Imperial Knights painted with the aid of an airbrush - kind of

Dave or better known as Dwez from 40kaddicts sent me a text saying take a look at this on Twitter and you should put your stuff on; the twit said "Hear ye, hear ye! A grand galactic knightly tournament declared in ye old Emperor’s name. Share your loyal and heretic Knights with us!"
So I put my Chaos Knights on and I got some nice positive re-twittes and comments.  Then I realised I hadn't photographed or blogged about my new loyalist Knights, so hear goes.

Following on from the strange and mixed response from my post on my "Project: Custodes Castellan Knight" I had decided to paint my Imperial knights using my airbrush.  I still consider myself to be a novice at airbrushing but I felt confident enough after painting my Castellan.  I had already painted the blue armour on them all, and I had finished my warlord, but I wasn't happy with the gold trim which was hand painted. as you can see below, the airbrush gold on the Castellan looks better, in my opinion.

I stripped the armour off him and dug out all the other armoured bits from my other Knights and started to mask up.

This is a long and laborious process, and adding cleaning the airbrush every blink of an eye, it can put people off airbrushing.  But the results speak for them selves, it's not quicker, it's just an alternative method of painting.   

Then following my technique I used on the Castellan I began to airbrush away with no idea how hey would turn out as it is all masked off.

I revealed one first to see if I liked the effect, and I did, phew.

It all looks a little too clean and tidy so it needs a lot of weathering.

OK so far so good, but now they needed basing and I wanted a theme base for all five but I didn't want the bases for my three un-based ones to over shadow the first two.  I decided to use the same Aquila and add some building wall sections and rubble, hoping it would work together.

You can also see I have some 10cm bases in the shot too, they are from my Armiger Helverins which I still haven't finished oops.  I airbrushed the bases just in the same style as  my Warlord and Castellan and here is the results of many months of work.

And as a passing shot this is my full collection of Knights and stuff I hope you enjoy :)

Painting Space Hulk Genestealers the quick and easy way

Since lockdown and spending all my time in isolation I have been relying on, and teaching my son how to play 40K, but 7 hours is way to long of a game.  So I cracked open my Space Hulk boxset and OMG I had forgotten what a great game it is.  I still have the original in the loft but the figures in the new one are amazing.  After we had a few games with my son, who has a very small "Genestealer cuts army" turned round to me and said "wouldn't it be great if these figures where painted" and secretly he wanted them for his army, he thinks I'm daft.  But... yes he is right it would be good if they where painted.   

Before we started to paint the figures I decided to buy some of GW's "Sector Mechanicus Industrial Bases" and start trimming the Genestealers to fit on their new bases.  

Last year when my son started painting (before contrast paints came out) he found normal GW paints too thick to use and didn't like painting.   I mixed up some washes for hes Genestealer Cults army.  He painted all hes figures and he was happy with them, so I started to paint the Patriarch in these washes, but I wanted them to look like the ones on the box and also simple and achievable for my son to do. 

I decided to delve into the realms of contrast paint as I think these paints are aimed at my sons level and age bracket and I would be able to get the effect and tone of what I want.  I chose Akhelian Green with a Druchii Violet wash for the carapace and Magos Purple for the skin.  I was happy with the effect with just these three quick coats of paints.  I painted his other Patriarch and showed him how easy it would be.  

He liked the effect so much that we based the original Space Hulk Genestealers and he wanted to paint them and I would paint the Genestealers from the new Space Hulk.

They don't look bad all together 

The new ones all painted.

And the old ones my son painted

Lord of the Rings Battle companies pt1 and 2

A while back our gaming buddy Otty wanted to try Battle Companies and after many discussions on you only need a few figures and it wont take long to paint, I purchased some "Hunter Orcs on Fell Wargs" thinking one day maybe in 15 years time I will get around to it.  Afterwards I started thinking how did that happen? I have so much stuff to paint why did I buy more? then it struck me "I had been Gríma worm tongued", bugger! 

To continue with the ethos of what to do in lockdown while disheartened with 40K, I started to put the figures together and create rocky bases, using up some white milliput  The arms are a little small then what I am normally used too, but they are a only 20mm, but  I really like the Wargs though.  So I thought I would look at getting another pack then I spotted this on ebay:-

11 Hunter Orcs on Fell Wargs and 15 Wargs, GW sell the Hunter Orcs on Fell Wargs for £25 for 6 and 6 Fell Wargs for £20 to buy new would almost cost me £110.  So you could appreciate this caught my interest.  Sometimes I love ebay but I do feel very sorry for the person who sold these because I bought them for a steal, only £30...... wow that was lucky.  Not only do I have a Battle company, but I have almost enough for a full army.   

My idea was to do a step by step guide to speed batch painting, I thought I had emailed all the images off my phone before I deleted them unfortunatley I was wrong so I lost all the images so here are the finished Wargs, bugger!

These are the original 6 with milliput bases, I added some shields before I started painting them

And this is the full army, and base coated, ink wash with Agrax Earthshade and finally a dry brush highlight.  Very quick and fairly effective on mass.... :)