Massive update :-D

Finally hobby picture time:
During past easter weekend I finished the room that I'm refurbishing.Now I have to wait for my girl and mother to hang some wallpaper before finishing up the whole deal=> paint, floor and electric stuff.
That means that until the girls meet up and do their thing(7th of May), I have some time to spend with miniature soldiers :-D me happy, big time!
Further complications in the continuation of this blog were the loss of my camera(just misplaced, typical :-/), and the busy working days. However updating the blog can work a wonder when motivation is down.....so yhere we go:
Picture time :-D
I've been playing with the idea of finally painting up a warhammer fantasy army and the steampunk-tech style of the skaven spoke to me(the fact that i'll need 200+ models brings a shadow of a doubt :-P). But here are some pictures of an assasin that I've been colouring :

I've also been working on a Flames of war force on and off.
Finally finished my SS-recon platoon with an upgrade to tank hunters(4 Schwimmwagens to go....but those will be my first airbrush experiment).

Yesterday evening I was finally finishing my last strike cruiser for my Dark angels battlefleet gothic fleet. The rest of the force is green, but I liked the idea of a ravenwing dedicated strike cruiser :

A little sneak peek at some projects/conversions for golden deamon Germany( in August)-feeling the stress allready-

That's Valkia the bloody and a early-heresy world eater for you :-D
Finally the big project: The Severed
Some progress on the first squad of warriors and my first raider. Now it's time to start the edge highlights :-D

Have a go at it.
.....and remember, maybe one day I'll be able to take at least some decent pictures :-/

The other hobby!

As every homeowner will testify, the job is never done :-D
The previous owner gave a good start by installing a roof. However they refurbished the 1st floor horribly.
And that's where my other "hobby"-or call it time-drain- comes in.
Last year was dedicated to the master bed-room and now I'm doing the rest of the first floor.
1st room of the 2(+ hallway) is moving along  smoothly......the denizens of Commoragh are moving a lot slower ;-)
Cause and effect
But here's a picture of a couple of weeks ago:

In the meantime all the gyproc-plates have been mounted and I'm drywalling the seams @ the moment(after work)

I know.....all this is quite off-topic in this blog. However I'm covering the silence :-D

On the bright side:
I won the painting competition der lage landen in the GW-store in Amsterdam. In the category Single model 40K, I won first place! The Commisar of Krieg posted earlier brought home victory for me, and now he's off to the cabinet of a friend of mine.
I will however get some "professional" pictures and I'll post them ASAP. In the meantime the high from the win pushes me on in my motivation for golden deamon Germany.
Busy, busy at work so that's it for now

Aftermath

As promised I present you the picture of my entry that won 40k single model in the pre-selections.

I'm delighted to finally have a decent picture of one of my models. I'm not 100% pleased with the angle. The sword-drawing arm hides a rather big part of the model. I'm also a little bit dissapointed by the fault in my name. It should have been "Gert D'Hollander". But hey, I've won.....and there's a lovely picture to prove it, so no complaining :-P
The competition had the great effect, that these events always have on me. I'm dying to go in, brushes and paints flying and produce even better models. The brainstorming for some Golden deamon entries have begun. Some sketches are in the works. Let's warm up the greenstuff, creativity, etc... and hopefully I'll produce some stunning entries.
2 things I still want to mention before I finally quit my win-induced rant:
- A friend of mine archieve some nice wins in the same competition. He also was delighted by the "professional" pictures and posted them in his blog. Check them out, I sense a lot of potential in his future and I hope that we can boost our mutual performances: BLOG
- The commisar was painted as part of a mini exchange. As experiment, I try out different painting styles during these mini-exchanges. A mordheim model posted earlier was painted using Natalya Melnik's technique(I 've got the DVD :-D). This commisar was painted using some techniques inspired by the Apes over at Massive Voodoo.

That's it for today

fingers crossed fot the 10th of April: Finals in Amsterdam.....THESE COLOURS DON'T RUN! ;-)

Nailed that one! Nailed it good

Dear readers/watchers,

a very short but happy post.

As of last saturday I'm a contestant in the painting competition der lage landen( The Netherlands and the dutch part of Belgium). The 26th of March me and some friends gathered at the GW shop in Antwerp. That store was the scene for our local selection of this competition. I took home the first place in single mini 40k with the commisar in the previous post. Not only is the win great, but the prospect of finally have one of my better mini's captured in a profesional picture(let's hope so). As soon as the guys from the shop hand over the picture, I'll post it up here. A friend of me over at http://dimsgalleries.blogspot.com/ participated and won some categories. Give us a thumbs up for the 10th of April.

These colours don't run

Almost done!

Here's a forgeworld commisar that I've been painting for a friend of mine(Mini exchange N°2). We did a kind of threesome....3 guys selected a model and then passed it to the left hand side. So I ended up with this model, my Drazhar(old dark eldar mini) is with another friend and the guy this commisar belongs to is painting an old kroot model from forgeworld(big scale). To up the ante we agreed to bring our models to the painting competition held in all GW shop in Flanders & The Netherlands. Next Saturday(26th) will be decide if these models make the first cut or not, 11th of April the final decision falls in Amsterdam GW.


I'd appreciate some crossed fingers and all :-P
Commernts are welcome!

On a different note: My production line painting of my first squad of kabalites is comming along, I did some nice progress on my raider & I started a Skaven model(might even make it for the same competition). The purpose of all this pictureless info.....build expectation.

I'll keep you posted

Emerging kabalites

Finally!

My first  kabalite is as good as done. I want some freehand "unit/kabal"-markings but this is more or less the way that my kabalite forces ("all 35 of them") willl look.
Like/dislike? Suggestions welcome as allways.


Furthermore some WIP shots of the first raider:

Slowly getting there :-P

Not many words this time(busy, busy, busy), but I hope you enjoy the eyecandy!
And I really would love it to get additional feedback from all those skilled painters out there!

As a last minute treat: Some FOW- Das Reich scouts

These really need some better lighting, but we'll fix when they are flocked and labelled(want to paint the base-edges black with SS markings).

It flies!!!!

So finally a kind of productive weekend!
It started out well with me sitting with some guys that just started the hobby and spending a nice evening of painting together. And during past sunday I found some time in between different tank battles(yep, still addicted to World of tanks). So as a result I'm proud to announce that my first raider is flying :-P. Most of the internals have been painted. The bottom has been painted as well and I mounted the sail and dark lance.

The exterior and details still need a lot of work, BUT....I can start to admire the lovely shape and make flying noises...All the good stuff :-D
My first kabalite warrior is approaching the finish as well and the rest of the squad is ready for priming.
And my first ravager is having it's interior highlighted :-D Lot's of work done allready but much more to come yet !
On the topic of other projects: I started de-mouldlining the imperial guard commisar for the mini-exchange and this refreshed my love-hate relationship with forge world. The details on these mini's is amazing. No other word can describe them, BUT...the mould lines are one f*cking job to get them of.Sometimes it seems that the moulds have shifted a full millimeter away from each other. This means a lot of carefull grinding and probably a little resculpting....I'll keep you posted.

As a final note: I was driving to work this morning and all of a sudden it hit me. "The severed" didn't choose a sissy colourscheme. It's all about crushing the spirit of their prey. Imagine:
 after a night of beign terrorised by strange, scary sounds and all, you see a flash of purply, pink colour resembling a new dawn. You're fully convinced that you will be safed or at least you'll have a chance to defend yourself against the until now unseen foe. But all of a sudden these hopes are crushed and "the severed" start to feed on your despair! (blablabla....the colour of the dawn today resembled my colour scheme :-p)