Great, just when I was getting into the swing of things again I go and injure myself.  I’ve somehow managed to end up with an inflamed lung lining, this was absolute agony yesterday.  So I am now on a short course of anti-inflamatories, hopefully it sorts itself out by the weekend as I’m meant to be out at a 30th Birthday party.  However I have stolen a batton from my Beastmen Ungors and stuck my Sky Claws onto it, these got sprayed yesterday and I have begun to paint the white elements of the faces – although didn’t get very far as I felt awful.  My Wolf Guard terminator is progressing as well with quite a few useful comments and tips from the CMoN community.  This picture is actually out of date but shows the general progress.

From the above photo I have deepened the shadows further, which has defined the areas further.  I need to push the highlights closer to pure Space Wolf Grey as well which will make the contrast difference between the highlight and shadow significant.  I also think that for future models I will darken the red by adding more Dark Flesh to the mixture.  This should provide a greater contrast for the highlights and also bring the model more ‘earthly’ than it currently is.

Oh, as I’m aware that this is a test piece I’ve actually purchased a spare set of legs, a torso and a head so that I could remake this model

The weekend allowed me to make good progress on the Wolf Guard Terminator that I’m painting.  The armour has come out OK, not as smooth as I’d like, but it has been a learning curve without a doubt.  The key thing I’ve learned is that I need to ensure that my highlights are thin enough else they have a nasty habbit of applying poorly.  The other item is that I need to ensure is that the mixes with Fenris Grey are mixed well enough because as previously mentioned that particular paint separates very quickly.

I’ve now started painting the red on the Terminator.  I’m using a recipe that was shown in White Dwarf a few issues back when Space Hulk was re-released.  The biggest drawback with this is that it is taking quite a while to actually paint.  Now in fairness the terminator has a lot of red on it – both wolf claws, a knee pad and a whole shoulder pad.  The overall effect is really smooth though, so it’s worth the time investment.

Although this miniature has consumed upwards of 8 hours time so far, I currently believe that painting power armoured marines will take less time providing I paint them in batches of between 4 and 6.  Many of the issues I’ve come across so far have been technique issues as well – how thin to make the paint, what area to cover to achieve a smooth blend, neatness etc – all of which will improve with practice.  I’ll also mix up a bottle of the base red colour I use which will also save some more time.

I can’t believe that there has been 10 days since my last post, it’s true that the closer to the festive period you get the faster the time seems to fly past.

I have however managed to get some painting squeezed into this last week and a half, so I’m thankfully not having large gaps in my hobby again.  I’ve managed to undercoat a Wolf Guard Terminiator with pair of Wolf Claws as I though that this would allow me to practice one of every item that my marines would have – wolf pelts, lightening weapons, face, armour, etc.  Overall I’m fairly happy with the progress that I’m making, modern terminators are really large models so it’s taking quite a while.  The basing technique that I’ve chosen looks absolutly fantastic and genuinly looks like this Wolf Guard is stood on top slate.

I have however come across a rather annoying item in my armour colour – I use Fenris Grey in the first three phases of painting the armour, this paint is one of Games Workshops Foundation Paint range which have a really good coverage.  The biggest drawback with this range is that as soon as you add water the paint seems to separate into a multitude of hues, Fenris Grey for example ends up with a rich purple sat on top of a mid/light grey.  The real problem comes in that you end up constantly mixing the colour up – normally with your expensive W&N brush in order to maintain a consistent colour ending up on your model.  I need to do some investigation to see if the addition of a flow retarder or similar will slow down the speed of this separation.  The armour on this miniature is far from complete and although it only requires four colours in total, in order to achieve a smooth transition is going to take quite a bit of time for each miniature.  However I’m sure that with a bit of practice I’ll be churning out armour in more of a production line style than this first one.  Justing rethinking I’m probably closer to finishing the armour than I thought as each progressive layer actually covers less area than the one before.

I must admit that I’ve had a fantastic weekend modelling and getting my Space Wolves army together.  It’s not been constant (which is a good thing as my brain would likely have melted) and I’ve got a chunk of the army ready.

