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Stevewren

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Blog Entries posted by Stevewren

  1. Stevewren
    This is the current state of my Lord of Change, I have chosen a very different colour scheme that will match some of the details on the next lot of Marauders. I started with a Mephiston Red undercoat and then sprayed on the purple to the wing tips and the feet using a spray can rather than trying to blend it or worry about the airbrush. This made the initial base coat a lot faster to do. 

    The details were dry brushed up with wild rider red and Kislev flesh on the red which works nicely as a top highlight. My intention was to go in and highlight the face carefully as this will be the stand out part of the mode. There doesn't seem to be any real benefit in terms of time vs quality achieved to highlight all the individual feathers, although I have gone round the wing tips with Palyd Which Flesh to give a nice bright highlight on the edges of the purple. 
    I am currently working through the gold and the blue armour and I have been using the Duncan video to try and see how it turns out. I am currently pretty happy with the whole thing. The only thing that I am really not a fan of is trying to paint the tabard as the detail is quite flat and the complexity of the folds and position makes this a very tricky piece to paint with any real quality. Fortunately it is hidden away and will probably not be that visible on the final model when it is based. 
    Overall I think this is a great model and its been a lot of fun to paint so far. 


  2. Stevewren
    "People comment more if a painting and modelling project is put in the Forum section than the Blog Section"
    discuss....
    it seems like having a forum post for tracking your painting and modelling is better than having a Blog in the blog section. Just scanning down the page there are a lot more comments on Posts. 
    Forum/Blog users don't seem to comment much on the blog section. You get quite a few likes or reactions, but very little critique or feedback from what I've experienced. 
    My answer to my own question would be that if you are working on a project don't put it in the blog section, put it here. Use the Blogs more like a diary to track your own projects,  but don't expect as much interaction. 
  3. Stevewren

    Look back at 2017

    By Stevewren,

    This is a photo of all the models that I painted in 2017: 
    The year got off to a solid start with the Tzeentch release. At the start of the year I didn't own any Tzeentch models at all, but I was looking for a new project for the South Coast GT and I was fortunate to get some of the Acolytes to work on. I painted 20 of these, and I have another 20 that are partially done. The kit is great though, so I used them to as the base for 20 Maruders. I fleshed out the army with 6 sky fires, a Tzangor Shaman and 4 Lords of Change. This took me up to March, and it meant I had another 2000pt army completed to add to my collection. one of my goals for 2018 will be to add to this army. I'd like to run some more horrors and also have a unit or two of Enlightened on Disc to go in for a more fighty force. Later on on 2017 I started on this and have added 10 Brimstone horrors so far, as well as a unit of Blue and Pink Horrors. I also got a Gaunt Summoner which I spent a bit of time working on - I'm extremely pleased with how he came out. 
    I spent some time painting a few Nurgle models as well. These were mostly converted for an army project that I started but never finished. However it looks like the start of 2018 will give me some exciting new editions to go into this force. If the new Battletome is competitive then I may try to paint up and actual net list of Nurgle, but if it isn't then I can have some fun adding models as and when. in 2017 I have done 20 Plaguebearers, 10 Warriors, 3 Beasts of Nurgle, a Lord of Plagues, a converted Harbinger of Decay and Festus. I was a little frivolous with my spending this year so I have the remains of the Blightwar box that I can add to this force along with any new models from the upcoming release. 
    And finally, and some what randomly, there are three warhawk riders that I had sitting around for ages. I have a large Woodelf collection and I have a lot of older or unfinished models that I really want to add in and rebase, so I like to do a few of these as little projects throughout the year. The first of these for 2018 will hopefully be the Sisters of the Thorn. I have the steeds completed for these ladies, but the riders have been in an unfinished pile for over a year now. I think they have deserved to be moved  up the painting queue. 
    And of course I also did an awful lot of terrain this year. Preparing for Blood and Glory was very stressful and at times I was really down about the whole thing, but the tables and terrain I managed to complete looked spectacular. I'm not going to put the photos here as they can be found littered throughout the blog, but that was a good 4 months of hard labour and I now have 9 high quality sets of table terrain that I can pull out when friends come over as well as having it ready for next years events. Maybe I can add another table or two if I feel motivated...
    Overall I am pretty pleased with the amount of hobby that I got done this year. Lets hope next year will be just as productive. I'd love to see how everyone else thinks they have done so pop onto the 2017 retrospective thread here and/or start thinking what your 2018 goals could be and post them too. 
    Have a terrific 2018 everyone! 
  4. Stevewren
    I've long been an admirer of the Table Top World terrain - it always appears to be excellent quality and well detailed terrain. Some of it is very expensive, but they have a few pieces that are more reasonably priced, and one of these is the Windmill. It turned up quickly and was well packaged, with all the pieces securely packaged inside the main building section. The casting quality is very good as well, and there was barely any clean up needed. 

