Knights of Baal: A Blood Angel Log (with random extras)

[S_A_T_S]

After posting to this thread, I felt the urge to go back and cross out each item in my list as I completed it. But that would be thread-jacking (and also, no one would notice one reply on the 4th page being constantly updated.

So here we go with my first 'project' log (I say that in inverted commas as I may well get bored with painting red at some point and may well dip into other projects waiting on the sidelines). I'm not the best painter, though I am trying to improve my technique (DID YOU KNOW: I only started to thin my paints in the last 2 years, despite having played and painted since '94? Previously used only neat paint straight from the pot ), and I'm also very inexperienced (read: never done it before) at taking photos of minis, so don't be too critical

Enough excuses. For those who didn't check the links above, and so I can cross stuff off (I feel like that is going to be the most fun part of this ), here is the list:

1. 2x Captain Tycho (Golden and DC)
2. 11 BA tacticals (2 variant special weapons), 11 Assault on foot (2 variant sergeants)
3. Corbulo + Sanguinary Priest on foot
4a. Build Razorback turret conversion to mod my rhino
4b. Paint Razorback turret conversion
5. Stormraven modded with Chapterhouse Studios extension kit (waiting for magnets, air compressor and a decision on where to put the guns - wings, cheeks, turret, chin?)
6. Mephiston
7. Strip, magnetise and paint metal landspeeder
8. Strip, model on cloaks then paint 3 metal sniper scouts
9. 2nd Rhino/Razorback (ordered last week due to combination of GW's price hike and Wayland Games doing a free P&P deal)

That'll do for Blood Angels. Additional projects to swap in as active when I get bored of painting red:
10. Finish putting together a complete Warhammer Quest boxed set and hero collection
11. Paint and PLAY Dreadfleet
12. Paint and play (more) Space Hulk (at least I've made a terminator squad for my BA out of it...)

Anyway, I'm going to start you off with pictures of my currently painted vehicles. These were taken outside at 7pm today, and the lighting isn't too bad considering.






Underslung weapon on my landspeeders are all magnetized using 6mmx1.5mm. I may come back later on with a photo of the selection of weapons I have so far. Having just bought some smaller magnets (3mmx1.5mm), I'm hoping that I might be able to magnetize the top weapon as well for the 3rd speeder.

[S_A_T_S]

You may have noticed that my vehicles so far are numbered individually - Speeders are 2 & 3, rhinos 5 & 6. That's a hold over from 2nd ed when the metal dread box photo had a 4 transfer on the sarcophagus. I didn't really understand company icons at the time, so I thought it was labelled as 'Dread #4'. I made my speeder 3, and now I've repainted and expanded my BA for the current codex, I thought I'd carry on the tradition. Can you guess what number the next speeder will be labelled?















I'm quite pleased with the Furioso Librarian. I started collecting the bitz for him before the codex came out because who can resist rumours of a flying psychic dreadnought? Not used him much, but was fantastic for the first game I played against a friend who knew nothing about the new book. Three dreads, one drop-podding in (crap, not got that with me, will have to remember to photo that and add it to the vehicles section) and another flying. He had a very confused face on throughout the game.

Thought I'd end this first photo session with some photos actually related to the list! Here come the Tychos (my wife comments that everytime I refer to them as 'The Tychos', it sounds like they are a gay couple; as in "Dear, the Tychos will be round for tea tomorrow. Such a shame they can't get married, they'd look so wonderful in matching tuxedos.")





And one of the happy couple together...

EDIT: Damnit, just noticed the DC Tycho is missing a pupil. Just imagine a black dot in the middle of that eye, or even draw it on the screen for yourself with a pen. I'll have to write that on my hand as something to go back and fix later...

Hope you enjoyed this first dose of my BA (and future randomness) log. Also hope such large photos don't screw up anyone's connection...

[Galvatron1701]

I love your stuff! The old era landspeeder is lovely, but my favourites have to be your two Tychos! They are so similar yet very different!

Looking forward to more!

[Student]

Nice painting. I also like the two Tycos and the gem stones on you rhino look cool.

