This is Sparta!

This mini, if from the Tale of War range, which I really like. I picked him up a couple of years ago after the movie came out to paint. Its been sitting half finished in my "to paint" box for the last couple of years.

Over at a website I'm a member of, they have set up a secret santa. The person I got gave me on guidelines about what to paint only that he has a "DIY space marine chapter". This did not really help me with the painting of a mini for him.

So putting one and one together and getting five, I decided now was the perfect chance to finish this guy off and send him off as my secret santa. How could anyone not be happy with a kick-ass model coming through the post? This is my current WiP

The skin is the closest to being finished. I've maybe one or two more highlights to add and a couple of washes. Instead of the normal flesh wash, I've gone with purple washes and I'm very happy with how its worked out so far. The red needs a couple of touch ups too for it to be finished. The metals are still quite a way off, as I've only done the basecoat. 

Finished Space Hulk Nids

So they are finally done!

It took me about a month to get these guys done. Working in dribs and drabs, but in the end I'm fairly happy with how they turned out.

I'm quite happy with the pink of the skin. The grey is unusual but I like it none the less. The army painter soft tone really helped me finish these guys off. I might hold off on space marines for a while.

First ever attempt at Army Painter Dipping!

As I posted previously I picked up the army painter strong tone quickshade. I am in the middle of building up the ratmen, put I really wanted to give this quickshade a go, ahh............really quickly!.

So my nid's from Space Hulk are still to be finished and it came to me, that the quickshade would be perfect! This of course would mean that the the purple shade would have to be cancelled, but if I could quickly get these nids done it would be all good. So back to my good old test nid and quickly finished off the base.

I have to have a pre-dip picture don't I?

Then I dipped. In my stupidity I decided to try and video this! So video'ing in my left hand, dipping with my right hand. So excuse the shaking and weird camera angles.

So despite me losing my grip on the mini, half way through I think it has worked out fairly ok. I've given him a couple of more sturdy shakes when I had both hands free to get rid of the excess shade. I have now placed him still to one side until this time tomorrow, and we'll see how he turns out. 

Army Painter and Skaven Gutter Runners

So I caved in today and bought my first ever box of Skaven. I picked up a box of Gutter Runners from my FLGS. (Gamersworld in Dublin). I am fairly sure these guys are not being changed or replaced in anyway in the new army book. (fingers crossed!)

 

I had a quick look at the sprue, and they seem like nice models. A box of twenty for €25 is fairly good in my book. Good knows for a skaven army I get the impression that I need a lot more than twenty!

And speaking of lots of models, I have been looking at some way to paint all these rats up in a quick and simple way. I know of the army painter range of products just by seeing them in my FLGS but have not talked to or read of anyone who has used them. So I took it on myself to have an experiment.

So today I also picked up two Army Painter Colour Primers and the Army Painter Matt Varnish.

I picked up the primer matt black as a general basecoat spray, which can also be used as an actual black colour. As I was going with the ratmen, I did pick up a brown colour too, ideally I would have liked a darker brown, but this colour might not be too bad with the shade. The matt varnish is vital for the Army Painter process, to remove the glossiness of the shade. I hope to also use it to finish off all my other painted projects.

The most important step in all of this of course the Army Painter Shade.

I bought the standard middle of the road shade, (Strong Tone). This smells and looks exactly like furniture varnish, but at first look it seems slightly more "runny".

I think it will be interesting to see how quickly I can get these twenty ratmen painted up using the Army Painting method.