    I had a plan for the base that I wanted for the windmill, which was to place it onto a step which was surrounded by some of the excellent ribs from Gary M on Twitter. You can see here how it would be situated. It was important that there was a lot of space around the windmill as I had a little plan for it, so raising the height seemed like a good idea. In the photo below you can also see some the other death terrain pieces in their earliest stages and showing how I generally lay out terrain at the beginning of the process. 

    Once I had cleaned up the Windmill I started on the conversion process. I ordered a very small motor from Pimroni that had a rotational speed 14 rpm. These come pre geared so all you need to do is add a battery pack to them. I ordered a 6amp circular battery holder from Ebay to power the motor and this was attached simply using a few wires and a terminal block. It didn't matter which way the batteries are connected to the motor - all this does is change the direction the motor spins, so you really can't go wrong. Mounting the motor inside the windmill was slightly more challenging. The top of the windmill is cast separately which is a good start, however I had to drill out the hole for the spindle to go through. I replaced the spindle with a small piece of wooden dowel which I drilled on a centre lathe to ensure the holes were located accurately. I drilled a small hole all the way through so that the sails could be mounted and pinned to one side and the other could be pushed on to the spindle of the motor. I then mounted the motor on some hard board and glued it into the top of the windmill. Once I'd done some testing to make sure that everything worked well I glued a ring into the top of the windmill to allow that to be rotated as well. 

    To paint the windmill I used some spray paint and gave the whole thing a few cots of dark grey, light grey and white to pick up a lot of the raised detail. I sprayed the top brown, and didn't worry too much about over spray on this as it would just add a bit of variation on the stone. 
    Once it was dry I washed the whole thing with various different colours and made sure to dry brush the whole thing. This picked up all of the great texture on the model . I was able to selectively wash various stones with blues, green and browns which just adds a nice amount of variation on the piece. I then carefully sprayed the windows with a bright acid green paint to do a glow effect. The Sails had to be painted by hand and took a bit of time, but I didn't spend a great deal of effort. 

    Once this was done I was able to finish mounting the model onto its base. Overall I was happy with the colour scheme and the overall look, and hopefully it will be well received by players at the event this weekend. 
      
  5. Stevewren
    One of the things that I have wanted to make ever since the South Coast Grand Tournament was my very own Silver Tower as the centrepiece terrain feature or my Tzeentch  table. I wasn't sure what to use as the start of the model though, until I came across this cheap (£6.99) lighthouse from The Range. I thought with a bit of tweaking it would work as the base for the model. 

    The first thing that I did was remove all of the shells and nautical decoration. It had al been attached with a glue gun so a quick go at it with the hobby knife allowed me to remove a lot of the detail and then I could sand down some bits that were a little rough.

    However the lighthouse now needed to be AoS'd a little bit. To start with I designed a Tzeentch pattern that I got from the floor tiles from the silver tower game. I scaled them so they were larger at the bottom than the top and then I cut them out carefully. I needed three patterns to go round the tower as well as a couple of extra bits to hide the window and door openings. Once they were cut out I used spray glue to attach them to the lighthouse. I had to go round some of the designs with superglue to get them to stick securely. 
     