[Hadriel Caine]

Great stuff. Might I suggest thinning your paint a little and doing twice as many layers? The painting is very crisply executed but looks a tad thick in some places. Layering will smooth this over (since you evidently have the brush control and skill) and give a better overall finish. I hope you don't mind my suggestion. The old school land speeder is very cool- I've been trying to get hold of some off eBay for a while myself. I love the idea of the 'tychos' as a gay couple. Perhaps in the far future gay marriage will be allowed? Let's hope it doesn't take 39,000 years though. I actually thought the missing of the pupil on DC Tycho was intentional- having succumbed to the red thirst his eyes have glazed over- why not? Keep it up lovely stuff here.

[S_A_T_S]

Wow, thanks for the comments, guys!

@Hadriel Caine: You are right, I do need to thin those paints down. I've been looking at the two squads I have base coated waiting to go, and I think it's partly due to using Army Painter spray. The speeder and the Tychos were primed with that, and I think it is just too thick (or I am using it wrong - models end up looking shiny, and some of the tacticals look like details are a bit smudged). Glad I finished the can off and ordered some traditional Chaos Black primer from Waylands along with the Razorback.

I really wanted to have some new stuff up this weekend (hopefully doing roughly weekly updates can motivate me to keep going at a regular pace) but due to the weather we've had (it's supposed to be *********** June! Summer time!) I can't get outside to take photos or to use my new toy...


What's in the box? What's in the box?!?!


Yay! My First Airbrush & Compressor!

Was whinging on & on about how crap using cans with my GW spray gun was last year so my mother-in-law gave me some cash for my birthday to get a compressor. Taken me almost a whole year to finally get one (wife enjoyed being able to say "My mum gave you some money, so go and bloody get one!" every time I've moaned in the last 11 months, though). We moved end of last year, visited toy shop in the city a couple of weeks ago, and they now have a whole section dedicated to model painting. It's awesome - so many tools, knives, paints and weird things I want to play with but don't know how. And of course, airbrush kits. That one was nice and cheap, so out comes the wallet. "Make sure to use it in low humidity" says the sales guy, and what do I get? Almost solid rain since the day I brought it home

Anyway, Mephiston and one of the scouts are done, but gotta wait for decent photo weather. While I wait, have some work area photos:


My desk, where I can paint between the frantic clicking bouts that are Stronghold Kingdoms. Some WIP/touchup victims for you there...


The paints pile. The paint station won't fit on the desk, and too much hassle having to move all that stuff too and from the dining table every day.

Before I go, a problem:
The assault marines in the picture above are out because I thought it would be good to start putting chapter and company icons on them. I'm not good at free hand (hand shakes enough it's a miracle I can paint as cleanly as I do, despite bracing my hands on the table) so I'm using old transfers I collected from eBay a couple of years ago. However, the BA icons don't fit the ******* shoulder pads - they wrinkle up along the top and some edges. Doing the gloss-transfer-gloss-Lahmian Medium thing does mitigate it somewhat (sealing those edges down a little) but does anyone have any tips for getting transfers to fit better?

[constant_ones]

Love the old school land speeder, in my humble opinion the best version of the land speeder produced by gw. Also nice gem effects on your blood drops

[hazmiter]

Awesome as dude, I wish I had one of the old speeders...

[Apothecarian]

Agreed, more old speeders all 'round!

[S_A_T_S]

Looks like people love old metal speeders...

Spent this week finishing transfers on my two old JP assault squads. I'd love to show you pictures, but when we finally got decent weather to take 'em, I got one bad picture and the camera battery ran out Been away for the weekend so not been able to taken photos, but did manage to get a couple of Mephiston earlier in the week:







I actually tried to shade up the cloak on this one on the advice of my wife, who did art all through school, 6th form, college then degree in Architecture, so I generally assume she knows what she's talking about when it comes to painting or design Probably a bit dark in the photos, but it scales gently from black down to slightly darker than Codex Grey at the bottom. My first real attempt to do mixing or gradients.

