RuneBrush
Rune's Painting & Miniature Blog

As I’m still in the planning phase with whatever I choose to do for next years Golden Demon, I decided that I’d start to assemble some of the new Space Wolf mini’s I bought at Games Day as it’s my intention to have at least assembled a 1500 point army by the early part of next year.

I’ve finished putting together a Wolf Guard Terminator with Assault Canon.  I will be honest and say that I’m very impressed with the new boxed sets, unlike some other plastics the tidying up is either straight forward or minimal.  The sheer number of weapon variations is also staggering – I think that you have around 3 pairs of weapons for every body so can kit them out in pretty much any variation you fancy.  I think the only slight disappointment is the heads.  Even though there are a dozen on the Wolf Guard sprues and 44 in the Wolf Pack boxed set, you’re actually limited on what is suitable if you want to go for un-helmeted heads and keep some kind of variety without converting any.  Some of the heads are clearly blood claw, some are grey hunter and some would be suitable for any, however a number of the hair styles are truly rediculous.  One has what can only be described as a medieval bob – not exactly feral nor in keeping.  What would have been cool would have been a few bald heads that would have made it really easy to convert (that still had teeth etc).  There is also a distinct lack of beards.  That said, a number of the heads are spot on and a number can be converted pretty simply.  I think that the only other gripe is all of the legs in the Wolf Pack box are standing – none of them are running.

Overall the sprues are fantastic and should add tons of flavour to any Space Wolves army.  Oh and with luck I’ll have a copy of the new codex waiting for me tonight.

Having flicked through the Warhammer Online collectors edition art book, I think that I’ve come up with a potential concept for my Golden Demon entry next year.  Within the book (and indeed the game), there is a Tzeentch bridge, simply put it has a path leading upto and out of what can only be described as an upturned pyramid, which is floating in the air.  At the top of this structure is a large Tzeentch eyeball, surveying all that come and go.

What strikes me about this as a project is that it’s going to be pretty unique.  It’s a massive modelling project in it’s own right and lends itself to a significant portion being airbrushed.  For me it’s quite cool as I enjoyed and spent far more time on the modeling element of my Dreadnought than I did on the painting element.  One of the pretty cool things about Tzeentch is that the structure has to look impossible, unstable and slightly disturbed.    The pyramid is in essence composed of ‘layers’ in a similar design to a flower’s petals.  What I’d love to do, is to have parts of the model floating with the use of magnets (a bit like those levitating pens you can buy).  Some kind of movement would also be pretty cool, but would have to think about both of these items as it could add unecessary weight onto the floating element.

I need to sketch out some sizes, but it would be good to be able to have the paths able to take three or four mounted miniatures – i.e. 4 inches across.  This would likely make the eyeball huge – at least 3 inches in diameter – providing I can paint it well it will make a fantastic feature centre piece of the model.  Once I’ve done a sketch or two, I’ll create a mock out of card and artboard to see what it looks like and it I’ll carry on with it.  I’ll also add some miniatures onto it – probably chaos warriors as they can be painted in the purple hues of the actual structure.  What would be really cool would be to sculpt the bridge over a valley and somehow model false perspective to make it seem like the valley bottom is far away.  In addition to the large eye on the top of the structure, there are also two eye like spheres set in the walls of structure (on either side).  What I want to do is to try and paint them so that they appear to follow you within a relativly wide arc.  If you’ve not already guessed I have plans to make the whole model slightly disturbing, but equally fascinating at the same time.  Now obviously I actually need to work out how and indeed if some of these ideas are actually possible within a modelled world, but fingers crossed and this will become a reality

Useful Links: http://img.war-europe.com/syndic_img/news/maymnl/TheBridge.jpg

My first post of various musings.

Read more

Unsurprisingly I didn’t win anything at Golden Demon yesterday.  Despite staying up until 11-30 on Saturday evening getting my entry done.  My basic problem was that I ran out of time and rushed the final parts of the model.  The red elements was litterally splashed on, the metals weren’t finished off to a high enough standard plus the base and cloak got whacked out in an evening – far too short a time to do them justice.  This meant that I didn’t even receive a single sticker for my entry   – which was my goal.  However the fault lies squarly on my shoulders as I should have spent more time on it when I had the opportunity and for not being able to take more time on the finishing elements.

However those were the negatives.  My intention is to begin to plan and work on next year’s entry now.  My Brother’s new flat is in Chippenham, has easy access to a train station (5 minutes walk away), so next year’s Games Day is pretty much sorted from a transport point of view – plus the train will mean that I don’t have to wake up at 5-30 in the morning

Read more

Quick post before I go out for the evening.  Here is the almost fully highlighted torso.  I’m going to work on the feet once the piece is fixed to the base.  I’m also not happy with the powerfist – stupidly I should have left it unpainted and done it red!  Mind you, there’s still time I suppose.

Here is the base on it’s newly arrived plinth.  It’s going to look OK.  Not my finest work, but passable.