    The next step was to cut away the central pillar at the top. I drilled two holes in the top section and the main piece that could be joined by some wooden dowel. I then drilled a hole through a table tennis ball which was going to act as the eye of Tzeentch. I then used the laser cutter to cut out the nine Tzeentch spikes that would go round the top section. For final decoration I glued on some of the bits and pieces left over from the Lord of Change kits to add some more flavour to the design. 
    I
    I then made a new Tzeentch disc style base which I attached to the original wooden base. I drilled a 20mm hole into the bottom using a Forstner bit and glued a piece of clear acrylic tube into it. To make it look magically powered I used expending phone around the bottom and stuck a load of the spare Lord of Change heads into it. At this point I also made a base from MDF and lots of filler to give it some weight. I covered the pole with masking tape so that  could paint the base. 

    With all the building now finished I was able to get on with painting the model. I painted it in four sections - the base, the tower, the base of the tower, and the eye.
     
    The base was painted brown and grey, then dry brushed and flocked. I used a lot of blue and white spray paint to paint the magical cloud at the bottom, then sprayed the top silver. Some of the silver went onto the blue but I really wasn't concerned by this as it added to the mystical appearance. I then gloss varnished the cloud. I also edge highlighted all the silver parts as well. 

    The eye was sprayed with shades of blue and then I quickly picked out a nebula pattern with white on the eye. Again this was given a glossy finish. 

    I sprayed the tower with leadbelcher and then hit it with a silver spray to pick out details. I used the light blue to do the lighting effects on the tower. I used a little bit of gold on the top just for some contrast. Everything was then glued together using mitre adhesive. All I need to do now is to create some exciting game rules to go along with the piece....

     


  6. Stevewren
    This year at Blood and Glory @Ben has generously donated some space for me to run the latest iteration of Warhammer Achievements, a little tournament that I've run on a somewhat irregular basis due to the birth of my children. This will be the 5th running of the event and I really wanted to do something different so this year I've decided to take a leaflet of Steve Herner's boo and make terrain for all sixteen tables. I quite enjoy a bit of terrain building and when the mood hits its quite easy to get a lot done in a short space of time. Over the last week I have made some good progress on a number of different pieces that I want for some of the tables: 
    REALM OF LIFE:
    These are the start of the floating waterfalls that you find in the Realm of Life. I made these from some clear 3mm acrylic that I line-bent and screwed down onto some 12mm MDF that I cut and shaped. Once done I then unscrewed the whole thing and spray painted the MDF blue. 

    Still to do: I'm needing to make the water effects to run down the acrylic and pool at the bottom. I'm planning to use the Woodland Scenics water effects for this so that I can make the falls and then attach them. I'm still not sure how I'm going to edge the pools though, so that is the next problem that needs solving. 
    REALM OF DEATH
    This is finally the chance I've been looking for to finish this rather large mausoleum that I've had sitting around in the garage for a bit of time. I made it for some end times stuff years ago and never finished it. I attacked it with some spray cans this afternoon in an attempt to get some basic colours onto the piece, and then I can go in and start to pick out a few details just to finish it off. I have t say that once I got  a few more bits of colour on it its starting to look pretty sharp. 
     
    REALM OF FIRE
    These two pieces will be going on a table set up for Khorne. I found that the mats we are using aren't actually black with the lava. Instead its a kind of dark green so it needs a heavy green dry brush over the top, The craters took some time to repurpose them and fill in all the cracks and dints. I then bought some adhesive pearls from the paper craft section of Hobbycraft and superglued them down to represent lava bubbles. Once again the painting so far is all spray can work. I kept them black and dark grey, but I think the lighter grey will work a lot better. 



