+ inload: Orks, Space Marines and some old friends +

+ Orks on the painting desk +

Various greenskins start to get their paint on.

+ A rather broken painting session saw me block in the clothing and armour of three orks and a couple of grots. With this in place, I'm moving on to the more enjoyable task of painting skin. +

+ As usual, I like to get some variety in skintones in a force; but I want to balance that against speed – I've got a game scheduled – so the solution is to use paint remaining on the palette to slap on the runts. The picture above shows what a difference application can make: the grinning ork on the right and the grot on the left are painted using the same mixes; the only difference is that I use smooth, blended application for the grots, and textural scumbling and feathering for the orks to create the impression of rougher, leathery skin. +

+ This pict-capture's a good illustration of the freewheeling approach to painting I'm using here – they're all at different stages, including one with (oddly) just his teeth done. +

+ Gathered forces of the Imperium +

+ The Alien Wars project +

+ What started out as a quick way to paint up the Dark Imperium boxed set has taken on a bit of a life of its own. The Rogue Trader/Nova Terra Interregnum setting is proving a gumbo of juicy ideas, and has quickly expanded to encompass lots of 'orphan' models – those that I bought on a whim or was given, and have had no big project to use them on. +

Blood Angels, Imperial Guardsmen and Squat Throngsmen

 + The Alien Wars project is proving not to be just an aesthetic thing, but a great excuse to dig through my pile of lead, tin, resin and plastic. The 'skirmishy' nature of the forces – very small groups; sometimes just two or three – makes painting more of a pleasure. It seems to fit me very well. +

+ The picture above shows what would make a rather lovely Rogue Trader force in itself – a varied mix of models that need only a sentence or two to tie 'em together. Does the picture above suggest a story to you? +

The Blood Angels are ticking over.

+ As you might have noticed over the past few inloads, I've been on a building and background spree recently – the two seem to go together; as there's plenty of time to think while you're in the flow of chopping, gluing and sculpting. The Blood Angels deserved a bit more time in the sun (after all, this started as 'their' project), so I've cracked on with a couple more.

+ Tallowlands +

...and, rather apropos of nothing, here are three dwarfs. They're the Forge World pack, kindly picked up by Lucifer 216 on a recent trip to Warhammer World. They'll make a lovely addition to the Throng of Nog. The sculpts are lovely, though I could resist reducing the slayer's (leftmost here) hunchback. As with the orks above, I trimmed the neck so I could set the head up a little higher. This meant resculpting a little hair, and also giving him some structure around the middle – somewhere normally covered by the beard. He's got a stocky little abdomen now.

+ inload: 15th/190th disposition +

+ Mark -1.57 sidereal +

Sergeant Santiagon

The column's footfalls crunched as they marched through the snow. Lieutenant Holion's breath misted in the air. 

'Forces at our disposal, sergeant?'  

'I've taken the liberty of preparing a dataslate, sir.' Sergeant Santiagon frowned as he handed it over. 'It's far from complete, but all told we've got the best part of a demi-company here, plus auxiliaries.' The column continued marching over the deep snow, warily scanning the ridgeline to the east and bare trees to the west. 'Not all in fighting order, I'm sorry to report.'

Holion nodded, absorbed in the slate. 
'Until we get a solid practical on what's happening here, we've got to make to the Muster. This doesn't feel like orks...'

+++

+ It's easy (and quick) to compose a snap of an individual model, but I find getting shots of a whole army is always a pain – so I'll be working up to it. I thought I'd collect together a list of what's what in the army. Not exactly an army list as, owing to the changes to the rules and restrictions, there are a number of odd models that don't quite fit. +

+ This project is going to (hopefully) resolve this, and step one is to work out what's what:

Warriors of the line

• The Apaesians (Sergeant Epipatros) – Rhino carrier Spear of Iax [Seeker squad]
• The Ciconians (Sergeant Mox) – Rhino carrier Quadriga [Seeker squad]
• The Locrians (Sergeant Santiagon) – Rhino carrier Odius [Seeker squad]
• The Carnassans (Sergeant Ordustin) [Tactial support squad?]
• The Corinthians (Sergeant [REDACTED]) [Heavy Support squad]
• 190th Squad Secundus (Sergeant [REDACTED]) – Tactical squad
• 190th Squad Quintus (Sergeant [REDACTED]) – Tactical squad
• 190th Squad Duodecimus (Sergeant [REDACTED]) – Assault squad
• 190th Squad Viginti (Sergeant [REDACTED]) – Breacher squad – Land Raider Proteus carrier Legacy of Armatura
• Shield of Sinon, Predator

