a full army.

For my first test model I've opted for something akin to the Black & White technique by Mr. José Luis López. I've enhanced the contrast archieved by priming with some hand painted black in the shades & white on the highlights. Here are some pictures of the differences in contrast & readability. The idea is now to glaze some offwhite over it all and so smoothening out sloppy blends(which there will be plenty if I ever want to finish the army). After the "tinting" I will enhance the colour and contrast by glazing in different shades and re-highlighting with white. At the moment I'm still in doubt if I'll first block in some green parts. We'll see....

Resurrection!

This blog has been death for a while. To be honest I've kept it alive to check on my favourite blog through this tool but haven't paid it any attention.
However that is about to change as I want to document my investment in 30K.
I've been liking the setting since the release of "horus rising". The decline of my interest in 40k due to a combination of re-writing the fluff, removing of the personality of armies due to unlimited allies etc... left a void. After seeing the excellent source books from Forgeworld I wanted to fill that void with something heresy related. However those cursed black library writers did an excellent job of making about all of the legion's pretty cool. And altough there have been a couple of dissapointing releases (I'm looking at you, facial sculpts of world eater rampager squad) forgeworld has released a ton of interesting legion specific units. So for me the picking of a legion was a hellish process.
But for the moment I've settled for Death Guard. The possibilities offered by a pale colour scheme and a tendency to keep their suits of armour in a less than perfect state gives me an interesting chance to experiment with weathering.


So Death Guard it was ....then list building came next as the price tag of FW's average portion of resin prevents me from going al out and buy way too much (plus the possibility that after the death guard I might be tempted to go for another legion, and another, and another, etc...).  Before the start of the list building I had a couple of absolutes: I wanted to include the released death guard character: Typhon was in. I also wanted to include both legion specific terminator units: Death shroud and grave wardens. Considering those and how I see the death guards way of war I opted for a full infantery force (for now limited to 1500pts) which resulted in 20 breachers, 10 tacticals, 5 grave wardens, 2 rapier laser destroyers, a contemptor and 6 deathshrouds(adding typhon makes seven :-D)


The list built for the moment (and to be added upon by adding Mortarion for example) I started to get some of the resin kits. In parallel I started to research some artwork & inspiration. The lovely artwork in the Forge world source books combined with some old artworks from various sources (thank you pintrest) is in a nice folder and is looked upon often.


I've started to build some breachers. I'm sketching out what will become the display/carry base for the army and I've prepared some basic approach about how to paint them. So we've started this endeavour fairly structured. I hope to be able to keep this up and do some regular updates on my progress. However, a lot of snapshot pictures will also be visible on this facebook page:
https://www.facebook.com/Wingedbrushco/?fref=ts