    REALM OF LIFE - Nurgles Garden
    I've always fancied doing a gurgle terrain set and this gives me a great excuse. The pits will be a key part of the rules as well so to represent how truly dangerous they are I got some reaper bones pox worm models and glued them into the centre. I have no idea how these will look when they are painted but they should certainly look menacing coming out of the swamps. 

    I'll probably be positing a lot more terrain than models for the next few months which will be an interesting change of pace for me. 
    If you have questions about what I've done feel free to post them here. 



  7. Stevewren
    This is just a quick work in progress post. I've decided I really want to get some more varied terrain for my games so I invested in some second hand craters off Ebay. They are quite damaged, but I have based them on some hardboard and I plan to go in and fix the gaps and holes with filler and play bark. Once undercoated I have a few ideas for different fillings. Three will be lave pits for a Realm of fire table, one will be a Nurgle Swamp and the other will be a Tzeentch themed piece of dangerous terrain. 

  8. Stevewren
    I had this conversion knocking around my painting desk for a while as my Budget of Sigmar 2 Army got shelved as I worked on the Tzeentch army for the South Coast GT. I had always planned on it being the leader of the force. It is on a big 60mm base with the mystical rocks hanging around him. The conversion was done with the 40K Cult Mechanics hero and mixing it with Blight Kings parts. The most challenging part was drilling out the head to make the space for the Blightkings head. As I started painting it I was not very happy with where it was going which was why it never got finished earlier. However I was happy with how the overall scheme came out with a couple of provisos. The green rocks are probably too distracting and need to be smaller, but this is a change I am loathe to make because of the fact that they are metal and it would be a pain to do! The other is changing the colours of the tentacles under the model. The white is too bright and distracts from the rest of the model. I had some good feedback from Vince Venturella of Warhammer Weekly about changing them to a green, and I think he's right so that will be something that I will go back and sort out shortly. Otherwise I am pleased to get another Budget of Sigmar 2 model finished. 
     
  9. Stevewren
    To complete my Tzeentch army I have started putting together some Tzeentch magical terrain that will go along with it. To start with I have done a couple of large line of sight blocking pieces. I wanted something warped and un natural looking and I was fortunate enough to find a couple of fish tank items that I thought would work well. I didn't do anything much too them. I cut the bases from MDF and then glued the two pieces down using Mitrebond. I then used a lot of filler to go round the edges and blend the base and the rock together. Once dry I then sanded the base. 
    To paint them I just used spray paints. I gave them a coat of macragge blue, then baby blue, then white. I tried to aim the second two sprays so they just catch the edges to try and vary the tones. 
    Once these were done I used a brown spray and sprayed the sand. I'm not bothered about the brown going on to the blue as this just helps blend the two together. Once dry I used Agrellan Earth on the base pieces where the sand had missed. I washed this with Seraphin Sepia and then dry brushed the whole thing with Terminatus stone and a little Wrack White on to the blue areas.  
  10. Stevewren

    Change is coming...

    By Stevewren,

    Like the rest of the Age of Sigmar community I was really enthused and excited by the new Disciples of Tzzeentch Battletome. I was lucky enough to get hold of some of the Kairic Acolytes which I painted up for my new force. A couple of things that I think are worth noting - the basing plans are to tie in with the rest of my Chaos force rather than having their own unique basing scheme. I'd love to have done a desert themed basing scheme for them as they have a really cool egyptian style look to them. 
    The kit is great - you can make the models up pretty quick and they go together beautifully as you would expect. 

    I used a really simple skin recipe of mourning brown spray, sandro dust spray and a wash of sepia or Reikland flesh shade. It gives quite a nice dark, sun kissed type of skin tone. As these are supposed to be quick I have really focussed on not going back in and adding extra detailing to the skin. I will try to spend the time on the characters and monsters in the list. The shields I kept separate so that I could quickly airbrush on the fade and get them done quickly. I find my airbrush to be a very fickle beast, but when it works it is a real time saver for this kind of effect

    Once the skin was all done the detailing was finished and kept simple. I used a lot of bright blues combined with purples and whites. As you can probably imagine the biggest time sink on these models is doing the gold trim. There is absolutely no way that these can be speed painted. you have to take care to keep it neat. I have seen on the Warhammer TV that Duncan does the gold first and then paints in the panels, and I can see how that would work, but at the moment I'd rather keep the gold as the final stage. 

