Just over a week ago, I listed two cases of Vallejo paints on eBay as I never used them and felt it was better to have them gone from my house and some money in my pocket.  Well I’m happy to say that they both sold for more than I was expecting which has meant that I’ve treated myself to a Forge World Contemptor Dreadnought which I fully intend to assemble and paint in time to enter into Golden Demon, which is just under 5 months away (after I finish my Arachnarock legs).

Although it may sound insane, I realised that I actually only started assembling the Stormlord the beginning of the year and painting towards the end of January.  The Stormlord is massive, certainly far bigger than the dreadnought and I’ve completed that in just over four full months – and that takes into account a few weekends ill and others taken up with other tasks.  The amount of conversion required is minimal in comparison to my last GD dreadnought and all of my previous research is going to be valid for this task.  The order was submitted this morning so with luck I ought to have this by the beginning of next week.  One big benefit of this project is that there is a lot less area to paint, so unlike the Stormlord where I had to wait until I had a 3 or 4+ hour slot to do something (like painting the hull), a similar task can be undertaken in a couple of hours of an evening.  Having my airbrush permanently set up (unlike when I was doing my Arachnarok) also means that I can nip up and do a bit of work of an evening rather.

I need to give some consideration to a decent base.  Although the actual model is around 3″ tall and the wooden plinth adds a further 2″, there are a lot of new vehicles that are taller, such as those with banner poles, demon engines and some of the other Forge World pieces.  To this effect the base really needs to add another 2″ onto the height.  It will also make it a lot easier to see in a display cabinet.  One thing that I think would help is if I have a very light coloured base – so a snow effect or sand effect.  This would also compliment the grey-blue armour colour that I’ll be using – unlike a grey stone effect

Tonight I’m hoping to get the dust layer applied to the tracks and then it’s ready for a coat of matte varnish and the final bits.

The tank has had all of it’s basic colours on and has been sponge weathered (a process where you apply paint with a sponge to simulate paint chips).  The whole tank has then been gloss varnished and last night I managed to apply an oil wash around all of the detail which then got blended in such a way that it looks like basic dirt & water streaking.  I’m probably not going to do much tonight but the next step is rust effects and then some applying dirt effect to the tracks and base of the tank.  A complete coat of matte varnish from the airbrush will then seal it all in ready for the last few bits.  Over all I reckon this should be completed in the next week or so.

Without a doubt this has been a massive learning curve and I’d recommend to anyone who is going to do one to a good standard that it’s going to take you a LONG time.  The cost of the vehicle and size means that it deserves time and attention to be spent on it.  There was very little that you could do in “just five minutes”, which resulted in you having to dedicate at least an hour at a time, most of the time a lot more.  The oil wash I did last night is a prime example and I spent just over 3 hours working on it despite it actually being a very quick and simple task.  Although it does need large chunks of time given over to it, I’d not want to do this alongside another project as I think it would constantly be put off in preference to the other projects which would give a quicker reward.

On the subject of details, I’m currently painting all of the gun casings Dwarf Bronze by hand.  I’m doing this for two reason – firstly trying to spray this thick paint through an airbrush proved to be nightmarish and secondly some bits would just be horrible to mask for doing this.  I have then got to paint the silver metals of the guns and any other details I fancy, finally it’s back to the airbrush to do the last 3 aquila’s with black and then gold and then touch up all of the hull colour and then I’m ready for weathering!  It’s still my intention to try and get this done by the end of the month, but being realistic I will probably roll into the first weekend of March.

I have been thinking about my next project – or more correctly projects.  The Stormlord has been (still is) a massive undertaking, requiring huge amounts of modelling, painting, airbrushing and detail work so I’ve not worked on anything else whilst I’ve been doing it so that I can commit not only my own brain, but my working area to the project fully.  It is however my intention to have a modelling project and a painting project on the go at the same time – painting up in the office and modelling on my paint station.  To this end I’m going to pick up my Ogre Ironblaster as my modelling project.  This has quite a bit of filling required and then my painting project I’m going to start working on my ForgeWorld Blood Thirster again.  Now I’m more proficient with my airbrush the sheer size of this piece is no longer quite as daunting as it once was.  What I need to do is to try and work out something unique to try with it’s armour so that it doesn’t end up as “just another demon”.

The majority of the black touchup had been done and the only exception is the rear and middle parts of both tracks.  In order to finish this, I need to mask the “skirt” of the tank off, which I can’t do until the red strips have been sprayed on, which I am aiming to do tonight.

