17 June 2008

The space-time continuum is conspiring against me...

Ok, so I've been pretty busy as of late and havn't really done a whole lot of painting. I had a karate tournament, I had been training for, on sunday. I think there's another one in august, not sure. The one on sunday was good. Down in weston-super-mare. Had a few of the refs from the british university champs. Good guys.

Anyway, since I last posted I havn't really worked on my dire avengers. I undercoated them, and put part of the base down for the champion, and that's about it. I got bored of them after that, hah. They looked like fun on the box. Oh well. I have painting one of my grail knights, however. The box only came with four sets of legs though, so I'll be one knight short :(. I could take it back, but I only realised I had one leg missing after I started glueing them all together.

I've actually decided to start building up an army in either warmachine or hordes now. The miniatures look a heck of a lot better than whatever games workshop puts out. And that takes a lot for me to say that americans have done something better than us brits... d'oh. Privateer Press - I bow to you.

I've been thinking of getting in WM+H for a little while, and now that maelstrom are stocking them, I guess now is the parfect time. I can also pick up some vallejo paints I've been meaning to try from maelstrom. So far I've stuck to games workshop. But the bottles of vallejo look better as I can pour the paint out drop by drop. Making it easier to mix the correct paint ratios. I look forward to it.

Untill then,

Sayonara

05 June 2008

Folk from the BBC...

So the BBC were filming at karate last night. Pretty cool. They're doing a thing on my sensei for a show about young entrepreneurs under 30. Being aired in september I think. Can't quite remember the name though. Something Tycoon. I dunno. Keep a look out for it, should be good :).

So it's decided to stop raining. Which is cool. It actually wasn't raining yesterday, but I was so busy, I didn't even have time to quickly undercoat my avengers. Hopefully I'll get a moment this evening sometime. Busy day today as well. No rest for the wicked :).

Adios.

03 June 2008

It's raining, it's pouring

Ok, so it's been raining the past couple of days. Which means I havn't been able to get out and spray my dire avengers *waggles fist at the sky*. I havn't really been in the mood to finish off my guardians. There's not really much to it. I think from now on (for a while at least) I'm going to purchase individual models. That way I'll be painting something different and new each time.

Also, I've been thinking a lot about painting some fantasy figures too. After looking through the catalogue there's quite a few guys I really wanna have a bash at.

Not much else to report really. But if there's anybody out there that does somehow have control over the whether. Could you please send some sunshine my way? Thanks :).

31 May 2008

"Kick aaass" - Cartman

Huh. Games Workshop decided to send my paints anyway. Just got them today. But guess what. They also sent me the new painting book as well. Doesn't get released till the 7th. So that's pretty cool. It has a lot of useful information in it. I can see myself referring to it often. Especially the step-by-step guides in the back.

Also, there's a Hobbycraft not too far from me in Stevenage. They sell some games workshop stuff, and they're paints aren't dried up like that other place. Although the lady behind the counter wouldn't sell me a primer spray because I had no proof of ID, d'oh. I'm 21, clearly look over 18, and it was obvious I wasn't purchasing it for nefarious needs concidering I had a bunch of other games workshop stuff (amounting to about £40) in the basket, hah. I just think she didn't like me because my knuckles were raw making it look like I had recently been in a fight, lol. Actually it was from punching a kicking shield to bits last night at karate. Scraped all the skin off me knuckles. Been getting quite a few frowns from people today, hahah. Oh well.

Oh, I picked up some Eldar Dire Avengers too. They look very cool to paint, and it looks as though I can follow the instructions on painting a space marine from the back of the new book, reasonably closely.

Me being the dozey berk that I am, however, I forgot to pick up some shadow grey and space wolves grey while I was in hobbycraft. So I've ordered them online, along with the new wash set. That's supposed to be released on the 7th too, but hopefully they'll decide to be nice and send those early as well.

Either way I've got plenty to be getting on with.

Peace.

30 May 2008

Dry paint no good...


Ok, so the store in my town that sells warhammer stuff is kinda crap. I wanted to buy some new paint to highlight my eldars (blazing orange if your interested) but it turns out all of their GW paints are all dried up. In their pots. How? You tell me. Concidering the amount of dust on them I'd say they hadn't moved in a good few years.

Anyway, so I've had to order my paint online, direct, but I also ordered the new "How to paint citadel miniatures" book which isn't released till the 7th. That means my paints won't be dispatched till then either. D'oh. Nevermind though. I've got a bunch of other stuff I can get on with in the meantime.

