Back at the painting table

Painting and American Football, an excellent combo.

Currently I mostly the painting aspects of the hobby as it goes well together with American Football on Sunday nights. Now that the season is over I may return to listening to podcasts again or Horus Heresy books on Audible.
Lately I have been listening to Dan Abnett's Legion where he is doing a great job at providing insight into the character of the Alpha Legion without revealing too much of the mystery that shrouds them.

On my painting table I finally took the dive and started to paint up Brother Tolmeron that my sister-in-law gave me fro Christmas:

First coat of Mephiston Red.

First wash with Dark Shade.

All base colors.

Base colors and a few details.

More details. Also quite happy with layering the red armor on this model.

Then a rather special moment for me obviously was the release of the Blood of Baal expansion and the new Mephiston model:

One of the most difficult infantry models I had to put together.

I took Mephiston as an occasion to try the new contrast paints as well and I am pleased with the results.

Last but not least I decided to add a capable Primaris retinue to my new Primaris HQ choices:

Hellblasters - the first time I primed miniatures in... beige?

I also got this bad boy.

I particularly liked on this one how the first black coat turned out to be really thin and smooth.

New Primaris Chaplain with base colors done.

This chaplain wanted a new home, too, and I were not a Blood Angels player if I said "No" to a new chaplain.

Reinforcements have arrived

It was time to paint the final batch of squadrons to have a full 300pts list available.

First I did two more X-Wings for a total of six squadrons. However, the longer I play them, the more I like their versatility so I don't mind having that many. So here we have Yellow and Orange Squadron.

Next up the A-Wings. I need them to escort my Corellian Corvettes. To my surprise, you can see the silver stripes on the photograph much better than in real life. So here we have Silver and Purple Squadron.

Then we have the Y-Wings. I'll eventually swap one or two X-Wings in my list for those. So here we have Orange and Gold Squadron.

Last but not least the B-Wings. I had them brownish in my memory although an image search showed they're just the same metallic grey. I overdid it here by adding a second wash for contrast and then directly highlight with Desert Yellow, but I like the Native American vibe it gives to them. So here we have another Orange and Yellow Squadron.

SWA: How to paint X-Wing Squadrons

The source of envy - X-Wings for Star Wars Armada painted by fellow blogger Ica.

Recently, among me and my friends Star Wars Armada got really big. As I have little to no money left for wargaming, I was lucky enough to receive the rebel models from my buddy Sven's starterbox. That being said, I wanted to paint them up nicely yet efficiently.

In terms of painting tutorials for Star Wars Armada, I didn't find a tutorial I found helpful for myself. On the one hand there's this super awesome painting tutorial by Ica that produces awesome squadrons, but this is beyond my skill level and not efficient enough for these models. (I am sorry to say it, but their quality when compared to other game companies isn't the greatest and they're so tiny that I don't wanna waste hours to paint them in detail. They are good enough for the price tag they come with, though.) On the other hand I have found some really basic painting tutorials that made me think "ok, I don't want mine to be that simple".

So here is my stripped down painting tutorial which uses Ica as an inspiration, but is meant for the artistically challenged like myself.


Step 1: basecoat the model with a white primer spray.

Step 2: prepare your palette. You don't need many colors, mostly light grey, white black, and a black wash.

Step 3: basecoat the model light grey. (I am painting here Luke Skywalker's Red Squadron because everyone among the local Imperial players hates him the most.)

Step 4: do the black wash.

Step 5: apply the same light grey paint again. However, now you should really focus on painting only the "easily accessible" areas so you don't remove the shadows you previously generated with the black wash.

Step 6: apply black paint to paint the cockpit windows and a black nose. (yes, I suck at freehands, too)

Step 7: tidy up your model with the same light grey paint again. On the nose, the X-Wing should now have only a small black lining and the tiny light grey frames should further define the cockpit.

Step 8: apply the white paint (they are flying for the good guys after all), but use a tiny bit more water than usual to water down your paint. If you are after a war torn spaceship, you don't want a pearl white spaceship. Applying a little more water when mixing up your white paint helps the grey areas to shine more through.

Step 9: add decorations and you are done.

This is how they look on their rear.

Overall painting time for this job was three hours on a Sunday night. I am a relatively slow painter, but I still believe I did something that both looks good and is efficient to paint.

From the very back in clockwise order: Red Squadron, Blue Squadron, Gold Squadron, Green Squadron.

The cavalry arrives

I just finished my Blood Angels Stormravens and I am quite happy with the results. I started to paint up the black Death Company Stormraven in 2011, still in 40K 5th Edition, and after that it sat around in boxes because of my "I don't play 40K anymore and Warmachine instead"-hiatus. Well, 40K 7th Edition sparked my interest again, so I finally had to paint up my Stormraven for my Blood Angels to stylishly ride to battle.

