Blue Drifts into Sci-Fi....eBay strikes again

Yikes! Nearly a month since my last post! I could bore you with a bunch of excuses as to why...but lets just say RL has been cramping my hobby time in a big way.

So since I've gotten very little done in the way of painting...Lets look at the ever expanding lead pile instead!!

As some of you who haunt similar forums as me know I've been selling off a lot of extra figures from my collection...this leads to money in the PayPal ...which leads to obsessive eBay trawling.... which leads to more small boxes and padded envelops randomly appearing in the mailbox...  which leads to exasperated looks from the wife...:)

One of my latest "successes" on eBay was the acquisition of some excellent Sci-fi models...both from the Rogue Trader Era Citadel range and from slightly further afield.  A gentleman from the States was selling a number of Chaos Renegades individually along with a Chaos Dreadnought.  I put some low ball snipes in on the whole lot of them and promptly left for a short holiday with my family.  Half way through my trip a received a flurry of emails from my eBay account letting me know that not only had I won a few of them...but I had won them all!  They weren't a tremendous bargain but at just north of $5 ($15 for the Dreadnought) each I was pretty happy.

The Dreadnought has been avoiding me for months!

A nice mix of Renegades here.

One duplicate...and the guy in the right is from 1993...but close enough for me!

These twisted disciples of evil will join the other 8 or 9 Renegades in my collection allowing me to field almost two complete squads...a squad of Chaos Terminators...and a dread...Nice!

As you may have noticed the two Plague Marines have different...non-RT backpacks...which I have to say I really like!  Can anyone tell me from what edition they are from?

I had also noticed that this same seller had a fairly large lot of non-Citadel Sci-fi figures and when I went to see what they had sold for I found that no one had bid on them...so I dropped him a message and offered to include some money for those in my payment as well...he agreed and added this lot to my box for only $10!

Thats a lot of metal for $10!

 These are all figures from Alternative Armies Ion Age Series of 28mm figures.  I first became aware of this through the amazing work of Pil....a regular contributor on LAF who painted up a bunch for a client.  I was pretty impressed with the figures then (and Pil's amazing brush work) and felt that they had a very RT feel to them so the chance to get my hands on a fairly large batch at a bargain price was a no brainier.

This lot includes a number of Retained Knights...which I will use as alternative Space Marines.  I think they are at least as cool as many of the old Citadel sculpts.

Perhaps its my fondness for Sallet helmets that makes me like them?

The rest are a batch of more lightly armed infantry...and to be honest I will have to do some thinking about what to play them as in RT...but the sculpts are still quite good IMO.

To Give you an idea what these guys can look like painted...here are a couple of Pil's Pictures (which I hope he doesn't mind if I use)

Of Course Pil's excellent scenery helps make them really look great!

This last shot is of more lightly armored human figures not included in my lot called "muster troops" which I think could equate to Imperial Guard...I see myself hunting them down soon...

Back in the foggy distance of time I had several squads worth of Citadel Space Marines...but stupidly sold them off a couple of years ago when I was focusing my attention on my dwarf collection...but with the discovery of these figures from Alternative Armies I don't see myself trying to rebuild that collection...These seem to be a fun alternative and one that is still in production and can occasionally be found for a pittance on eBay....unlike the classic Space Marines.

Thats all for now...if my painting mojo continues to elude me I'll let you in on a few more of my recent impulse buys.

Cheers for now!

Blue

Bret Halberds Complete...and something Chaosy this way comes

Howdy all...well the heart of the summer is upon us....my ankle is healing well and my work load has gone off the charts...seems no one did anything at work while I was laying on the couch for a month...lazy sods!  So my hobby time has been quite restricted but I do have a couple of updates to share with you.

First of all I finished off the last of the infantry units for my Bretonnian warband....these are the halberdiers I was working on for the Monthly Unit Painting Challenge over on the Oldhammer Forum.  They still need a banner and few shields but they are done enough for now.  This unit didn't inspire me the way the others did but I'm glad they are finished and I'm fairly happy with the way they turned out.....take a look for yourself.  Sorry about the crappy wooden movement tray...its a WIP

This shot shows the 3 R&F sculpts...nice but a little more variety would have been great!

Shields detail...these guys look better from the back!

With the completion of these guys I'm getting fairly close to being finished with this small army.  On my painting table right now are a unit of 10 knights as well as a general and army standard bearer.  The only other thing I have to add are more mounted yeomen....I'm still hunting a couple of the sculpts down but that unit can grow slowly.