Anyway, now seems like as good a time as any to show some bits and bobs.

Here's my work area. Kinda cramped, bad lighting and not well thought out, but it does the job for now.




Yep, those are my eldar in the front. The ones I've basecoated anyway. Here they are close up:




Here's the first miniature I ever painted. A space Marine Commander (not quite complete I know):




And finally some chaos space marines. I've found these in some ways to be the most fun to paint, but in other ways the most boring. Don't ask me to explain:




Well, that's all for now. Peace.

29 May 2008

The Eldar are coming...



Ok, so I recently got a troop of eldar guardians. And I've changed my mind on the colour scheme. After looking at the actual box, I think the Saim-Hann craftworld colours will look pretty decent afterall (certainly better than my crappy yellow/blue idea).

So far I've glued them all and undercoated them in white -



I've also basecoated the heavy weapons platform and just this second finished slapping on a black wash. I'll leave that to dry up good, and then I'll start some highlights. Hopefully I'll get onto the details tomorrow.



Peace.

28 May 2008

Is it white? Is it metal?

Ok, so here's the thing:  white undercoat + metal miniatures = pain in the ruddy arse! I think I'll just stick with a black undercoat in future when it comes to metal miniatures and just accept the fact that I'll need three or four coats of colour to cover it up, bah.

Anywho, I'm now thinking the witch hunter army idea isn't the best I've had in a while. Metal miniatures take so long to prepare, I think for now I'd much rather spend my time actually painting and getting better in that department. So I've decided to put the witch hunters on hold for maybe a year or so. I definatly want to come back to them however, as I think the finished products will look very cool.

So what am I going to go for in the meantime? Well I've narrowed my choice to either eldar or tau. I like their armour and weapons and the fluff of each army too. I'm leaning towards eldar at the moment. But I think what I'll do is buy a squad of basic eldar and tau troops, paint them both up and then make a decision.

I also need to decide on a colour scheme. I like the 'eavy metal colours for 
tau. As for eldar; I'm thinking a good strong yellow as a base, with black 
for the helmets and various other details. 

I'll make a proper decision soon. Peace.

22 May 2008

Wow, I almost forgot about this blog...



Holy crap. Been a long time. I guess I havn't posted on here in a really long time because I havn't really had anything to post that anyone would find even remotely interresting. Now I do however... I guess.

Ok, so recently I have gotten into warhammer 40k. I don't meen the PC game, though. I'm talking about the proper table-top wargame.

If you've never heard of it, well it's basically a table-top game played with little metal or plastic miniatures, which you buy, glue together and paint. It's the painting side of things that is holding my interest right now. But I figure If I'm going to be painting these things, I might as well work on some sort of army so that if I fancy getting into the actual game side of things I'll have somewhere to start.

So right now I'm working on witch hunters. Why? Because they look freakin' sweet! I've bought an inquister with his retinue and a troop of battle sisters to start me off. I've got the basics down on one of the sisters and and have just started on the sister superior. I figure I'll get all the basics done first, and then I'll go back and shade them, put in more detail and just generally clean them up so they look a lot neater.




As you can see they look very rough at the moment, but they'll do for now. I've gone for the Order of the Bloody Rose paint scheme. Looked the coolest on paper, however the blood red paint is a bit bright. I don't know. Maybe I'll change schemes or just switch to scab red or something.

Here's a photo of them with a few other miniatures I've painted over the past few days.
A Space Marine Commander and a few Chaos Space Marines. All with very basic paint jobs.
The commander was my first bash, and it turned out better than I thought, although halfway through painting I realised I had stuck his flag on the wrong way round and had to reglue it.





Hopefully I'll have the sisters done in a week or two and can get started on the inquisitor. I look forward to that guy, especially some of his henchmen.

In regards to metal miniatures; I can totally understand why people hate them. You need super glue for them, so you run the risk of glueing your fingers together, you can't really change thir poses easily, you don't have a a good choice over how they look, and they have tonnes of nobbly metal bits you have to file off before you can even think about starting. But at the end of the day, I prefer a finished metal miniature than a plastic one. Mainly because it's heavier. The plastic ones just feel a little cheap for me. If I'm going to spend all this time painting them, I want something that feels like it's worth the investment.

Peace.

PS: My photos were taken with my N95 incase your wondering.