what have I done since the last update?

As usual I am not too good at  th the blog, and for a little while I have not been doing much with the minis either. 

Stil, I have managed to do a little. And among the things I have done I have done most of the painting on my first unit for the Citie of Sigmar army. All that is left is a little cleanup, and then making the bases. I plan to make them like I have done with my Sylvaneth, but with a little less green drybrushing since they are not in a forrest. 

Also I just have a little detail work and basing to do to finish off my Great Unclean One. I need to paint the little nurglings though, but I am not sure I will use all of them on the Great Unclean One. I might use some of them for other projects.

COS #8

I have not been painting for a few weeks, but now I am back on it. Today I have started on the skin of my first unit of Longswords. When that is done what is left is just a few little details and brushup, and then I will do the bases.

I like how this unit is turning out, and looking forward to paint an entire army this way.

The Longswords are sort of an elite unit, and becaue of this all the soldiers in this unit have some blue on their feathers. The other units armed with regular swords, spears or halberds are regular troops and in these units only the officers have blue on their feathers an thet mean three in each unit.

Officers have gold on some of their armor plates, regular troops have silver, and this also goes for the Longswords who have silver except for the high officers.

I have also started to paint four of the knights in the knight-unit, and I will work on deciding the colors for the remaining knights. I am quite happy for how that unit is turning out as well, and look forward to deciding on the colors for the remaining kights.

The first battle mage is also gotten a long way in the paint process. He has some more details than the Longswords, so he is a little longer from being done, but I think the progress is good on him as well.

I have also started to paint up a Great Unclean One, and after putting on his base color last time I sat down and painted, today I drybrushed his skin and gave all the Nurglings a first coat with the same color as the drybrush. Then they will be drybrushed a little lighter. Their horns will have the same color as the horns on the Grea Unclean One, and I will also see if there are other colors I can use to link the Great Uncean One and the Nurglings to tie them closer together. 

I also started to paint the biggest wounds, and I will paint the edges of these wounds with a yellowish color to look like fat between the skin and muscle. And when that is done I will try and find a color to paint up the guts sticking out of his belly.

Cyclops Demolition Vehicle

This must be the smallest vehicle in the entire 40K universe. I knew it was small, as I know it can ride inside a Chimera. But that it was so small supprised me.

Here you have the entire thing laying in pieces in front of my Deathwatch Watch commander.

The set consist of a body and two side panels with tracks. 

Since this vehicle is so small, I plan to paint it up in a simple paintscheme. I usually have both dark green and black on the sides of my vehicles, but for this one I will go all black. Then the body will be Mechanicus Standard Grey as with all my vehicles.

If I have undrstood it correctly, the Cyclop is filled with explosives and then driven by remote control to the target where it explodes. This means that the Cycop will only last for one attack, so for this reson I have decided not to give it any identifying marks as I would like to give the impression that there are more than one in the army. I will dedicate one Chimera to be the Cyclop transport vehicle, and will probably modify it a little bit to make it stand out a bit from a troop transport. I might buy a second Cyclopfor the rmy in time. but frst I will prime and paint this one to the best of my abilities.

Painting faces and COS # 7

 We'll start with the Cities of Sigmar update...

Since the last update I have done some more painting and priming. All the built minis are now primed, including all the shields that will be glued on to the knights and men-at-arms later and the poles that are dug into the ground as barricades.
I have done some more painting on the general on foot, his standard bearer, the commander of the first Greatsword unit, my first wizard and three of the knights. I think I know how all their color schemes will be now.

I have also done a cool discovery with the Steam Tank, and this will affect my army and lead to some more converting. I have discoverd that the hole in the turret is wide enough for a Duardin Engineer (Cogsmith) to fit in the hole. I might have to add a plate in the turret as he probably is shorter than the original figure, but that should not be a problem as I have plenty of armorplates from my Imperial Guard vehicles. I had planned from the beginning to group the tanks together in threes, just like the artillery. They will probably be separate units, but I will paint and detail them so that they look like units of three anyway if I can find a way to add some unit colors. At least one of the three tanks will have a commander in the turret. I will see when I build the second tank how it looks with the turret closed, and if it looks good then two of the three tanks in the unit will have closed turrets. This will give me two tank commanders with the amount of steam tanks I have now, so I will have one human and one duardin commander. The remainder of the commanders will be used other places in the army.

