Warhammer Visions: March edition sneak peek

Laid my hands on the second Warhammer Visions today and had a quick look through the pages. And as everyone probably know it´s mostly about Dwarfs. It all starts with the Latest Releases where we get to see what we´ve already seen, provided that you read the february editions of White Dwarf Weekly. 

Some of the pictures following will show up the wrong way since blogger decides to flip it by despite they are correct on my hard drive. They may be a bit blurry since I took them with my phone at work

Then there is the Forge World pages presenting their latest releases consisting of 40k only. I wish they could release some Fantasy more frequently:

Then we have the Army of the Month chapter consisting of the Imperial Guard. Impressive work as usual:

Here comes the best part, the Parade Ground, 52 pages of goodness. I know, everyone says that you can find pictures on the internet. I say it´s not even close to the same thing as having it on print. Call me old fashioned, but a screen just don´t do it for me.

Over to the next chapter; The Battle Report I guess it would be called. Not that it is a battle report, only more pictures of Dwarves with a minimum of text saying nothing. A few shots of the opposing army, Skaven in this case (I want to emphasis few shots).

Moving to the Kit Bash. Not much bashing it seems, mostly green stuffing in the cracks. Edit: Ok, maybe there is some conversion done here, I´m not famailiar enough with 40k but after skimming through it again I see that there are parts from other models:

Then there is the Blanchitsu. Wish that the text was left. Well there is text, about a sentence per page. Would be nice to read about how they thought whne creating these models:

This is followed by a showcase of some Kabal Armies and even more Dwarfs. The grand finale is made out of the Paint Splatter section, don´t expect anything new here, it´s only the WD Weekly gathered in one spot:

So what is the verdict? Well, you could get this edition if you haven´t read the WD Weekly editions already. If you have i wouldn´t recomend it, only for the Parade Ground maybe or if you want to get better close up pictures of the Dwarf models. You could also have use for it if you have too much money and need something to spend it on.

Have a pleasant weekend, I won´t for sure. Work awaits.

Hammer Time! (and some sprues)

Oh yeah!

Was about to start painting on some Khorne Warriors today and take pics of the process while at it for a Step by Step. But as i stood there, brush in my hand and all, i recieved a letter that my package had arrived. Well, that put an end to my thoughts of painting as i laid my hands on these fine looking magazines:

Found them on Ebay for about £11, twelve issues of glory all in all, hardly touched by human hands. A fair price if it weren´t for the shipping that added £5 but still affordable considering the quality of the content. It´s such a huge difference between WD today compared to 4 years ago.  The painting tips were awesome. Lots of terrain tips and tutorials, in depth army tactics and lots of fluff. What happened? Guess that´s a question you can ask yourself about the quality of pretty much everything today, so no hard feelings Games Workshop. It´s all ´bout the money nowadays.

Khorne will have to wait, twelve issues of White Dwarf on the other hand can´t wait. But after that I´ll make sure to put up that Step by Step (unless i fail miserably with the painting) At least I managed to put up some pictures of the contents of the Warriors of Chaos box, you can find it here here.

Chaos Marauder Horsemen Sprue Overview

Hey hey!

Been a busy week with no room for painting and I felt that I deserved a reward for being a good working man. So I went to my local Games Workshop retailer Iocus for a chat with the store owner. I can really recommend you to drop by that store if you by some crazy way should put your feet on Luleå soil.
Had a rummage  through the Warriors of Chaos shelf for something that would trigger my brains reward regions without emptying my bank accounts money regions. Actually, pretty much anything in miniature way triggers the former. 

Anyway. You can never have enough cavalry. And what is better than cavalry made out of ravaging mad men? Possibly ravaging mad men with striated torsos, froth foaming from their mouths I would say! So a package of Marauder Horsemen hit the desk together with a bottle of Druchii Violet wash (or shade as GW calls it) and Castellan Green. 

I decided to take a photo of the sprues before I went bat shit crazy on them with my scalpel. May be good to remember what you get from them for future converisions. Bits, the best a man can get! Here they are:

So what do we have here? Quite a lot I would say. You actually get two of the sprue above. Lots of chaos stars, hooks and skulls.... on chains!! Scrawny horses (no time for eating, just killing) and beefy torsos (lots of protein when your diet consists of blood n' guts). Not that you will have any left of those unless you´re going to use the Marauders as knock-kneed cowboys on foot and magic unicorns . Some classic Marauder flails, spears and axes plus gnarly arms.

