Using Markers for shading and Dark lining

 

Here is a pic of the final shoulder pad that I shaded with the brown marker.  

Space Wolf shoulder pad before.

 

Shoulder pad with one single brown line around the edge.  Some people may just leave the pad like this, which looks good.

 

Extra ink for shading.

Next, I got a 10-0 brush damp with clean water and blurred the edges.  It takes a little work to get a smooth transition.  I also found that sometimes it was beneficial to leave a little bit of 'inky' water on the brush, and other times, I wanted to clean it and remove some more ink.  After I was done, I also used the marker again on the very edge to make sure it was nice and dark right at the edge.

 I also found that it worked well to add a dark line around the edges of tanks.  Paint is hard to get a constant line.  With a marker, you can get a very precise, even, dark line around the edges.

You can see where I did it on this rhino.

Another WIP rhino.  I found that the orange marker gave a good light brown color on top of the blue.  I tried the brown, and it looked too black.  I like the non waterproof markers, because then you can fix any spots where you go too crazy, and can blend if you like.  My wife has some permanent ones that I may have to 'borrow' for some tests.

Using markers for pack markings

Pack markings can go slowly, and get sloppy if you are tired of doing them.  I found a way to help. 

These pens are NOT waterproof, have .3 mm tips, and work great.  You can get them at Michael's art supply for about $12.

First, I put dots where I want to go with the lines.

 

Connect the dots.

 Then paint in the right spots.  Because these are NOT waterproof, they mix into the paint a little.  Not a big deal when you are painting the same color as the pen, but will mix in and blend if you use different colors.  That can be used to our benefit though, which will be the topic of my next post.  Shading with markers.

Here is the progress on the army.  So far so good.

Scourges, Incubi, and Space Wolf 3k Army Painting Challenge

I finished assembling my scourges.  Well, I guess they still need a few things.  The guy on the left has some adrenaline injectors on his shoulders.  All of the scourges will get them.  They are eldar guardian shuriken catapult cartidges from their belts.

You can see the dar eldar on the left isn't as modified as the others in the squad.  I wanted to try to show that maybe some of the dark eldar can't afford all the modifications that others can.  So he's a wannabe with a beak glued to his helmet.

My favorite model is the one on the right.  I like the longer beak and devious stance he has.  Looks like he is ready to stab someone in the back.  All the white guns are magnetized heat lances.  I have found them to be very effective if you are within 9 inches of your target.  Also great for cooking power armored chumps.

This one has magnetized arms.  I doubt I will ever get the solarite upgrade, and probably never give him these weapons.  But its fun to try them out.

The Incubi are about 75% done.  I gave the Klaivex the archon's head to set him apart.   Just some finishing work to do.  I love these models.

Here is the second squad.  Same idea for the Klaivex. 

This is my newest project.  We have a mega apocalypse battle with the gaming group in Flagstaff, and they wanted 3k of painted models.  Everything had to be painted.  So for the last couple weeks, I have been putting them in squads, giving them all official space wolf shoulder pads, and resin bases.  Once they were all assembled, I used the airbrush to base coat, shade, and highlight.  You can see I already had 2 squads painted, but am painting the rest of the army as a whole, instead of 1 squad at a time.  We'll see if I hold out.

The list includes: 2 rune priests, Logan, a Wolf guard battle leader and a Wolf Priest.  The Wolf Guard battle leader and wolf priest go with the 13 blood claws in the LR crusader. Logan and Arjac are accompanying a long fang, douchebag squad in the drop pod.  I then have 2 long fang squads with 5 rocket launchers each, and one squad is accompanied by a wolf guard with cyclone missile launcher.  I then have four squads of 8 grey hunters, 3 meltas and 1 plasma squad.  Each squad has combimelta power fist, or combiplasma power fist wolf guard leading them.  I left the thunder wolves, dreadnoughts, and other terminators home this battle.

Here are some examples of my airbrushing.  I started with black, dark blue, medium blue, and then finished with space wolves grey.  With each color, I painted less and less of the model, and with Space wolves grey, only painted from directly above the model.  It took about 2 hours to paint about 55 space marines.  Now for the finishing details.

I made some progress on the drop pod too.  I like how the weathering came out.  I used watered down paint, a medium sized paint brush, and quick vertical strokes, from the bottom up, to get the burned look. Where the bolt gun metal paint is on the fins, I tried yellow, brown, and finaly decided on the silver.  I like the more subdued look.

