Frost and Bone

I'm currently rushing to finish as many units as possible for this Saturday's game (only my 2nd with Vampire Counts) and I wanted to take a break to post what I've done so far. I have to point out I did go back and rebase the Hexwraiths and original Skellie unit as I didn't like the flock and static grass and wanted a winter theme.

I wanted the bases to look like it had been winter and the thaw had arrived but just as the snow had started to melt a cold had descended freezing the melting snow. That's when the undead arrived.

Family photo. I love the new Vampire Counts models, they're so atmospheric and it looks like they've been sculpted by someone who really loved them. 

I've never been a massive fan of metallics so I'm steering away from them except a slight lining of silver on the rusty swords.

I'm writing a background for my Banshee as it just feels right to have some kind of history. I imagine that she was a vain trophy wife who had her husband poisoned to inherit his fortune but accidentally drank from his cup. 

These new Spirit Hosts are just incredible. Easy to paint, lovely sculpts. Didn't take long to get them looking like this. 

 I love the vargheists and I think I'll be going back and touching them up a bit just to give them glowing eyes and some bone details. I've got about 2500pts of Vamps now and this is the units half done. Next up I've got a Black Knight unit to finish painting so fingers crossed that's done by Friday.

Let it snow!!!

'TIS THE SEASON! We're all getting ready for the Christmas celebrations in the Purchase-Green household so hobbying has been taking a back seat to wrapping and baking however I've still managed to get some stuff done. With the End Times Warhammer supplements coming out I'm really excited about getting a larger army and fighting some massive battles. 

I've been adding snow to the bases of my current finished units. I love snow effect but usually I just painting PVA on the base and dip the models into it, this time I mixed the snow effect straight into the PVA glue then clumped it on with a sculpting tool as I've seen this create a more realistic effect. I wanted it to look like it's been snowing and is still snowing but the armies are moving through it. 

The Hexwraiths are ethereal so I didn't want it to look like they were being affected by the snow however with the Skellies I wanted it to look like they had it landing on them. You can see it on the shields, top of the banner and some of their heads. 

Here are the current units in progress. We've got some spirits who just need their final highlights, a unit of skellies who just need basing and vargheists who need their wings (next time I paint vargheists I'm doing them in separate bits, getting behind the wings has been a nightmare)

Got a game planned for January 2nd with Steve and last time he faced a mostly grey plastic army so would love to have an army that's half finished. I reckon I can get all this done AND a character if I do a bit every day.

Finished Skellies and the start of my ghostly Hexwraiths

With the debut battle for my Vampire Counts army happening tomorrow night with Stephen I stepped up my painting speed to get at least a couple of units painted before the great unveiling. This first unit of Skellies actually didn't take that long but finding time to get them done was tough. I tried a whole load of new techniques but mostly I've been experimenting with inks over a white undercoat and almost all of the GW technical paints (all of which are a godsend for someone trying to make a unit look good quickly) 

I've also managed to get these Hexwraiths nearly done. All the need now is some drybrushing on their bases and some flock and they're good to go.

You'll notice the lighting is a lot better in these photos and that's because I managed to get one of these in a sale - Daylight lamp I really really recommend them as the light is perfect for painting and photos.

 

Necromancers ready for the brush

Annnnnnndddd here are my converted necromancers ready for their undercoat. They're going to be a nightmare fitting into a unit but look at how amazing they are LOOK AT THEM!

Skellies!

Here are the first finished skellies and the next rank too! Once I start it's very easy to get these finished quickly so should have the whole unit done by tonight! Got the army's first battle next week with Steve (of Stevo's blog) so want to get as much painted as possible.

Necromancer?

A long time ago I won a bunch of miniatures which included this lovely model. I've not done anything with her yet but I'm thinking she'll make a great necromancer for Gaussenlund's force. I want to convert her so she's different from the original. I'm thinking of removing the box and having the spirits coming out of graves or even corpses. Hmm this might be tricky.

Absolutely BATtered

I got 4 of the Reaper Bones bat swarms as they've got a lot more movement and character than the GW one. I used 1 on my Vampire Count so that left 3 to make a unique unit. I left one as it was and converted the two remaining with bits I had left over. Looking forward to seeing these in action.

My Vampire conversion and hobby station!

Apologies for the double post but thought I'd show you this lovely conversion I did

I've used the Vampire parts from the Terrorgheist kit and some bats from the Reaper bones range. What I'm going for is the Vamp is reforming into his man firm after flying into battle as a swarm of bats!

Also got my permanent hobby area sorted and my basing kit arrived so here's some pics of where I paint and what I'm using -

COUNT on me (more vampires!)