And the third one:

Oh yeah, heads! Seventeen of them, twelve left when everything is assembled. I love the crazed bearded seniors. "What? Weapons?? I tear heads of with my toothless gums and strangle what´s left of their necks with my beard!" Then there´s one more starved horse, two alternatives for banners. Well, one banner or you can use the spiky bits. Shields- One will be left unless some mad bugger dual wields them. A battle horn made out of skulls from childrens (don´t know what else the small ones would be from). More axes, one of them twin bladed; for bad-asses only.

What can I say? Im very satisfied with what you get. There´s quite a bit left overs to convert some of my regular Marauders and/or Chaos Warriors. I think that the double axe is going to one of  my Warrior Champions.

Thats all for today, apart from a few well chosen words from Minsc:
"Go for the eyes Boo, GO FOR THE EYES!! RrraaaAAGHGHH!!!

Chaos Warriors revisited

Phew, what a weekend. Two days in a row of low self discipline. Started the friday evening as board game night that went out of hand when a friend decided to invite some more friends and all of a sudden alcohol consumption got into the picture. Saturday was planned as a night out with my work colleagues and also ended with shenanigans. Need I say that Saturday decided to get even, cursing me with mild head throbbing?

Despite the fact that my head was acting up I decided to defy its subtle warnings of doom if I as much as tried to use my brain. So I sat down by my trusty old paint station to get going on the color scheme for the rest of the Chaos Gods. Decided to go for nurgle this time. Papa Nurgle craves Nurglification so i put some pva-glue onto a shield and dripped super glue on top of it. A nice little trick i found on the net. The water in the pva is reacting with the super glue creating nice wrinkly patterns. Then i painted it in green/yellow/black tones.

It all turned out pretty decent. Didn´t put my soul into since my head was trying to kill me and I think it´s best that way, or it will take ages to paint a large number of models. Here is a pic:

But a shield doesn´t make a warrior so I pushed my luck and started on the Chaos Warrior bodies, hoping that my vengeful head wouldn´t take note of it. I decided that the Tzeentch shield had waited long enough and would be first in line to get a firm hand to hold it. Here I went for the same color scheme as the shield itself, or near enough. Here I ran into a problem, the shield and body kind of melts together as they go in the same color so I tried to darken the body with a dark glaze. Cant decide if I like it or not. Think I have to finish the whole piece first.

Next in line was the Warrior of Nurgle. Decided for a different approach on this one to get a bit more constrast against the shield. Since nurgle is the God of Decay I tried to paint the armor to look really rusty. More rust than metal in this case. Looks decent so far but I think I´ll try to darken the shadow areas further. Then I have to decide which theme to go for; Same color for shield and body or the one with rust (thinking of a shiny one for the Tzeentch with a faint blue glaze)

"We are the Knights who say NI!"

Going for Khorne next time, maybe the Blood God can remedy my skull, and lé grand finale with Slaanesh.

Minsc time!:  
"Then say it louder! We must inspire fear in evil! Quiet tales of hamsters are foolish, but a man and his hamster that tear evil limb from limb? That's scary!"

To Tzeentch or not to Tzeentch

Alrightie then. Got home from work today and painted up two more Marauder heads before my brain hit into a syntax error and went into a meltdown. Ok, Im exaggerating, it went pretty smooth with the eyes this time. Followed the tutorial that i mentioned in a previous post. You can find it at massivevoodoo.blogspot.com. Awesome blogg filled with great tuts and articles that makes your soul cringe in envy.

Anyway, I had my fill of Marauders for the day and started on another Chaos Warrior shield. Went for a more vibrant color scheme this time, but tried to hold back and not go candy land style all over the place. It came out as a Tzeentch shield this time:

Just to make it easy for me I mixed some Winsor & Newton acrylic retarder into the paint to extend the working time, making it easier to do the gradient as I went for wet blending instead of layering. I just sketched out the gradient going over it with glazes later on to smooth it out a bit. The retarder is very viscous so the paint got a bit thick. Thinned it with a bit of water but it still made the surface a bit rough. But it´s only noticeable at close scrutinization so what the heck. It´s a game table army after all.
Overall I think it turned out quite nice. Would like to use another weathering technique next time. On this one Í just stippled the rust effect onto the surface and painted a few scratches. I´ve read a bit about weathering with hairspray so I think that´ll be my next project, probably Nurgle this time.

Thanks for now.
Minsc quoting time:
"I trust those who prey on children no farther than they can be thrown, even if I manage to throw them pretty far!"

Chaos Warrior musings

Planning ahead for the next units to paint as soon as the Marauders are finished. Chaos Warriors are next in line and they are bringing me headaches before I´ve even started on them. Don´t get me wrong, I love painting, it´s the decisions I don´t like. Basically I only have to decide between two different styles. The Colorful one and the not so colorful.