Here are the freshly painted wolves in their carrying tray.

Looking for painting inspiration?

Wow.  I just stumbled onto this site and am floored by the quality of models here.  It has all the golden demon winners from around the world with photos of their paint jobs.  Wow.  http://demonwinner.free.fr  It is worth some time checking it out. 

Dark Eldar Scourge Conversion and my Son's painting

 Here are my first attempt at some scourge conversions.  I finally found a head that I like.  As you can see, it is a Kroot head, with the mandible removed.  I liked the bat wings because a)I had 10 un-built gargoyles, and b)they looked cool.  I will fill in the neck with greenstuff before too long.

I may need to fix the pose on this one.  You can see wych arm, kroot upper head, sawed-off splinter rifle=shard carbine with kroot shoulder sling.

 

I like this one with the kroot legs as well. He is holding a heat lance which you can tell is a sawed-off splinter cannon with a dental mixing tip on the end.  Needs magnets.

 Here are some head variations I went through before deciding on the final one.  You can see the dark eldar with the spines-looks too indian.  The greenstuffed beak would be great if I was looking to make Donald Duck. You can also see a good top view of my son's angels sanguine marine.

I wanted to have bird men with faces like that in the codex.  By removing the lower half of the head of the kroot, it made for a lot smaller head that fit with the size of the dark eldar.  I also wanted to make the squad in various stages of augmentation.  I thought I would have a few with kroot/birdman legs, a lot with bird heads, maybe some dark eldar heads with kroot spines coming out the back, or a helmet with spines breaking through the back.  I also want to add some adrenaline injectors in the shoulders like in the fluff and drawings in the codex.  I am also going to magnetize the gun variants to be able to swap them out as I see fit, or as they change the rules and make certain guns less effective.

 And here are a couple of my 11 year-old son's paint jobs on his angels sanguine army.  I think he did great.  He painted, assembled, and based them all by himself.

My Theories on the next Dark Eldar Release

Like most other Dark Eldar lovers, I am anxiously awaiting pictures of the new models.  I know they will be great, but am still wondering what they will look like.  After reading the White Dwarf covering the initial release, I realized that the artists for the codex pictures WERE GIVEN EXAMPLES OF MODELS to base their pictures on.  It wasn't like, "a warp beast has this description, go crazy on what it looks like in your drawings, we'll make models later."  It was more like, "Here are our models for _______ (insert model name here), please draw cool battle pictures depicting these models."

If you look at all the drawings of warp beasts, beast masters, mandrakes, reavers, wyches, incubi, warriors, succubi, etc. etc.  they match the models EXACTLY.  So you want to know what a venom is going to look like?  Check the drawing.  Grotesque?  He is there.  Wrack?  He is in the codex.  Also every drawing depicting grotesques has them looking the same. 

The latest pictures that come out look like a Grotesque head, and maybe the forearm armor of a talos pain engine.  If you look at the drawing of the talos in the codex, it has a lobster-like armored forearm covered with small little spikes. 

The only unknowns are lady malys, asbrudel vect, duke sliscus, and the voidraven.  We have a shot of the razorwing and all the other models that are still to be released. 

Just my 2 Cents.  Let me know what you think they will look like if I am wrong.  I will bet you a squad of mandrakes that I am not.

Dark Eldar Incubus Test and Finished Trueborn Squad

This dark eldar army is painting itself.  I have the incubi 90% done, and the trueborn squad is almost done as well.  Whenever I take pictures I see a lot of little finishing things I need to do.  Here is the incubus.

I think my favorite parts of the paint job is the sword, and the bone colored head.  The sword blade I painted boltgun metal, washed with devlan mud, and then did fine little stripes with mithril silver.  I did the same thing with the giant razor blades on his back.  The head I painted tallarn flesh, washed with devlan mud, drybrushed with bleached bone, washed with gryphon sepia, and final highlighted with skull white.  The horns were the same colors, but I took the sepia wash to the top of the horn, and then a devlan mud wash only about half way up.

The Trueborn squad looks good together.  I really like the bronze with the silver black and red.  It really makes the squad stand out as elites.  I still have a little bit of finishing work to do.

The Dracon's arms are magnetized as is the backpack.  After much deliberation, I decided to go with a blue/purple skin for the dark eldar.  I like the darker skin like fantasy dark eldar.  It makes them look sinister and alien.

Should I paint some skulls on some of these helmets like the halo reach guy?  I am tempted to paint a couple that way.  What do you all think?