Tomorrow I’m going to get straight on with the metallics as I feel that’s going to make a hell of a difference.  Cloak needs finishing sculpting as well as a matter of urgency as it needs time to set.

Still running behind and hit my first hiccup.  I think that I’ve tried to highlight up too quickly.  By that I mean that I’ve gone stright from the Codex Grey base coat (which is dark as it’s layered on top of Adeptus Battlegrey) to Fortress Grey.  The end result is a pretty poorly blended highlight.  Sadly as I painted this with an airbrush it’s too late and complicated to repaint that area from scratch   I’ve blended in a bit with some neat Codex and it’s helped, but it’s not at the level of painting I’d hoped to achieve.  I also think that I’ve had too big-a-break from painting and have lost some of the brush control that I’d developed.  Quite gutting to be honest, but I’m just going to plough on.  I have booked Friday off as holiday so have a little bit of extra time.  The highlighting and shading were more time consuming as I really didn’t get into it properly – I find that when I have a bit of a ‘not happy with it’ moment, that I loose steam.

So when I get back tonight, my job is to finish the highlighting and shading (a tall order and late night might be involved).  Tomorrow is out as I have to go out, but Friday should allow me a good chunk of painting time.  Fingers cross that it’s enough!

I’ll add a progress shot up tonight, but yesterday I actually did get paint onto the main Dreadnought assembly of my Golden Demon entry.  I’m getting the hang of the airbrush as well, which should make things much easier in the long run.  I begun to shade and re-undercoat the various bit last night as well, though my eyes were starting to go fuzzy so sadly had to stop – mind you not that surprising as I’d been airbrushing in the garage, where the light isn’t that fantastic.

My deadline is still very tight (verging on the impossible), as the base needs to be painted and the cloak finished, both of which could feasibly be classed as a model in their own right.  Sadly I’m out tomorrow evening at a friends (though am planning on coming home early) and out for a few beers on Thursday and I can’t get out of either – not enough time left!!!  I have two items that I aim to get done tonight – shading and highlighting of the Dreadnought.  I’m going for a pretty simple scheme here, shaded with carefully applied washes (three or four colours), plus lined with a codex grey and charadon granite mix (this looks like lightly weathered dirt).  Highlighting will be fortress grey on a wet pallette (which keeps it moist for longer and help to prevent chalking up) and sharp edge highlights with skull white.

Once that is done I have to finish re-undercoating the metal areas, which roughly break into two items – steel and bronze, then paint these up.  Thankfully metallics are not horrifically complex to paint.  I can then park the body on one side and work on the cloak.

Currently I’m meant to be working on my brothers flat again on Saturday – however I’m toying with the idea of taking another one of my precious days holiday and using this to stand a chance at getting everything painted.

Ok, not everything is, but in principal the bulk of the Dreadnought is now assembled and ready for paint, despite the “don’t let him get it finished gremlin” making the carpet tiles at my brothers flat take longer than I want (not even finished yet).

I’ve still got the fur on the cloak to finish (not that much left to be honest), and the Chaos Space Marine on the base to give arms

Overall I’m happy with how it looks.  Had I of had more time then I would have added more detail onto both arms and now that I’m a bit more adept with creating fur, likely would have had small patches of fur over various areas.  Right, off to get dressed and then do some more.  I’d like to get one of the arms of the marine on the base done, before I disemble the Dreadnought from the base to spray it – I’ve decided that the base will be done separately as I need to airbrush the marine to stand a chance of getting it all painted in time.

It’s daft just how quickly you progress when you get a decent block of uninterrupted time.  I’ve just spent an hour and a half (or so) on both arms and they’re almost completed now.  I’m probably not going to add any extra armour plates on due to time restrictions, but the gun arm looks pretty much exactly what I was after.  Given more time I’d have actually crafted a proper gun block, but this looks more than acceptable.  Some more wolf pelts needed on the arms however.  I have putty drying on the gun arm at the moment, so that’s now out of development for a few hours until that’s solid.

It’s quite exciting seeing all of the ideas that I’ve had in my head slowly coming to fruition

Sadly my afternoon & evening didn’t go as well as hoped.  I didn’t start until later than I’d planned and got interrupted with a problem from work, so even working till 11-30 I didn’t get the mini to a position to spray.  However with a little bit of work this morning the torso is now primed.  As expected, there are a few bits that need green stuffing to tidy them up and a few glue seepages that need scraping down.  The reason the photo looks shiney by the way is that this was taken less than five minutes after it had been sprayed – the final finish is very matt.

I think my next task is any filling on the arms, then secure all of the base together.  Although my original intention was a number of assemblies, I’m not going to do this now.  I realised that the weight of the torso, legs and arms is far too much to practically hold and paint, so this is going to get glued along with the base and tackled as a single entity.  I shall be keeping the fur/cloak separate however for ease of painting.  Once the cloak and torso are airbrushed, I’ll glue those together as well.