A New Beginning

"Procrastination makes easy things hard, hard things harder." - Mason Cooley

Well, it's been almost a year since I last posted and since I last did any painting or hobbying in general. University took over and chronic disorganization and procrastination threw everything out of whack. And then summer happened and I got hooked on Dungeons and Dragons. Have you ever not done something for a while and the longer you put it off the more intimidating it was to go back to? I kind of had that, not sure if it's just me or not, would be nice to hear that I'm not alone in this though.

Anyway, the future is what matters and it's time to learn from last year's attempt and do things better this time!

Painting almost felt painful last time with how slow and monotonous it was, but now with a busier and more stressful final year at university, scheduled painting and blogging breaks are suddenly incredibly appealing, and after an especially stressful week of writing a 4000 word introduction to my dissertation with a migraine, that's just what I did!

The whole Saturday was spent at my FLGS and it was very refreshing - after examining the three models from my last post with a fresh mind and a highly prestigious, hand-picked focus group of whoever was standing near me at the time, a final paint scheme was chosen. It took the whole day to just paint the one model because I kept getting distracted by the lovely new Shield of Baal hardover books I very luckily managed to order, but the model came out looking very nice, not counting the flaws of an inexperienced hand.

I also put together some cheap items from local cheap hardware stores etc to make my own very useful portable painting toolkit- It's not complete but I'm very happy with it and will probably write a post about that soon, I'm sure other people will be interested in this too.
And here we see the end product: It could do with some refinement but I am happy with the color scheme at least!

Please excuse the low quality photos, since recently moving house I have no idea where my proper camera is!

Now, I was a good student and finished today's self-assigned coursework yesterday and so with 16 more Hormagaunts sprayed black and all packed in my new portable painting toolkit, I am going to rush off now to Games Workshop and enjoy a few hours of painting!

Test Painting Tyranid

"Red on yellow, kills a fellow. Red on black, it's got jack."

This week I've been working on coming up with my own design and paint scheme for my Tyranid, and tweaking ideas for their name and backstory to make everything fit snugly.

These are Hive Fleet Basilisk. A fleet of survivors from Hive Fleet Gorgon returning to Tau space to finish what they started and clashed with a wandering tendril of Hive Fleet Behemoth. The two merged and became a new fleet, more powerful than either and with semblances to both, Basilisk now looms over Tau space and is currently shadowing over outer ice worlds of the Sa'cea sept.

The name comes from having mythological connections to the other fleets. Gorgons come from Greek mythology and the most well known ones are three sisters- but we usually only hear about one of them, her name is Medusa. The powers of Gorgons were stone/ death vision and they are often represented as or related to serpentine creatures. It fits rather perfectly then when my fleet is an offspring of this creature to name it after one which also has the same power - a glare causing death and stoneform - but is so much more horrendous, said to be the ugliest thing of all creation, venomous and evil and large and powerful, a behemoth in it's own right! I really can't get over how well this works!

I know I overthink things too much, blame the OCD. But it makes me happy and I like being able to have armies with stories of my own creation but which fit nicely into the canonical fluff.

Continuing in this serpentine theme I am basing the colors of my Tyranid on those of the Coral Snake. It is brightly colored, and is recognized worldwide as "This will kill me" and "Danger! Danger!" The colors are red, black and yellow, similar to those of the Behemoth fleet which also fits nicely to make my Tyranid visually an offspring of that fleet.

I bought a lot of new paints for these guys including my first colored basecoat spray which I was looking forward to trying out, and have test painted three prototype models each in slightly differing ways to try out ideas.

Each begins with a different basecoat, all Games Workshop basecoat sprays:
1- Sprayed black chitin, sprayed red underside.
2- Sprayed white chitin, sprayed red underside.
3- Sprayed red all over.

First step, painting the yellow. Same process for all three.
Paint a White Scar strip down the back of each as a base for the yellows followed by: Averland Sunset, Yriel Yellow, Flash Gitz Yellow
This was also done on their tongues, and on the scythes from White Scar to FGY

Second step, painting the flesh. These are prototypes so I wasn't too concerned about detail and looking amazing I just tried to get a general idea for things. Painted all three the same for this step too.
Wash all flesh Carroburg Crimson, go over most all surface with Mephiston Red, then most upper surfaces with Evil Sunz Scarlet, then highlighting the tops of all flesh with Wild Rider Red.
Also painted a thin line of Evil Sunz Scarlet down the center of the yellow strip of chitin.

Third step, painting the rest of the models. I painted the remaining chitin, talons and hoofs all over in Abbadon Black apart from over the yellow strip. From here each model differs.
1- Stegadon Scale Green, then Sotek Green. I mainly followed the standard manner of feathering the edges of the chitin, and also edge highlighted the rest of the models as well as weathering the scythes and highlighting the talons.

2- Stegadon Scale Green, then The Fang. This color mix was to maintain a small degree of color but maintain a mainly dull grey feel. The chitin on this model was mainly a thick border all around as well as on the hoofs instead of feathering, and soft edge highlighting on scythes.

3- The Fang, then Fenrisian Grey. This mix was to go for a brighter light on the edges and make each plate stand out more and to lose all the bluey greens of the previous ones to see how that looks. I did one side of the model in the standard ragged, weathered feathering style and the other side with thick bordering on all edges of each plate. I did the same for the hoofs, some soft highlighting on the talons/ scythes and weathered one scythe to see the differences for that too.

