Trade Marine - Day One

I've decided to start putting up more of my WiP pics. Whether I take one at the end of each day or certain phases is still up in the air... My next figure is going to be a Space Marine Master of the Chapter. It's a trade miniature between Roleplayer and I. He has my two year old Gamesday Marine (With the big ass hammer), and I'm doing this guy...

Anyway, day one

Cleaned the miniature of excess flak, removed the mold lines, cleaned it with a little bit of toothpaste and given it an acid bath. While he was soaking I cleaned the head off, and put the base together. I made the decision to remove the funny little ear things and make the helmet more flat. With the face panel it looks slightly older, or it does to me. All of RP's minis are helmeted. So I wanted one that had a little more character. The base is a simple cork and sand job. Roleplayer buys his bases, but I think this one should work so long as I use similar colors. I like to have a bit of height for character minis...

Chaos Daemon Bloodletter unit

Wow, first things first let me just say that Batch painting is truly a sucky thing, it takes all the fun out of watching a miniature come alive before your eyes and distorts it so that you feel you're getting nothing done, plus you slack off and don't take as much care as you should. That being said, I don't know if painting in ones and twos would be any easier... Just longer...
These came out OK, I've missed bits and pieces and they still need to be sealed. For these guys it's going to be gloss, (shocking I know). I think the slight sheen will give them a little more zing, especially the lava, which I think has turned out OK... Ink is fun, but it can be sticky and messy so if you choose to use it make sure you have some paper towels handy... and old clothes on...
Couldn't get all of them to fit against my backgrounds so I had to use a white drop sheet instead, sucks all the light out of the shot... Oh well... Can't win them all... I think I'm going to treat myself to painting a single figure next. Maybe a Hero Space Marine... I think that would be a good break from batch painting stuff...

Test Daemon: Bloodletter...

My second attempt at using inks rather than paints, and they're pretty good for speed painting, well, what I consider speed painting anyway... White undercoat > Yellow Ink > Orange paint / yellow ink 1:3 mix > Red ink, touch ups with yellow. Black coat the sword and horns, and then use my gem technique for them. The sword is far to dull so next time I'm going to have to do multiple coats... Not quite sure what to do with the base... To much lave might be wrong... Maybe more black...

Warband complete!

Finished! At last! *phew* painting fast is tough, but I've learned a lot while doing this. Having a deadline is well-worth the extra pressure, it forces you to keep going, but also try new things and shortcuts. Hopefully it's going to translate well over to painting the rest of my army... The last two Witch-Hunters were done at the same time, and while it allowed me to finish in one day it annoyed the heck outta me when paints kept drying... Back to Space Marines soon though... ^_^

Witch-Hunter Captain Done!

This pace is slowly killing me... What's worse is the fact that my painting chair is NOT comfortable for looooong periods of time. Two hours? Fine. Four hours? Heeeeell no. Longer? You'll be in pain for the night... *sigh* Anyway, ,y finished Witch Hunter Captain. Took me a full afternoon from say 1pm till 5pm, and then some little bits of extra time as I was doing the base... Four days left. Two Figures to go... Gonna be tight, especially if I want to get some scenery done as well...

Notes:
- Some people said my metals were to bright so I've given the metal a wash of Sepia after the black to take most of the shine off. Must say I kind of like the look for Fantasy-type armor...
- I've had a few people ask for various color recipes; when I'm finished I'll sit down and try and remember how I did them, most are simply foundation colors with a little bit of bleached bone added to lighten them and a crap load of washes.
- The face may look little black, had a splotch of Black wash land there, not quite sure how but had to do some rescue work...

Alrighty, yet another finished figure. The pace is starting to show on this one... My exceptionally quick Elf Ranger. Three hours from start to finish and it really shows... Normally I would of taken a lot more care with the brown, but it's such a pain in the ass color to properly highlight. I am happy how the green came out though, I normally don't get a chance to paint large areas of green and the speed highlighting worked quite well... The red was the last addition. When it was just brown and green it seemed to miss something, and then it occurred to me that red will both tie him into Witch-Hunters and give him a little zing... Likewise there are meant to be little leaf clumps in parts I've just painted them an off-green and given them a wash... I normally don't like to complain about a miniature being responsible for painting short-comings but this was a bitch, lots of little fiddly bits to get in the way and overlapping bits of cloak / armor / leather make it quite hard to pick apart whats meant to be what color...After some playtesting I've changed my warband slightly which means I now have four more figures and ten more days....

And it continues... Fast painting isn't really my strength, but I made the decision to use heavy washes for shadowing and it seems to work well enough... ^_^

Running tally: 16 days, 8 miniatures left.