However, before I got started on my DC Stormraven again, I painted a yellow Stormraven red as a warm up exercise. Sven was so nice to gift it to me after he dropped his project of building yellow Space Marines. The red Stormraven bears no insignia other than the Imperial Eagle so I am going to use it for both my Blood Angels as well as my (still loyal) Thousand Sons.

Feeling empowered by the finish of the red Stormraven I moved on for the black one and although one'd think it takes significantly less time (it has been primed black after all), the details still take up quite some time. To my surprise the hardest part was the red crosses on the wings because on the one hand they needed several layers of red to have that lively red color, but on the other hand the paint accumulated near/under the rim of the masking tape for a very ugly border effect. :-/ Right now I just try to ignore it and be happy with the Forgeworld Death Company Rhino Doors instead, which fit perfectly. :-D

Here you can see the border effect best. Don't know how to solve it yet other than using less water in my paints so it doesn't flow as easily, yet that would leave the red stripe itself very smudgy.

This is one of the two Death Company Rhino Doors which can be easily swapped with the original Stormraven doors.

One of the reasons this Stormraven took me so long was that I wanted to paint the inside of the cockpit.

I am always painting at least one vehicle of a kind with doors that can be opened and transparent windows to prove I can paint the insides of vehicles as well.

Alas, although I took a lot of effort to fully paint the Techmarine's and the Servitor's cockpit, even the panels at the back of their heads, one can hardly see it.

With these differently angled shots you can at least see the controls in front of them.

Well, that's it for today. I look forward to playing these babies on a tabletop near you. :-D Plus I have a third Stormraven assembled and a fourth waiting in its box, so depending on my painting priorities I may more or less soon field the corresponding formation with three Stormravens and three Tactical Squads. I just don't know yet if that's suitable for a 1'500pts game.

Arming up on Good Friday

The dining table - my current workbench.

What do to on a Good friday when the beloved is at the office? Right, painting up the Blood Angels miniatures needed for my 40K 7th Edition list.

Hence I finished my Servitors

who will go into the Stormraven (sitting on the dining table above) together with Brother Techmarine.

This kit has a certain age; I got it in 2008 before the kit was redone; the current Techmarine wears a cool helmet now.

Last but not least I painted up two Scout Squats that had been sitting in their boxes for years, but now I need them in 7th Ed for mission objective grabbing.

People said I am crazy to put a Powerfist on a Sergeant, but hey, in a White Dwarf Battle Report that type of model once killed a Greater Daemon. I will use this unit mostly for its fire and the Powerfist to tear open the back armor of tanks in the opponent's backyard.

These guys are gonna cover firing lanes while sitting on their mission objective.

So that makes it three months since the original idea of painting up these models until completion. I gotta speed up my painting if I wanna be done before I am dead. ^^

Brother Librarian and Brother Techmarine

As discussed in my previous blog post, I am currently painting up additional pieces to my existing Blood Angels force to have something more suitable for 40K 7th Edition. For starters I painted my two new HQ models, the Librarian and the Techmarine. A Librarian with a Jump Pack simply is a must for any Blood Angels force and was hence long overdue; Techmarines are substantial for any chapter's success and get way too little play time from my point of view, so there I am trying to change that.

I am sort of proud here how the freehand lettering and the blood drops turned out in contrast to the blue armor.

His name, Divico, didn't turn out as neatly as I hoped for, but I decided to leave it on. In this view you also get the best view on the spellbook Divico is carrying into battle. The book is from some bits company, forgot which. The other bits come from Sanguinary Guard, Death Company, and Assault Squad boxes.

I am particularly proud how I was able to work the light blue into his wings; something I wanted to do for a long time. Blood Angels need to look angelic into their very feather tips from my point of view.

This here is the picture of shame. I took the shoulder armor with a skull from the Death Company box  and added horns with green stuff to make him a proper Librarian. Well, you see how it turned out.

The Techmarine (OOP model) turned out just as I wanted. On this picture the red has a pretty uniform look, but in reality there are five different layers of red and orange. On the other hand the uniform look probably means I did my job well, the Librarian has the much harder color contrasts.

I added armor with a grail to his left shoulder to give him some chapter iconography, but I didn't wanna overdo it because after all he is a disciple from Mars.

I also gave him the white Bolter that is special for my Blood Angels 2nd Company, but decided to leave his Boltpistol black because he probably got it before he went to Mars, so it's chapter adherent in its coloring.