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.

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!


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.

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!

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!

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