Painting the board: part one!

Actually, there were numerous things that had to be added before I could even start to think about painting the board.

I had a ton of little details that I wanted to add, in the form of very thin pink foam strips.  Time considerations meant less, which was a bit of a bummer.

More of the strips will be added to some of the roof sections, however...

Remember how I said that this was made in a modular fashion?  Here you go!  Breaking it down for ease of painting (and attaching the windows, but that is a later post).

It was a little scary to break it all down, but kind of neat as well!  I just had to make sure I kept all the parts at least somewhat organized.

Everything laid out for painting the interior surfaces!

Before I could paint the ground level, I wanted to add at least a little texture.  Normally, I would use Oxide Paste, but that was running very low, and I didn't think I would have enough of it.

So, I mixed Flex Paste in with various rocks and gravel.

Here's what it looked like.  You can see that I have left some gaps for the Aegis Defense Line.

Magic primer time!  Those of you familiar with all my other terrain projects know how I love to use this magnetic primer.  It is very heavy, but it means that lighter magnetized miniatures will stick to it relatively well.

You can barely see the outlines of a metal plate in this shot.  The metal is designed to hold metal miniatures that are using rare earth magnets.

As that dried, I painted the interior surfaces of the walls.  These would be a little lighter than the outer walls.

And now for the outer walls.  A little less brown, and more black mixed in.  Not too dark, since I wanted other details to be included.

In this picture, you can see that I have been doing a bit of weathering on the panels.  It is much easier to to do when they are not glued in place!

That proved to be very critical...  This modular form made painting so much easier, as well as the putting in the windows.

Stay tuned for painting the inner floor of the Cathedral of the Raven!

Same wings, different minis

Here's another Seraphim, this time with a 'standard' GW  Seraphim flamer miniature.

As you can see, those same wings are very nifty with this version!

A little side by side...

Much more to come! Stay Tuned!!

The full set...

So, I promised group shots of the Command Squad.  Here you go!

They are created mostly from Victoria's Highland Moss Guard, but other bits were combined as well.  The medic is an older GW figure from the 5th edition boxed set.

The broken columns are from Secret Weapon Miniatures.

I really had a lot of fun with these guys.  While the regular troops are great to work with as well, you know that these command squads are the place where you can go wild with conversions, bitz, and so on!

These are the only 5 figures with this Tartan pattern, which means they won't get mixed up in a scrum... especially the ones not carrying a huge flag! ;-)

Let's just hope they are effective out on the table as well!

I look forward to creating more additions to this unit.  Or make a higher ranking squad with astropaths and ordinance chiefs, etc.

Time is just about closing down for Adepticon.  Wish I had more, obviously...

On the Wings of Angels

For a very long time, I have been saving a batch of Urban Warfare Archangels to use as Seraphim.  I did a little conversion on some of them, such as this one.  Just a little arm swap.

I have had to do a bit less of the snazzy stuff that I wanted to do, but time is just not there!

I used a chunk of the Secret Weapon Broken Column set, as well as a bunch of powders.  They were not just used to create weathering or exhaust... I used them to do a little painting as well.

If your work it right, you can smooth out blends, or get some interesting color variations without having to go through lots of paint mixing!

Marble Mayhem!

Today I was finishing off the rest of the statuary.  To do that, I had to get the pedestals painted.

First some generic colors on the 3 sections of marble on each base.

Using a smaller filbert brush, I quickly applied a slightly darker color, making sure to twist and turn the brush to make veins on the surface.

Make sure that each vein has a random shape.  If it's too regular, it just won't work.  So, be sure that some parts are much thicker than others, and so on...

The next stage was to put a slightly lighter color on the opposite side of those dark veins, using the filbert brush again.  There is a little more 'feathering' of the brush strokes now.  

That is, keep the edge next to the dark color sharp, but soften the edge on the other side.  You can even do that by wiping away some of it with your thumb if you work quickly enough.  Also, this rougher surface of the foam will let you get some very nice feathering using that method!

Working a little lighter, trying to keep the two edges hard and soft...

Final stage of feathered light colors.  I used a sharp #8 round craft brush for this part.

Using a liner brush, I started to draw out some lighter veins.  These not only enhanced that edge, but I started to 'cross over' the darkest sections as well.

The light sections are complete... time for some green!  Beginning with the filbert brush, I added some very broad strokes with a color slightly lighter than the original green.

I switched to the craft brush again to enhance those lighter swatches.  You can see that I am trying to create the same definition as the other color of marble.  Remember... keep it as random as possible!!

Getting lighter!  The veins become more and more defined.

For this final layer, I went back to the liner brush with my lightest color, following the patterns already created.

As a final touch, I added some dark colors in a few select areas.  These enhanced the lighter veins running through the green marble.

I hope this is useful for creating some quick marble!!!

Melting pot

Some more hot stuff from Victoria Miniatures, and the last member of the command squad.

Gotta have some kind of special weapons in there!

Group shots next!

Over there, lads!

Here's another member of the command squad, courtesy of Victoria Minatures.  I used parts from the Highland Moss Guard and a few other bits.

One last member of the command squad to go... and then time for group shots! Stay tuned.