After a bit of investigation last night, I’ve found out that the aquila on the tank are going to need a black undercoat as the hull colour is too light for a gold colour (which looks pale and washed out).  What’s really annoying is that because of the way they’re moulded onto the tank I’m going to have to paint them by hand.  I did start on one last night and have found that I need to hold the tank at all sorts of funny angles so that I can get a nice smooth colour on.  It looks highly likely that because of this, I’m going to have to wear some gloves in order to ensure that I don’t get any grease from my hands onto the paint :s

I’d like to hope that I’ll get the tank gloss varnished at some point on Sunday, but I do have quite a bit to do though, before I’m at that point.  I have got all of the metallic sections (guns, treadplate, tracks), the red strips, all of the detailing (bits on the top, engine shrine, aquila), the basic weathering done (chips and such like) and any touchups of the hull colour.  Oh the main gun is going to need fitting into place too.  Looking at that list I think that gloss varnish on Sunday is looking unlikely…  However I’m not prepared to rush and end up with a poor job.  If can carry on at the speed I am then I don’t see any reason why this won’t be complete by the end of the month.

I’ve not got any photo’s off what I did yet (it was 11.30pm when I stopped), but it’s made a huge difference to how the tank looks.  I started off with the two loose gun turrets and the main weapon, but quickly looking this morning and there are a couple of patchy bits that need touching up.

The mix I’ve ended up going with is 2 parts Denheb Stone and 1 part Bleached Bone (I’ll call this the Hull colour to keep things easy).  If I were mixing it again then I would probably put in a tiny part of Codex Grey as it’s quite pale.  However it does change colour depending upon the light it’s viewed under, overall it’s going to be fine, especially after it gets weathered using oil paints, which will add in browns, blacks and greens.  The hull colour does need quite a few coats to get decent coverage, but I am going to a very pale colour from a black undercoat so that’s not unexpected.  The really nice thing is that the paint is really smooth so isn’t gumming the airbrush up too often (unlike Fenris Grey).  It does occasionally spider but it’s easily blended.

Tonight I’ve got an opportunity to spend a few hours working on it, so intend to try and get as much with the hull colour on as possible.  Knowing how long the bits took last night, I know that the main body is going to take a very long time to do (we’re talking 10+ hours I reckon).  The metallic elements need to be done in different orders, for example, the treadplate in the back of the tank will need to be done before the inner wall element, where as the imperial aquilias needs to be done after the body.  By having to split the body up into chunks of airbrushing, these out-of-order bits can be done without the hassle of flicking between colours every five minutes.

Quite looking forward to getting into it – it’s been a while coming!

I speak as I find and the model was an absolute joy to put together with a couple of odd exceptions.  The tracks are a proverbial nightmare to tidy up as the ‘join’ line seems to slope on one half of the track.  The fuel barrels on the back of the tank have awful join lines which I filled in using thin plasticard that I cut with a circular cutter.  What I am exceptionally unimpressed with, is how the two autocannons mount onto the rear of the tank – one of the poorest connections that I’ve ever had the misfortune to come across.  The area that you glue is no larger than 1mm x 2mm and even with a decent amount of poly cement it feels quite fragile some hours later.  Fingers crossed it doesn’t ever get knocked else either gun will likely just snap off :s

I have managed to borrow a couple bottles of metallic Vallejo Air (grey colours) to supplement the bronzy colours I’ve already got.  This means that I can easily do the regular grey metallics such as the tracks and gun barrels in addition to the copious amount of brass that Vostroyan’s tend to have as part of their background style.  I also purchased some sticks of earth coloured chalk which I’ll grind up small portions to use as weathering pigments.  Although this might sound strange, they actually work in exactly the same way and I purchased the twelve colours for around the same price that a single pot of weathering pigment would cost.

Painting is going to be quite a big job, but thankfully a large portion of it is airbrushed or weathering using oils and powders.  I’m going to be using the Forgeworld Masterclass book on painting tanks for some of the techniques so to a certain extent there isn’t a massive amount of “skill” involved.  I don’t mean that horribly, but with the correct paints, brushes and equipment most people should be able to achieve a good result – OK I’m probably going to rue the day I said that

To this extent, one of the items I pulled out of the cupboard is the sprues for a friends Stormlord Super Heavy Tank.  I say sprues because a while back I had a tin of cellulose thinners leak in the cupboard and it messed up the box it was in.  I’ve had this tank for at least 2 years now so have over the past couple of weeks gone all guns blazing on getting it put together.  Last night whilst the weather had calmed down (at 11pm) I managed to undercoat most of the tank and turrets chaos black, so I’m one step closer to being able to get some colour on.  I only have two autocannons to finish tidying up (that go on the back) and the main gun had the last bit of glue drying overnight.  I’m going to aim to get it fully painted by the middle of February so that it can be given back and then I can plod on with something else, most likely my Ogre Ironblaster.

Finally I’ve just started a Flickr account so that I can post up all of my progress shots of models in there.  Although I’m more than happy to host them on my own webserver, doing things in Flickr will mean that it’s searchable within Google and placed like Games Workshop are now showing pictures from Flickr on their website.