     
  11. Stevewren

    Bonkers Basing 2!

    By Stevewren,

    I've been doing bits and pieces on this base for the last few evenings. It always takes time with water effects as they take quite a while to dry, and also need to be built up in layers. Overall I'm pretty pleased with the effects, although I still feel like the white water rushing up to the sides and making waves looks good in places, but in others could be better. I chopped the feet off the ghouls and the running away man so it looks like they are running through a bloody pool, which I think is a very AoS type of terrain. My next job will be to add in some more graveyard terrain and then snow flock the whole thing. 
     
  12. Stevewren
    In my last post I talked briefly about the Budget of Sigmar 2 challenge that is being run by @Vincent Venturella from Warhammer Weekly. I have completed my month 1 submission now and I am also starting to flesh out the rest of the projects to make up the army. You can see the layout of the challenge here: 

    I have broken it down into the models that I have and that I can easily convert, as the key point of the challenge is to get some level of conversion into every single model. To achieve this I have decided that I want to use a mix of Nurgle demons and Mortal units. The models I have chosen so far are:  
    Leaders
    Month 4: Rotbringers Sorcerer (100)
    Month 2: Lord of Plagues (100)

    Units
    Month 1: Chaos Warriors x 10 (180)
    - Halberd & Shield - COMPLETED
    Month 2: Beasts Of Nurgle x 3 (180)
    Month 3: Putrid Blightkings x 5 (180)
    Month 4: Chaos Marauders x 10 (60)
    Month 5: Chaos Marauders x 10 (60)
    Month 6: ??

    Behemoths
    Month 3: Soul Grinder (280)

    War Machines
    I still need to make a decision on my final month unit and also a war machine/behemoth for month 5. I'd quite like to do something from the Monstrous Arcanum, but I don't know anything about what is available yet. 
    For my month 1 submission I went with something simple - a unit of 10 Chaos Warriors. I want to make the units be a little savage and barbaric, so to show this I have used the Bonespitterz shields and halberds for the weapons. I think this is a nice easy theme to run throughout the rest of the army. For the marauders I will use the rest of the hand weapons along with plague bearer heads. These should go nicely onto the existing Marauders that I have got. 
    I have made a good start with a number of the other months submissions as well. I think I need to work in this way as otherwise I will not get it done. For example the Soul Grinder is a model I have had lying around for ages in bits that has not been finished. I have also got 6 plague drones which I have used to make the blight kings and the Beasts of Nurgle. I am quite excited about how the army will look and also how it will make a good dent into my unpainted pile of chaos stuff. I also like the enforced time line. It means I can work on other models and armies at the same time as the hobby challenge is progressing, 




     
     
  13. Stevewren
    I finished the painting on the dark oath war queen. I kept the pallet very limited and mixed some greens into every colour (except the purple) to see how this would turn out. I'm pleased with the finished piece although the undercoat was little rough, and this shows up in some of the close up shots. For some areas (the shield, helmet and armour) this actually works well, but the cloak could definitely be better if it had a smoother base. The freehand was interesting. I was curious to see how it could look. If I do it again I will plan the pattern out first, but I think the way I did it - white over the green, followed by lots of washes, is the way to go with this kind of muted pattern. I'm going to experiment with it again I think. I'm also going to use the white undercoat again and see what sort of finish I get on a test model. If it is still rough I will stick to using brown or grey undercoats. 