All of the torso’s have been tidied up and gaps filled with green stuff.  The Skyclaws (5) are ready to glue onto their bases (more on that shortly) as is the smaller pack of Grey Hunters (5).  The larger pack of Grey Hunters (8) just need the shoulder pads glued on a few and appropriate heads selected and fitted.  This leaves the large pack of Blood Claws (14) which need a few more legs tidied up and then arms, shoulder pads and heads.  The scouts (10) need to be tidied up and assembled.  Finally the long fangs require quite a bit more work assembling than I originally thought.  So tonight I will be able to base up 18 models and have a futher 30 to so.  So 40% ish of the troop element of the army done.

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The handful of bits I ordered over the weekend from Games Workshop arrived yesterday, but due to various reasons I didn’t actually get a chance to open them until tonight.  The techmarine and his servitor retinue are actually quite nice models, though quite fiddly.  To make him suitably Space Wolfy is going to be a bit of a challenge, but not horrific (I hope), numerous wolf skins and pelts are going to be needed, along with using some arms from the Wolf Pack sprues.  One thing that I have realised is that this model is actually 3 or 4mm taller than a regular power armoured marine – the same height as a terminator.

Overall including the Battle Force that I’m getting tomorrow I will only be needing 1 more razorback and a plastic jump pack to have well over a 2,000 point army (17 power armoured marines and two drop pods worth) – the bits for it anyway, I still need to put them together!  It looks like I’ve only got a handful of things that I *have* to do this weekend, so potentially have 2 whole days and 3 evenings which I can use to construct an army – mwu hahaha.  One thing that has dawned on me is that I can actually put out all of my army on the dining room table as nobody is going to be wanting to need it, it should mean that I get a much clearer idea of where I am throughout the weekend.

I have also chanced across quite a clever article on how to make the main weapon of the Razorback magnetised, so that it can be swaped out should I want to.  I’m going to try and make fairly large portions of my vehicles magnetised as it will ultimately give me more flexibility with which to chop and change should the need arise.

I may have already ranted about this in the past, but I fundimentally dislike many of the colour schemes used for Space Wolves.  The standard Games Workshop scheme is far too ‘baby blue’ for what are essentially savage space marines.  Grey is a popular alternative (I even used it for my 2009 Golden Demon entry), but I find that it limits painting other areas on a miniature – for example rocks on the base or grey hair, highlighting pure grey is also a bugger as the paint becomes quite chalky unless special care is taken.

I’ve done a bit of research on this in the past, but have never found anything that for me looks right along with being relativly straight forward to paint.  However ‘Countersunk81′ on the Cool Mini or Not forums recently posted up a classic Sergeant mini with what I think is quite a good ‘middle of the road’ colour scheme.  Being nosey, I asked how he painted the armour which he explains in his reply.  However to repeat it here for convienience, it’s basically a variant on the Games Workshop scheme recently shown in an issue of White Dwarf…

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For the first time this year I actually have a whole weekend entirely to myself!  My Mum and Sister are both away from Friday, with my Sister not being back until Sunday evening.  So much time what do I do?  In all seriousness I’ve got a few things that I need to catch up on, but do intend to spend one of the days working on assembling my wolves.

I’m hoping that somebody will go into GW in Swindon on Thursday and pick up the battle force of wolves.  This will mean that I’ve pretty much got all of the troops that I actually want for my army.  I’m tempted to aim to get my skyclaws (5), bloodclaws (15) and scouts (10) assembled up over the weekend.  The scouts require a significant amount of conversion and I aim to fur up at least 3 of the 5 cloaks that the snipers are wearing, so I would think that they’ll not be completely done.  I also treated myself on Sunday to a Runepriest, techmarine with servitors and a Razorback, plus ordered all of the heavy weapons from an online bitz store.  Off the top of my head that means that I should only need one more Razorback and I’ll have all of the models that I need to make my 2000 point army – that makes it sound much easier than the reality.  I want to do a handful of quite major conversions on characters within the army and things like the scouts and Long Fangs warrant more effort than the rest as there are only a few of them and (fluff wise) they’ve been around for quite a long time.  However the whole thing should be pretty straight forward so a target of next year for a complete army is actually possible.

I just chanced across this link to a long list of Norse names, I thought it was pretty cool for any budding Wolf Lords out there.