Black Templar Initiate

I’ve painted my first Primaris Marine! I built this model at the tail-end of 2020, and he finally has his Black Templar livery on.

I started the hobby back in the WH40k 3rd edition days, and like countless others, was awed by John Blanche’s Black Templar cover art. Even so, I didn’t paint my first marines as Templars, and up until now that has continued.

The inspiration and the actual color guides for this model came from Maxime Corbeil (who in turn was inspired by Blanche). I’ve admired his BT army ever since seeing it in a White Dwarf (2017 Tale of Four Warlords), and dreamed of having models like that in my own collection. The black armor and all the edge-highlighting intimidated me for the longest time, but after I decided to just get on with it, I actually found it pretty fun. Highlighting the black armor took around two hours all together. Funnily enough, somehow I spent around 4,5 hours on the rest of the model, and one more on the base…

But even if I clocked in quite a number of hours on this lowly troop model, at no point did it feel like taking very long. Well, other than painting the shoulder pads white. That took quite many layers… Other than those, everything else was rather quick(ish) and enjoyable to paint. In the future I’ll try to keep the pads separate and prime them white to speed up the process.

More than anything, this model was a test piece. While I’m extremely happy with how it came out, I do see plenty of room for improvement. Mainly the (spot)highlight placement. I’ll have to study mr. Corbeil’s work a bit more before the next Templar. There will also be a more obvious change with the future models: I’ll follow Maxime’s guide for the bases as well, to get that classic orange-y dirt look (and hopefully a tad faster basing). This model was always going to join my Imperial Cult collection, and hence got the marble base.

I use this model to claim another square in the hobby bingo: paint a model in a color scheme you don’t normally use. Now, as I said, I haven’t previously painted any Black Templars, but even if the scheme was “black”, I would be OK. Ghaz was black, sure, but one model doesn’t yet mean “normally”.

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!

Makari

It has been a while! After Ghazghkull I had an urge to build something (more on that soon, I hope), but it also made me want to paint all kinds of models. Painting time being at a premium these days, I decided to work on something small so that I’d have a chance to finish before the holidays. It started to look like this would be a close one, but I got Makari finished!

I think I started working on him around a month ago, but only got to work on him during some weekends. Still, I’ve put at least five hours of work on him, which is probably more than a model of this size should take. I enjoyed every bit of the occasional hobby getaway, however, and am very happy with the end result!

As with Ghazghkull, I followed the studio scheme pretty closely, just replacing red with orange. The one notable omission are the white dags on the banner flaps. I left them out partly as it cut down the painting time (though not by much, I reckon), but mostly because I don’t like them that much. For pretty much the same reason I changed the yellow glyph a bit: I didn’t like the tiny black-and-white dags, so I used a “bad” glyph transfer instead. The rest of the glyphs are also transfers; I thought about freehanding them, but transfers were the faster option.

Makari with my old metal grot. The proportions of these guys have changed!

I used quite a bit of glazing on the model, much like with Ghaz. The big horns are based with silver and colored with Nazdreg Yellow and Guilliman Flesh. The white skull is glazed with Basilicanum Grey and the bone with Snakebite Leather. I even used some OOP Bloodletter for Makari’s nose!

I’m using Makari to claim a cheeky square on the bingo card: paint a unit with unique markings to be your general’s retinue. I suspect this isn’t quite what the original intention of the square was, but I’m saying it counts! I tried to mirror some of the color scheme elements on Ghaz to Makari, such as the orange to black gradient, orange teef and white skull, yellowish bone and the use of blue as a very tiny accent color. Of course, much of it is down to following the studio schemes, but when the end result works, it works! Honestly, painting Ghazghkull and Makari has been a superb exercise both for learning painting techniques and color composition.

I think this was good practice for the eventual Zarbag’s Gitz (or Rippa’s Snarlfangs), but as much as I’d like to start painting them they’re yet unprimed and I don’t know if I’ll be able to spray them before spring. Of course, it’s not like I’m running out of things to paint! I think I’ve got a couple dozen models in various stages of completion, so with the hobby time I manage these days, I’m probably set for next year as well 😀

Ghazghkull Thraka

WAAAAGH! I’ve finished my Ghazghkull, appropriately for Orktober! If I’m only going to finish one model this month, I can think of no better one than him. I got the model as a birthday present from my wife and started working on him in June. So yeah, it took quite a while to finish (to be fair, there were a couple of other models in between, as well as some other distractions:)), but I couldn’t be much happier with the finished model! I think it might be my best work yet!