For the colorful one i was thinking of going for one of the usual colors corresponding to one of the Chaos Gods prefered colors. Don´t want to go for the garden gnome style with too strong colors. I´m thinking a muted color cheme, putting some browns into the color to take the edge from it. I´ve previously painted up three of the low budget version, Hobo Warriors from Hell (the three for £6 ones). They are actually the second models that I´ve ever painted so hopefully the upcoming models will be smoother and the colors not screaming "HAPPY UNICORNS GOOO!" in your face. None of these are complete since I tried out different styles. Here goes, be gentle:

Went for a try at the not so colorful style yesterday. Snatched a shield from an unsuspecting Chaos Warrior and tried to get a rusty feel to it. Some corrections needs to be done, maybe a bit more orange to it, but overall it looks okay. The problem I have with this style is that I don´t have a clue how to handle highlights on the model. No problemo on the colorful ones but here.. hmm. Dunno. Time for more experiments. But they are really quick to paint. Here is the stolen shield:

Getting back to the last Marauder heads as soon as I get home from work *Think of a happy place*

Ok, time for the Minsc qoute of the day: 

"Take heart fellow adventurers, for you have curried the favor of Boo, The only miniature giant space hamster in the Realm"

Head over heels

After long last it came. The day I´ve dreaded to face.Until now I had taken detours to avoid all these vicious heads staring at me from my paintstation, but it had to be done; Face painting. I don´t know what you think about this peculiar task, but personally I die a bit on the inside everytime I have to paint an eye. They are so darn small that more often than not my models looks like they got hit in the head, eyes pointing in different directions.

So like any sane person would do I hunt down some tips on the net, find a nice face painting tutorial and start reading just to be smitten! Why? Well, as it isn´t enough to paint the eye white and try to jam that brush point at the right spot. Nooo, you paint it black first. Then, just to make it a wee bit harder- paint it white, leaving an impossible thin black border and finish the masterwork whit a black dot in the exact middle. And if that wasn´t enough they go through the painting of the iris. How to put an absurdley small pupil in the middle of the iris and then how to paint a reflection in the previously mentioned pupil. WHAT SORCERY IS THIS!? The eyesockets on the models are about 1mm wide, how is that even possible?

Crestfallen I went back to my paintstation and resumed working on those heads. But without mascara, shiny blue eyes and reflection of magical stars in those wells of the soul. This time luck struck and I managed to paint those eyes to a decent look:

Only tweleve heads to go. Hopefully madness won´t get to me before I´m done. If anyone got tips on how to handle those eyes they are very welcome.

"The den of stiiinking evil! Cover your nose Boo, we will leave no crevice untouched!"

Barking

Set out on an adventure in the woods on yesterdays evening with my girlfriend. It was supposed to be an ordinary evening walk to get away from the telly for a while. That was soon to be changed. Why you ask? Well, turned out the woods were full of.... trees! And trees means bark, and bark means a shitload of stone look-alike in miniature format. I had in secrecy brought my trusty mora-knife (swedish quality!) in the specific case the woods would be full of wood. So we skulked around for about an hour, filling up my bark depot.

We also stumbled upon some  poplar trees that had interesting texture so i grabbed some of that and brought it home. This bark is sturdier than the pine bark and dont flake as easily. The flaking of the pine bark means problem when attaching the models since there is a risk that the model breaks loose if you have magnetized them. So I´ll have to pin my models to my bases from now on instead of only glue them into place.

Anyhow, here is a picture showing the poplar bark:

 

It´s going to need  a bit of cleaning since it´s covered with lichen. A toothbrush should take care of that without a problem.

Hamsters and rangers everywhere. Rejoice!

Failpainted

By Odins beard, what a day...

Got home from work yesterday (weekend schedule farting in my general direction) and decided to start working on the skin tutorial while cooking dinner. Who said that men don´t have simultaneous interpreting huh?
So i started putting down one layer of paint, take a photo of it and tending the tomato sauce while that first layer dried. Then over to paint the shadows- take a photo- set the pasta on cooking. Back to my paintstation, another layer, another photo, food etcetera.

Now that sounds all good right? It sure did... until I took a closer look on the photos. My daylight lamp that puts out whopping 2400 lumen had been a bit too close to the model. My lousy camera on the phone can´t compensate for light of a lesser sun so my Marauder looks lika an albino in the desert and I had to scrap the photos. Fortunately I´ve got one last Marauder that still requires his gnarly torso to be painted. So on thursday I´m going to buy a tripod for my Nikon D3100 so I have better control over the pictures and this time I´ll make sure to take a look at the pictures.

Better get back to work.
Camaraderie, adventure and steel on steel. The stuff of legends!