Green, everywhere!

After the travesty of the Sammael model JK bought a painted one off the internet and sent me some of his tanks to do instead. I have three rhinos - two of which are older than I am! Two are first edition rhinos from 1988, one is normal one. The old ones are so tiny compared to new ones - it's really cute. They are also going to be Dark Angels paint scheme, but before I started I wanted to work in some battle damage. I had just gotten my hands on the Imperial Masterclass book on tanks by Forgeworld and was following a few of their guides for this.

I had tried to find pictures of battle worns tanks and damaged tanks on the net but I found that either tanks become completely destroyed - ripped apart, blown in half, torn open like a monkey too aggresively opening a banana - or looked fairly ok. Tanks either got a few bullet holes, maybe scrapped by a few bigger things, or they take a full hit and just die.

I just used a scalpel and a set of diamond files. 

My tools. Fizzy orange is very important.

I do all my painting in mood lighting.

 You can see at the top right of the front I have taken a notch out where the tank could've taken a glancing blow from anti-tank fire. I just laid my round crystal file on it and rolled it and sawed a bit until I got a good depth. 

 

I didn't take any pictures  that I can find of this process. I actually grabbed one of my metal sculpting tools and started scrapping at the centre of the spot where I wanted the damage to be. In the Imperial Armour book they used a burr on a hand tool to start wearing away parts of their tanks. After a while I started to wear away at the area around the centre. Then as you can see I added two larger streaks going across it diagonally to give a sense of directionally to whatever hit the tank. 

Then I accidentally shoved my file through the plastic! On the side of a new tank you can feel it start to thin and go but on this one I just went straight through. I just drilled it out a bit more to make it look like it was intentional! I made sure not to keep the hole neat and instead uneven and slightly jagged. 

On the other tank a got a bit more ambitious after seeing a picture of a tank that had had its roof and side blown apart by a partial hit. I started by hacking a hole in it to remove the roof that has been blown apart. 

I didn't do it straight on to make it look like the tank was being attacked from an angle rather than straight on. Then it came to sculpting the bit that had been blown up. You could have the piece of roof on either side I guess. I just rolled out a tiny sausage of green stuff, laid it on the edge and started to smooth it into the roof.

Then I took another slightly thicker sausage and placed it on the edge again. I worked it into the lower piece of green stuff so it didn't fall off and then I put my sculpting spatula (nice and flat) on the side of the hole to the greenstuff, and took my clay sculpter and started to push the greenstuff upwards against the spatula. 

I made the edge that had been attached all rough. Actually I stuck my thumb in it a few times and squished everything into a glob while I was doing stuff to the rest of the model. 

The other thing I did to this tank was to give it a series of shallow bullet holes across one of the side doors. 

I felt like I should have really done more but looking at all those photos I could only find working tanks that had a few marks on them, physically. When I have finished the main paint job I can start weathering it. 

I had a strange dream that I had found a limited edition pigment pot at a random shop and it was really cheap. It was an extra large pot too! But when I left the store the pot turned out to be the size of a thimble and I was very annoyed. 

Still kindof am.

Dark Angels

I have been sent a couple of tanks to paint for the same guy who tricked me into dealing with abomination of a model 'Sammael'. They are also going to be Dark Angels. I have been trawling through pics of tanks for inspiration and thought I'd post up some of them here.

This one was painted by Rene and can be found here;
http://www.coolminiornot.com/184162?browseid=929559

Obviously the freehand is excellent, but I love the idea of having a tank covered in the scrawlings of its chapter. He has another cool DA tank here; 

http://www.coolminiornot.com/194308?browseid=929559

But I found with this model the freehand all looks excellent, but only the bottom half of the vehicle looks finished. The top half looks like it is missing detailing and weathering compared to the bottom. 

This one was painted by HopeRiver and can be found here;

http://www.coolminiornot.com/284703?browseid=929559

This one to me actually looks like a painting. I like most of the free hand except for the diamon pattern. It looks too much like velvet cushions to me. Or toilet paper. A Dreadnought looks much less scary when it looks like a pillow. 

This one was painted by Nucleosaur, and can be found here; 

http://www.dakkadakka.com/core/gallery-viewimage.jsp?i=237640&m=2&w=800

His gallery showcases many excellent examples of OSL and weathering. I will definitely be pouring over them when it comes to finishing off the details on the DA tanks. 

Oath Thread: The oathening

I have been very quiet recently to mirror my lack of painting. Two things are happening this month, however. 1) I am going home for my month long easter holiday. 2) The guys at SA have started up a new oath thread!

The basic idea is at the start of every month you say I will paint x amount of y, following guidelines set out in the thread. You post a picture proving your mini is thus far unpainted and then you have to finish and paint it by the end of the month. You get points according to various things such as having a proper WIP, how well you fit the month's theme and how well you paint overall.

I have been having a break in preparation for this! Normally I paint at a glacial pace - certainly slower than the rate at which I buy new miniatures - so I am hoping that this new thread will motivate me to paint faster! There's prizes and stuff to be had if you do well in certain categories.

I've been making a list of all the unpainted models I have, and here's what I've found so far:

Penitent Engine
Throne of Judgement
Vampire Counts Coach
Exorcist
Predator Tank
Immolator
Dreadnought
HQ's from Assault on Black Reach
Island of Blood full box
Dreadfleet full box
St Celestine
C'tan the deceiver
Legion Epic Thragosh the Messiah

And some more that are not currently within arms reach and I'll be damned if I'm getting out of my bean bag. It takes far too much butt shuffling to get it right to waste it!

I'm also going to try and set specific goals for myself each set of models I paint - monochrome, or layering, wet blending, speedpainting etc.

Im super psyched and really hope I get to painting at a steady rate again.

Let's Play Nerd Adventure!

I have had another little project start up in the last week which stunted my ability to post. I have started a Let's Play of Xenoblade Chronicles!

You can check it out here;

Let's Play Xenoblade Chronicles Forum Thread

Xenoblade Chronicles Part One - The Beginning

You get to hear my girly British voice.

In miniature related news I have a series of photos taken of a tank I've finished, two models I painted in an hour, and some terminator heads/bodies that I made myself using instant mold!