Did manage to get the airbrush out in the week. Great fun, and I'm amazed I can actually direct it so well, and that you get such control over the amount of paint coming out. Very different experience to the Citadel Spray gun - no pratting around with cans, spluttering, or fiddling with the nozzle, but on the downside it's too small a nozzle to do mass basecoating as quickly. Ended up doing each of this squad individually, but I'm pleased with the smooth result (and I waste less paint on the weapons, which will be black anyway):


This squad will be an assault squad, but painted as a tactical (read: red helmets) as I want to eventually have a Battle Company of marines, but I don't want 6 actual tactical squads for my BA. I'm sure some basic fluff shouldn't be too hard to knock up...


The squad has two sergeants so I can take an inferno pistol if using them in a razorback, or thunderhammer if in a rhino/stormraven when I can have the full squad together.


Variant sergeant with thunderhammer. Got the feeling I'll be using this guy the most...

Looking forward to trying a non-foundation paint in the airbrush later this week. Will be interesting to see if it's easier... Also, finally got my razorback from Wayland Games, but they apparently didn't have any black primer in stocks. I say apparently, as all I got from them was a refund for the price of the spray (no explaination, just email from paypal informing me of the refund) and a red line through the spray on the invoice in the delivery. I hate it when sellers don't communicate. Would it kill them to send a quick email saying "Sorry, we don't have x item in stock currently. Rest of order and refund for x on their way"?

[Emilio101]

Very nice work. I'm thinking of getting an airbrush of my own soon. What model are you using?

Emilio

[S_A_T_S]

Very nice work. I'm thinking of getting an airbrush of my own soon. What model are you using?

I don't know, to be honest. It came as part of a unmarked bundle, which I'm pretty sure is just a load of cheap stuff some distributor bought in bulk and slung in a box together. It is a gravity fed cup, which is pretty good compared to the GW one. One piece of advice I'd have to give you is to get some spirit or alcohol to run through it after every use - I've already buggered mine by filling the nozzle with dried paint On the plus side, it did make me dismantle the thing so now I have a better understanding of how it actually works.

THIS WEEKS UPDATE!
I've not done much painting this week due to coming dangerously close to the brink of war in Stronghold Kingdoms and faffing around with the airbrush clogging. However, managed to finish the assault marines with transfers and company icons.

I was originally torn between going for 4th company, the Knights of Baal (cool name but have to paint the green drop icon) or 5th company, Daemonbane (not as cool name, but can use black drop transfers and Captain Sendini sounds a little better than Captain Castigan). However, when I actually got the transfer sheet out, the drops are in all sorts of colours so I'd have to paint them anyway, Castigan sounds like Costigan from The Departed, and when I tried painting the green drop, it actually looks pretty cool.


Doesn't look amazing in closeup, I admit, but the goblin green edge does give it a great shadow effect when viewed from normal gaming or display angles, and it's so simple!

1st JP squad looks like this:





This guy is my favourite pose, as he looks to me like someone has missed him with a thrown knife, and he's turning in that direction saying "Alright, who threw that? Own up, yer bastrd. I'm gunna fookin break yer face!" (Don't know why my BA sound like East London toughs...).

Plans for this week coming include:

• Finishing minor details on 2nd assault squad
• Touching up and adding transfers to tactical squad
• Fixing airbrush and finishing the basecoat for on-foot tactical/assault squad
• Making a start on razorback turret
• If I want to do some proper painting, do some work on plaguebearer squad that have been sitting in my paint box taking up space for 2 years

...and probably reading Warseer for criticism and info on 6th which is being officially announced in 20 minutes. Local manager gave me a black card with the date on the other day. I say "Ah right, 6th", he says "No idea what it is, come in Saturday and we'll all find out". I'm thinking "Really? You have to organise a major sales event/announcement in your store in three days and they haven't told you anything?" This secrecy thing is getting boring. I haven't read the leaked rule sets so it's only bits and pieces I've picked up but I'm starting to get the feel it's going to be a bit more like 2nd, with the more complicated tables, psychic cards and scaled rules. Could be interesting...

[S_A_T_S]

Had an up and down week that's messed with painting - birthday midweek (yay!) followed by 3 days of hay fever (boo! hiss!), so completely lost interest in doing ANYTHING for the last half of the week. However, did manage to get some touch ups done, and spent yesterday (after taking some anti-histamines) building my razorback turret. Enjoy!