And now for the face-paint...
Today I attended a class at the Warhammer store in Oslo to teach me to paint faces. I would have thought it was a class with 3 or 4 people attending, but it was only me.
I have painted lots of faces before, but they don't look like they have any character. That will change now hopefully. Mattias took the time to teach me how to paint with thin layers and watered down paints, and showed me how to do layering in a way that added shades and highlights in the right places. I hve seen it done in videos on Youtube before, but it was something else to try it with someone giving me good feedback and help while doing it.
Mattias also showed me a few other detailing tricks to use to add some character to the faces, and I look forward to trying different tricks on different faces.

I will try to use what I learned on the Cities of Sigmar army, but I think the army where it will really come to shine is the Imperial Guard and my Valpurgian 3rd, as they have several models without helmets so you see the entire head, while the Cities of Sigmar army mostly have faces only as they have helmets on. But I will try to apply what I have learned for all heads and faces going forward and I might even go back and redo some of the faces on minis I have completed earlier. I look forward to showing off painted miniatures in the future.

More progress - COS #6

I have done some more building and painting this weekend, but not  much as I had originally planned to do.

I have finished assembling the last unit of Bretonnian Men-at-arms (except for the shield arms that will be glued on after painting). And with that I have finished all the Bretonnian units. I still have a couple characters left though (the Green Knight and some ladies). 

I have also done some priming, so now I have lots of units to paint up. I have started on some figures to get an idea of how I want my color scheme to be, and have landed on most colors I think.
All pants will be Morghast Bone as I think I have mentioned before. Then the tunics and hats will be Caliban Green. I was considering making the hats another color but I think matching hat and tunics makes sense. 

After visiting Warhammer Oslo on Saturday to get my last mail order with more troops for the army I got a tip on how I could paint the feathers. They will be painted Celestra Gray first, and then Ulthuan Gray. Thet way they will get a slightly blue/grey color instead og being white, as I would not be happy with all white fethers. Then the officers will have the quite bright blue Caledor Sky on parts of their feathers to show rank. And the rule is the higher rank, the more blue it will be.

I have also decided atfer talking colors in store that the brigandines of the Bretonnian forces for the most part will be painted Khorne Red. There might be a few variations if it looks more like they are wearing other kinds of a garment though.

Three of the Knights have gotten their colors now. I have one red, one Caliban Green and one light purple. I will come back to the names of the colors of red (used contrast pints) and purple when I have chosen colors for more of the knights.  

With the archers there are some barricades made of stakes and chain that come in the boxes, and today I have figured out how to assemble them, so I made one base up, and for my next sitting (hopefully tomorrow afternoon) I will make the remaining seven. I will place some clusters of arrows ranomly on the bases, and also "pauldrons" of hot coal (to make flaming arrows) and some chopping blocks with axes on to look like they have been used to make the barricades. 

I have also made a little more progress on my first Steamtank.So now the back part is done, and I will start on the front next time I build on it.  

Another weekend is almost over - COS #5

As this weekend is comming to an end I think it is time for another Cities of Sigmar update.

This weekend I have managed to assemble two new units. The second (and last) unit of Bretonnian bowmen, and the first of two units of Bretonnian Men-at-arms. I hope to ssemble the second and last unit of Men-at-arms on Monday or Tuesday. 

I can not complete the Men-at-arms because if I glue the shield-arm to them, then it will be impossible to paint half the front of their body. So I will prime the shield separtely and glue it on when painted. 

small archer painting update COS #4b

 I just learned that was I thought was a protective leather coat probably isn't. It is actually something called a Brigandine ans this is many small metal plates studded together against a cloth to hold it together. This means if something is broken, one can change out just the damaged little plate instead of an entire chestplate. So it is much easier to repair and also much easier and cheaper to produce.

Also the Brigantine gives you a lot more mobility and flexes more than the full plated armor (chastplate). So it is much easier to wear that when you use your arms extensively like you would do as an archer.

And one more thing, being metal plates studded through fabric, it means you can have it in almost any color you would like, as you dye the cloth to the color you want just like regular clothing.

What does this mean? Well, it means I will not be painting this in leather, so I will see that I can come up with. Perhaps the archers will have the green tunics with a blue Brigantine outside? Or maybe I will use a variety of colors making the two units look different. I will start to think about it and see what I can come up with. I need to prime the models first before I can paint them anyway...