Progress and future plans

I managed to get a good finish on sunday, and finished the fur on 9 hounds, bringing the total up to 10. When all 10 hounds are done, I will start on the last 10.
I also took a look at the hound painted when the light was a little too low, and found I missed a few spots, so I fixed that. Tonight I hope to paint the hide on the hounds, and then I will have to fix some spots on the one that was used as a test scheme as well.
The test actually looked quite good, and I am looking forward to seeing vast numbers of Chaos Warriors with those kind of capes. If I hadn't coated my old warriors, I would have gone back and redone their capes to the new scheme.

When the hounds are done I will start on my warriors. From the new rules it seems good to have larger units. I had originally thought each unit to consist of 12 warriors, but I might re-think and go for 24 instead. But I don't have to decide before I start on the next batch of 12 warriors, and knowing me that might take a while.

I have also started to think about building some scenery to use with the miniatures.
I have assembled my Temple of Skulls (really not much to assemble as most of it comes in one big piece) and I think it is so big it will need a layer of black basecoat. Then I will see how it is best to proceed with the painting, but I'm guessing a combination of techniques. Also I think some work with flock or sand might be needed.

When the new Warhammer Rulebook was released the GW store in Oslo had a very cool tower with a building on top of it, and in the rulebook there is a picture of a tower with a ship on top.
This combined with the book I'm reading (Nation by Terry Pratchett) made me want to scratch build my own scenery. The idea with a boat being somewhere it's not expected to got to me, and I would love to build a house or fortress and put a boat on top of it. Then for fluff I can say it belongs to a Bretonnian sea captain. After all, I think I will paint my Bretonnian army eventually. I relly like some of the miniatures, and I have enough sets on the shelves to make a small army.
But knowing how fast I am, it will probably be a long time yet...

Progress...

I got to a slow start on the hounds, but I'm finally on my way.

The plan was to have 20 hounds done by the end of the weekend, but I will have to expand that timeframe a little. I've been spending the day at my In-law's cabin together with that side of the familly and my two dogs. Still, I managed to paint the fur on three dogs, and I also managed to paint the skin on one of them.

I could have done the skin on all three, but I figured it would be a good idea to see how the color scheme looks before I go into mass production. So far it looks good, but the light is a little low so I will wait for the regular daylight tomorrow before I decide.

Last saturday saw the release of 8th edition of the regular Warhammer rules. One of the events in the Games Workshop store in Oslo was to guess how many metal pieces they had stuffed in to a large plastic jar. I came closest with my guess of 298 (the correct answer was 315) and my price was that I won the enitre thing. 5,4 kilos of bitbox fun! Looking for something special, let me know and I will see if I can help.

I have looked through it and found that it was some LOTR minis that I will try to pass on to others (except perhaps for some figures from the movie that I can paint up for fun), also a lot of Warhammer stuff, and some 40K stuff (an Imperial tank driver and two Cadian snipers to mention some of the stuff I will use).

I will look through all the Warhammer stuff and try to sell off some of the things I know I will never use, like a lot of elves, lizardmen, etc.

But There was some really cool stuff there as well, some Bretonnian minis that I will use for my Bret army whenever that will be painted up, some nice chaos stuff for that army, and some Dwarf pieces.

Among these pieces were a cannon (just the barrel sadly) that turned out to be a Dwarf Flame Cannon. I also got the crew, except the Dwarf with the flag. I will try to use this for something experimental built by a semi-crazy Egineer (the dwarfs seem to have plenty of those).

yet another update

There has been some changes in the progress plans...
Last friday my house got hit by Hurricane Amanda...
Relax, it's not that kind of a hurricane, so there is no need to send relieve packages of any kind. Me and my wife just got a second dog.
From before we have Nemi, the very prototype of a kind dog. She's a 6 years old German Shepherd, very easy going and very relaxed. My workspace is in the basement, and on hot summer days she likes to be there with me since it's one of the colder places in the house.
Last friday (1 week ago today, where does the time go...) Amanda hit the house. She was 8 weeks old (9 now) and has a lot of energy like little puppies do. It's 100% action for some time, then comes a time with sleep and relaxation before it's 100% action again.

Because Amanda came to our house I have to work from the livingroom for a little while, sort of like I did with my mobile workstation before I got my workspace done.
This reduces the number of minis I can work with at the same time, so what is on the worktable is left there for a little while. I will get some time to sit there when I start my holliday in little over a week. Until then I work from my recliner chair, packing away my stuff every night.
I use newspaper to paint on, so I decided to paint things that didn't need to lay long to dry and risk being stuck to the paper (it always looks ugly when the paper is removed).
20 Chaos Warhounds seemed like a good start, they are now assembled and ready to be painted. The idea is to paint them in the same colours as the capes of the warriors. Not suggesting anything ofcourse, purely a coincidence... (yeah right...)
The hounds will be fielded in 4 units of 5 or 2 units of 10, depending on rules and tactics.
Beastial Brown skin, Graveyard Earth fur, and Bleached Bone horns are the main plan for the colour scheme.
The old chaos warriors have Scorched Brown capes, but I have found that it might look better with capes painted a little lighter brown, especially for those units that will have other armour than the regular black old warriors.

A month is over...

June has it's final day today. Tomorrow it will be July 1st, and I still have the same miniatures on my table as I had in the beginning of this month.
Granted, something has happened with several of them, so it is not a complete stand-still.

My Imperial Guard veterans are being detailed at the moment, adding backpacks, helmets, grenades, daggers and other equipment that fit in.
Some troops will get a lot, others barely anything at all. It is all depending on how much availabe space there are on them. I hope to have most of this work done by the end of this weekend.