Having now finished these, I showed them to my housemates as a focus group to be evaluated and ask their thoughts and opinions on these to help me decide which is best. They weren't painted neatly because they are just prototypes, but here are photos for you all to see.

To any readers I hopefully have, what do you think of these ideas and models? Which of the three do you prefer, or do you dislike the scheme entirely?

Tau Paint Scheme

"The Fire Caste warriors of the Sa'cea sept are known for being mighty and honorable warriors, but also for having great armor."

Having finished my first unit of Fire Warriors and spent the day today clearing my desk and preparing my workstation to get to work on starting my first Tyranid unit, I realized this would be an ideal opportunity to discuss my color scheme, process and paints used, and anything I found which I want to improve on for next time. No photos sadly, but I will take progress pictures but I will do this next time.

- Undercoat with Skull White Spray
- Basecoat armor: Caledor Sky
- Basecoat everything else: Fenrisian Grey
- Second coat on all the cloth for a nice solid color

- Layer on metals: Warplock Bronze
- Layer on armor: Teclis Blue, (Painted on armor plates but not in the gaps)
- Layer on armor: Lothern Blue, (Painted on armor plates but not in the gaps)
- Drybrush cloth: Ulthuan Grey
- Go over the metals again in Warplock Bronze
- Drybrush metals: Sycorax Bronze
- Second coating of Lothern Blue on armor for solid color and to go over any scuffs from the drybrushing.
- Layer Sept symbol and antenna tips: White Scar
- Layer over the white parts: Troll Slayer Orange (Repeat this 3 or 4 times for a nice strong color)
- Shade: Drakenhof Nightshade, watered down

- Basecoat hoofs: Rhinox Hide
- Layer hoofs: XV-88
- Basecoat skin: The Fang
- Paint eyes: White Scar, followed by dot of Teclis Blue
- Layer skin: Russ Grey/Caledor Sky mix, watered down
- Shade skin: Druchi Violet, heavily watered down.
- Drybrush skin: Fenrisian Grey/ Lothern Blue mix
- Paint hair: Blood Red, Red Ink
- Detail lights on visor/ gunsight/ gauntlets: White Scar, Xereus Purple, Genestealer Purple, highlight with Genestealer Purple/ White Scar mix


And, here is the result!



I'm pleased with the result but the process felt somewhat inefficient. Thoughts to improve for next time:
- Skip the Caledor Sky basecoat and use Teclis Blue basecoat instead then go right into layering with Lothern Blue. It will save me so much time and look just the same, probably with a smoother coat.
- Paint hoofs after skin. That little patch of the skin on the feet took a long time to do without messing everything else up, it would be much easier and faster to do it before the things around it.
- Shading the body with Drakenhof Nightshade before the final armor layer and cloth drybrushing. I don't like how it made the
- The paints I used for the hair were very old and seemed a little off-color. I have new ones though so hopefully the next time I paint hair it will be better.
- The purple lights need to be WAY more vibrant - especially in the helmet.
- Generally change the order of painting some things - I feel like I should make the process more efficient, it took far too long.

I would like to learn and practice object source lighting for the purple lights in the helmets and the leader's gun to make them look like they are glowing. I tried but it came out rubbish.
After painting the skin, I nearly wrote down the mix ratios I used for it, but decided against it. Not everyone has the same flesh color, so as a personal touch to my army I'm allowing for the mixes to be slightly different each time, giving the impression of regional/ national variations in skin color, as well as degrees of tanning (assuming blue-blooded creatures have melanin in their skin...).

I also tried giving the leader some purple freckles on top of his head but it didn't look very good so I covered over them. I like the idea though so I will try again with new ideas on the next one. I think that's everything though, the sept markings won't be done until a large portion of the army is ready so I can properly over-think marking them realistically and make it all consistent, and it's pretty much the same deal for the bases only I'm saving that for when I've done a portion of Tau and Tyranid armies as well as have made my own realm of battle tiles so all of these can be consistent and matching with each other too.

Anyway, if anyone reads this I hope you have enjoyed it or found it interesting, I would love to hear from anyone out there who has anything to say about my scheme whether you like it or have suggestions on how I can improve it please comment and share your thoughts!

My first unit finished!

Last night I finally finished my first unit of Fire Warriors.

This was nicely timed, as I recently bought a digital camera off a friend and that also arrived yesterday too!

So anyway, it's been a good new year so far. I've been very slow in working on my models but that's fine because I don't want to burn myself out. I consider these models complete, but have intentionally neglected to paint on Sept markings or do the bases as I'm waiting to have a large army and lot of models to do that all at once with, for experimentation reasons.

I've been playing battles regularly with my housemate, twice a week when we could fit it in, sort of for a best of three type thing and each weekend we make a new list for the next week. So far I've won every game like a boss! Mostly this has been 500-750 points, as he hasn't got a large amount of models yet and plays Space Marines (Bah, humans!)

I was very excited about the new Tyranid, and pre-ordered a bunch of those to get started on too, I want to work on the armies simultaneously and will do one unit from each at a time, this will be fun for me to see them grow together. I'll get more into that subject in another post when I make a page or blog for the Tyranid side of things.

Anyway, here are some pictures of the models I recently finished! If anyone out there sees this blog and my models I'd love to hear from you and know what you think of them as my first time properly painting models and finishing a unit, as well as any tips for making them look better.