Today has been pretty busy! I'm still sorting out my painting area etc so apologies for the low quality of these photos.

I managed to do the details on the first five skeletons of 20. Agrax earthshade over white primer, then a drybrush of white for the bone. Tried a bunch of different things with these and learned a couple of lessons. 

First off Oxide is a great finish for undead metallics.

Secondly you don't need to do any metallics at all.

And finally sometimes a quick ink does the same job as hours of shading

I've managed to prime and wash the rest of the skellies so they'll get drybrushed tomorrow. Also my basing kit and these babies arrived.

I got 4 and 3 will form a unit . The remaining swarm I'm going to use with my vampire to make it look like he's reforming out of them (been watching Dracula Untold).

Also Lucy (my exceedingly better half) convinced me that a display cabinet would be a great idea so now this has gone up in the bedroom.

Undoubtedly she is incredible. Also it's not Vamp related but in the same place we found the cabinet we also discovered this awesome work of art for the bargain price of £2! THAT'S CHEAPER THAN AN EXTRA VALUE MEAL!

White undercoat - the revelation

WHY HAVE I NEVER USED WHITE UNDERCOAT BEFORE?!!!!!

I've always been a stalwart defender of a black undercoat then layering up your paint. But look at this:

JUST LOOK AT IT! - 

That's white spray with one brown ink wash over the top of it. The bone is basically finished! Took me 3 minutes! Sure doing the swords etc is going to take a bit longer but I could base coat a 20 model unit in 15 minutes with shading! Today I will be experimenting with metallics and getting some colour on these bad boys but I think I'm a white guy now. Spray that is, I'm not going through some hideous Michael Jackson based procedure. 

The Dark has risen!

It's been a long time since I blogged here but I'm back with a new project! These are the newly risen undead forces of the notorious vampire Gregori Von Gaussenlund!

This project is something I've wanted to do ever since I saw the very first tale of 4 gamers. Also I'm challenging myself with something new by using white spray for the most part then inking. Fingers crossed!

Getting down with the brown

Let's start with an apology. Through a huge influx of work and the addition of a new kitten I've neglected my wonderful hobby and you, the literally tens of readers, I'm sorry about that.

We're all good yeah? Great?

OK so I've gone full steam ahead with the Skaven. I want the army fully painted quickly and so am trying something I've never done before. Colour undercoat. Through my while hobbying existence I've always painted using a black undercoat, of course I've dabbled with white during my more daring moments but black is far more forgiving and for me easier to get the shades I want.

With these Skaven their primary colour is brown fur and I'm painting their clothing red which comes up from brown anyway so throwing caution to the wind I've sprayed the next batch to paint Mournfang brown. I'm nothing if not a maverick.

Apologies and Tau

Apologies for not posting in such a long time, I've been touring around the UK for work then incredibly sick so not been able to stop and hobby (AS A VERB MOTHERFUDGERS!) but I will be back on it next week. What I have been able to do is start my 40k Tau army, I got a £20 voucher for my local bricks and mortar store as a house warming gift and wanted to use it to start the Tau properly. Here's what I did with it:

I got myself the absolutely beautiful Tau Commander. I was umming and arring over some Fire Warriors to begin with but really I want big robot suits so why not start with that. This is a gorgeous figure though while building it I a) had no idea what the weapons do on the battlefield so I stuck everything on and b) realised the model was a bit heavy on one side so stuck a 2p coin on the opposite side to balance it. Once it was built it looked like it was leaping backwards bringing up the guns to immolate unfortunate enemies. 

I'm building this army to play against Steve's  Orks so lots of firepower is key.

I'll be posting about the Skaven I'm doing later next week but until then this is what I'll be doing - Mic, Bike and Hike  so I hope you can forgive my lack of blogginess

Freshly summoned familiar

Apologies for the lack of posts but as you can see our newly summoned shadow demon is preventing any hobby work being done. Normal service will resume as soon as I find the right binding spell, oh no it's luring me in with it's cuteness...will draining...heart warming...brain softening...argh!

Family photo shoot

And here's everything painted all together in one place

Rat roster (updated)

I've made some changes to the original army list after getting a bunch of suggestions. I now have a more solid core with 2 blocks of 40 clanrats supported by a Warlord so my characters all have reliable units to hide in. 

I'm still taking both a Warp Lightning Cannon AND a Doomwheel mainly because I love both of these no matter how many times the DW tries to kill my entire army by itself, haha that's so Skaven. 