There were quite a lot of firsts and otherwise experimenting with this model. The biggest one was the black armor with multiple edge highlights, but using glazes to alter colors for fades and weathering were pretty new to me, as were the subtle OSL effects. Not to mention that this was the first model to be completed after the birth of my son!

For the color scheme I tried to replicate the studio scheme. As Ghazghkull is a legendary Goff character I wanted him to keep the black armor, but I also wanted him to tie in with my “orange orks”. That’s why I replaced the red accent color for orange on my model. I also used the same recipes that I’d used on the boyz for the skin, cloth, leather, and of course the wasteland base.

For the black armor and the metal bits I followed the recipes from “Painting Ghazghkull” article found in White Dwarf #453. That involved some paint mixing (purple-ish highlights for the armor and a brownish basecoat for metals), which was interesting and not all that scary in the end. Just for the convenience though, I’ll probably be using paints straight from the bottle for my future black armor highlighting needs. But yeah, I’m loving the final result! While painting, I thought that the highlights on black looked a bit too much like TRON, but when the model’s all together the armor looks black as it should. The highlights are a bit too chunky in places, but I’ll improve my highlighting game with future models!

The orange presented me with a peculiar challenge that I hadn’t really noticed before: orange is a color that doesn’t have a lot of tonal range. There is no dark orange like there is dark red, for example. Dark orange is brown! In the ‘Eavy Metal version the power klaw (and the glyphs) are dark red, but I didn’t want mine to be brown. I had to leave these bits more vibrant so that they would read as orange, so in that way the studio model is stronger compositionally, but I did try to punch the highlights on the iron gob so that they would draw the eye towards the face.

Weathering was done by glazing various brown tones on the crevasses and the lower parts of the armor plates. Scratches were painted pretty much only on the freehand patterns, otherwise I ended up relying on the modelled damage. I considered doing some sponge weathering as well, but in the end I left it out. Mostly because I thought the model looked great already but I was also feeling a bit of painting fatigue.

A lone Space Wolf about to be pooped on.

There are still quite a number of things that I could improve or add to the model, but I’m calling it done. Seriously, I think the more time I spend painting a model, the more I notice places where I could do better if I spent the time! My original goal was to give this centerpiece model the paintjob it deserves, but it’s not a competition piece so I’m not sweating over every tiny detail. I’m super happy with how it came out and proud to have painted such a big, initially very intimidating model! Next up, something much smaller!

Last but not least, I’m one square closer to scoring that elusive bingo. Ghazghkull qualifies as a monster, which means that I only have to build a piece of scenery before the end of the year! I’ve been thinking about going into build mode for a bit now that I’ve finished a major painting project, so maybe I’ll have a simple piece of scenery in my hands before too long!

Corvus Cabal Shrike Talon

My Cabal is getting reinforced with another model, as I’ve finished one of the coolest models of 2019! Here’s the Shrike Talon.

As with the Cabalist, I pretty much followed the ‘Eavy Metal color scheme with this model. One of the challenges with the scheme and with this model in particular is the separation of different black elements. Following the painting guide in the assembly instructions booklet (and looking at the studio models), I highlighted the feathers with blue and the hood with brown tones. I’m not sure if the colors still read as blacks, but I’m happy either way! I guess the biggest difference to the studio scheme is that I left out the painted, diamond-shape eyes from the hood. I get why they’re there in the original – to draw attention to the head, but I never liked them that much aesthetically.

I feel some parts of this model were painted a bit sloppily. As I mentioned in the last posts, I haven’t gotten quite as much painting done as I would’ve wanted lately. I noticed that this translated into less accurate painting. After a day or two I seemed to get back to the swing of things though, and the paint started to go where I wanted it to. Last week I made a conscious effort to get back to painting, and decided that I would at least put paint on my brush (if not the model) every day. Every time I did, I ended up painting for at least an hour! Let’s see how long I can keep this up…

Oh yeah, a small PSA: I’ve treated myself to some new electronics which might affect the photos on this here blog. I got a new Pixel 4a phone with that fancy camera software, which hopefully should lead to WIP shots that have much better color accuracy than before. And from the Black Friday sales I bought a new monitor to replace my previous, 10-year-old one. The important bit is that this new one has an IPS panel which is much better with colors than the TN panel in the old monitor. So, chances are that from now on the photos will be a bit less saturated, as I probably over-saturated everything a bit with the old monitor. Shouldn’t be a dramatic change, but just a heads-up if anyone notices it.

Corvus Cabalist

This weekend I took a slight detour from finishing the bikers I showed in the last post, to build and paint a single small model. Here’s my first Warcry model: a Corvus Cabalist.

