Ultramarine Captain finished!

Well at last I've finished (almost) my Ultramarine captain. There are a couple of bits that still need finishing off like the base and some kind of writing on the banner but for now I'm happy.

 

I'm pleased with how this model turned out especially the feathering on the plasma gun and banner. Although time comsuming the feathering effect is well worth the work and it's a fantastic moment when that 10th layer of paint finally starts blending in nicely from the previous colour.



Here's one of the other marines in this squad

Ok so 2 down and about another 8 to go for this squad. I'm currently raiding my bits box and putting together some more marines. For some reason I seem to have a lot of body parts and no legs, might be a trip to eBay to finish the squad off.

On the topic of eBay I noticed a nice looking Ultramarine army that someone was selling and noticed they were using a mixture of old style marines and newer ones. This got me thinking so I dug out my old terminators that came with Space Hulk all those years ago (you know the ones with the twisty body). Anyway I glued them together after getting a lot of the paint off, based them up and have started to prep them for a base coat. Even though the new terminators are better models I do love those old Space Hulk miniatures. I'll keep you posted.

A productive day?

Well I've had a mildly productive day of painting, always seems like there's something else to do but I though I should just get down to it and start painting.

So I've been continuing painting my Ultramarine squad and after painting one marine to get a feel for the colour scheme I moved on to my captain. Originally he was intended for a blood angels squad but decided to change his allegiance somewhat.

It's a work in progress at the moment and I'm hoping to finish it off over the next couple of days.



Still work to do on the armour highlights and the powerfist



Did a bit of feathering on the plasma pistol, still needs work :)

Hopefully tomorrow I'll get a couple of hours in and finish this guy off soon as I've got a banner to paint for him too.

Whilst I was clicking away a few pictures I took the opportunity to take a few pictures of my workspace as I'm always interested how people work.

Looking quite tidy at the moment, usually a bit manic



A shot of my recently purchased Vallejo Game Colour range




A few of the brushes I mainly use including a couple of Kolinsky brushes




A recent addition, somewhere to finally put all my models

I've had a few recent additions to my workspace including my Vallejo Game Colour range which consists of 95 colours, inks, mediums and varnishes. I found the whole lot on an Ebay store called Drum and Flag. I hunted around a bit to get a good price for these paints and noticed that a lot of places sold the 72 core set for just shy of £100. For about £120 including postage I got a lot more inks and other bits and pieces. I'll do a post soon about what I got in the set.

After reading a few articles and watching a couple of painting videos last month I finally took the plunge and purchased a couple of Kolinsky brushes. I really wanted to up my game on the painting front and these brushes are a great choice.

When I first had a go at the brushes I've got to say I got a bit annoyed trying to use them. They are quite soft when compared to the bog standard brushes I was used to. After a bit of patience and thinning of my paints more than usual it really started paying off and I started to get some great results. 

I'm hoping to do some painting tutorials in the future giving examples of different levels to paint to. Previously I have always painted to get my models on the table as quickly as possible but now I'm enjoying taking my time to get better results.

Please leave a comment if you like what you see or have suggestions on painting techniques or anything about the hobby.

A few of my minatures

Over the years i've painted many minatures and haven't really ended up with any complete armies. So after buying the new edition of Warhammer and re-kindling my love for High Elves I set about painting the best army I could. I decided to follow the painting guide from the GW website and managed to turn out some good results.




Only three done so far!



Ok so High Elves are my army of choice for Warhammer Fantasty but for 40K i've settled for the obvious Space Marine army and after painting Blood Angels and Dark Angels I've settled for Ultrmarines as they have some fantastic  models in there line up. Ultramarines posts are to come but for now a few Orks that came with the boxed set.





 Over the next few weeks I will be converting and painting up my Ultramarines so we'll see what I can come up with.

Hello and welcome to my blog...

 

This diary will let you see some of the projects i currently have on the table and i'll try and provide step by step pictures where possible

 

So...right into it! My first post is of something i did a couple of months ago when i picked up some green stuff from my local GW. This is the first time i used it and i gotta say im pleased myself with the results!
 

 
As you can see i opted for an old test subject back from the 40K box set many moons back. First thing i found when using the green stuff was that as a complete novice it was hard to make anything look good. For example i tried making some purity seals which just looked bad. With practice that will come but i recommend to anyone starting off using this stuff to go for a slimy, rot infested tentacle look as not only is it easy to make the shapes its also forgiving if it looks a bit messy.
 
Heres a few making of shots...
 

For a first go at green stuff im happy with the outcome although there are a couple of things id recommend to get you modelling quicker as i spent a while playing around with it.

• Make sure everything is wet, you hands, your knife, your model and your green stuff. This makes it a lot easier to handle as it can get a bit tacky.
• Once you've mixed up your green stuff let it harden for about 15 minutes as it will go from a blu-tac consistency to something alot better to work with and less frustrating to use.
• Like with painting layer things up, in my model i started with some fleshy looking parts then added the ulcer blobs and then the spine on the back all of which started as a round piece of green stuff or a sausage and then shaped on the model.

Well thats the end of my first post and is a taste of things to come, let me know your comments and any tips you have as im still an amateur at this myself.