On a completely different note....last weekend my painting mojo completely vanished so I found some time to clean a prep models for future efforts.  Recently my boy Clam sent along a set of his new Ewal Dvergar sculpts for me to play around with.  So I spread them out with a batch of the first release castings that were still patiently waiting assembly and I went to work....here is what I started with.

As you can see there are a LOT of options here....so I spent the better part of night just fiddling around and trying different head and weapons options on the various bodies.  By the end of the evening here is what I had come up with....a group of 4 with pole arms...

I particularly like the guy second from the left...

 ...a couple with two hand weapons

here I used weapons from both 1st and 2nd releases

....and a sizable group of hand weapon and shield warriors

A right evil looking bunch eh?

Additonally I built this guy on the left with the two handed sword and started on a couple of conversions with some of the extra bits...which are sill very much WIP.

Bonus points if you can ID the base bodies on the two models on the right...

I hope to get these guys primed up in the next few days so they can join the great unpainted masses awaiting my attention on the painting table.

Of course if you want some of these babies for yourself you should check out Clam's Blog HERE

...tell him Blue sent ya...

Cheers for now!

Blue

Yes I'm still Alive and Kicking!

Just a quick post to let you know that I'm still alive and painting.  The last few weeks have seen the condition of my ankle improver quite a bit and I'm now able to put some weight on it (Yay!) and have started to return to a fairly normal work schedule (Boo!).

On the Painting front I've completed a couple of things that I'm not at liberty to share right now as they will be used as contest entries in the future.  I have also been plugging away on my unit of Bret Halberds and they are nearly complete.  I ended up having to re-highlight the padded armor because I felt that i came out too dark after the wash I applied to it...I'm much happier with the result even though the difference is pretty subtle.

Take a look...new highlight on the left...un-highlighted on the right

And here is the Group as of two nights ago

Last night I got the Bases complete and they are looking pretty good.  Now all I have left to do is the Shields...but I've come to find out that I'm a couple short!  Here is what I have so far...

...So if anyone has 2-3 of these shields to spare...please drop me a note...:)

I've also selected my next unit to work on...and once it is completed it will just about wrap up my Brettonnian project.....the Knights!  I'll be double dipping with this unit and using it for painting challenges at the Blood Forum and over at Bugman's....shhh...don't tell on me.

....of course I'll be painting their horses as well.

So thats all I have to report today...I hope to have completed shots of the Halberd unit up by early next week....assuming I can decide on (and execute) a banner design...I suffer from Banner design block apparently....I still need designs for the scouts and the mounted yeomen as well....sigh

Cheers for now!

Blue

PhotoBucket Sucks...and More Brets

Well...as you have probably noticed all my pictures have disappeared...I have apparently exceeded my bandwidth limit with Photobucket....this has never happened before.  They should be back in order on the 3rd or 4th when my monthly limit is renewed.

So sorry for the technical difficulties but everything should be back in order soon.

Here is what I've been working on....another group of Bretonnians...this time Halberds.

Cheers,

Blue

Remeber the Alamo...Again....Still

So I know I may be beating a dead horse here but while I had a camera out for the other shots this week also took some individual shots of the Alamo figures that I used for the LPL Round 5 entry...both the Mexicans and the Defenders....and since I love these figures so much I wanted to post the pictures up for you to enjoys as well.

Lets start with the Mexican soldiers...who haven't been seen with their completed bases up to this point.

And here are the four Casualty Markers

All Really fantastic figures with a lot going for each sculpt....I see more of these in my future.

Even though I've shown them twice already here are some new individual shots of the Alamo Defenders as well

well there they are....Some of Boot Hill Miniatures finest!

Cheers,

Blue

LPL Round 10: ....This is the End.

As I finished up the Averlanders' from my last post my mind shifted quickly to thinking about the teams that I wanted to put together for the last round of the LPL....which was also a themed round: Sci-Fi.  With this topic in mind, over the last couple of months I have been slowly expanding my very modest collection of 40k models....first with some Squats and later with some Marauder Orks (the only 40k models produced by Marauder).  I had two excellent teams picked out and was already thinking about how to display them for my final shot....when the whole ankle thing happened....and those thoughts went right out the window.

My new reality for the foreseeable future was that I would only be able to sit at the painting desk for very short (30-45minute) sessions once per day.  This is required a new system.  So I quickly forgot about the squats and focused on a group of the Orks.  Having read about some new (to me) fast painting techniques I decided to give one a try. 

