Oh my head. Where am I? How long have I been out? Who's been looking after my blog? What do you mean nobody! Get out of my way, you fool! I have pictures to upload!

So this blog has been silent for a while. Not because I've been in unconscious or in a coma for the past however many months it's been - that didn't happen, don't worry. Mostly I haven't had as much as I'd like to add.

But in my absence things have happened. Fantasy died and the age of Sigmar was created from what I can only assume was the afterbirth from the 9th edition that Games Workshop meant to release but lost, or dropped on its head. I'm pretty upset about this and am reluctant to paint any more fantasy miniatures for the near future.

Other things that happened include my getting a job - part of the reason I haven't painted as much lately - got accepted back into college - undoubtedly the reason I won't paint as much as I'd like in the near future - and I swear there was a third thing but I actually had to take a break writing in the middle of this sentence so two things will have to do. There you're all caught up.

Anyway with fantasy gone I'm working on my 40k, starting with finishing off my Ultramarine Allied Detachment. Here are the terminators:

These were actually a lot of fun to paint (although freehanding all those symbols and the hazard lines on the power fists took ages). I'm particularly proud of the sergeant's face - a huge improvement on my tactical squad sergeant's!

In front of me as I write this are a whole bunch of cultists with sand and pva glue drying on their bases. With luck they'll be undercoated tonight. I intend to paint them in a red colour scheme so they can be Khorne Daemonkin Cultists, but I'm not totally set on that yet. I also have the dreadnaught from Assault on Black Reach, but he will have a different style to the rest of my ultramarines as I don't want him as part of that allied detachment. Finally I have my eldar, pictures of which have been promised for some time. They are on the "to do" bench but have incurred a number of setbacks with glue (getting those wings to stick without pinning is the goal) and I decided to change their colourscheme. If nothing else there will be a teaser of their bases with the next update.

Until then, happy painting!

Vylka Fenrika - Test Model

As you may know from a couple of previous posts, my brother is a Space Wolf player who doesn't paint a lot. Or, you know, at all. So I've been trying to come up with a quick and easy way to paint his troops for him. The idea is to airbrush the armour and then let him finish the details. With that in mind, here's the test bloodclaw!

For a model that takes maybe 30 minutes to paint, he doesn't look too bad. All the details are painted with a simple basecoat, wash, drybrush formula, except for the metal (no drybrush), and the face (extra highlighting). I've already airbrushed 4 more grey hunters for my brother, so hopefully he'll get round to painting some of his own later this month. And, if not, maybe I will if I find the time.

This guy was actually finished a while back, but I didn't have time to post him until now. At the moment I'm still working on a bunch of elves (first batch is finished, second batch is under way) and until they're done all other projects have been halted. My poor Eldar will have to wait a little longer for some love.

Anyway, I hope you like this model. Until next time, happy painting!

Here be Dragons!

Title gave it away, didn't it? Yep, it's a dragon.

Potato shot from above. I need a better camera.

Look at that egg!

Or maybe it's just a really round, blue rock...

 Disassembled for posting - all those bits pin together!

I finished this piece a short while ago and had a lot of fun trying out new things, especially with an airbrush. By far my favourite detail, though, is the egg. I wanted to give it a mottled look as many real eggs have to aid camouflage, but I did make it blue because hey, it's a dragon egg and they don't actually need to hide from anything. In any case it was a lot of fun and gave me a great idea for a whole army painted like this which I hope to try over the summer.

Finally, I'd like to take this opportunity to warn you about poor quality resin and how much I hate it. Seriously, this thing broke so much I almost gave up on it. And when the little pieces broke they didn't just snap off - they shattered into dust. Luckily it didn't detract too much from the dragon, just made it look more battle-worn and aged, but it was a huge pain. Some pieces even managed to break during posting despite careful bubblewrapping and tons of packing peanuts. As this model was bought from eBay, I'm thinking it may not have been a proper one from Forge World (hey, mistakes happen), which might explain its fragility. My friend's Sicarian tank certainly never shatters (can bricks of plastic even do that?). In any case, if you're buying resin try to buy the good stuff and be wary of eBay. At least if you buy Forge World you'll have some excellent customer service to rely on should things go wrong.

Anyway, until next time, happy painting!

Space Marines!

Well it was fun while it lasted, but as predicted I couldn't keep the one update per week rate I'd accidentally established. So here we are five weeks later with another post! (Let's try to be positive about this.)

With the arrival of the new Space Marine codex I thought I'd share some Ultramarines I worked on a few months back and never got round to posting. They're from the Assault on Black Reach box so they're fairly basic, but I wanted to see if I could do them to a reasonable tabletop standard in a short space of time. They took less than a week, including the shoulder pad icons which are all individually freehanded (because the friggin' GW transfers don't actually fit a normal marine - grr!).

Anyway I hope you like them. On their way are a dragon and some more Astartes goodness - already photographed, just have to get them up here - and I have on my workbench a whole heap of elves and eldar that should be finished soon.

So for the next five weeks, happy painting!

Helldrake

Let's keep things going with another update. Two a week is a hard pace to set and it definitely won't last, but let's enjoy it while we can.

One model I've had the pleasure of painting in the last few months was a friend's Helldrake. Those things are huge! I didn't realize it while I was painting as I did it in parts and assembled at the end, but it's actually one of the largest models I've painted and certainly the biggest on this blog. Anyway it was a lot of fun to do, particularly as I was trying to be more adventurous with my airbrush which I used to paint the metal. I also had a go at giving him an OSL effect for the working fuel lines, and while it's not perfect it looks pretty good on the table.

It's hard to photograph big models -

I didn't notice part of the background wasn't covered by my cloth! 

Close up of the head.

Power lines and core seen from below - pretty happy!

Close up of the base and the crude chaos icon daubed in blood over the Imperial Aquila.

Anyway, I hope you like it. Until next time, happy painting!

Aaand we're back!

Hello all!

Been a bit of a hiatus from the blog of late, due to life and not having a computer. That said, I have been painting and have some photos to show you. First up a TT+1 Goblin Big Boss. He's not my best by any means, but he was a nice way to get back into painting after what had been a few weeks without touching a brush. Anyway, I hope you like him.

More updates to come. Happy painting!