*Cough*

Big ol gap in posting...Ive since changed jobs and consequently now do more traveling.  Been doing a bunch of freelance work in my extra spare time, so been ultra busy.  I have managed to jam in an hour here and there to paint, so I figured Id line up everything I have finished (except a couple bases) and post an obligatory group shot!

Hobby Drought

Been taking care of little things around the house lately...just haven't done much in the way of hobbying.  Most of the stuff I am planning to work on is very 'unglamorous' and not so exciting.  Heres an example.  I painted a large squad of bikes for my Black Dragons army...then I made slight adjustments and turned them in to Black Consuls...well, poor guys.  I bought a bunch of Ravenwing bike bits...front plates, wing poles, and gear packs.

Well, heres some progress on those.  I cut the old plates off...carefully removed the painted bolters and separately painted the Ravenwing plates before attaching the guns.

Here are the bikes BEFORE:

I'm not 'Dreading' this one...

Thats the last of the terrible, terrible dreadnought puns I swear.  So this is one of my leftover dreadnoughts from a Black Reach set that I decided to add some of my newly aquired Dark Angels icon to.  (poor sentence structure)  I filed off the original sarcophagus and added the DA lid.  Filed down the stormbolter and added a flamer.  Sprinkled some icons...and its getting ready for the painting stage!  I've always loved dreadnoughts...it will probably suck, but I think it would look really cool next to the Deathwing dreadnought I finished last week!

Hobby Progress

Had a bunch of free time during the holiday weekend...so got a bunch of stuff done hobby-wise!  Got a bunch of DA & RW icons in a bitz order, so I was looking forward to putting them to use. 

Chopped the fronts off of a bunch of my old bikers...they were already pretty much painted black and finished for my Black Consuls, so it wont be terrible to convert them to Ravenwing!  As an added bonus, I found an old Land speeder I painted in highschool in 96...under a foam insert in an old gun case I used to keep my marines in.  I had to take a pic, because I was actually a really nice job!  I think for the longest time I got worse as a painter before I got better  :)

Felt sad to strip the paint

Ezekiel Completed

Finally wrapped him up last night.  What a pain to clip the slotta-base tab and drill out the bottom with a pin vise!  Can't wait to field this guy.  It was a strange existential thing to finally paint a model that I have held on to unpainted since the 90s (haha...insert some sort of 'virginity' joke HERE), but I think he'll look pretty badass on the table so I'm excited.

Filled with "Dread"

Took a bit of a break from finishing Ezekiel this weekend to start/finish up a Deathwing Venerable Dreadnought!  I was so happy with how it turned out until I went and sprayed the matte varnish yesterday without thinking about the 90% humidity outside.  So disappointed!  The sealer went on cloudy white...all over the place.  Ugh.  I was able to save most of is my washing with nuln oil and armor was...but you can tell most of the rivets and metal parts have lost their detail and look a bit unfinished.  Don't get me wrong, it still looks pretty great from the tabletop...i like it, its just a serious bummer that its a step backwards from where I finished it.  Maybe someday I'll go back and touch it up again, but for now I'm content to leave it be!

Mind Worm

Heres a bit more Ezekiel progress.  Shaded the green in the shoulder pads, put some script on purity seals, almost finished up gems on the sword, more work on banner pole (after the picture I added a cluster of purity seals to cover the finecast gap near the bottom), got the base almost finished, picture is not great, but got a lot done on the face as well...lots of just little things left to pull it all together.

Ezekiel Progress

Not sure if this miniature has enough 'glitz' to draw any attention as far as the painting competition goes...but making a lot of progress anyway.  Worked on the robes and power armor for a few hours last night and they're starting to look pretty clean & crisp.  Theres a bit of modeling work that I need to do on the banner...the finecast mold was pretty terrible and it has several cavities where the paper-thin areas tore out.  If its not salvageable I will ditch it.

Painting Contest

As a little bit of fun and motivation I decided to pledge painting Ezekiel, Grand Master of Librarians for a Painting Contest in The Warmaster's forums.  I've had Ezekiel for about 20 years now unpainted and in just a box of old minis.  I bought him when I was probably 13 or 14 because I thought he looked awesome and I didnt really have a concept of space marine "chapters."  Since I played Ultramarines, (you can see that at some point I scraped off the DA symbol from his book) hes stood in for Tigerius on many occasions but now since I'm all-in on Dark Angels, the figure gets the treatment he deserves!  

No illusions of grandeur, but I want to do a really nice job on it...while I'd love to give him some major weathering and battle-damage I just dont think hed fit in to the rest of the army, so I'm planning to make it nice a clean from the start.  I'm converting the banner pole from the Terminator Librarian to give Ezekiel the drama he deserves! HERE is the link to my contest post if you're interested in following!

Note the scraped off book front :(

Just after blocking in some basecoats.

Tactical Marines - More Work

Last week had a nice afternoon of painting and enjoying a couple local brews!  I think next time I need to pay more attention to HOW I'm putting the new tactical squads together...a couple bolter arms went in weird.  Oh well, my primer got all speckled and fuzzy on all the boltguns so it was a slight letdown anyway.  The marines themselves are shaping up pretty good!

Turrets Syndrome

Not the most exciting of posts, sure...I'll buy that.  Progress is progress so I figured I'd post it up here.  Its a couple nearly finished turrets for two Razorback vehicles I'm finally getting around to painting.  I didn't go through the work of magnetizing the weapons or anything.  It usually seems to work fine to model the things with the more expensive weapons and the opponent is less likely to to have any issues if you're 'downgrading.'  ex: "These lascannons are actually just Heavy Bolters for this game"... as opposed to "These HBs are really LCs"  Well, thats my justification for being lazy anyway! haha

++ Squad Complete ++

Epistolary Librarius Sodiel "The Enlightened Seer" leads Brother-Dekel's Deathwing Terminator Squad in to battle amongst the forests of the latest Death World to reportedly hide Fallen space marines.