Heavy Flamer loaded...


Assault cannon loaded. Magnets are fun (but very fiddly)!


Bits to get primed and painted.




These guys are Black Reach tacticals with a few parts of the DC sprue added for colour.

The airbrush is still clogged (sooooooooo not looking forward to cleaning that out...) so it's be the task for next week when I'm in a good mood. Additional tasks may include:

• Touch ups and transfers on Sanguinary Priests
• Touch ups to terminator tactical squad
• Paint a plague bearer!

So, see you next week, hopefully with some progress on that ******* airbrush...

[S_A_T_S]

Sadly a small update this week, as I've been pretty slow this week, partly due to Space Marine and all DLC being 75% on Steam, then having to deal with overheating GPU and WLAN adapter I did manage the transfers on the Priests, but need to do some more touch ups I spotted when I took a photo, and I even managed a plaguebearer! Photos will be up when we get weather I can take them in. Anyway, some photos:




These guys are almost entirely made from the 2nd ed metal assault marines, with a few plastic jump packs mixed in, as I found the metal ones were good for balancing models with metal weapons or banners...


The banner is in there because I needed my old honour guard to combine with spare bits to get up to 20 assault marines. I like having banners on my squad leaders, though, and this makes a good compromise for the ASMs, as I can't get a banner onto a jump pack. I'm incredibly pleased with how the droplet at the very top came out, it looks like a smooth blend.

So, on to the airbrush. I found some info on the net about cleaning them out, and ended up making this:




That's right, it's a toothpick sanded down to a ridiculously small size - the ruler is in centimetres, not inches. I had a fiddle with that, got out a couple of lumps until I could see a clear circle of daylight through the nozzle. Unfortunatly, when I put the needle in, it was sticking, and when I tried putting water through, it came out in droplets with a spluttering sound I'm thinking it might be beyond me to sort out, so I'm gonna try taking it back to the shop this week to see if they can help, and also find out the exact connector sizes of the Citadel Spray Gun and my compressor so I can use that in the mean time. If anyone knows what the connector sizes for the Spray Gun are, pleeeeeeease tell me!

[MrNovember]

Lovely models - which you've also managed to photgraph really, really well! Kudos for that. Really like the gold on Tycho - very effective. Can't wait to see hoe this thread develops...

[S_A_T_S]

Back again! Missed last week due to visiting the in-laws, but managed to get a little done (bloody rain! It never ends!), so here's this weeks (fortnights?) update (it will be picture heavy to make up for missing a week...):

Got the priests touched up.





The second priest has a badly damaged Jump Pack from leaving it in acetone too long, as you can see below. Primed a replacement from my left over DC parts this morning, which will now go on the pile waiting for the airbrush to be up and running...



I'm pretty pleased with my Space Hulk Terminators. It really is amazing how a little bit of edging can make so much difference! Apologies for the shadows, but it was the only bit of sun today. I even had to brace things against some of the plants in the garden to get their shadows out of the way!








I know his gun is the only thing in focus, but I only noticed as I was uploading them. I think it looks a little dramatic - draws the eye to the thing about to do the killing. The wife enjoyed playing a game of 'What's in focus?' as I uploaded -"Knees, knees, gun! Knees, chest!"





The Termies are loosely pinned to the bases so that I can pop them off to play Space Hulk (same reason for the plain black of the model's own base - painting as slate doesn't look right in Space Hulk, and edging in Grey would have looked odd as well, so I decided to leave it for now):



AIRBRUSH UPDATE: I finally managed to discover the right size for the Citadel spray gun! The gun's connection size is 5mm, which thoroughly confused the blokes at Machine Mart when I took it in to ask. Apparently, if it's not in inches, it's absolutely not standard. They got my hose size immediatley, so was able to find adaptors on eBay reasonably easily (just had to get the right male/female combo). Tried it all out today, and it works, but now I have to deal with paint that has been thinned to go through the airbrush (ie. far too thin for the Spray Gun!) and moisture issues (moisture traps are designed to hang down, not stick up, like it would need to be on the Spray Gun...) but at least the damn thing sprays paint! Also bought some Vallejo Airbrush Cleaner from the extremely helpful people at the toy shop in the city, which dislodged a few chunks from the Spray Gun. If I get time this week, I might even try it on the airbrush itself... Hopefully by the end of the week I shall have some assault/tacticals actually painted!

