I’ve been experimenting with crystal resin recently, on a seperate (non-hobby) project for a present for someone special and I wondered what some of my old base moulds would look like in crystal resin.

I like the results a lot, think I’ll have to make some ‘ice world’ or ‘crystal cave’ bases some day soon….

'Ice effect' base made from crystal resin.

….more photos soon hopefully – just got to wait for the stuff to cure properly (takes days).

Limited Edition Sergeant Centurius model (1996).

I’m really quite happy with the way this one turned out. It was a bit of a learning experience and I tried a lot of new techniques. I used ‘Eavy Metal’s Anja Wettergren’s technique (see WD 361) of using a blue shade of black and stuck to the old ’90′s way’ of doing flames (i.e. wrongly) for the armour although not for the banner. I bought the mini from a guy on ebay about 3 years ago and it sat gathering dust until recently. I started to get inspired when I took a spare banner and decided to paint it up with freehand to see what I could accomplish (and if I totally screwed it up – no big deal). I was really happy with it and it stayed in my bits box for about a year or so until I finally got around to painting up some of my Damned on holiday. I have another 10 waiting to be painted so hopefully I can get that squad finished soon too. For the face I used grey mixed with various skin tones and then glazed it lightly with purles and reds around the ‘messed up bits’ of this poor guys face. The result makes him look quite zombie-like which is approximately what I was aiming for (i.e. quite sick).  I also added a nice glow effect on the skull’s eyes using thinned down green washes. Here’s a close-up:

Too much beer and crisps I think...

Apologies for the image quality, it’s not exactly sunny at the moment but I’ll see if I can get some decent snaps of this (in focus) at some point.

I was a bit sceptical at first at using a purple glaze over the metal but actually I really like it now, it ties the colours of the model together nicely, it’s subtle but effective.

Not a single post in over 3 months? What happened? Well, to be honest I just lost interest completely in the hobby for a while. All the painting got to be a bit of a chore, too may projects on the go at once and not enough of them getting me the kind of results I like. Big mistake: never have a desk full of incomplete projects, it’ll put you right off and eventually you’ll do what I did – sweep them all into a box and say ‘sod it’ for 3 months.

I recently went away on holiday though, and actually got some painting done. I think the trick was I set myself a small and achievable goal: one squad of marines and a commander. I didn’t quite finish it but at least it moved on a bit.

I’ve recently picked up the commander again and nearly finished it today, so I’ll post pictures of that up soon (just need to finish the base and varnish him). Maybe I’ll work on the squad next too – if I can just have the dicipline to set asside a little time each week and try to finish a squad each month, I think that would be enough.

Feeling (a little bit) inspired again…

p.s. Is it just me is is White Dwarf sucking even more these days (if that is even possible)? It’s just gone so down-hill since they changed editors recently – not that it was that good before (I miss the good old days of Rouge Trader, then it was a kick ass magazine).

Haven’t got any pictures of the winners but I think they’ll be up on the GW site soon.

No competition entry would be complete without some free-hand, so I added some funky blue flames inside the bone-coloured arches. I also used some weathering powders from Forge World, although I discovered you can get pretty much the same effect by chopping up old pastels – of course you have to seal it later with varnish spray but it worked pretty well I thought – gave the feet a ‘covered in concrete dust’ look.

I used a faux marble technique on the base to make it stand out more and added some pipes and bits of random little detail…

With a bit of luck I stand a chance of getting in the top three – that’d make me happy. The competition was pretty good, one or two really nice pieces in there. I’ll post the result of the competition tomorrow.

I’ve been thinking about doing a Soul Drinkers army one day, maybe I’ll do a few more. Might put that project on a back-burner for now, I really need to paint something other than space marines for a change.

I’ve managed (with quite a bit of googling) to track down UK equivalents for most of the materials needed (except the large mixing bottles – let me know if you find any in the UK). I’ve updated the ‘raw materials‘ page with the shop websites.

Hopefully I’ll have more in a week or so. Stay tuned.

Slideshow here if you’d like to see more.

Stay tuned for more updates – hopefully I’ll have some painted models to show soon…

I decided I needed some lower-level standard characters in my army (not the point’s hungry special character ones), so I’m making a chaplain and a librarian by converting parts from bits of the chaplain model I cannibalised for the Petrok model I made many months ago (just the backpack and crosairus) and regular assault marine stuff. I’ve done some from-scratch sculpting too – mostly on the chaplains helmet. Had a bit of a struggle with this guy – I wanted more flowing ribbons trailing out behind him but the last lot I did ended up snapping off – I’ll probably have another go later. I also need to finish assembling them – I’ve got the librarian in bits because I’m thinking of adding a cape or something similar.

I also need to add some fabric to the librarian too I think and maybe more decoration too. I really like blood angles now that G.W. have made them more ‘showy’ – now there’s a lot more opportunity to do more freehand sculpting work and practice my sculpting skills.

I would have been doing lots of hobby-related goodness this week if it weren’t for a lovely little stomach bug I picked up which kept me in bed for most of it. Just started looking at my projects again. The Adeptus Custodes project isn’t really progressing as fast as I’d like but it’s coming on slowly. I’ve been working on a jet bike conversion as well as bits for a tactial custodian but I think I may have to remodel some of that because of ‘size creep’. I seem to be getting side tracked with my blood angels again, now that the new codex has come out and because I’ve been reading the soul drinkers omnibus, I’ve started modelling goblet-and-wing shoulder pads (might post up a pic or two later).

In other news, I’ve added a page on raw materials and where to get them, enjoy.