Even More Necron Warriors

In what feels like a record time for me these days, I’ve finished the five remaining Necron Warriors and hence completed the squad. Here’s the lot with the accompanying Scarab Swarms:

The painting went pretty much as with the last batch. The OSL ended up a bit different from the previous ones (again), but I think it’s the best one yet. This time I tried to be a bit more accurate, especially with the eyes, rather than flooding everything with the fluorescent paint. I think I’m slowly but surely getting a hang of how the paint behaves and when to thin it, when not to. I’m still not satisfied with the actual glow on the gun barrels. It’s patchy and rough, which I believe comes from thinning the fluo paint (too much). I might have to try using regular acrylics, as they’re more predictable and easier to glaze with.

While painting these models, I tried something new. Not with the actual painting but I tried out an app called Brushrage. It’s designed to keep track of your painting projects, where you’re going with each and how much time you’ve spent on them. It’s got a bunch of other functions as well, but they’re not currently of interest to me. Now, my reason for taking up the app wasn’t to clock how much time it takes me to finish a certain mini, but to see how much painting time I actually manage these days. Quite a bit, as it turns out. I painted on nine days out of the last ten, around 30mins to an hour per day. Hopefully I can keep this up at least semi-consistently! And of course it was nice to see how long it took me to paint the Warriors too. I hadn’t yet taken up the app when I started these guys, but clocked in just over seven hours on them. I’d estimate that ten hours should be enough for the whole project (after priming, at least), which means around two hours a model. Pretty much what I was expecting, and not bad at all!

I’ll be taking a small break from Necrons now, as I’ve painted all the models that I built back at the start of 2021. I’ll get on building the rest of the Indomitus force before too long, but again, as it’s winter I’m not sure if I’ll get to prime them for a few months.

Finally, as I said in my previous warrior post, now that the whole unit is finished I’m claiming a bingo square with it. “Paint a unit before using it on the battlefield” on this one.

Corvus Cabal Shadow Piercer

After finishing the last five Necrons, I still had a couple of free days before work started. I wanted to work on something that I could most likely get done quickly, and picked up the Shadow Piercer. She took me about a week longer to paint than I’d have hoped, but she’s finished now.

Painting the figure was pretty fun, and largely similar affair to the last two Cabal models. In some ways I still think that the first Cabalist I painted is still the best one, probably due to overall contrast, but I tried to push it here with the clothes and think that the result is pretty good. I’ve improved in painting skin, ironically by reducing contrast there! I even added some light blue to the eye lids and lower parts of the severed head, which I think was successful. Some pink tones could work well to make the (Cabalist’s) skin more interesting, but I have wanted to paint this warband mainly in cold tones. Who knows, maybe I’ll change my mind in the future and come back to experiment with these models…

Speaking of keeping the color palette in the blues and blacks, I made a little concession with the Blood for the Blood God. I pretty much had to add it to the trophy head and its sculpted blood drips. I debated on whether to add it to the sword as well, but it seemed appropriate in the end. The additional spot color also works to differentiate the Shadow Piercer as the leader of the Cabal.

In addition to the blood, the other new feature on this model compared to the two previous ones is her armor. This presented me with another dilemma – in the studio version gold is used to separate elements. I was very close to caving in and painting the armor trims and the beak gold, but I think I got just enough contrast in there to make the model not look boring.

For a minute I was worried that I wouldn’t be able to claim any bingo squares with this model. And then I realized that yes, this model too has been in my to-do pile, and even started for more than a year. That’s my hobby bingo card started for the year 2022!

More Necron Warriors

I had some time to paint during the holidays, and managed to finish five more Necrons. These guys narrowly missed the New Year’s Eve deadline to be counted for last year’s minis, but now they provided a great start for my hobby year 2022!

Not much to say about the painting that I haven’t said in the previous Necron posts. The painting felt quicker than with the last squad, which of course was welcome. When I compared these new ones to the previous squad, the paintjobs are pretty much indistinguishable from each other, apart from the OSL effects. On this new batch the light is brighter, less saturated. I think I had a better idea about what to do now than before, and went a little easier with adding red. I still have ways to go with OSL, but I think I’m going in the right direction.

Hopefully I’ll make short work of the remaining five warriors too, though I’m taking a quick(-ish) detour to work on something else before returning to the robot skellingtons.

Sadly no bingo square with this lot – yet. I’ll claim one when I finish the other half of the squad.

Wrapping Up 2021

That’s another year done and dusted. This one felt like it whizzed by very quickly, a lot happened but unfortunately not many minis got finished… Still, some progress was definitely made on the painting front: here’s my 2021 output.

• AR Standard Bearer
• AR Vox-caster
• SCE Prosecutors (3 models)
• Necron Warriors and Scarabs (13 models)
• Necron Plasmancer and more Scarabs (4 models)
• Space Wolf Grey Hunter
• Ghazghkull Thraka
• Makari

Seems like I was pretty firmly in the 40k side of the hobby… That’s 25 models for the year, and while that’s not a lot by most standards, I’m once again super happy with how they came out. Well, the Prosecutors are a bit “meh”, but they’re done! I painted my best model so far (Ghazghkull), started yet another collection and practiced new things like OSL and power weapons.

Looking back at the previous wrap-up post, it seems I achieved what I set out to do, that is finishing some Astra Rodentia and working on the Indomitus box. Of course, that was pretty much it. Whereas in 2020 I added something to pretty much all of my collections, now only my Orks, Stormcasts and space rats got new models, in addition to the new collection of Necrons.

This was also the year that I scored a bingo on the hobby bingo card! Kind of ironic as the model count was lower than ever, but I guess it shows that I focused a bit more. I’ll continue playing the hobby bingo with a fresh card in 2022 and trying my best to score another five across.

I’m not going to set any hobby resolutions for 2022, as I know myself and my painting speed. Not to mention minimattila’s around now (26^th mini of the year?), so trying to maintain any sort of painting discipline is pretty much off the table 😀 Right now I feel like I’d like to paint more greenskins and finally start that Black Templar collection. Going back to the Imperial Cult would be nice as well and maybe painting another Underworlds warband for a change… Oh my, there are still so many cool projects to choose from!

Well, better get on with it then! Have a great 2022, hobby- and otherwise, and a big thank you to everyone who takes a look at this blog every now and then!