Multiple Mayhem

Phew finally finished the 5 (rat) man Globadier unit today. They're just one of those units that while you're painting doesn't look great until you get to the final touches. I'm painting the robe on it thinking "this looks good but it would look fantastic with blood spattered across it" or "I think the leather on this face mask looks nice but the lenses would set this off perfectly" so it's just a case of seeing the model for what it's going to look like. 

As you can see that giant globadier isn't alone he's accompanied by a blood soaked ratling gun. These guys have been sat in the army with just the metallics done for weeks so wanted to finish them quickly and get them paired with their unit, plus I was awake at 6am this morning and had 90 minutes where everyone else was sleeping. The red is a base red, brown army painter ink then some blood red on top finally highlighted with a blood red/bad sunz yellow mix. The rest of the army currently has a darker red to their clothes but I'll drop a highlight on them when I finish all the others.

I wanted the ratling gun to look like it's been getting right up in the combat, jamming the gun into the enemy units and letting rip with hot warpstone death. I think I use blood for the blood god a bit too much but I love how it looks and really it's called WARhammer not HUGhammer (that's something dwarves do). 

Next up it's either the Warp Lightning Cannon or the second half of a 40 Rat clanrat unit. Something big and impressive anyway.

Hello Ratfans!

I have to say this week is not going to be the most interesting for you. I have been painting multiples of the same model:

I love globadiers, they're fantastically chaotic on the battlefield and totally in line with the Skaven way of war. My only gripe is that GW hasn't updated the model in such a long time that these guys feel a bit outdated, next to their newer brothers and sisters they look like they've been mainlaining the growth hormones and cloning themselves. 

Just for the record here's a group shot of everything I have painted so far. It amounts to about 18% of the army so far. Not too bad but this has taken 6 months. Speed painter I am not. 

Two little skaven sitting on a wall....

Got another one of the globadiers done last night after purchasing a monster brush from army painter:

I love these brushes, the grip makes it more comfortable and precise to work with and the quality of the tip is fantastic. I zoomed through last night's globadier because of it. Together the two finished globe chuckers look nice but lonely, need to get the rest done quickly:

I've been asked how I do these guys robes and it's really easy. I wanted the army to have a comic book feel to the paint style, stark highlights and blacklining abound. I started with genestealer purple then covered it in a load of gryphonne sepia (seraphim sedia now I believe). Once this was dry I highlighted it up as if I was starting on a base of genestealer purple, adding white gradually. The effect is that the shadows and shades are a nice dirty brown to give the impression that these are old tattered robes. Make sure the wash is dry first before you start highlighting, sounds obvious but some of us are impatient and like to ruin their own work. 

The list

For anyone that's interested here's the list for the army I'm currently painting, it's based entirely on which models I bought as part of deals or were given as birthday/Christmas presents:

I use an app called Battlescribe to create army lists, it's incredibly efficient and easy to use so go check it out (it's free but I paid a little extra to support the developer).

Hot Skaveny goodness!

I blame Stephen. I was trundling through life on the verge of a nervous breakdown as I built my career and refused to take time off for hobbies or relaxation time then suddenly BAM! Stephen buys me a hobby starter kit for Christmas and I fall right off the wargaming wagon. Suddenly I have not one but two Warhammer armies on the go and my hands are covered in spray paint, my blood pressure is down, my left eye doesn't twitch anymore and damn it I've started to feel feelings again! You can read Stephen's blog here which is 50% inspirational and 50% disheartening as he paints at the speed of thought, the models even look great. I could deal with the rapidity of it if his stuff looked like an angry child had attacked the cast of The Two Towers with a paintball gun and some tins of industrial emulsion but it's all pretty great. Check it out. 

Anyway right now this second I'm working on a Skaven force. Currently that force looks like this:

As you can see there's a grey plastic/black spray paint theme tying the whole army together nicely. Prior to my hobby hiatus I was a speed painter, able to crank out 10 tournament level models in a couple of hours, but after a six year break I just don't have the same eyesight, hand stability or painting ability that I used to. This has meant that I can't paint at the same speed but have a greater sense of achievement when I get a unit done. I was so pleased when I finished the Doomwheel because it was a lot of effort and looked great (I think):

I also managed to complete an entire unit of clanrats over the course of a single week (except for basing as that required nearly an entire week in itself!):

"Enough with the past Chris!" I hear you cry "what did you paint today?" I hear you ask "Have you lost weight? You look fantastic" I hear you compliment, oh stop it you. Well I'm currently working on a five man globadier unit. Here's the first of the quintet:

I love painting lenses as they're really simple and when done right take a mediocre paint job up to the next level. I'm hoping to get all these bad boys finished this week so I can focus on getting a big block unit and character done (it's just not fair to play people with beautifully painted armies and I show up with the shadow army from Spraytoria).