The Wolves Progress

Been a little bit since I’ve posted because I’ve been struggling to get anything approaching a half decent photo because it always seems to be dark. Thankfully the mornings are getting light enough that I can take a few snaps before I go to work.

I’m changing jobs the end of the month which is going to need me to get up an hour earlier than I currently do, so I’m trying to get up earlier in an effort to ease me into what will become my new routine. This has meant that I’m getting in at least quarter an hour’s worth of painting before I go to work – definitely needed as I’m meant to have the majority of a 1,000 point army painted by the end of the month! One other thing that has helped is that I’ve managed to get a decent length of wood has meant I’ve managed to extend my desk space by over 100%. This means that I don’t have to try and juggle what I’m painting onto my painting station or keep clearing things away. It makes a massive amount of difference, I just need to wander into my little office and can sit down and start painting.

First up, my fairly well progressed unit of Blood Claws. All 15 of them are up to the point where I need to paint faces, hair, bases and put on the decals.  There are a couple of odd details such as scrolls and trinkets that I need to sort but on the whole not too bad.

One thing I’d love to do is repaint some of the blacks as I’ve worked out a better way of doing them, but that might be for the future.

Here are the Grey Hunters are what I’ve been frantically working on. The armour is done and pack markings have been blocked in.  I’m working on the base coat of metallics (Balthasar Gold and Leadbelcher). Only got 2 1/2 left to go and I can then paint the blacks (tidying up the metallic as I go).  Then onto the washes, black highlighting (including the pack markings), metallic highlighting and then onto the fur (this shouldn’t take as long as it sounds it should). The trinkets will then get them to the same level as my Blood Claws so that I can paint all of the faces and hair in one hit.

You might be able to just spot a Long Fang with lascannon. He’s part of my Long Fangs (2 missile launchers and 2 lascannons) and will form part of my 1,000 points, but I’m not 100% confident that I’ll get them much further due to time restrictions. This weekend I’m away and I do have a few commitments between now and the 29th (when I’m gaming).  That said if I am able to shift my morning routine round even more I might be getting over an hour extra in a day!

Before I apply the decals I’ll give them all a coat of satin varnish (GW’s Purity Seal).  This makes it a lot easier to move the decals round without fouling anything up. At this point, I’m going to take the opportunity to do some ‘pin washes’. Broadly speaking, a pin wash is where you take a wash of some kind and apply it only to the recesses to shade them. It’s a technique often used for tanks and things where you need to shade round armour plates. Quite often people will use oil paints to do this and do various weathering effects too, I’m going use a regular acrylic wash with some extra ‘Flow Aid’ so that I can push it round with similar effect.  This should allow me to put an extra bit of contrast into some of the areas that have been saturated out with the airbrush such as the top of the miniature.

The bases might just have to wait until after the 29th…