Painting a Sagodjur Fjorlag Astartes

Hallo everyone.  I'm an artist and I'm mad.
  To-day I shall tell you a story.  A story with my paints.  Here, look, look!  The empty canvas, the white of innocence unmarred by the artist's hand, look!  Down there, do you see him?  And his raven?  There they are.

 

I start with Abaddon black where black wishes to go, dark and matte like the thoughts forever behind my eyes; but sometimes the black goes where I don't want it to-- bad black-- bad!  I am compelled to go over with with white again.

See, look!  There is white again!

Next I add the Averland Sunset, the darkest of yellows like the tarnished gold of our lord the Praetorian of Terra.  The Sable pale down the middle of the Or field of the Sagodjur's heraldry symbolizes a habit of penance and servitude overshadowing their past history as a VIIth legion assault chapter.

With the setting sun I add the spot colours, cheerful red and sombre brown where later I'll be applying bronze-- shiny bronze!  The green depths of his eye-lenses open, and I dust a bit of white around his faceplate to brighten it.  This works, I know it does!  It does!

And now I give him a coat of watered-down dryad bark with spots of doombul brown, and this is-- yes, this-- this is where the fun begins, for the paints wash away the need for all caution and care and pointy brushes and--

Now for the shiny-- so shiny!  The silver and the bronze!  I went over the parchments again and again with screaming skull and now they're white again.

And the black returned, across all the corners and the edges-- it's like edge highlighting!  Only it isn't; my my, aren't I funny!  I could write a book of jokes because I'm funny!

The silver tries to stop the black from his game, and now more washes!  Mournfang brown!  Caliban green!  More black!  I'm an artist, an artist, Throne curse you!  What am I even doing with my life?

 What have I done?  The rust of ages is consumed me!  Typus corrosion!  Nikalah oxide!  ryza rust and nurgle's rot, bring them all to the alter!  My own will do just fine, above the thumb, above the thumb as always!  Hee hee, it hurts me; yes, even Blood for the proverbial Blood God!  Can't you see?  It is done, IT IS DONE!

... It is done.  I have borne a sweet child into the world.  I will name him Allangan, because he is all my delight, and his raven I will name Ebenfalls, because she is too.
Blotfjord 1st command, at your disposal my captain.  To doom, and to the finding of our lord the Praetorian; on wings of blood and rust I fly.

***

So there you are.  This ridiculous rambling is pretty much what goes through my head while I paint.  Not very insightful, I suppose, but that's that.

Bye-bye for now.  Hope I didn't put you off the blog forever ;)

Basing an Imperial Knight: odd glues and things

Basing time!  Hurrah!

From the start I liked the image of my knights striding through an old graveyard.  The picture I'll paint with them will be the defense of their home world, advancing through the mist to a forgotten front where their enemy waits to die.  Layers and layers of war have been poured across this graveyard; time passes and nobody remembers the names on the broken stones anymore, though between decades of corpses and bloodstained rocks lies a convoluted history of Imperial piety and intolerance.

Not sure where to start, so I'll begin with the legs.  I began on the wrong foot last year when I made the mistake of chopping the legs to bits without any clue at all what I was doing!  I think that's what put me off completing the project the most.  I later found this tutorial from The Dice Abide which helped me a lot (I used greenstuff instead of plasticard strips, so sue me) but that still left the question of ankles and, by extension, the pistons 'round about.

Picking it up now and looking at it with fresh eyes certainly helped as my admech watched helplessly-- and unpaintedly-- on as I begun to repeat what I had done on a second pair of legs.

I drilled out the pistons and used brass rods tipped with the bulbs from off the original pistons, two of which I lost so I replaced with the tops off some flying stands.  The energy tubes from the necron warriors kit worked nicely for the heel piston; I'm sure there's another bit of pipe the right width, but plastic was just that bit easier to work with.  For the record I lined all the pipes up attached to the pistons before gluing the legs to the ankles, in that order.  Of course the stress of working with super glue hardly helps...

And onto the base!  While it's best to know what you want it to look like, it's also better to pose your IK legs first and then work the base around them.
So there were the remains of an old rhino kicking around in the drawer, how exciting.  I used slabs of plasticard to build up the ground a bit around it before going over the whole thing with an odd, extra-thick glue sort of medium...

No idea what it was to be honest.  It came in a tube and it stank, but other than that I have no proof it really was glue...

Legs in place.  The bit of sand was where I was experimenting and it didn't work as desired.

After that was another odd super-thick glue, and this time the coarse grit went on.  It went on first, because the ground I was trying to go for was boggy, at least outside the graveyard.  In battles past stones have been stamped to the surface, and afterwards the green has tried to grow back; constant rain left the ground a sludgy ruin.
Trust me, I know ground like this.  Hee hee, I've worked on cattle farms before!

Sand over the top of the stones for the soil.  Some of the sarcophagi lids have floated to the surface.

Various sprinklings of grit and sand until I was happy with the result.  Memories of Sunday school days seep back to the forefront of my mind as I make a beeline to the kitchen and wash off the gritty PVA from my fingers...  My my, surely it shouldn't be this messy?

Oh well!

With a confidence I didn't know was there I set forth immediately after and began work on the second base.  This is mostly inside the graveyard, so the ground will be a bit drier, less boggy; the sand went on first this time.  Also more gravestones.

