Struggling with the grey knight

I've been struggling a bit with this guy and been working mad hours, but I'd like some opinion on this I think. For some reason the photos all look awful, I'm sure it doesn't look that bad in real life! :(

Anyway, very very much WIP but do you think this is gonna end up working or is the pallet too blue? That's my main worry it's a lot of work and at this point it just looks like rubbish to me, but maybe I've been starring at it too long! :p

Would love some opinions!

New Dark Angels Vehicles

Just a quick note on the new Dark Angels vehicles.

The aircraft I think is lovely, nice one, wish I could have one in my army.

The Land speeder.. oh dear. It's like GW don't know anything about aircraft aspect ratios, so their flying sculpts are just hit and miss these days. Back in the old days of Eldar vehicles and Tau vehicles they knew what they were doing somehow. What I'm talking about of course is this thing:

It's just too wide at the front, aircraft need to have some narrowing of the body towards the front to give an illusion of going fast (incidently this is a consequence of all aircraft in the real world having that, so our brains expect it from something which flys. )

I do  think removing the front set of engines would improve it greately, perhaps moving them backwards and doubling up the engines at the back with them instead.

Finished Elf and Grey Knight thoughts

Woo, I finished my first miniature of 2013! I had great trouble taking the photos but just about put something together in the end, as usual click to enlarge:

Got a few more views as well!

In the end the water effects look ok, but not perfect, something to think about for the future. I do like the planking though, made of coffee stirrers, so I'll have to remember that for another time.

Cool mini or not voting link, if you have the time! :)

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Next I think I'm going to be doing a grey knight colour test. I'm hoping to take part in slow grow campaign using grey knights soon so have been thinking about what I'm going to do.

As far as painting goes I'm fairly sure I want to use SENMM, I've been experimenting with it a little, as below. I'll probably do a fair amount of gold on some of them too to pick out the more senior models. However, this is a lot of work, so I'll time myself during the test model and see how it goes!

I'm still thinking about basing and so on, I have 1 GK model which is a golden demon project which is currently on hold:

Not sure whether to continue down this route for the basing (ruined mechanicus planet)

Or go with some sweet lava basing which would allow me to justify warmer highlights in the painting. I painted this a few months back pretty quickly and kinda liked having warm highlights tie into the lava, so that's tempting and then I can leave the GD project to come back to in the future:

Any thoughts? Am still not convinced either way really!

First of 2013 - High Elf and Basing

So Happy 2013!

I've come up with some new years hobby resolutions now:

- Update blog/forum logs weekly (will try and get into a habit of doing it on Fridays)
- Sell off my Space Marine army (by March)
- Sell off my Skorne Army (by March)
- Don't buy any more minis for painting only (I have enough to last a good year already!)
- Enter Salute painting comp in April
- Enter GD in September
- Army project at rate of 1 unit per month and play casual games with it, 15 games in the year. (not sure yet if this will be Grey Knights or Cygnar)

Since I've been back from holidays I've been getting on with my little elf a bit, a few people asked about the sword, so I tried to get some closeups of that. Still got a bunch of tidying up to do and a few details to do, click for larger images:

I started working on a quick base too, the planking is made of coffee stirers. Only problem is as much water effect as I put onto it, it seems to keep dissapearing! I have a theory it's soaking into the wood, but I don't really know, I suppose I'll give it some more and see what happens!

PS: If anyone wants to buy any Space Marines or Skorne models, give me a shout!