134 The Last King to Rise

Got my final Tomb King done and dusted over the weekend. He fits quite well with the gang but I have taken a slightly different style with him; going for a more corroded metal with nikilth (??) oxide to get a corroded brass look.

I stuck with the Dark Angels Green for the cloth (thats old paint) and general boney colours for the wraps and ribbons.

I tried to keep his shield front brighter as if he has carried on a memory to polish it as a reminder of his past.

I now need to decide on the basing style, whether to stay with squares or go round....

133 An elder Eldar?

Another lovely model spoiled by being made from Finecast!! So much lost detail, holes, weird overcast bits between parts... argh!

Now at least this time round I was generally able to tell what was poor casting and what was model, unlike my experience with some of the Tomb Kings where I couldn't tell if some of the decay was intended or not!

I didn't want to go with something close to the original GW idea this time round as I think its a little dated and too "cartoon" in some ways so went for something more toned down and gritty... well that was the plan.

Incubi Darkness was my starting point as a green black which I think works well, I went with flesh for her arms instead of the body suit she is meant to wear as I was wanting to step away from the synskin suits of the Assassins I have been doing,

I then tried to get a sort of enamelled look to the body armour parts by using some coelia greensahde and a moot green highlight which I think works well.

The contrasting red for the hair breaks up the otherwise very green palette which is just good ole scab red and a blood red wash. Love those old school paints!

132 (Paint) Stripping Music

A stepped up a gear with my painting stripping experiments, not only have a splashed out (see what I did there?) on Meths but I have also now gone a step further and got myself a little acoustic cleaning thing too.

A week in the meths with a little light scrub from the brush every now and again was working quite well but slowly.

I found that you need to sort of "break into" a section for the meths to then really work well, so once you had scrubbed a toothbrush across a section by the next day the meths had really got into it

So this was a week in with a good scrub at the end with the tooth brush, not too bad but not amazing either. I would say to be honest it was better than the fairy power spray.

Then I when all out and got the acoustic cleaner. I had read a little about it and most I had heard was good so thought at £20 it would be rude not to give it a try.

The unit I went with has a little plastic tray to hold everything up, which I think must be pretty standard to all models

It also has a curved cradle for holding watches and jewellery but not too useful to me

30mins later and they are pretty damn good. Couple of tiny bits left but otherwise perfect.

A few learning points to take away from it. The acoustic cleaner warms the meths up quite a bit, a lot if I am honest. This had me sitting watching it quite a bit worrying that it would burst into flame but no combustion occurred thankfully!

The learning point came when getting the meths back out..... meths evaporates at room temperature quite well, WARM meths evaporates really well so when I tipped it up into my funnel to go back in the meths bottle I managed to get a lung full of vapour. As a one off I came off not too worse for ware but I certainly want to avoid it too often!

Meths and the acoustic cleaner seems a great combo and I certainly will be suing it going forward.

131 Storm Scion Kasrkin Tempestus Troopers

Imperial Guard, Astra Militarum, Grunts with Flash lights, call them what you will. I have always had a soft spot for the everyday joe fighting for his life on the battlefields of the Grim Dark

These particular guys are the 3rd Generation of the original "Storm Trooper" from the Imperial Gaurd often called Kasrkin as they came around after Cadian/Dan Abnett works.

And I love them! They are the last of the metal storm troopers (although the first ones were plastic!)

They suffer from the old "must be flatish" to help with making the moulds posing style but they have a certain flare that works for me.

These guys were painted years and years ago and the only work I have done on them now is to texture paint their bases and add some static grass.

This time I went for astrogranite but with a gryphone sepia wash to make it look more muddy and while when the wash was wet I was worried it looked poor I think in the end is works well

2nd Generation! SAS in space! These guys are the gas masked SAS storming the Iranian Embassy transferred straight into the 40k universe. Again some classic models but they have not ages as well as the 3rd gen but then they are older

I painted these way back when they first game out over a decade ago I guess and you can tell from the overly bright and clean colours of grenades and packs on many of them. These guys will be getting reworked soon but I thought I would post about them now to see them in the former glory!

130 Birth of the Four Armed God Emperor

Praise to the glory of the Four Armed God Emperor! Finally finished this guy off :-)

129 And then it happened....

This may or may not be sat on my sofa.....

128 Bits and Bobs

I have been searching my bitz box for supplies ahead of some new conversion works and was worried to find I am down to my last few part sprues of the gloriously good basic weapons sprue from GW of yesteryear.

This sprue I think was originally inspired by Necromunda but became my usual rescue for all my 40k conversions from my Marauder Imperial Guard to veterans and Inquisitors.

I am going to appeal to the community for ideas of where to get more, I am guessing ebay but you never know. Or what people are using these days to replace it??

127 Block and Tackle

Anyone recognise these two fine looking fellows? Fresh from the line of scrimmage for the Reikland Reavers.

I painted these guys back when Blood Bowl was new and my painting skills were awful... and in honour of the recent ish announcement of a new Blood Bowl in the works I raided my parents attic and fished out some of the classics!

How about these guys? Wouldn't want to meet them on a dark night would you!? not with that paint job for sure.

Thankfully we don't have to because paint stripping is all the craze these days.

Some of you will have seen my previous posts experimenting with Fairy Power Spray to strip down some warp spiders and some old servitors. It worked will if slowly but I have been hearing rumours of a change of recipe so have been looking for a new brand to try. Hence meths.

Fancy a bath guys? We will see how this works out over a little bit of time, I am starting with this on old metal minis as they are the least likely to suffer any adverse affect from chemical drowning.

Has anyone had any good or bad experience with meths? In a paint stripping context!

126 OMG What have I done!!!??

It may prove to be my most costly experiment in painting since the tea cup/brush pot incident of '98 but I have some how ended up encouraging my wife to paint miniatures.....

We started with something simple, an old Empire Knight charger. Some confusion over paint names followed when steel legion drab was substituted for something metallic but we made some progress.

Ignore the saddle but notice the use of washes to add depth and texture to metal!

And this is where it has led us, Perry Miniatures and a very small sprue of French Cuirassiers; there is even greenstuff in there folks!!!

All jokes aside I am really pleased that she has decided she wants to have a go, for someone who was very artist in their youth but hasn't held a colouring pen let alone a brush for years I was impressed that she was up for the challenge.

As a very first attempt with a new medium I am very pleased with how they are going!

125 The Four Armed God-Emperor

Just a very short update on this one, been busy with a couple of other mini projects that I'll be posting about soon but want to show that things are still moving forward with the big guy.

This is a really good model and I cant believe how well they have recreated the vibe of the genestealers and in particular the hybrids so many years after the originals, its truly impressive.