     
     
  14. Stevewren
    I've decided to do a little bit of a retrospective and take a look at some of my older armies.
    First up is my Orc and Goblin force. My first big event was the South Coast GT in 2010. I had only been back playing for about four or five months, and I painted this up as my first army. It was absolutely rubbish games wise, and I spent the whole weekend knocking around the bottom tables, but it was a great introduction to  the independent tournament scene. 
    The army got a lot of positive comments and Dan and the guys amazingly awarded me the judges choice award alongside another Orc force. Not bad for a first attempt! 




















      
  15. Stevewren
    Painting and Modelling: 
    March has been a bit of a painting disaster - is it possible the wheels are falling off the challenge...? I have dropped off my model a day target so I need to claw it back somewhere. I managed another 10 chaos warriors for the Nurgle force, as well as the Darkoath Warqueen to act as their leader. She has come out really well and I am super happy with the conversion. I also finished a couple of the Pusgoyle Blightlords. And finally I managed to get through Horrors 20-25, meaning I only need to complete another 5 to have my three units of 10 completed. Lets hope they get done in April! I need to pull myself back on track, or at least get through some bigger models. At the moment I am finding it hard to get the painting time in due to being back at work and also watching the Commonwealth Games!   
    Gaming
    I managed three games this month, all at the Coalescence Malign Portents event run by Steve Fotte and Jimbo at Warhammer World. I took the Tzeentch, and it was probably a little towards the tougher end of the builds at the event. Even holding back some of the models the Tzeentch are still so strong, particularly in a narrative event. I enjoyed the games a lot however, and the army managed to win the best army award at the event so i got a rather nice GW certificate which is up on the wall. I think if I di another narrative event with the tzeentch force I think it will be more appropriate to roll out the horrors, chariots and warriors rather than sky fires and a lord of change! 
    Aquisitions
    This month I picked up the Daughters of Khaine book as well as a Changling, but that is all. A good month....
    ...however as you can see from the image at the top the Deepkin are coming, and I have my eye on these guys as the next Order army
    Personal
    We had a rather fun personal holiday over Easter, taking the boys to Linclonshire and visiting Tattreshall Castle as well as doing a few fun play areas and farms. The boys had a great time swimming and playing in the hot tub too. School is going OK, its getting hectic now that GCSE's are creeping up, but summer hopefully is just around the corner. We managed one basketball game, but we got beaten and finished tied for first on points, but ended up in third due to points differential. I have to say I had a shocker in the final game! I also picked up a rather annoying calf strain that kept me out of running action again. However some regular physio seems to be sorting it out nicely. 
  16. Stevewren

    Darkoath Warqueen

    By Stevewren,

    I received a Darkoath Warqueen model for my birthday that I want to finish for the Malign Portents painting competition. I decided to try and convert her up a little so that she could lead my Nurgle Slaves to Darkness force. I didn't want to do a really extensive conversion so I did some relatively simple weapon and head swaps. The head was from the Blight King box. The helmet is quite small and if you leave the head off the war queen and cut away the little top knot she has the helmet fitted perfectly over the top of the skull. The helmet looks big, but I think its actually a realistic size - I think a lot of the models with helmets actually look too small, and if the model doesn't have other armour then the helmet should look larger - imagine wearing a motorcycle helmet without any other gear on; it would look very oversized. 

    The weapon swap was easy - I cut away the hand at the wrist and replaced it with a Plaguebearer sword. Because the cut was flat I just used plastic glue to secure it in place. The war queens shield required a bit more work. I had to cut around the shield arm, trim between the straps and then slice off the front of the shield to leave a flat area where the new shield could go. I chose a Rotbringer shield with a distinctive Nurgle design and clipped of the arm on the back and scraped and sanded it flat, and then just secured it with plastic glue again. 

    I used superglue to glue her to the tree stump, and secured the tree stump to a 32mm base with superglue. All I need to do now is build up the base with some filler and drop a rock or two on, then she should be ready to undercoat.  

