New Year, new models to paint...

We have entered into 2009, Happy new year everyone!

At the official Warhammer Forum I have taken a pledge for 2009 to paint more miniatures than I buy this year. Hopefully this will lead to more posts with pictures of game-ready miniatures, and less posts with the all too usual "nothing has happened since my last post"-content that I have become known for in 2008.
I know myself well enough to say that I will keep buying miniatures, so that means I will have to get better painting them up.
The status so far for 2009 is perhaps not the best, but it will soon get better. So far I have bought 11 minis (5 terminators, 5 fast attack marines, 1 drop pod), and painted 2 minis (both terminators). The 2 terminators will be followed by 9 more. 4 of them are in the making, the last 5 are still in their box. I have planned to make 1 full terminator unit (10 terminators), and then I have one terminator left that I haven't placed in a unit yet. I will probably end up with buying one more boxed set (5 terminators) and find 4 on ebay or through blister packs at Games Workshop (the last option is preferred). That will give me 2 units of 10 Terminators for my 1st Company.
The single terminator came with the "Space Marine release issue" of White Dwarf Magazine, along with a space ork (anyone want a free Space ork?).
Since I had fun assembling that, I started on a terminator from the boxed set that had been sitting on my shelf for a while. I had even more fun assembling that, so the rest of the boxed set was moved to my mobile workshop.

I'm also working on a Space marine Scout on bike. He is also almost finished.
I just have to decide what wash to use on some of the parts that are painted Bleached Bone.
I had an awakening when it came to using washes, so some of my finished minis will get a round with washes before I give them the final layer of protective coating.
When I was at my local GW store in Oslo, I had some of the finished Space Marines with me and they were very positive to the way they looked. Still they showed me how washes could make them even better, and I decided to give it a try. I feel that they look more battle hardened after the right ammount of washes has been applied, so I will work on improving that in the future.

The 4 masters of the chapter that I have been working on for so long (don't know why it has taken so long) are as good as finished (3 of them is ready for base work), and I am also nearly finished with the Chapter Master. He is really a Captain (I think) but with a gold helmet and a battle standard he looks a lot more like a Chapter master. I guess I will have to have a command squad along with the Chapter Master, and one of the members of that is my apothecary. It is a metal blister of Apothecary Corbulio, and I will try to add him into a command squad for the Chapter Master.