So on Friday I was browsing the local (/national) wargaming forum’s trading area, and spotted someone selling quite a lot of unopened kits for half price in my city. Apparently he had excitedly bought a bit too much and was selling off things he didn’t see painting in the near future. Probably a wiser man than many of us 😀 Even so, I got in touch with him and a couple of hours later a brand new Corvus Cabal box changed hands. And a few other kits as well, but more on those later..

Having bought new models and the weekend ahead of me, I had the perfect opportunity to finish a hobby bingo square that has so far eluded me: finish a model in 48 hours of acquiring it. Now, this shouldn’t be too hard, as surely we’re all eager to get those new models finished as soon as possible! But for one reason or another, they often go to the cupboard of unfinished models to wait for their turn, and might stay there for quite a while. Now, truth be told, I’ve mainly wanted the Cabal box to own the Shrike Talon and maybe some cool conversion bits, I’m not really interested in playing Warcry. I reckoned that painting one of the standard Cabalists would be good practice for the Talon and should be quick enough to paint even at my slow pace.

I built and based the model on Friday evening. I did a minor conversion too, as I’m not super fond of the kama style weapons they have. I shortened the handle a bit and used the kama’s blade to give the model a knife with a hawksbill style blade, which I like quite a bit more than the original. On Saturday I primed her zenithally using rattle cans, which went a lot smoother than with the Poxwalkers. In addition to that, I washed the model with Nuln Oil and drybrushed it with White Scar, which gave me a really nicely defined and shaded starting point. I also used some Contrast and Base paints to lay initial basecoats on the model. I decided to go with the studio scheme for these, partly because I didn’t have much time to mull it over, partly because the studio scheme fits the Cabal really well. I did leave the bloody throats out, as I think they’re a bit silly..

On Sunday I painted the rest of the model and got it finished with a good hour left before the deadline! I know I could’ve just left her in the “battle ready”, basecoated stage, give her a simple base and call it done, but as I had plenty of time, I wanted to do it properly, and actually practice for the Shrike Talon. So I ended up covering pretty much all of the basecoats by layering and highlighting. It was a very enjoyable process though, so I don’t mind. I used a similar palette as for Mollog, and again finished all colors with highlights of Pallid Wychflesh. I’m particularly happy with the beak (on the mask), I think I got the transitions down pretty well. I also like her eye, which at first at first I was going to leave black, but while I “was in the area” with my paintbrush, I thought I’d paint just a small dot of white in the corner to give an impression of a pupil. Worked well!

White there are a couple of things that could be improved and I’ll probably change with the next Cabalist, I’m very happy with the model and feel that I can more or less paint the Shrike Talon and any other Cabalists with the same techniques and paints. So yeah, one more square down, which takes me quite close to getting my first completed row. Unfortunately, I won’t be making a 2’x2′ table in the foreseeable future, due to limited storage space and no real use either.. So it’s back to working on the bikes and the “vehicle” square!

From the Archives: Ork Dreadnought

So this is a bit of a special one: the last model that I got before dropping the hobby in my teens. And it was a Christmas present too, so it always bothered me a bit that I didn’t finish it. But here it is, in its finished glory, an Ork Dreadnought (yes, from time before Deff Dreads)!

The Dread was completed a year ago for Azazel’s mechanically themed November challenge. It was basically a full build too, as I had hardly started working on it all those years ago. The first thing to do was to make a base as the box didn’t come with one. As you might be able to tell, I used cork and tied to replicate the old Space Marine Dreadnought base design. I did add a couple of details like the tank trap bit and the Ork helmet to add some flair of my own.

After the base was done it was on to the Dreadnought itself. I could instantly remember why I didn’t finish this model: this is a metal model and basically none of the parts fit each other without a lot of filing. I think I spent 2-3 days just fitting and pinning the model together. While I was at it, I magnetized the big shoota so that I could swap it for a rokkit launcha in the future. The burna is glued on as usual due to it’s more difficult position.

Then I had to decide on a paint scheme. I kind of wanted an orange scheme, but painting the whole thing orange would’ve been too much, and I couldn’t come up with anything else that I would’ve been happy with. In the end I decided to try and replicate the box art scheme, which is a kind of first since my teens, and I’m happy that I did since the scheme is awesome, and was very fun to paint! There is absolutely no “standard” edge highlighting on this model, all the edges are defined by sponging or drybrushing. Freehanding the skull design on the front was a great exercise, and I found a pretty good way of painting dark (coated?) metal that’s common in real world guns.

So yeah, this project was a fun one! I think the design of this Dreadnought has held up really well, maybe I’ll get some plastic Killa Kans to accompany it. Some day..