Through the chemclouds, they come

Almost done!


In a couple of days my grind on the Grave wardens will be over.
These models are so f*cking cool. A bit limited in their posing possibilities but so characterful for Death Guard.
I guess I'll need more of them in the future (to hike my army to a respectable 2k or 3k points).
But before I ponder that too much I'm finishing my current 1,5k points.
The Grave wardens bring me to a total of 15 painted models + Mortarion (he's not realy included in the 1,5k points but can bring my army to about 2k).
Which leaves me with 10 tacticals, 10 breachers, 6 or 7 deathshroud, 1 contemptor, 2 rapier batteries & typhon....sigh...
I might need to pick up the pace a little bit but I do not want to rush them.
But enough ranting for now....some eye candy on the progress of these dudes.

Intermezzo in Historia

Reading between the lines of my previous posts you might get the sense that I'm burning out on the death guard. And you would be right!


One of my personal challenges is that my mind is constantly bursting with new idea's, new projects...a typical example of  "the new shiny thing"-syndrome. I'm easily enthusiasmed by an  idea.
This has it benefits but also some serious pitfalls.


To prevent rushing the death guard to subpar completion. I've partly given in to the sentiment that I needed to do something other than death guard. Last October I've started painting a tiny (1/48 scale) PanzerKampfWagen IV Ausf H. The occasion/motivation for it was a half day workshop at scale model challenge in Veldhoven, the Netherlands. I had the opportunity to follow this workshop from Jose luis lopez, diving into his Black & White technique for painting scale models. during this short course I prepared my Black and white undercoat for the panzer with some tricks here and there to extra highlight some interesting features of the model. Afterwards a very thin and controlled "Dunkelgelb" was applied. But after the workshop, the panzer remained WIP on my desk. Constantly reminding that something had to be done, But I never took it up.


So back to the present situation: I needed a distraction and the panzer needed attention, so we found each other. In the following pictures you can find the current state of the tank: after the airbrushing I added scratches, started painting some of the details & gave it all a nice coat of Tamiya X22 clear. All in preparation of the following oily steps!
Some important things to note are the lack of Schürtzen. I've convinced myself to try and soler some nice edged brass. This however wasn't finished in time for the workshop. So it still needs to happen.

And what would be a lonely panzer without some interesting setting. So during the last couple of evenings, I've built a solid foundation for a nice environment for this vehicle.

As a consequence, I've given myself the challenge of some serious conversions on a couple of resin figures. But that will be a different story.

Here's the current mock up of this vignette.

Down in Southern Russia a PzIv is guided across an improvised bridge with the help of the dismounted crew. Simple, yet I hope effective. Comments, remarks and ideas are greatly appreciated as I am a bit out of my comfort zone in this strange historical part of the hobby :-D

Wait for it.........

What happend to my intentions of updating more often?




Well actually, not taking pictures and limited hobby time happened!
The last couple of weeks I've been slowly grinding on the next 5 breachers.
And actually they are pretty close to completion.
I've also built my grave wardens and started on their bases. That way I can airbrush/prime them at the same occasion.

But back to the breachers. At a certain point I decided to not use the stellar decal/transfer sheet from forge world. This meant lots of small freehands. But as I figured the army wasn't going to be that massive, I kinda accepted the consequences. In reality this always becomes a point in time where my progress stalls a bit. I like doing the freehands but dread it at the same time.


But after leaving the dread behind I slowely started to make some headway:

Not perfect, but good enough hidden partially behind the breacher shield.
Likewise I added legion symbols, roman numerals and other minor marking to all the models. Minimal, as we are talking about death guard. And then I assembled the models and started finishing the breachers shields and backpacks on the model itself.