Command and Specialists

• Captain Orpheus Orkbane
• Lieutenant Holion
• Ancient [REDACTED], Chapter Standard Bearer (15th)
• Lieutenant Pullo, Master of Signal
• Brother Yppocampon, Apothecary
• Brother [Redacted], Apothecary
• Brother Arius, Techmarine
• Brother-dreadnought Avulus
• Brother-dreadnought Strix
• Brother-dreadnought Cestus*
• Brother-dreadnought Telcion*
• Brother-dreadnought Icelus – Deredeo pattern
• Brother-dreadnought {REDACTED] – Leviathan pattern

* Previously a marine of the 15th; killed in background.

+ Expect a few edits to this over the course of the project, as I dig out models or change my mind and pull bits apart! +

+++

+ Let's face it, all this is useful for me, but a bit boring, so I thought I'd do a gallery of a few old faces:

Brother Eumon, Locrian

Brother 'Young' Holion, Locrian 

Cassie, Mother to worlds

Brother Atlion, Corinthian

Brother [REDACTED], Squad Secundus

Squad leader [REDACTED], Squad Secundus

Brother [REDACTED], Squad Quintus

+ You'll spot a number of [REDACTED] notes here. Normally, that's the in-universe way I list things if I haven't decided on a name, but here it's that I'm fairly sure I've named him/it, but have no idea what the name is... I would check Warseer, but sadly it's still down. If you can help fill in a blank, please let me know! +

+ inload: Roberto +

+inload: Roberto+

+ All this grim darkness and oppressive regimes get tiresome sometimes, so here's a fun little figure from Armorcast*. He's not currently available, but I think he emerges, along with some other familiar characters, around Christmas. Keep an eye out if you want one.+

+ He's a good example of a very quick, simple paintjob. This is just a base of Solar Macharius Orange, with a few different washes and details picked out.

+ The figure came in three pieces, I think – body, neck and head (the latter two on a sprue). He went together nice and quickly, and was a fun little side project.+

+Noospheric inload path: http://armorcast.com/store/index.php?cPath=116_177

+ inload: Foundation paints +

+inload: Foundation paints+

+My palette has always been very earth-led, with grungy browns and muted warm greys. This works particularly well on the models I like painting best, which are Imperial Guardsmen from Games Workshop. The image below shows a typical model from my latest Lamb's World army (more on them in a future post, I hope), a kitbash made from Forgeworld's Elysian range and bits from Games Workshop's Cadian command squad (great kit, that).

+The paint scheme uses an olive green from Vallejo coupled with liberal use of Dheneb Stone, a paint from the sadly delisted Foundation range. I was sorry to see this range be replaced with the new 'Base' range of paints, as they've lost some of the muted nature of the pure paints.

+I suspect this is due to less clay being used in the suspension, or perhaps simply more vibrant pigments. Either way, I now find myself adding touches of greys and complementary colours to knock the vibrancy back a bit. I think this is important to my miniatures that are intended for the tabletop in order to give the impression that the model is far away (and thus getting more bluegrey through the effects of recession), rather than just small.

+ To contrast, the little dog-soldier chap is from Hasslefree miniatures. He was painted for a showcase on The First Expedition forum*, which specialises in Great Crusade and Horus Heresy-era modelling, painting and background. Because he was intended to be viewed up close, and on a computer screen, I chose a deliberately slightly starker colour scheme of orange and white, though retained that slightly misty look I like. Again, I used a Foundation paint – this time Solar Macharius Orange, a colour I'd never used as the basis for a model before.

+Orange and white are the colours that suggest slightly old-fashioned pulpy sci-fi to me; Blake's 7, Buck Rogers and the like. As this model was intended as a foe of the Imperial Great Crusade (and therefore in Warhammer 40,000's distant past, I thought this was a fun way to suggest an ancient, long-forgotten species.

+ The paint worked nicely – orange is often thought of as very bright and vibrant, but the suspension of the Foundation range (which I suspect is heavily clay-based, or some equivalent to give it such covering power) neatly mutes it.

+++

*+inloadlink+ 

http://z13.invisionfree.com/The_First_Expedition/index.php?

+terminus+