Salutations, tiny plastic readers! It’s been a while, but we thought we’d get back to sharing what’s been on the hobby desk for some of our contributors recently.
With events starting to creep back into calendars, there has been a flurry of activity as we add finishing touches, meta-chasing units, or whole new armies to the collection, whilst others amongst us to continue to devote their time to beautiful single models, metawatch be damned!
Tom G (RespectableGeek)
I’ve spent the last couple of months working on my most ambitious project yet: the Knight Castellan Saraneth, the Throne of Queen Valancy, First among the Seven companions of the House of the Mausoleum Adamant. It all started with a concept of wanting to have a knight that was being used as a mobile command base, complete with holotable and various commanders.
From there it escalated into a concept of ‘The Court of the Queen’, with a ruler sitting in their command throne atop the knight. It took me ages to work out how to make it all fit, but eventually I saw someone who had used the pulpit from the Sisters of Battle range as a front piece, and it escalated from there! I’m particularly pleased with how well everything slotted together: getting the pulpit, the throne and the structure at the back to fit all just worked with very little need to cut anything!
The names of the knight and the queen are both references to book series involving necromancy, by the way: all of the knights are named after the bells in the Abhorsen series, and the pilots are named after cavaliers in the Locked Tomb series!
Laura (Scops)
These are from my Ossiarch Bonereaper Null Myriad army, which I’m getting close to finishing. I find OBR quite strange to paint because every model has the same textures – bone, armour, and weapons – in a different arrangement, so the process of painting each model is the same regardless if whether it’s a Mortek Guard or a Gothizzar Harvester.
Drew
This month I have been experimenting with some new painting techniques on a random troll model, seeing what I can do with thick base coats and refining airbrushed glazes.
Working on some tiny tiny Romans.
Painting some Dark Angels for 30k.
And actually playing some games. Along with TPP members Rich, James, and Pete.
WhamBadger
The last couple of months have been pretty focussed on Kill Team for me. I’m not a 40K player, but know some, and the chance to do something in that space like Warcry seemed like a good idea to finally be able to play with them.
I turned a long standing desire to paint a mech into “lets try painting some T’au StealthSuits to see if I fancy it”. I used a Squidmar T’au recipe for the main turquoise colour, and I think that looks great. I didn’t enjoy the process too much (drilling barrels is not fun), but I’m happy with the end results. This gives me the option of pairing with a Pathfinder team to make a Kill Team force. Not sure I will do a big mech now, but Gunpla may start calling me to scratch that itch instead.
The next foray was a group of five Grey Knights. These are the first Space Marine models I’ve painted (excluding Epic back in the day). I’m not so good at edge highlighting, but some airbrushing with deep turquoise ink, Vallejo Model Air Chainmail Silver and then dry brushing Stormhost Silver and that mixed with white gave me a nice metal colour to work from for the bulk of the models.
Unusually for me I stayed focussed on both these builds, and got them finished painted in about a week and a half each.
Next stop: I’ve built some Harlequins for a second force, and just got them primed. I’ve ordered some Scale 75 FX Fluor paints, as well as Turbo Dork’s Miami Sunset to try and 1980’s them up, and I’m planning on batch painting the twelve in units of four. I’ve also bought and am scratch building some terrain for my board. Hopefully by the end of next month I’ll be ready to play finally!
Michael
When the previous roundup came out, I was actually hobbying for a change. But I couldn’t contribute as I’d bought Kragnos on a bit of a whim and was secretly painting him to surprise the Discord server with his sudden appearance.
I built him off of the base, but could perch him on it to see how he was coming along. Here he is with the main non-skin materials blocked out with Contrast paints, which I think did a great job of helping me feel a sense of progress.
The swampy water is Woodland Scenics Water Effects with Athonian Camoshade mixed in, daubed on in thinnish but uneven layers. The Water Effects is normally white gloop when it’s wet, but it dries transparent and the camoshade colours it in the way you’d expect.
With the skin painted up and all the Contrast areas enhanced with bits of highlighting or glazing, he was starting to come together nicely, but I realised that the textured ground outside of the swamp looked very dry rather than muddy. I experimented on a small patch with Ardcoat but this just accentuated the sandy texture, so I settled on giving the rest of the base one quick coat of the Water Effects to make it look wet.
James O
This month I finished up a few minis (but you can’t see those, those are for an upcoming article), and now I’m moving on to try to finish off models that I’ve started but abandoned for one reason or another. So I decided to pick up this Obliterator that’s been sitting on the shelf for probably a year. I gave up on it at the time because I lost confidence that I was going to be able to paint the helmet as its obscured behind a horrible toothy maw, and the amount of details on the rest of the mini were really overwhelming. I felt like I was going back and forth picking out tiny bits and pieces and making very little progress.
Now, armed with a brush I’ve found that I really love using and feel super confident with (Army Painter Wargamer Regiment – really great point, decent durability, great price for the performance in my opinion) I decided to face my fear head on and start by completing the helmet.
To my surprise, it went really smoothly, it really made me feel like I had progressed and become a lot more comfortable picking out fine details compared to when I started painting the model and I feel really enthusiastic towards tackling the mountain of trim, teeth, bullets, cables, pistons and tentacles that absolutely cover the rest of the model!
Rich (Cronch)
It’s been a while since the last hobby roundup, so I’ve painted quite a lot of things! Let’s stick to the highlights:
Like so many people, I got hold of the Dominion launch box for Age of Sigmar 3rd edition, and I painted up these Annihilators following a tutorial from Cult of Paint. I’m really enjoying getting to grips with a combination of airbrushing, selective highlighting, oil paints, and weathering for a high-tabletop finish! I’ll be doing the rest of the Stormcast side of the box soon, I hope.
This Arch-Revenant was a gift for a friend, as part of a randomly-drawn exchange we’ve started doing as a group. It was good fun trying to match my friend’s colour scheme and basing, but luckily the model has quite a lot of individual features like the wings, so I still had room to be creative!
I also finished off my 2000-point Lumineth Realm-Lords list in time for Blood Tithe at the London Grand Tournament recently (look out for a pod special on that topic soon!). I’m thrilled with the end result, so much so that I made them a magnetised board to sit on at the event, and already planning what to add to the army next!
That is all for now! Join us next time for more hobby goodness!
