Space Hulk - Blood Angels

First Terminators

I finished painting my first 40k miniatures - Blood Angel portion of Space Hulk.

I tried out a few new techniques. Armor was all done using airbrush in the following steps:
- charred brown from the bottom
- mephiston red from the top/sides
- dry brush vallejo heavy orange
- wash with agrax earthshade
- mephiston red from the top/sides
- evil sunz scarlet from the top

I think the armor turned out really well. Some things that I know could have been done better:
- this was my first time doing edge highlighting, which you can probably tell from how uneven the lines are
- first time doing detailed gems. I should probably apply more thinner costs (glazes), to get smoother transitions
- power swords - should be smoother and edge lines sharper
- I used the same red for some of the gems as I did for the armor. That was a terrible idea, because the gems don't stand out.
- for metallic I'm using vallejo metal color which are great, however they are very thin which makes them difficult to do edging/highlithing
- writings on scrolls should probably be done with thinner lines

Overall a lot of things to improve, but I think for first space marines they turned quite ok. Admittedly I always have the dilemma how far to push for quality by investing more time. On one hand I want my models to get better and better. On the other, it took my about a month to paint these guys, given how much/little time I can dedicate to painting given my other life commitment and I do want to see my long backlog of miniatures painted as well.

Age of Sigmar - Vanguard Raptors and Aetherwings

Golden army expands

I got the next batch of figures from Blightwar painted. These were my first magnetized figures. I'm quite happy with the result, although I should have put on more pair of magnets to the Prime's arms, as now it's very difficult to put the fixed arms on and also the shoulder pads scratch the back of the figure. The rest turned out quite well I think.

I also tried to make the bases for the Aetherwings a bit more interesting and added some more sticks and flowers to the base. I think they turned out quite nice, although I could have been more consistent with the colors, so that the figures not only look good individually but also look more consistent as a unit.

Age of Sigmar - Screaming Bell

Screaming Bell

I'm continuing to expand my Skaven army. I started to paint the Skaven Pestilens start collecting set. This has been my biggest figure so far. I'm overall quite happy with the result, although I know I could save some time painting details on parts that are not visible after assembly and do a better job at highlighting the grey seer, which I painted as last and wanted to have the figure finally done. Also I over-invested in the base middle part (which contains water), as it's impossible to see it after I glued the actual figure.

Also this has been my first conversion (not a big one, but still). I decided to use the spare parts to build a "pit stop" scene with the extra crew changing the wheel.

I also painted the extra plague monk. Tried to do a small OLS on the base, but I don't think it turned out very well. I only added some glaze to the surrounding area, but now see that I also should have painted some lighter colors around it to get a good result.

Last but not least these pictures have been taken in my newly purchased Alixpress lightbox. The bell is a bit dark as I didn't get the camera settings right and the white background was reflecting too much light, but I think pictures in next blog posts are quite good.