He stepped on a tomb by mistake, but was it already open?

Feat. a banner and some armour plates, and legs #2 photobombing on the right.  Throne, image composition is cruddy.

So here's where I'm up to with the current IK.  At the first, I had plans for a knight Warden named Aborted Sanctity, but as time went on that character split into two; Aborted Litre, the knight crusader, and Reprisal of Sanction, the knight gallant who's unfinished visage you see above.  I'm sad to say I'll be making him with his carapace shut, no cockpit, no pilot, I'm sorry.  The plans I have for aesthetic will make it all a bit awkward.  Looking at him from a distance, I wonder what putting the pauldrons on their sides would do to his image...

And that's that!  How badly did I do?  Don't be shy to share your thoughts. 

I'm rubbish at landscapes, I know this.  Basing is not my strong point but I had a go and that was the important thing.  Don't wait until you're good at something-- do it now!  Do it badly and don't feel bad about it!  Remember that practice can't hardly be bought or waited on, and confidence only grows when tested.

Bye bye for now.

Assembling/converting IK #2: The returning

Throne of Terra!  It's been far too long since the last time I tried to make another child of house Silenzi, and now here I am making two at once-- reposing both, fool that I am.  To-day's update won't be too detailed, I just wanted to let out how excited I am to be doing this again!

The last post was September last year-- that's eleven months!  Back then The White Rose still lived on my hobby desk and I had a set of blue clippers apparently...

My attempt at reposing didn't work out quite as nicely as planned, but if I just cover it up with centennial grime hopefully no-one'll notice... I'm cheap like that.  I will be going into detail concerning the bases in another post, with what I'm using and the scenario I was attempting.

I decided last year I wanted to give this next knight a chainfist, thinking I'd be making a knight warden.  This was my first-- now rather poor-- attempt at one.  Never happy with how stuck together it looked, plus that wrist was a pathetic pivot for such a weight...

 So this is it at the moment, pretty much.  Far happier with this one, 'specially now The-Great-Mister-Scatterbrain decided to make a knight gallant instead.

Not having much in the way of firepower, he'd need every advantage he can get, so I'll be magnetizing every extra option for him because I'm nice like that :)   The effigy was from a wall rosarius I had stored away; there will be story behind it but that's for yet another post.  I'm really behind on posting, I'm sorry.

For the other fellow who I think will be a warden, I am making-- yes, another building to go on top.  Quite by mistake (shaving off the icons of Sigmar's comet) I found this interesting pattern you could achieve by gouging a haphazard step-like pattern into the surface and brushing plastic glue over.  The result would look good on the plates of a chaos knight, but I won't be going there.

This isn't canon.  It would have been, but it isn't.

I said I won't be going there.  But here, if you want to make a traitor knight, I highly recommend getting the WoC Chaos chariot for bitz.  For one, the chariot front fits the chest exactly and the gorebeast's head would look cool in place of the IK's own.

Over-the-top tilt shield, because I'm me and I'm silly like that.  As no heraldry can be painted on the shield itself, old alliances will be remembered in little roundels on the side.

And that's that!  For now, once again.  Next post I think ought to be either about basing, or fluff concerning house Silenzi's family.  One or the other!  Bye-bye for now.

Hobby update: Yay for painting

Hallo again; I'm finally back painting after ever-so-long of not doing so-- that didn't quite come out right.  Oh well!  Having run out of super glue I can't really do much converting, so painting instead.  I've kept going with my BA successors, the Angels Encarmine, the beginnings of an 1850-odd point force.  Sorry about the picture quality.

 Ever since I got hold of an old Angels of Death codex I've wanted to make a small force based on either the1st or 9th legions; I think it was Rob Hill's Death company that made the decision for me.

As you see, the squad isn't quite complete...  I might also say now that the bases aren't quite done.  Another brown wash, those stones want a bit of painting, and maybe I should invest in some clump foliage...

I tried to avoid using mk7 helmets wherever possible, because... because I can.

...He said, right before showing one.

Are missile launchers a DC thing?  I hope so, because he's painted now.

Here's the sergeant,with a combat shield and power sword.  I totally didn't think of Skyrim when assembling him.  By-the-by, I've finally beaten Alduin, and it only took me half a year.

And lastly, the Sanguinary priest.  Still trying to get the skin right; I'm trying for an inhuman blue but it's just going fishy.

Like I said before, I'd like to eventually get an 1850ish point army assembled for competitive games where there'd be little sense in trying to package up my fragile Sagodur Fjorlag models.  I want to sort of copy Rob's force, except for a tactical squad in the drop pod because I've had a lot of fun with that setup.

So that's the biggest news out of the way.  The skitarii I've mentioned so often this last while with nothing to show still aren't finished-- I'm sorry-- but they're getting there.

"A fine mess you've got us into!"

They've been sitting together rotting on my desk for so long I'm dangerously close to calling them Laurel and Hardy.

backpack for scale

And lastly, on my travels I found a beach only an hour and a bit from home that yields some of the nicest medium-fine grit I've seen, so yeah... that's a thing, and that's that!  No Imperial Knight progress updates yet, that's all for another post.  Bye bye for now.