Wishing's Armies of the Imperium (sisters and marines)

[Wishing]

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This is a new introduction for this thread, which will hopefully make it a bit more clear on what it is about. The thread is intended as a collection of pictures of my Imperial models as I build, paint, and restore them. My two first projects are Sisters of Battle and Blood Angels, and these armies can be summed up with the following photos.





I'm just starting on some Grey Knights, of which the following is an example.



Other pictures that have been added along the way include Adeptus Arbites, militia, and a Knight walker.

Below is the original first post of the thread. Thanks for reading.

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This project is not so much going to be about building new armies, but rather about restoring old ones. I recently dug up my old battle sister and blood angel armies from storage, but they are somewhat damaged and a lot of it in an unpainted or really badly painted state, especially the blood angels. Hence this project is about restoring and finishing these armies so they can finally take to the field fully painted.

To start off, here are some pics of some of the battle sisters that have survived mostly unscathed.

Sister squad:



Canoness and more sisters:



Clergy, confessor and missionary:



The army was bought when the sisters were first released, so no Inquisitors or newer models like the Repentia yet. I do quite like the Repentia though, so I may try to snag some on ebay sometime. The paint scheme is meant to be fairly conservative Order of the Valorous Heart, just with black gun casings instead of silver.

[Brother Alexos]

Nice work, I like the confessor and missionary, the one on the right reminds me of Eldar.

[eltanko]

Very nice. I like the dark colour scheme, really good. Can we have a full shot of the banner? Because that looks great!

ElTanko

[Wishing]

Sure, here is a closeup of the banner. I can't take much credit for it though, as it is actually a pre-made Battle Sister banner that came as a sticker along with a bunch of transfers when I got their battleforce. All I did was basically dirty it up and touch it up a bit, to make it look more painted and less printed.



About the Blood Angels, I started working on a jump pack squad which needs either new or reattached arms and a general going over, although I intend to save as much of the paintwork as I can. I'm thinking of seeing if I can get some of the new Sanguinary Guard weapons and/or shoulder pads for them, as they would look awesome I reckon. As you can see I already painted their helmets golden back in the day, I really like the golden Blood Angel look.

I really dislike the Death Company look at the moment though, which is weird as I got into the army because I liked them back in the day, and I've got a bunch of them now lying around in pieces, which I guess I will repaint into normal assault marines.

This is how the jump packers look now, with one of them having been reassembled.



The pics look a bit different, more greyish, because I took these in daylight and the others at night...

[Wishing]

Nice work, I like the confessor and missionary, the one on the right reminds me of Eldar.

Yeah, he is based on an Eldar Warlock with a new head - I actually followed a conversion guide by John Blanche when I made that guy, because it was such a good idea. The guide basically said "take eldar warlock, add bretonnian knight head, add book on banner pole", and came with this picture:

[Brother Alexos]

I've always like John Blanche's work. I think that your Sisters look good, but they need a little more definition. This may well be the pic quality, but I can't make out too much detail on their actual armour.

The marines are looking good, keep it up.

[Gonfrask]

Really nice sister, I will watch your army very closely, the banner is really good

[eltanko]

That banner really is superb, really fitting to the Sisters style. Doesnt matter if you didnt paint it yourself, still used it in the right way [Its good to see some OOP models getting some attention again.

ElTanko

[Wishing]

Thanks for the feedback!

I've always like John Blanche's work. I think that your Sisters look good, but they need a little more definition. This may well be the pic quality, but I can't make out too much detail on their actual armour.

This is probably mostly because it's hard to get super-sharp pictures with these girls for some reason, but they could be painted more cleanly too. I'll try and shoot the Seraphim soon, I think their armour is painted a bit more neatly.

Among the blood angels there are a couple of old plastic marines that came with the 3rd edition box set. The problem with these is that they are posed like they are doing a parade or something, which is fine for a chess set, but looks really bizarre when mixed in with a bunch of marines in more natural poses. As such, I set about turning the one on the left into the one on the right in the pic below. Only done one so far, it's not a huge change but I think it helps.



