Sons of Medusa, first model and step-by-step

 After years of not painting Power Armour, I finally gave in and got myself some awesome Phobos Infiltrator Primaris Space Marines (lotsa words). First part about starting an albeit small Space marines army is obviously The Chapter, or more importantly – The color scheme. I knew I wanted something colorful instead of “Random dark color made even darker with a wash”, that I sometimes feel I end up doing – Rule of least effort and all. But not this time! The Salamanders chapter fit the color scheme, but I didn´t feel like going the flamers and scales route, so they got scratched from the list of prospects. Dark Angels too dark (plus, I used to collect them back in the days, so wanted something new). I even went as far as googling “green space marine chapter”.

In the end I settled for Sons of Medusa because:

1. The scheme fits the bill
2. White helmets make them a bit more interesting to look at
3. They are technofreaks that love cybernetics.

Only downside was that they felt a bit too…robotey, character wise, and with me already having a Necrons army, felt a bit samey. On the other side my Necrons have a lot of background fluff (not written down, sadly) for their characters so it feels a bit like my Necrons will be the ones with personalities and the Space Marines struggle to get rid of their human weak emotions – delightfully ironic, am I right?!

Anyways, in order to not reinvent the wheel every time I paint I´ve decided to jot down the “recipe” for my Sons of Medusa. Maybe someone else will find it useful, who knows!  

Step-by-step

 

Preparation

• Citadel Black spray undercoat
• Army painter Angel Green spray
• Airbrush Vallejo Game Air Scorpion Green
• Light zenithal airbrush with Vallejo Light Livery Green

Basecoat

• Army Painter Matt Black on the non-green things (straps, guns, purity seals…)
• Grey Seer (or Vallejo Game Air Stonewall Grey) Bolter handles, Purity seals, Gun strap
• Paint Iron/Silver parts with Vallejo Game Air Gunmetal
• Citadel Contrast Gore-Grunta Fur for Pistol grips
• Citadel Contrast Snakebite Leather for Boltgun leather strap

Highlights/Shading

• Vallejo Game Color Green Wash (Every other green wash turned out horrible)
• Highlight Black parts with Reaper Stormy Grey and mix with Reaper Pure white on your wet palette
• Nuln Oil on iron bits
• Highlight iron with another go of Vallejo Game Air Gunmetal (Unless you’re feeling lazy. Sometimes I skip this.)
• For Chest skull, Vallejo Model Air Greyish blue -> Reaper Snow Shadow -> Citadel Drakenhof Nightshade -> Reaper Pure White

Helmet

Link – he come to town!

I was about to split the post in two, but who cares, really?

I made myself some demon twins for Malifaux; Lelu & Lilitu. Albeit with more fitting clothes, of course! Pardon for the variation in picture quality, I threw in a few WIP pictures. Sculpting hands is hard work!

 

 

 

 

 

 

And the WIP’s

 

 

WIP Wounded city, Zuzzy gaming mat

Some more work done on my gaming table project – more specifically the “Wounded city” gaming mat. I ordered the mat in February and received it the other week.

Straight out of the box it works well enough to play on, but it’s sort of boring with a completely gray board.

First up, I cleaned the mat by dabbing it with a wet towel and then left it to dry for a day or so. Afterwards, I began painting, first by “drybrushing” it with a roller in a light gray tone and afterwards picking out the details, such as cracks and brickwork. The cracks were initially painted with an old GW Black ink, and afterwards with a really thinned out GW Chaos black. The red bricks were painted with a thin layer of red acrylic paint.

The entire mat after drybrush and details. It doesn’t look awesome at this point, but I hope that the final wash will rectify some of the glaring weaknesses, like the roller-marks.

Detail of the mat at this point. No masterpiece, but washing should take care of that!

The sample piece

Apart from the mat, I received a sample piece as an excuse for having to wait as long as I did for delivery. This seems to be pretty much how Zuzzy does with every order, and as nice as freebies are, I’d rather see them trying to speed up their delivery process. Anyways, I figured I’d use this as a base for some terrain, so I did this piece while I did the entire mat. I also washed this one first, since I didn’t want to risk ruining the entire mat with a failed wash.

At this stage, the wash still wasn’t completly dry, and I was afraid it was too brown.

After some additional time drying, it looks pretty ok. A bit brownish, a bit grayish, but not over the top. I’m slightly worried about the wrinkles, but some further inspection should reveal as to whether it’s permanent or just temporary.

Anyways, more to come!

Bauhaus hussars

Finished assembling my 23 Bauhaus hussars tonight. Lots of filin’!

WIP graveyard

Just a quick post about my graveyard project. So far it’s pretty shy, but the plan is to eventually make at least enough terrain to play some malifaux on, possibly any 28mm miniature game, if I get enough.
Anyways, a graveyard. There’s still stuff left to do with it but.. It’s a start.

Magnets – what do they stick to?

Yes, it’s been ages since I last posted. It doesn’t mean I haven’t done stuff though! It just means that my Wyrd inserts that I need to finish my models are lost in space somewhere and I don’t want to post the stuff without bases.

Also, I’ve busied myself with magnets, lots of magnets!

I love magnets. And cheese. If there’d ever be a magnet flavored cheese I’d be in heaven.

Anyways, here’s a weeks worth of magnetizing!

Chaos Space Marines Revisited

Rawr, some good olé 40k in the middle of all this Malifaux focus!

Vallejo heavy transparent gel, take 2

Myyeeaaah, two weeks later and these are the results. The smaller blob would pass on quite nicely as icey stuff, but the big blog never really reached the transparency which was promised. I’m aware that “real ice” aint 100% glass either…but that’s what it said on the label! Curses. Now to figure out what to do with it, now that I know how it works…

 

 

Vallejo heavy transparent gel, take 1

Finally decided to try out the Vallejo gel and see what it looks like. Haven’t found any reviews online so will just have to experiment myself. Hopefully it’ll turn out as some sort of snow/ice/water effect. Will post again once it’s dry.

Live long and prosper.

Ashes to ashes, Rust to rust

Some more wip pics. Bases still missing, sadly… Ah well!
It’s progress, at least.
This time a Guardian and a Watcher.