Hope those who managed to struggle all the way to the end of my ramblings enjoyed what they saw and read. See you next week!

[constant_ones]

Your angels are turning out really lovely, if I could make one tiny suggestion? Have you considered adding a little more shading to your yellow helmets? You could pretty easily do it with a washy glaze or either a orange or muddy yellow, I've found the deeper you take the shading on the helmets of ba assault marines, the brighter the yellow pops. Plus you've got your great eye details, but I loose them a little bit, which is a shame. Just my two cents and I really dig your character models!

[S_A_T_S]

Your angels are turning out really lovely, if I could make one tiny suggestion? Have you considered adding a little more shading to your yellow helmets? You could pretty easily do it with a washy glaze or either a orange or muddy yellow, I've found the deeper you take the shading on the helmets of ba assault marines, the brighter the yellow pops. Plus you've got your great eye details, but I loose them a little bit, which is a shame. Just my two cents and I really dig your character models!

How would you make a glaze? I've never used one before, but I agree something could be added to the yellow. I've also thought about the eyes, and having had a good look at my terminators, I'm going to try adding a little scorpion green to the corners to give them a bit more 'glow'.

It's been a couple of week since the last time I posted. Most of the reason for that is the weather - too humid to use spray gun, so couldn't get things sprayed up. However, I have finally managed to finish the tactical/assault squad, and I'm quite pleased with them. Unfortunately, the combination of the time it's taken to get them done and the weather has prevented me from getting photos done. Today is pretty good, but I'm off on holiday for a week tomorrow, so I don't have the time today. Life - it gets in the way of all the good things, doesn't it?

So I'll try and get pictures of the squad (and a character) up next week when I'm back, but I do have a couple of pictures I took a while ago and haven't attached yet to give you something to look at beyond some white text




Recognise this guy? One of the first models I stripped for my BA, he was a test for a way of painting gold a staff member recommended to me. I liked it, so that's how I've painted Tycho and my Sanguinary Guard, and will paint a purchase I am quite excited about (maybe with a little refinement). The chips you may notice on the top left of the model on each picture are from where I dropped him about 4' onto the stone steps outside my home just before I took the photos. I was surprised it was such minor damage. They don't make 'em like they used to, eh?


It's that plaguebearer! I went for a heavy drybrush on my daemons as I wanted them to look a little undefined and insubstantial. A little orange to make it look more unnatural, and there you go. Also, the new plastics look awesome! Shame they are still crap in Fantasy. The nurglings are very tempting, however...

[S_A_T_S]

I'm back, baby! I actually have photos this time. Enjoy!






I particularly like the orange highlight on the crest of this sergeants helmet. I wasn't sure if the Sanguinary Guard helmets would work on normal marines, but with a gentle highlight like that it looks good!

And a bonus:

I've had this librarian model for about 15 years, might even have been the second character I got after the captain from last weeks post. With the DC box, I just had to strip him, replace the pistol arm and give him one of the cool new jump packs. He's one of the earlier models I repainted for this army, so I don't think he's as clean as some of the others (his gems are a little more clunkily painted) but he's great in game. The number of times a well-placed Blood Lance has carved through a line of tanks... Great to see the smug look disappear of mech-player's faces ;-)

I've started putting together my Stormraven as it's been really humid and close the last few days since getting back off holiday. It's a big kit, so it's going to take some time, as I want to investigate magnetising the wings, doors and weapons, and I'm undecided about the turret at the moment. With any luck I will get some paints mixed for my spraygun this week and be able to base coat some more tacticals for painting when I'm frustrated with the 'raven.

See you next week!

EDIT: Just noticed this weeks photos look a lot brighter than previously. That's because I discovered Windows Image Viewer has simple tools for brightening pictures which made them look a lot better. I didn't realise quite how dark the others were in comparison!

[VenomBlood]

I like hammer guy, he looks old fashioned and classic.