Painting competition: Scout biker WIP

Here are the promised images of the biker for my space marine scout bike.  This is my first attempt at painting yellow power armour.  More pictures and details after the jump...

Painting Competition: Scout biker base.

The completed base for my scout biker. Loads more after the jump...

Painting competition: Possible chapters for scout biker.

I've narrowed down the possible chapters for my scout biker to the above, from left to right; Lamenters, Howling Griffons and Imperial Fists.  You may notice a slight tinge of yellow to the proceedings, but I've never tried painting yellow power armour and I fancy a challenge.

My current thoughts are as follows:

Lamenters; cool chapter badge and fun doing the checks but the chest eagle looks a little washed out in bone and I'm worried the bike might end up looking like a New York taxi in yellow with black and white checks.

Howling Griffons; nice bright colours but I'm not sure that I could pull of that chapter badge in freehand.

Imperial Fists; I like the bright yellow armour with red chest eagle and the chapter badge looks do able but I know at least one other person is thinking of doing them.  On the plus side I found these on 40k giveaways blog.

A really nice looking scout paint job ready for me to work from....

So votes and ideas please, which should I go for.....

Mordheim: Sculpting city bases tutorial.

I want to give my Mordheim warband some nice warhammer city type bases so I tried to sculpt some from scratch. 

Mordheim: WIP Flagellants.

As I had bought the empire flagellants boxed set to make my kneeling prisoner I would use some of the rest of the figures to make flagellants for my fledgling witch hunter warband.  More after the jump...

Painting competition: Scout biker WIP.

                                                        

The next model for my local GW painting competition is the space marine scout biker.  Now bikes are awkward, either they are very boringly posed or rather unconvincingly mid wheelie.  So after some web based research I found the above image and the following conversion (by maelstrom on Dakka Dakka). I was inspired by this unusual take on a biker, like he's just skidded to a halt and is taking aim at some incoming enemy. After the jump I'll show you how I tried to represent this idea.

Review: Colour Shaper.

For my recent Witch hunter display model I wanted to do some quite extensive (for me anyway) greenstuff work on cloaks and flesh.  Now I'm no expert at all but I find trying to get smooth shapes into greenstuff really hard with the standard GW sculpting tool, so I had a look around to see if I could find anything better to work with.  A number of people recommended one of these.  They're called colour shapers and they are just like a paintbrush except the tip is solid silicone. They come in a variety of sizes, shapes and grades of stiffness.  I purchased a small round tipped one (like the middle one above) in a firmish grade (grey I think) to do the smooth cloak folds.

Showcase: Witch hunter.

These are the pictures of my Witch hunter model that I am entering into the next round of my local GW monthly painting competition. Loads more pictures and details after the jump....

WIP: Base for witch hunter.

I've gone all out on the base for the witch hunter model. I got hold of a nice block of wood and used some left over varnish to make it look all posh.  Up close after the break...

WIP: Kneeling prisoner.

To up the ante with my next painting competition entry I decided to try and make a mini-diorama.  I wanted to show him judging an heretic as his pose lends itself to this kind of setting.  To the end I needed a kneeling prisoner, however GW don't make a kneeling figure to the best of my knowledge.  The best I could find was the empire flagellant in stocks.

2012 Review

It was only eight months ago that I started this blog and the new year seemed a perfect time to review what has happened and thank everybody who has commented.

In May I started to paint miniatures again after a break of over ten years, so here's a quick look back at the progress I've made since then.

This was the first test model I did for my Astral Knights chapter, not a bad paint job for a first attempt.