Here is my progress on the pseudo-sanguinary guard models, I managed to build glaives for a couple of them, and I've ordered some of the shoulder pads too. I wish I could give them some of the cool new heads too, but there is no way that I'm chopping the head off five metal marines unless I had no choice.



Finally, for the sisters, I've built a couple of lay follower cavalry models, inspired by the rules in the old codex where I found the pic above. Nothing fancy, but I think they look the part. The heads are from West Wind studios and the bodies are two bretonnian knights and a kislev winged lancer. Paintjobs temporary, will be redone.

[Brother Alexos]

Nice, I like the look of the army so far, and the "ad hoc" feel to it. Using cavalry is a nice touch, but a Kislev Lancer? You sir have outdone yourself. I think you should keep one or two of your marines in their original, unconverted state. While I do like the way you have modernized them, I think keeping one or two of the oldies around would be nice. The sanguinary guard are cool, but you may want to look at this if you're going to be making their Artificer armour with GS:
http://sciborminiatures.com/en_,sculpting.php?id=571

Its a fairly simple GS work, and it has some killer results.

[Wishing]

Thanks for the nice comments Alexos! And thanks for the great looking tutorial link. What they're doing there is a bit above my level of both ambition and skill, though - I do want the armour to look a bit more jazzed up, but I'll be happy if I can just achieve an effect that doesn't look too out of place.

[Wishing]

Took a few more pictures last night. First, the Seraphim (three of them at least). I really want to do something to break up the pewter jets connecting them to the base, maybe wrap some lichen around them.



Second, a squad of Celestians. I made them look special by painting their gun cases silver and adding little pieces of brickwork to the bases. In retrospect, maybe I should round up all the helmeted sisters and say that all the helmet ones are Celestians...



Finally, as an experiment, I painted up one sister as Order of the Argent Shroud. I really like this scheme, but I don't want to abandon my old one, so I think maybe the solution will be to paint up a small group of these and say that they are bodyguards for one of the priests, and on loan from a different order. The paint has gone weirdly white and powdery in places on this one, but I'll get that fixed.

[Wishing]

Here is the commander of my blood angels, so far at least, a Sanguinary High Priest.



Here are some details of his jump pack. The freehand looks a bit clumsy close up, my painting skills aren't as advanced as I'd like, but it looks good from far away.



Finally, a Frateris Militia unit that I gave some new weapons along with the same heads that the cavalry had earlier, should look good and tie them in together. Sadly a lot of them are just primed black making it hard to make out details.

[Wishing]

Wow, the pages move quickly here in Imperium logs. At least when you don't get replies.

I don't have anything of particular interest paint-wise to post, but I thought it might be fun to show my storage for the sister army. I am quite happy with how I divided the foam tray into sections with plasticard, allowing the models to sit snugly without bumping into each other. This is the only 40k army I have that isn't mostly plastic, so it's a bit of a challenge dealing with all the metal infantry.

[Comp]

The Sisters are brilliant. I love the John Blanche-esque feel to the painting and the weathering on the standard is just great...

Where is that conversion guide picture from originally?

[Wishing]

Thanks! The picture is part of a full-page spread of Blanche conversion ideas from the original Sisters codex. If you're interested I can take a pic of the whole page.

[checkerthinker]

very nice again! love the weathering! and is this going to competitive play?

[Wishing]

Not competitive at all, I only play casually and very occasionally. I mainly build armies just for the satisfaction.

[Wishing]

Felt inspired to paint up a couple of more Argent Shroud sisters. I still like them! The one on the right is the original.



I was a bit worried about having to paint the order symbol by hand, since I have no more transfers, but it was actually not so bad, much easier than the templar cross of the Valorous Heart actually, less need for symmetry. Here are the results.



I am also toying with the idea of converting up a group of sword and shield armed sisters in power armour, but I figure the only way to do that is to use heavy weapon sister bodies at the base, and that might be an expensive prospect for a whole unit. I’l dig around ebay and see what I can find.

[eltanko]

Nice work on the shroud sisters, I really like the white and red robes, very nice.

ElTanko