  17. Stevewren
    Painting and Modelling: 
    February is over and its been a bit of a mixed bag. I missed my painting target of a model a day, ending up with 24 completed models. Most of these got done in the first half of the month and then there was a bit of a lull. I managed to do some consistent work, but I didn't really finish everything. As the end of the mon th rolled ever closer I had ten warriors that were almost done (just the weapons and the bases to go), and I also completed a Blightlord fly, but haven't done the rider or the wings yet. They should be done soon. I didn't have a model that I thought was worth submitting to the PMP this month either. However I did enter the first part of the Malign Portents painting competition at my local GW in Rotherham and was voted as the winning army which was pretty sweet. For me though it was just nice to be able to support the store and get involved in the event.  
    Gaming
    I've entered the South Coast GT in May and the NEO Coalescence event on the 17th March that will be themed around the Malign Portents. I will be using the  Nurgle army for this. I managed one game which was against the Legion of Nagash using the Nurgle army. I had the Glottkin out for this, and the game started well, but I got undone by the sheer resilience of the Undead force which kept regaining wounds and models despite me killing off the characters quickly. I was impressed with the Nurgle speed and resilience, once again the Glottkin died super fast and I struggled to redeploy the army after a strong initial first two turns. In the end the Legion of Nagash was a strong victor. I was really amazed at how good 40 skeletons
    Aquisitions
    I bought the Legion of Nagash book as well as the Malign Portents book and cards. I also managed a good bit of selling on ebay, getting rid of a lot of older models I didn't want to use any more. This all went fairly smoothly - I had to refund one guy who bought a Helldrake that he wasn't impressed with, but I was just pleased to get rid of it. I am certainly in the green for hobby spending so far this year which is good! I also had a successful birthday haul - three boxes of Pusgoyle Blightlords, an Ogroid Thaumuturge and a Darkoath Warqueen.  
    Personal
    On the plus side I have been feeling a lot better after my illness at the start of the year. I had a great birthday (the wife took me away for the weekend without the boys!), have got back to playing basketball and even managed a few running sessions! I'm nowhere near back to where I was, and of course the snow has hit at the end of the month and stopped a lot of training. It also forced our lease deciding basketball fixture to be postponed which was annoying as I was back and had been picked in the team. Hopefully that will be rearranged soon. The snow was awesome for the kids though and we were able to build an epic snowman as well as take   William sledging for the first time. Turns out sledging in Yorkshire is a completely different animal to sledging in Essex when I was a boy! 
  18. Stevewren
    I feel like I'm getting nowhere fast with this Dragon. I love the chance to go back and look at these old sculpts, but they are difficult to paint compared to new models because of the lack of defined detail. The scales don't seem to take washes very well, and parts just seem to merge into other areas. I still think it will look OK when its done though! 






  19. Stevewren
    This was very much a fun little aside from painting models. It goes together fast and you can have a lot of fun with bright colours, washing and drybrushing. My next task is to come up with some variants on this. I played my first game with the Maggotkin Battletome yesterday and I got plenty of trees out. I'm not sure you need any more than 3 or 4, but it would be nice to have some variation. I think I can afford one more of the official model which I can convert with some Sylvaneth parts, and then use a couple of sylvaneth trees which can be put on a same size base and then modded with mouths, pustules and bells to represent a Gnarlmaw. 
  20. Stevewren

    Cheeky Nurglings

    By Stevewren,

    These were a fun little speed paint. The Nurglings were primed Caliban green and then zenithal sprayed with Deathguard green. I then dry brushed them quickly with a mix of Organ Camo and White before glazing the whole model with Waywatcher Green. This gives a really nice vivid green colour. I then went back in and washed the recesses with Athonina Camo Shade and Nuln Oil. I did all the eyes, mouths etc at this stage too. Once this was dry I painted the tongues with screamer pink and then watered down a mix of screamer pink and wild rider red which I used for all the sores. All of these got washed with Drucji Violet. Blood for the Blood God went on all the sores and they were highlighted with white to make them look glossy. Horns were Rakarth Flesh and a quick highlight with Palyd Whych Flesh which I also used for the teeth (just a careful dry brush with very little paint on the brush). The most time consuming part was dotting all the eyes with yellow. 