The Scout Sentinel is washed and ready to be pinned and glued on to its base. It actually turned out quite nice, and I look forward to assembing more of these Sentinel models in the future.
The base is primed in earth colour, and will receive some flock and other details before it is ready to receive the miniature.

The Space Marines on the table are all in a different state of ready, but all of them are now painted with their base colour of Ultramarine Blue. Some have also gotten their boots painted Necron Abyss.
For the Assault marines I have gotten all 5 on their bases, and started to paint their arms as well as their jump packs.

The Sisters Repentia are getting close to complete, I just have some challenges with the one sculpt that I have to try and resolve. Apart from that there are just minor details missing before they can go to basing.

The Ogres are also just minor details and a god wash away from going in to basing.

And so it is June...

Summer is slowly getting to my part of the world, and with that comes more spare time. The band I play in has taken summer holliday allready, and in a few weeks the School Band I'm conducting will have a summer holliday until mid-August. This means more afternoons to spend at home, and when I get to be more home I might also get more time painting. 

This weekend I managed to get two painting sessions in to my schedule. I have a Venerable Chaplain Dreadnought that has been laying in pieces on my worktable for too long. The first session this weekend gave this a good facelift, and after a few more sessions it will be ready for assembly. I chose to go for the regular blue body instead of the black armour the chaplains usually are seen with. I am not sure if this will be the rule for my regular chaplains, but I felt it was a nice touch for the dreadnought. After all, dreads are very old and vise warriors, so by giving it a blue body I signal that it is a warrior first and foremost. I also managed to do a lot of the painting on my first assault marine with jump-pack. I believe he will be ready for final assembly after the next session. This is a marine with both legs planted firmly on the ground. I am still working to find good ideas to pose the other four that hardly touch the ground at all unless I make them look very wobbly (and I don't intend to do that). 

My Imperial Guard veterans are only missing the wash and extra detailing, except for one dude that will need to get his face re-painted after I accidentaly gave him a big stripe of black with a runaway brush. 

I really like the way these veterans have turned out, and I am quite sure Forgeworld will see another order for veterans (the batch I didn't get this time) in the future. 

 The Scout sentinel got the final touches this weekend too, but I see I need to go over some details on the lascannon as the black brush ran away again... 

 My Sisters Repentia are also almost ready. There are some minor details to paint, and I need to decide what is what on the one mini that looks to be badly sculpted. I don't think the Sisters will see much action, as I don't intend at this moment to buy a full battleforce. Still they will look nice in the glass cabinet of my workspace, and I might find a way to incorporate them in some Apocalypse or Imperial units in the future.

Status update May 25th

As usual things are taking way too long...
But here is an update on what is going on.

The Space Marines have got their new insignia, and some of the 1st Company are on their way into the glass cabinet in the near future. Just need to check them a final time for details. The insignia for my Marines are a black # on white background. For the troops of the 1st Company the background and company colors are separated with a thin black line. The remaining companies will not have this line.
The Marines are now called The Gatekeepers, and their home planets are located in the Cygnus Arm and can be seen as a smal cluster of bright stars just North of the Eye of Terror.
I will use som time working on their fluff, to get it to be as good as I want it Hopefully it will be almost as detailed as the Imperial Guard fluff I have written for my IG army.

For the Imperial Guard, I noticed that I had not finished painting some of the details on the Scout Sentinel, and I will do this as soon as I have the time.

The Veteran Squad is just missing the fine details and the wash. I am quite happy with the way they turned out. I will add some grenades and extra ammunition and things like that before I put them on the base-work box.

The Ratling snipers are also underway when it comes to painting. Skin color is applied, and more will follow shortly. They have proven to be a little hard to paint, as they are both smal and detailed and that is not the best combination for me. But still I am sure they will turn out very nice in the end, as they are great miniatures.

I bought some Elf heads (wood elf gladeguard?) with free hanging hair, and hopefully these heads will make for nice female Imperial Guard heads with just small modifications.

I also got hold of a few Sisters of Battle miniatures, and they are a nice change to paint. I have not decided if they will be part of a small Sisters fighting force, or if they just will be minis that sticks out a little in the glass cabinet where my 40 K minis (Marines and Guards) will be standing between games.

The plan for the future is to paint the minis on my table at the moment, so that I can get room to do the base work on these and some previously painted miniatures.

Then when these minis are done (some Imperial Guard models, many Space Marines, and a few Sissters of Battle) I will make one Fantasy and one 40.000 unit at the same time until I have solid armeies to field in tournaments.
The plan is to make a unit of Chaos Warriors as the next new set for Fantasy, and some Kommisars for my Imperial Guard army.

Sentinel is done! (almost)

I finished building the Scout Sentinel today, all that is missing now is some paint on the engine and the drivers cage, and the usual round of washes. Plan to do this tomorrow, or perhaps later tonight.

This was the old sentinel model, and that is partly why I chose to make it a scout sentinel. The model is a combination of plastic and metal, and I am not too fond of that.

As i understand the new sentinels are all plastic, and also seem to have more equipment to add and choose from. I plan to add some to the army at a later point, but for now my main goal is to build and paint what is in the shelves and there is a lot to choose from.

The veteran squad lead by Sergeant Bastion is comming along nicely. I had a little challenge painting the resin black, as the paint wouldn't stick right, but I got there eventually.

I find this a little strange, as the grey went on without any problems at all yesterday.

What is missing on the elites now is to do the leather, the skin, and the metal parts of weapons and insignia. The sniper's cape needs to be painted on the outside, and some of the models needs to have head or arms attached to their bodies.