I started by base-coating the figures with my normal Dark grey primer.  I then attempted to give them a Zenithial Highlighting...which I found was hard to do with a spray can....but there was no time for a second attempt...so I went with it.  Here is what they looked like....as you can see the droplets of spray from the can are too big and coarse...I can see why most folks that employ this technique do so with an air brush.

Here is what they looked like.

I then started to apply a very watered down coat od my ancient Goblin Green to the Flesh areas.  The idea here is to let the zenithial highlighting "shine" through the thinned payers of paint to add some instant shading.

I then did the same thing to the cloth, leather and armor portions of the models.

Areas that were going to end up as metal were painted solid black and teeth were given a coating of bone.  When all areas had their thinned base coats applied I then slapped a coat of Miniwax Tudor Stain on them and let them dry overnight. 

Once dry and coated with Vallejo brush on Matte varnish I painted up the metal areas using my normal technique and took care of any details like eyes and teeth.....and they were done!  Record time for me...I bet I spent less than 3 hours painting 6 miniatures...thats fast for me!  No they won't win any prizes...and they got stomped in the competition...but I got a new team in (personal victory) and I didn't further injure my ankle by spending too much time at the desk...here is the final result

I found this new (to me) technique to be very interesting and something that I hope to refine in the future....perhaps a post dip highlight on the flesh might make them "pop" at bit more.  I think a finer spray for the zenithial highlight like you can achieve with an airbrush would make a major difference as well....I might just have to put one on my wish list.

Cheers,

Blue

LPL Round 9: Averland's Best

Late last winter I was approached by a fellow member of the Lead Adventure Forum about a small painting commission.  thebinman had a group of old empire figures that he wanted me to paint up for him as a Mordhiem warband from Averland.  Since he offered to compensate me in old lead I had no choice but to accept....:)

...I had hoped to complete two teams of thebinman's figures for LPL teams but as things worked out with RL I was only able to get one completed before the contest ended.....this team was my Round 9 entry.  I picked my 5 favorite figures from this commission and went to town!  Among the group of figures that thebinman sent along were many classics and the choice was difficult but these five seemed to fit well together with their strong Puff and Slash style...plus the variety of heights/races made for an interesting team.

Anyway...here is my entry photo

This is a hastily taken iPhone picture...the camera does pretty well!

Loverly figures all!

As I have been laid up with my ankle, one of the tasks I've managed to complete is the basing on these guys...I also took proper pictures with my better camera...so lets look at each figure in detail with those photos.

On the left here we have a classic Marauder Halfling.  Just a wonderful face on this guy...I stupidly sold my complete unit of Marauder halflings when I got back into the hobby a few years ago and after painting this guy they have gone back on the acquire list!

 Next to him is "Piers," (...'cause he has a crossbow see?! haha...very clever) a venerable model from the early Citadel Empire range.  I like the figure overall...the look on his face is a bit odd...but still fun to paint.

In the middle we have one of the absolutely wonderful Marauder Puff and Slash Ogres...and one I hadn't painted before! I tackled most of this small range for a previous LPL entry but this guy was new to me and that made him particularly fun to paint.  I was a little perplexed about the severed head between his legs (see the picture of the back of the figure)...to me it was unclear what type of head it was....shrunken head trophy?  Head of another Ogre? Troll? so I went with a flesh color that could be interpreted a number of ways...:)

Next up is another bad ass figure... Smiorgan Baldhead from the Eternal Champion Personalities range...I figure I covet very much!  ...love the wicked scar on his face!

And last...but certainly not least....one of the absolute best dwarf miniatures....Ever!  The Marauder MM15 Zweihandler Figure.  My copy of this figure is still untouched....its one of those ones that I'm kind of intimidated by...so having another to work on in a completely different color scheme was really a pleasure.  His beard gave me fits...and still might get one more highlight...but overall my appreciation for this figure was only increased by having painted it....Now I'm itching to get to mine!

The Yellow and Black color scheme proved to be a fun challenge as well....both of these are colors that I tend to avoid doing large areas of if possible.  Black in particular has always been one I've avoided...I had to do a lot of internet research on different techniques before I found one I was willing to try...and over all I'm happy with the way it turned out.

Anyway....gotta get back to the couch and put my leg on a bag of ice!

Cheers for now...

Blue