Power Swords, Redux

Right, so with a bit of time on my hands last night I've had another play with some power swords.

First up, the Imperial Guard officer:

I wanted to see what a green sword would look like, and a many of the "sabre" like swords i've seen done well have a sort of secondary glow around the curved areas, which is what i'm going for here. It's a little inelegant, and works better if you squint, but i think it gets the shape and general effect.

After that, I went back to Captain Firey-Sword and, inspired by some work over at Smurfs in Space, redid him.

This turned out a little better, i think, and certainly more elegant than the previous effort. I've tried to maintain a bit of fluidity to the effect by "feathering" the colours along the leading and trailing edges of the blade.

Overall i think i may be getting past my fear of Power Sword effects, don't you think?

Fun with Power Swords

One of the techniques I see around the place that makes me most intimidated by other peoples abilities is the effects on Power Weapons. Loads of models use them, and there seems to be lots of ways of doing them, but they're such a striking effect when done well that at the same time "feels" very hard to get right. I've had a few stabs at it (so it to speak) so in lieu of any actual painting content I thought I'd share. 

My first attempt was my Imperial Guard officer. Well, I say "first attempt" but i mean "first attempt that still exists on a model". Its pretty basic, just some layered colour moving up to the edge of the blade.

This is actually the third of fourth covering of paint on this guy's sword, which can't do it's edge any favours in a fight. Anyway, heartened by this I got confident for the Lord Commissar, read some online tutorials, and managed what I think is a pretty good Lightning Effect. 

But the general look of a full blade still eludes me. When I finally bullet and redid my AoBR Marine Captain, I wanted to do something interesting on his sword, and after some mucking about ended up with a firey effect like this: 

I think its a pretty good blended fire effect, but I'm still not sure it's wholly appropriate for a Power Sword effect, which should be more "glowey" and less like it's actually just on fire. So this weekend I've been messing about with the Termies consigned to the paint test bin, and the best effort so far is this guy: 

Which I rather like. Not sure about the colour; it's a little cold but the technique may not be at the level of a lot of work you see around the place but I'm confident enough in it to stick up a picture on the internet, so that's progress! 

The blue arm, by the way, is me practicing to get a blue-grey colour for a Librarian - more in line with the scheme used in Dawn of War over the brighter blue you often see. 

Something a Bit Different

I'm having a bit of a major dither about what to paint up next - largely torn between expanding the Blood Ravens force a bit more and a desire to do something in "not red". In the meantime, a mate sent me a link to Mongoose Publishing's Judge Dredd Minatures Games, which do some great figures based the 2000ad stories.  And I've always particularly remembered the Kleggs from when I was a kid - you'll notice my profile uses a picture of one - and I really couldn't resist.

Very quick paint this, actually, as it's mostly strong, bold colours in big blocks, as you'd expect for a comic character. And a bit of a reminder of how much I dislike painting metal compared to plastics or resin. And the base is just greenstuff pushed around to look give a muddy texture, then painted up. Anyhow, pictures!

Its a really nice pose, in my opinion, and a nice rendition
of the character - a little simple but that's how they're drawn. 

From the Front, with his snaggly teeth!

And the jet-pack. All the reference drawings I can find do
them silver, but there are few enough colours on him as it is!

Blood Ravens Landspeeder Storm: COMPLETED

So, after turning into a bit of a nightmare, I've salvaged what I can. Turns out I was right insomuch as you can hardly see the interior at all once you cram 6 scouts into this thing, so I guess that's a bullet (or Bolter Shell) dodged. And the overall colour scheme has turned out pretty well. It's been weathered down the same as the Predator, with of a bit of extra mud-spatter on the nose and the legs of the scouts, to (try to) simulate the sort of effect you'd get from skimming along the ground quickly.

Anyway, here it is. As ever, comments and criticism appreciated.

There's a quirk of the lighting that makes this look darker than it actually
is, but I think it's still looking OK. 

