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.

I started off yesterday evening with the best intentions.  I cleared an area to work in, got my rivet maker out, lit a candle for the heat and got a load of sprues ready.  All I can say is that if anybody can get a Greif Rivet maker to consistantly make uniform sized rivets, please tell me how the hell you do it.  I spent over an hour and a half faffing around and managed to make around twenty ‘OK’ rivets.

So I decided to revert back to Plan A and use 0.79mm ball bearings instead.  Though more fiddly and more difficult to manouver due to being glued in place with super glue, the end result is at least more uniform than different sized plastic rivets.

As you can see from the image I’ve got the front of one side done.  The photo picked up a number of glue spots and one or two ball bearings that need popping out and re-positioning.  Before I hit the sack I managed to drill all of the marked positions on the other side, which went more quickly than the first ones.  With hindsight (the most wonderful of things), I should have worked out the positioning on the computer and printed off a ‘ruler’ for each strip of rivets.  This would have resulted in a better distribution of rivets along the length of the edging – that said, providing it looks OK, I’m beyond the point of caring.  I also got two loops cut and drilled that will allow me to ‘fix’ the cloak on, this biggest annoyance is that the holes need a bit of filling after the loops are glued in – which is going to complicate the fact that I wanted the cloak as a separate assembly.

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Just a very minor update post.  Despite going to B&Q last night to collect carpet tiles (the growing saga of my brothers flat), I actually got a little more work done.  I’ve redrilled the hole on the base that will take the foot – this is the third time – and ended up with a much more balanced arrangement.  Basically I always felt that the model wasn’t stood centrally on the base, but this latest tweak has fixed my concerns.  Instead of doing more filling on the gun arm, I glued a piece of plasti-card onto it.  Although filling is needed, this will give me a better finish with which to paint.  I do need to add some detailing to this though – mind you the same applies to the other shoulder!  Oh I glued the ForgeWorld power fist together and got that stuck on, it looks fantastic, but currently unbalances the model a little

Tonight I actually have an unexpected evening to myself, so will begin to make the rivets for the torso – with luck I’ll even get them stuck on   I also want to bend the toes of the feet – notice plural, as the foot that is flat on the base now has one toe over hanging the base :s  I’m planning on cutting them from underneath and bending them.  These bits should stand me in good stead for tomorrow afternoon, where I’m going to have to go at the project full tilt.

Running Totals: Time – ~ 75 Hrs; Cost – £38.92