And another hesitation for the next freehands :-/
And more cursing about not using the transfer sheet....
But lets start with blocking in some green banding:

So let's hope this evenings painting session brings more tiny scribblings, less fear and some steps closer to finishing these 5 breachers. I can't wait to have the first 10 troops surrounding Mortarion on picture.
And yes....again I've come up with the idea that this is the last army I'll ever do. So much other cool projects are haunting my dreams. But I will persist, I will not rush and I will do my death guard army justice!


Interlude

My airbrush setup is far from perfect.
I'm confined to an old, 'airy' garage for my airbrushing.
This kind of shuts me down for most of winter in regard to airbrushing.  Now and then I have a good day where fair weather coincides with some free time.  Some of these lucky breaks allowed me to prime the next batch of 5 breachers. I primed them black and white, then "upgraded" the basecoat and now I need to wait for another lucky break to spray some very thin coats of light beige over this high contrast base.

I also finished their bases. This way I can mount them on the base as soon as they are airbrushed. Ok, I'll have to be a bit more careful with my brushstrokes around the feet, but I can integrate the models much better in the base. On the picture the bases weren't completely done yet. The sandy area is tinted and drybrushed after this stage to add extra depth.

Just as I was about ready with Mortarion (who actually deserves some better pictures but consider this as a teaser), the weather changed.

Gone were the hopes for further advances into my next quarter squad of breachers.
So I started on a model that I had worked on right after last years Scale model challenge. To be completely honest, a lot of pent up frustration about the judging at that event was put into the model. I also promised myself that I would stop whining about it after I finished the model....but the model got sidetracked and my whining continued.....:-/
No More!!! I'm just about to wrap this one up!

And then we'll see what the weekend brings as I'm looking forward a lot to the upcoming Banshee workshop. Colour, colour everywhere.....my more muted style can use some more bright colours!


And just a reminder: I'm extremely interested in your opinion, pointers, comments etc....

Slow but purposeful

Last post has been a while again, but I slowly progressing on Mr. death himself.
Again I have a couple of pictures of actual progress. Not the best pictures but they are quick phone snapshots that I'm sharing with my painting buddies, horus heresy lovers and some facebook groups.
I'm pretty pleased with how he's turning out as it is the Mortarion as I envision him after reading and rereading a couple of his appearances in black libraby & forge world books.
I'm even more pleased that my ploy worked. After almost finishing the primarch I'm now bursting at the seams again with enthusiasm to paint some troops. So another set of 5 breachers are standing- cleaned and primed- ready to be painted. Still a slow crawl but any growth is nice....right?

Gene father of the fourteenth

The last couple of weeks I've been slowly grinding on and on.
And today I want to share some pictures with the actual progress on Mr. Mortarion, the death lord himself.

Still a lot of work to do and there are some parts that still need to be cleaned and basecoated.
But I'm pretty pleased with how the off white armour is evolving. Completely differenty from my Horus but I feel it's fitting for Mortarion. While I want to leave it open whether my death guard are still 'loyal' or have already fallen for the guile of the warmaster, I believe Mortarion always had a sinister aura. And that's what I am aiming for. My horus is clearly still the shiny, white armoured paragon of the imperial truth (I leave evil Horus for a possible second sculpt by Forge world). Mortarion needs a bit more grit, weathering, grime....Will it work out as planned? Well....we'll need to see about that! I still find envisioning the final result of a mini in advance very hard.

As a parting shot and because he's mentioned a couple of times: Horus

DONE!

It took a while, but that is OK. I'm not working towards a hard deadline here.
And I also hope that now that I've completed the colour scheme designing process, my next models will go a bit faster. I've already located some redundant and useless steps that I will cut out.
But first some pictures. And please remember that your comments/ideas are very much appreciated!

The next 5 breachers are ready for priming. The bases need some final finishing. But apart from that they are good to go. But as I've been a little bit under the weather lately, I've not started the priming. I do my airbrushing in the garage and it's pretty cold there. So instead I choose to clean my grave wardens. What lovely models! I can't wait to start painting those.

I've also started on the big guy, but this is still pretty rough.