Let there be light!

OK!  On to the windows... the key element to the entire structure.  Originally, I was going to paint them all with a special paint on acetate, but time would not allow for that.

Plan B was the only thing I could think of, and that was printing them out on inkjet transparencies.

Fortunately Ray (of Offworld Designs fame) had some sheets, and he sent them home with Cathy

I manipulated as many as I could in Photoshop to make more unique windows.  I didn't want to repeat the same one over and over again!

Here's one of the printed sheets.  I have to say, the old Epson 1280 did a decent job with them!

The the hard part of attaching the 40+ windows began!!

I was lucky that a small amount of wood glue was enough to hold them in place.  I didn't want to risk super glue fogging up the plastic sheets, as happens with canopy windows.

I was also glad that I had done all the walls in sections.  It would have been brutal to glue them in reaching through the columns, etc.

Working on the upper level pieces!

Shiny!

The blue glow of Chartres was just what I was after!!!!

It got a little tedious after so many windows, but it was worth it in the end.

The upper levels rise!

Now some interior shots...

A few of the columns in place!

Just when you thought you saw the last of the marble...

Not true!  Much more marble to come!  Now you shall see why all the Sisters have been mounted on the green marble bases.

I used that same approach as I did on those pedestals I showed you over the weekend.  Once it got to a certain point, I started to place the icon in the center of the knave.

Still just general outlines at this point.

I found a few container lids of various sizes, and marked off the areas that needed to be more precise.

I started to fill in a bit of the colors...

I wanted to match a few elements from that big base you have seen in a number of posts!

Just about ready to go!  I have even started working on a few cracks through the lettering and such.

Cracks are now highlighted, and it's ready to go!!!

The Sisters approve!

Here's the platoon standard bearer... flag looks a tad bit familiar, doesn't it?

You can really see how the breakdown of all the individual parts made this so much easier.  It would have been a true nightmare trying to reach in there to do all this!!

I didn't forget the columns!  Again, same technique with the filbert brush creating those veins.

I had a few advantages as I was doing the marble on the floor and the columns.  The floor was covered in magnetic primer, which meant that my paint stayed wetter for longer.  

The same for the foam on my columns.  This not only meant wet into wet blending, but I could use my fingers to wipe away bits where needed.

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!