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!

New year plans

Well guys, I spent the last year painting a lot, some of my stuff can be seen here:

http://www.coolminiornot.com/artist/Jonagon

I started working on some big projects for Salute painting competition, but as usual got well bogged down in a big sculpting/modelling project. They always take ages and get me down. This is where I got to:

So I ended up 'taking a break' from painting/modelling for a little while. Had been working on a NMM High elf before that:

Anyway, after about a month off, I'm now rediscovering the fire a bit. Think I'm going to move a little bit back towards army painting a little and start a new Grey Knights project. I've been writing a little bit of background for them lately. But before that I'm planning to enter a painting competition at my local store in a couple of weeks, I can do prep and conversions before hand, but all the painting has to be done in 5.5 hrs in the store on the day.

So I'm going to look at a Farseer for that first, then move onto the GK project. That's the plan, am pretty keen to start already, but am 200 miles from all hobby materials for another few days yet. Here's to 2013, though work is probably going to keep me busier than ever; Let's hope it's a good year. :)

This blog I can hopefully use to keep track of my painting in 2013, more than I did last year anyway!

Sanguinary Guard

Finally a new post!

Am pretty pleased with this latest mini, still a long way to go but improving all the time. Onwards and upwards!

If you have time a vote on CMoN would be appreciated:

http://www.coolminiornot.com/316683

Salute 2012

Phew! It's been a little while since I posted on here, that's for sure.

Hopefully I can get into it a bit more regularly now, I have a few things that I've been doing in the intervening time to share... This was my entry for Sci-fi miniature at Salute this year, I learnt a whole bunch of things doing this, so though I didn't place (man the standard is high!) I certainly learnt a lot!

The miniature is Adept Nemo a warmachine caster.

For some reason I can't make this go any larger, so here's a closer look at the freehand:

And a cheeky WIP shot to show how it came together:

Cool Mini Or Not Voting Link

Captain Cloak!

Some years ago I painted the Assault on Black Reach captain... badly.

However! Now, Salvation is at hand for at least a little bit of this poor miniature.

I wanted to try shading red with green, to give it more vibrancy, instead of black, so I went back and reworked this guys cloak.

The finish is a bit poor because I painted straight over a badly varnished surface, also I may have gone a bit mad with the final highlight!