    One thing I did with these was not to base them. I usually use the cork  bark for the bases, but because of how these models are made I didn't want to do this as they wouldn't sit flat on the bark well, so I went back to the traditional way of sanding afterwards and then brush painting the base. This is very annoying! I will try not to do this again. It is much easier to make the bases first and then attach the models to them. When you get a somewhat dubious looking join you can just go in with the foliage and use this to cover up any of the gaps that you may ave left. 
  21. Stevewren
    I wanted to get a few units done over the holiday period and so far I have completed some more Plaguebearers which is convenient timing looking at the new models that are coming out in a few days time. I quite enjoy painting these guys as green is a colour I enjoy doing due to the amount of variation in tone you can achieve. Plus spray cans do a lot of the work for the scheme that I have been using. I like dry brushing on some paler green to lighten these guys up. I'd like to add a couple of the new great Unclean one models and do them in a nice pale green scheme. 

    Now on a different note I painted 10 brimstone horrors and I'm not sure that the paint scheme is quite as successful as I would have liked. I got some great feedback from a friend on Twitter who's painting I have always admired. He said that they sat too much in the arrange midtone range so lacked contrast. On the next ten I'm looking to bring back more of the yellow and also highlight the faces in a more traditional way to bring out some of the detail. I think that I tried to keep the fire too realistic in the scheme I picked, and that clearly hasn't worked, so next I'm going to take Mikey's advice and bring a bit more of my own thinking into the models. Stay tuned to see how they turn out.  
  22. Stevewren
    After having a week off on holiday I'm back on the Sylvaneth. I took these to Alliance, Ben Curry's one day event, but they were not finished at the time. They also qualify as my entry for our latest Hobby Challenge at Derby Wargames Club. When I got back I completed the banner and added the foliage so that they would fit in with the rest of the army. I went for a pale ethereal skin tone combined with bright green hair. I keep the weapons in a similar hue to hopefully give them the impression of being some what spectral in nature. I gave the blades a green glaze to tie them in more with the rest of the models. Overall I think these are great models and they are fun to paint, but they were not great in the games I used them. All I have left now are some Spite Revenants and Allarielle herself and that will be the army complete so I can start on something new (or more likely i'll be rebasing something older!)

  23. Stevewren
    Just a quick apology for not getting a post up over the last few days, but I've been busy and not had much time to complete anything! However this morning I was able to get the Hunters on to their bases. The bases are just smaller versions of the base that you can find details of how they are done in this Drycha article. One thing that might be of interest is how the flock stays on - I very rarely have any issues with the foliage falling off the models. I use Superglue Thick from GW and am quite generous with how much I apply over the branches it will be sticking too. The foliage then has to be pressed down firmly into it and this seems to give a strong bond that lasts. 
     

  24. Stevewren
    Ive been making steady progress on my entry for our clubs Paint a Silver Tower Hero competition ready for next month. So far I have made reasonable progress on the metals, although I do want to go in with a bit of weathering and some scratches in places. Ive also finished the red robes, although its pretty subtle and doesn't really photograph well. One thing I wanted to try and create was a Golden Demon style base for him to be displayed on. I found a chunk of wood that I cut and sanded to shape and then went to town with some play bark and cork which is topped off with some plasticard. I then filled the whole thing with filler so it could be sanded square. Tonight I've added in the pipe and the rocks to start to add some Duardin ingenuity to the whole thing. I have to add a small overflow pipe coming out of the rocks and I'll be adding some water effects to the base when its finished. Whole thing needs to be completed by the 7th June....



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  25. Stevewren
    Continuing the wood elf theme for another month or so I have been working on the Eternal Guard. I only want to do 10 of these guys just so I can use them for fun. I've finished the seven regular guys. I've just got the command group to go and add in the foliage and flowers to decorate the base. 
     

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