Monday, June 4, 2012

Four Months, 100K! Big time thank you...

Since we were gone all day (and a good chunk of the night), I didn't realize that the 3rd of June was the 4 month anniversary of the blog's start up.

I also saw that today the blog surpassed the 100,000 hit milestone!  Wow.  I thought it would take much longer to get there.

Thanks to everyone who has checked out the blog, the repeat visitors, the folks who have left comments and such.  Your time is valuable, and I appreciate that you have taken some of that and spent it on the blog!  A big thank you to everyone.

I have tried to keep things as interesting as I can, and I hope to have lots of stuff to peruse as time goes by!

Oh, and here are some pictures of a random chaplain dreadnought, just for the heck of it :-)

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Sunday, June 3, 2012

Smurfguard!

This was a more difficult assignment than one would think.  Like most of the previous Ultramarines posted here to the blog, I had to match a very specific color scheme.  Also, this scheme did not have very much high contrast shading... it was all about the tiny highlights, and even those needed to be done in a very specific color. 

Typically, I am grabbing whatever paint jar happens to be closest, and fooling around with the glazes and such.

Essentially, each guy was restricted to 3 shades of blue.  Also, I could not do my usual heavy shading, creating lots of contrast throughout the miniature.  It was really working against my instinct, that's for sure! :-)

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Here are a few WIP shots.  The approach here was a little different than what you have seen lately on the free-wheeling Chaos side.  That was due to having to match someone else's color scheme.

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And then some more group shots:
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Lords of the flies

What did we just step in?  Anyway, the promised Nurgle Marines are now here!

I believe these are the only Nurgle marines I have ever painted.  It was lots of fun.  I was able to use a much different palette than normal, and some different icons as well!  The rest of the squad will be posted later when we get back home...

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Here are a few WIP images that once again illustrate the idea of painting lighter, and then glazing and shading and tinting darker colors later:
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Saturday, June 2, 2012

White out: Forgeworld Demon Prince

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Here is the companion piece to Harold the Herald which was posted the other day.

To say that there were numerous tiny details would be the understatement of the millennium.  It probably took me a week to glue on all the little spikes!

Just like the Herald, I enjoyed the lighter color scheme, done to fit in with the World Eaters army.

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Really Pre Heresy Thousand Sons :-)

I know that these days what constitutes "Pre Heresy" colors and appearance can get folks in a bit of a tizzy, but I think there can't be much question with these guys :-)

It was a fun squad to paint, but my favorite was the Prospero banner.  I would love to make myself a Prospero gaming table.  OK, I think I will! 

Also, blue purity seals were the most guilty of pleasures!  It was also a blast to do the scarab bases.

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Dante: Angels Solarus style

Today we have an alternate form of Dante, with a jump pack that matches all the other infantry of the Angels Solaris.  This type of pack also gave me a chance to get the chapter icon on it, which was a plus!

This figure is always an interesting gold NMM candidate, since everything must be gold!  That means I have to play around a lot with color temperatures and saturation.  I tended to go with cooler colors towards the base (adding more muted greens and purples), while doing high chroma yellows and oranges by the face.

Those kinds of differences, along with many sculpted areas of definition (faux muscles, etc.) allowed for many areas of high contrast in shading.  That makes like a lot easier when trying to convey gold NMM on a space marine!

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Unclean, Unclean!

Here's the last of the Plague Ogryns.  Up next, the Plague Marines!

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