Space Wolves: Primaris Redemptor Dreadnought #1

I love the new Primaris Redemptor dreads and actually started this before all the others posted up. They're significantly larger than the oldschool dreads, with all these enormous flat surfaces. After painting it up in a pretty flat grey scale with dark up to light, I realised more colour was needed to make it visually interesting. So it's here I started playing with glazing reds and then glazing blues over the top of that.

Painting freehand remains a challenge to me, so I used transfers as my "outline" and then painted over the top. Keeping the transfers as they come off the sheet wasn't viable, as my yellows are a little darker than the default. Other areas are my attempted freehand, riffing on the spiky theme present elsewhere on the model.

Adding weathering to guns is enormous fun. It's over-emphasised because on this scale of miniature I felt it needed that. Then after that, it's just a case of keeping the painting neat and tidy on the rear, which has so much pleasing detail.

And there he is! He's big and angry, and all mine. I bloody love dreadnoughts.

Space Wolves: Dreadnought #3

Now the triumvirate is complete. Here's the last of my three oldschool dreads.

Big fan of the intricate scrolls and battle honours on the front panels. Lifts the model from a casket to something with a little character. Which is much needed.

I magnetised all the arms I could find, and here's the selection in full.

Pleased with the results of these three, and it was nice to get something else out the grey mountain and erm ... paint it grey? Alright, there was a little yellow in there too.

Space Wolves: Dreadnought #2

When you're on a roll, you're on a roll I guess, so here's a second one off the production line.

He's a fairly functional fellow, and not much in the way of fancy highlights. We're looking at tabletop and expediency here. But there's always time for a little heat weathering on the weaponry.

I plan to come back and add a banner to the back of this guy and have it hanging from the skulls. But that's lower down my to-do list right now.

Pleased with how the colour transitions worked, and find myself wishing I'd pushed the yellow even darker in the shadows now.

Space Wolves: Dreadnought #1

The last couple of weeks have been super busy, but I've taken a lot of pleasure in working through an unexpectedly large collection of dreadnoughts acquired over the last few years. You can mentally switch off, work through them, and still achieve a reasonable result.

So here's the first dreadnought finished! Many years ago there was a little accident with my original Assault on Black Reach model, and he lost a leg. Whoops. Small remodeling required to look damaged but still combat capable.

The weapon arm is magnetised so it can be swapped out depending on what I need.

Barrels added to give the impression he's staging a last stand in front of scenery. I'd like to return to this and make a diorama in the future.

Engine Shed POLA-600 HO/00

And now for something completely different.

 My dad set up his model railway board recently, for the first time since I was a child. I offered to paint something for him to add a little character to the board. He gave me an old train shed and asked if I could paint that.

This didn't take long. It isn't my finest work. But it was nice to be able to help out my dad.

I kept the roof reasonably boring, but had fun with the metals and verdigris. Is it even verdigris on iron? Probably not, but it needed the colour contrast, rather than browns of rust merging in with the body of the model.

I'm not sure why you would put your coal, spare wheels and a ladder all next to each other - but as there's literally no other place to put them ... there they go.

Adding funky colours for mold is fun. Blues and greens leaking through the brickwork helps to break up the larger surfaces.

The windows were a stinking mess, with the clear plastic being scratched something awful. To counter this, I added lots of weathering to make it look like they were dirty - achieved with lots of weathering powder and isopropyl alcohol. Then I took a cue tip with water on it to create dirty swirls to look like they were badly cleaned.

How old is this kit? Old enough that it was manufactured in West Germany and on my dad's gaming board in the mid-eighties. This post also has the worst tags possible.

Plot twist.

It turns out this was originally my kit, and I started assembling it before growing bored of the hobby. Which means at 35 years between build and paint, it's accidentally my longest ever hobby project.

Your move, fellow procrastinators.

Ruined Church

Phew.

This has been a while in the making, and I'm happy it's done - but have no idea how best to photograph it, so here we go.

The idea itself should be fairly evident. It's a priest standing in the ruins of his church, defending the remnants from dark devils, with the righteous power of light spilling out from his holy symbol. There's living flowers in the back of the shot, and everything in front of the church is being consumed by the darkness.

A few accessories in the side to give a lived in/refuge feel to what remains of the church. These are from various suppliers, possibly Tabletop World, Ristul's Marketplace or one of the small vendors at Salute. I sort of threw things together that felt like the right dimensions.

It should be the last bastion of whatever remains in the area. Giving the feeling that that this a partial view of a greater whole. More church out of the scene, more devil dogs being summoned from hell too.

The sly devil dog creeping from the side, but still partially caught by the light was good fun to position.

Big thing for me here is that there's no pure black anywhere on the piece, nor pure white. They weren't even on the palette at any point. The closest I got was dark brown washes on the barrels, and a very saturated dark blue for the shadow. Brightest is ivory on toenails and teeth, and Ice Yellow on the final light highlights.

I tried to convey a very bright, white light for his power, and a warmer, menacing light from hell for the devil dogs. Here's an overhead shot to demonstrate it a little better.

There's a little bend on the lower devil dog light source, but I realised my error too late - and stuck with it.  This does show the difference between the purity of light source from the church, versus the glow in the background suggesting worse things to follow.

Overall, I learned quite a bit about how to build a diorama and also what not to do the next time. Getting too excited and gluing the pieces into final position is NOT RECOMMENDED and will make your life significantly more difficult, so that's definitely a tip I'd pass on right now.

Kill Team: Skitarii Vanguard

So here we are, my Skitarii Vanguard finished up. To my surprise. I thought this would be a project sat on the WIP desk for a lot longer, but things picked up pace and here we are. Only nine months after release, but that's still a victory.

The muted colour scheme is lifted by the blues on the weapons and the little white symbols on the coats. Orange cabling is in to try and give an effect of glowing power passing through. I tried this a few years ago on another model and really liked how it turned out - so it's back!

I realised too late that I'd messed something up when priming these last year, so there's a slight texture on the surface of some areas. Not sure how, and it's irritating, but there we have it. Here's the squad in all their glory.