The Ever Present Hobby Guilt

Dave:

We’re nearing the end of our hobby guilt marathon now, and I’ve made some good progress since our last update. I’m not as far on as I would have liked to be for various reasons, but I’m finally starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel with these guys.

I don’t know if I’ve mentioned this so far, but I have a thing about painting horses – I don’t like it. I don’t know what it is about doing it, but it just drives me up the wall. In the last post I had all but finished them, and now that they are done (with the exception of the odd detail here and there), I’ve started on the riders, and what a difference that has made! Firstly, they aren’t horses, but secondly the model suddenly starts to come together and actually starts to look complete when the rider has their base colours done.

For the gambesons (the clothes under the chainmail) I decided to go with a simple dull brown colour rather than brighter colours as I had seen on some of the example armies during my research. These are supposed to represent early Normans from around the battle of Hastings era, so they wouldn’t have had such bright colours in their uniforms (at least, not to my knowledge). To achieve this, I use Secret Weapon Miniatures Old Mud, followed by a coat of Citadel Agrax Earthshade, then picking out the raised areas with old mud again. The models seem to be wearing some kind of strapping on their legs too. I couldn’t work out what this was supposed to be, so I just painted them same colour of the gambesons – these guys are only going to tabletop standard, after all!

I have decided to leave the shield designs off for the time being, just leaving them a plain field of the base colour. At some point in the future, I’ll go back and add the designs on, and there will be a tutorial blog post on it. Most of the patterns will be simple, geometric designs, but there will be some that I will want to be more adventurous with (the warlord, for example).

One of the great things about getting all of the cavalry done, is that I’ve worked out the colour palette for the cloth and shield colours, which I can carry forward to all the infantry when I come to do them. This, unfortunately, may be further in the future than I hoped, as Mike and Rob have been making noises about a fresh hobby challenge for us all in the new year… No rest for the wicked!

Rob:

A fresh challenge? Surely not… Mwuhahaha!

Since the last post I’ve been surprisingly productive. I’m not entirely certain why, but I knuckled down and managed to make a lot of progress with a lot of different things – though other than the Deathshroud bodyguards, I’m not certain anything is 100% complete.

First up, I’ve been working on some more Death Guard. There’s still a lot to do on them, but the longest part – the pale armour – is pretty much finished bar the guy on the left:

As well as the troops, I’ve also been working on the Death Guard Plagueburst Crawler. It’s a great kit with plenty of detail, and I’m just up to the pale armour – urgh… Don’t be fooled however, the sides, dozerblade and gun in the back aren’t glued in place yet.

I’ve managed to get some work done on more Shadespire miniatures. With us planning a little Christmas gaming over the holidays, I’ve been working on the Orruks, Stormcast and the Khorne mobs to get them all painted for then. It’s looking promising that they’ll be ready to go.  My pal Danny told me how much he enjoyed painting up his Stormcast, and they looked great. After starting this trio, I can see why. They’re simple to paint, but there’s so much you can do with them.

Finally, I’ve been working on a little bit of the Necromunda scenery for Wednesday’s video. Although it is made for Necromunda, it makes great scatter terrain for 40k. I’m hoping to have all the Necromunda terrain painted by the end of the year, and at least one of the gangs, so I’ve been working on a quick and effective way to paint them up. Hopefully the barricade looks the part.

That’s all from me this time. I’m back at my desk ready to get painting again.

Adam:

This week is one of those great weeks when you are painting an army: the week it comes together! Everyone knows that day. You slave away at a unit, basecoating, starting to add the odd extra colour here and there and BAM!  … you can see that it is going to look decent when it is finished!

The primary instigator for this development is, I think, that our group has started to do some online Skype painting sessions. So, we can all chat whilst we get some colours on our toys. I’ve found this helps to take my mind off overthinking my painting. I’m unsure if I have shared this before but I am colour-blind, so putting together colour schemes that I have come up with myself is quite difficult.

I do tend to opt for uniformed armies where possible to alleviate the stress of this: paint one, show the group, get the response that ‘it works’, repeat on x200 models. With the Samurai I have been overthinking every combination of colours. By talking on Skype, I feel much more willing to just ‘give it a go’ as well as being to show for instant feedback.

Still a way off from being finished, but my Samurai are getting to the stage where I would be willing to allow them out for a test game over Christmas for a trial of the Ronin or Test of Honour rules (hint, hint, B&B team… who’s free?!) [Check the calendar – Mike]. The Ashigaru and Samurai are now getting to the stage where they will be assigned allegiances and have their clan badges painted on. Although, as I find freehand rather painstaking, the badges are probably good for a non-Skype night!

The ninjas are also coming on, one layer of highlights on the black. Probably about two more to go!

As well as the Samurai, you know I have been getting distracted…

The French continue apace. Looking at the models I have already completed for this army, though, the white is a slightly different shade. Gah! This is the problem with not finishing full armies at once. Looking at it, I think the base grey I have used is slightly lighter as my Foundation Paint Grey and now my Citadel Mechanicus Standard grey have both dried out. This is done using Vallejo Mid-grey. A trip to GW may be needed before Christmas (any excuse, eh?)!  If we play any Muskets and Tomahawks over the holiday, I am itching to try out artillery…

Speaking of distractions and not finishing armies, I also have my last two Russians to complete: a flamethrower team. with a Russian Tank War set for Bolt Action on its way, I had better hurry up with these, as I feel January may be tank month, and if you are really good I will do a guide on whitewashing, as I found it really hard to get a decent look when I did my first tank.

As I said, I love painting uniformed armies and these should finish pretty quickly. I have already done about 70 of these chaps, and I use a base/wash/highlight system to keep them nice and grubby. I may well focus on these and try and box off at least one of these project pieces by 2018!

Mike:

Well, I missed the last post, mainly because it was my birthday and I had been quite busy with various other things. It was also the end of term so I had lots of teaching and marking to finish off. Excuses… excuses… excuses… (“I ran out of gas! I got a flat tire! I didn’t have change for cab fare! I lost my tux at the cleaners! I locked my keys in the car! An old friend came in from out of town! Someone stole my car! There was an earthquake! A terrible flood! Locusts! IT WASN’T MY FAULT, I SWEAR TO GOD!” – Rob)

The main thing I’ve been working on is a top secret project as it happens to be a Christmas present, and I wouldn’t want to post pictures of it all over the internet before the big day. Don’t worry though, there will be a step by step post about it in the new year.

The other thing I was going to post about was a bit of advice. I have my airbrush station about my washing machine on the worktop. I just wanted to say, don’t leave fragile models on the worktop while the machine is on. I walked in and stepped on a sword, then found the other pieces spread across the floor. So I spent some time of last week repairing this:

The main thing I’ve been working on recently is trying to get some Adeptus Custodes done. I posted a video (here) last week showing the method of getting the following gold armour:

And finally I also managed to do some more work on my Imperial Fists Master of Signals, and a little bit on this Leviathan Dreadnought. Full guides for these will be up in the future:

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