The driver is a nightmare to get into position. He had to be broken down
and reassembled in place, poor bugger. 

Look! You can hardly see the crummy interior! 

An Exercise in Frustration

When does the Taxi get here? 

The last of my reclaimed Ultramarine sets that I'm repainting into Blood Raven colours is a Landspeeder Storm, and it's turning into a bit of nightmare. I started this blog to be a record of my painting, so i guess the frustrating things that don't turn out belong here too, so here's a "Works in Progress" Update on it.

So this was assembled and originally painted up blue, and stripped down pretty well. I'd clearly not undercoated it properly when I first did so some of the paint refused to be removed, and there are some areas that whilst aren't obvious at distance, really look rough close up. But that's not the main problem. The main problem is that painting it's interior is a horrorshow.

Gah! Scruffy Cockpit Interior

I was able to get the crew out of the set without problem but the rest of the speeder remained steadfastly intact. The open cabin has a fair bit of molding, including gun racks, screens and controls, and assembled you can't get a brush at them other than in fairly broad strokes, and clean, straight dividing lines are nearly impossible, at least at my skill level. Given that I wanted to do the interior in a light cream/white colour to contrast it with the red hull, it just looks scruffy - which will be fine, to an extent, when the interior gets aged and worn but ideally I'd have liked it to look clean in the first place.

I've less excuse with the scouts themselves but my old nemesis - white cloth - has risen to defeat me again. I've had fun with it before, in small areas, but always managed to make sure it was on a small enough part of a model to not make much of a difference, visually. But these buggers are evading me - I seem to be able to get a decent cloth effect in any other colour. Currently painted light grey, dark wash and then a white highlight, and i suspect that'll have to do. Ho Hum.

Is there good news? Well white leggings aside, the scouts are looking OK. The main colour is done on the speeder now and it looks pretty solid, and once the white wings/tail are on I think it'll look pretty good. And then hopefully the busy, cramped nature of the passenger bay, combined with dirt and wear along the base line and forward edges, will cover up a lot of the "scruff". Fingers crossed, eh?

White wings and tail to be added! 

Five Things I've Learned in the Last Year

One of the first, and one of the most recent, Space
Marines I've painted. Hopefully there's a qualitive difference!

So, it's been about a year since I decided to take advantage of being stuck in the house more often to pick up the old painting hobby again. I'm still not terribly time-rich, and but I think I've learned a lot and shown some improvement in a most areas that matter. One of my big motivations for starting this blog was that when I started out I learned a lot from the painting/gaming community online and whilst I've no illusions about either my own skills or the worth of my opinions, if even one person reads these posts and comes away with some inspiration or insight then in some way I've given back.

So, in lieu of any real progress on my current project, here is the 5 things I think I've learnt this past year.

Painting Table Update October 2011

So, with most of the outstanding painting mentioned last time I did one of these round-ups done, I guess I need to put my thoughts in order again. Most of what I've painting is Blood Ravens, completeing a Predator, Dread, Force Commander and Tac Squad in fairly close order, so much so I feel like this has been turning into a "Blood Ravens Blog".

Not a Blood Ravens Blog, appearances to the contrary

Next up is a stripped, repaired and re-basecoated Landspeeder Storm for my Marines, but after that I'm in a world of conflict.

See, I've really enjoyed doing all the Marine stuff and part of my would like to expand the force a bit more. I've got the AoBR Termies still, but they're exceptionally dull figures compared to the boxed ones, so the temptation to spring for some of them is quite strong. I also like the look of the Finecast Sternguard or a Venerable Dread.

On the other hand, I'm running the risk of getting bored of all that red pretty soon, and I'd still like to expand my IG and Tau displays; fitting the blue/white electic scheme to a Tau vehicle will be a fun challenge, and I'd still like to expand my IG troops up to at least a full Platoon.

So the conclusion of this ramble is that there isn't one. But at least now i've been conflicted in public!