Still planning on picking up a Deathwing Knights box to make my own sergeants and get a TH/SS marine here and there.  I also need to get some more bases from Secret Weapon Miniatures to totally finish it off.  I used a tablet to take this pic...its ok, but theres like 2 lights blasting down on the minis so its a bit too blown out for my tastes...still pretty cool to get progress done.

More Terminator painting

Getting closer to finishing off this group of Deathwing.  Its going a bit slower now that Im working on 3 of them at the same time.  The eye lenses and chest symbols are the only parts that are completely finished.  Otherwise these are just after the point of inking and cleanup.  Up next is lots of highlight buildup and edging.  I think Im going to pickup a box of Deathwing knights to use for the Sgt. torsos.  I don't really like the one from Dark Vengeance, so I've re-purposed the arms to change up a bit of their poses.  (the one on the right is the assault cannon guy with the Sgt arm)

Hobby Update

Been doing some gluing lately!  Made a bit more progress on my Deathwing squad, but wanted to bust out the tools a bit and do some building.  Did some binge-watching of Dexter with my wife and organized my marine bits.  One container is for the newer marine kits and another has some older (2008 and before) kits in it.  Theres probably 30-40 full marines in this newer container....organized by weapon type, shoulderpad, legs, heads etc

Using the GW Dark Angels shoulderpads I put together a new tactical squad using all unique parts!  (gun carrying arms might be the same though)  Each one has a different head, chest plate, legs, and backpack.  I think its going to make painting the squad less tedious for sure.  I've since Army Painter'd the squad "Angels Green" and separately finished their bolters.  Oh, and I love Loctite Ultragel.

Finished over weekend

Took a bit of a painting break over the holiday weekend but heres the finished Deathwing - Chainfist wielder.  I need to get the factory rolling again to crank out this squad!

"Warp" speed ahead.

Get it?  Cuz hes a psyker...and he harnesses the power of the warp...?  Its #FTPF (Free terrible pun friday)  Well, tomorrow the 7th ed book comes out...I've seen leaked pics that Dark Angel Librarians no longer have access to Divination power, but I still think it will be fun to sling around dice with the new (old) psychic phase.

Anyway, heres my first Librarian.  (I touched up 2 tiny things after I took the pictures, but its pretty close to done at this point)

B- Epistolary Librarius  “Sodiel”   (125)

                Power Field Generator, Force Weapon, Terminator Armor & Storm Bolter

Each Librarian will be attached to his own Deathwing squad...In Sodiel's case, he will be accompanying  Brother-Dekel and his men in to battle.

Last night progress

Looking at about 75% done on the second Deathwing Terminator!  Still a bit of bone color clean-up here & there, but next step with be high-lighting all over the place.  I've got a 1500pt list I'm working on to serve as a painting 'check-list' or to-do sheet...This is the group I am currently working on:

D- Deathwing Terminator Squad “Brother-Dekel”   (245)

• 5 Deathwing - 1 Assault Cannon, 1 Thunderhammer & Storm shield

Do you EVEN chainfist Bro?

Some Deathwing progress!

Had to take a few days off from the painting desk.  I have a horrible setup right now...its just a tv tray in the living room and it makes my back sore as hell if I don't take breaks.  Anyway, I tackled the first Terminator over the last couple nights and really like how its turned out.  I want to give a shoutout to Vallejo Model Color 124 - Iraqi Sand.  It worked so well with the Skeleton Bone Army Painter spray.  

As a little homage, I'm painting all the feathers similar to like they did on the 90s Deathwing models.  The 3-band feather is very iconic to me.  I might swap the color positions for each squad.

Starting Deathwing

First time painting these guys...I actually cant remember the last time I was so excited to paint a squad of marines!  I've always loved Terminators...from the first time playing on the kitchen floor with my friends, Ive always had to have Tactical Dreadnought Armor everywhere.  (Of course it didnt hurt that back then it was a 3+ ...on 2d6!....strength modifiers lowered it etc, but it was awesome).
I've always loved how the Deathwing looked, but early on I saw white dwarf 98 and Ultramarines became the coolest thing ever to me!

So there was no way I could stray from the codex and paint my 1st company white.  Well, now that Im a 40K hipster and can't bring myself to play UM anymore (haha...I liked them before they were cool ;) and believe it or not, they didnt used to be the gw marine posterboys...Crimson Fists and Blood Angels were both the first chapters I remember on the rulebook covers) of course now I get to paint the cool bone-white Terminators.
Wow, that was a long-winded way of saying, heres the first WIP shot.  (I realized I forgot to drill one of the storm bolter barrels...whoops, Ill fix that)

#TBT

I think I have a power armor addiction.

My armor is contempt. My shield is disgust. My sword is hatred. In the emperor's name, let none survive.

 On a side note, I'm getting super pumped for 7th ed.  I started playing back in 2e as a 12-13yo so the psychic phase is actually pretty nostalgic to me.  In fact they seem to be moving the game to be a bit more like it was then.  Everything was unbound then.  lol I had a squad of terribly converted Ogryns in my Ultramarine army that was mostly Terminators and Assault marines.  Genestealer cultists were awesome and I have great memories of my friends Genestealer Magus and Patriarch being so fun to play against.