From Barks: How I paint yellow Lamenters (Inconstant) (79 points)

For the last 18 months I've found myself painting Lamenters. I often get asked about my yellow technique, so I made a little tutorial.

Preparation

i. Remove moldlines and assemble. I glue sand etc. to the base now. I prepare and paint the backpack and head separately. 

ii. Undercoat Vallejo Bonewhite rattlecan.

iii. Paint the base.

iv. Drybrush white. I've found this subtle slapchop works well for me.

Okay, here's the real meat.

1. Contrast Ironjawz Yellow

2. SMS Umber Wash. This is an oil-based product by an Australian model paint company. I work it into all the creases...

3. ... then I clean it up with Artists White Spirit and a makeup sponge. I get rid of the worst excesses (e.g. back of the hand, shoulder pad) but it doesn't have to be pristine. That's it! Your yellow is done. No highlighting required.

4. Paint the rest of the Lamenter. The left pauldron (chequered) is hand-painted (another tutorial on my blog); the tactical symbol on the right is a decal.

I appreciate an Australian oil wash paint is a bit niche, but I'm sure a similar product exists elsewhere. The point is that I've found a reproducible way for me to get masses of yellow done without losing my mind with edge-highlighting. I've seen nice things done with pink pre-shading, but I'm committed to this technique now. It doesn't have to be too neat; the rest of the details hide major flaws in the yellow. These figures won't win individual prizes but they're done.

These marines are sneaky special forces infiltrators, stealthy 7' canaries. I'm thinking of playing Black Ops with them.

Do you find your Chapter, or does it find you? About two years ago something clicked and I realised Lamenters were for me. They've a striking colour scheme that looks good on the table. They are prone to severe melancholy and try to do the right thing, which is a rarity in the 41st millennium. They are, however, cursed by extreme bad luck. So if I have a terrible game, I'm playing them right!

No-one likes them due to their curse. They've been nearly wiped out on multiple occasions. They're experts at doomed last stands. They will sacrifice themselves to ignore orders and evacuate the last colonists from advancing hordes, only to find the colonists were secret cultists all along...

And so, I claim the Inconstant circle of Paradise ("think of something which may try its best but often falls a bit short").

7x big marines 49 points

Inconstant +20 points

Side duels

Can opener +49

Squirrel +1

Skullz +12

From Millsy:

I wish you'd posted this about six months ago Barks. I painted some yellow marines and was not at all happy with the outcome whilst yours are the bomb! Crisp, clean and the exact right shade for Lamenters (and other yellow chapters too).

Thanks for taking the time to explain in detail and with step-by-step images. That's worth another 10 points for adding to the collective knowledge base on the Challenge.

Nice work mate! 79 points for your tally.

Cheers,
Millsy

From RhysH - Rohan and proxy Wildmen of Dunland (85 Points)

Rhys spent the last two weeks working on this entry, mostly the two Rohan heroes on their horses. This post is, firstly, the two new Rohan heroes from the recent movie, the sons of Helm Hammerhand. The second part is some Warlord Games Vikings that Rhys is going to proxy in as Wildmen of Dunland.

The brothers. I noticed that I put the foot versions next to their brother rather than their own mounted version.

These models are good representations of the new state of the art that GW brings to plastics. The detail is superb but the conversion value is pretty much limited to weapon swaps, though Zorpa Zorp did some nice work with Greenstuff on his YouTube channel so it is possible.

Rhys is going for the winter fighting around Helm's Deep on these models, hence the snow bases. 

Rhys spent a lot of time on these models. They are his only Rohan and he wanted to do them justice. I think we need to work on his washes some more. He's been using them more and I think they really make the details pop where he did.

The models are very dynamic. I have a pretty serious dislike for the old Rohan horses, caused in part by the bin full of broken ones on my shelf and partly by the static, sameness of them. Rhys really made these two pop. He used Speed Paints for the first time and really liked them on the horses.

Next up is a group of Warlord Games Vikings. We're both usually a fan of Warlord but I think they bought this set off of someone else and they, frankly, suck. I showed Rhys the Victrix set and that's the one he wanted, but these were available on Amazon for his Christmas money and Victrix was not.

These are Warlord metals. Much better than the plastics, but I think Rhys had a priming problem since we are in the hand priming season in Colorado. We lost some of the detail, especially on the face of the guy on the right.

Rhys said he really enjoyed painting these. We discussed the use of washes on the grey hair but he wanted them to be "wintery" so he left them as is.

My photography didn't really capture the work he put in on the cape, but he tried his hand at layering on this, as well as the capes of the Rohan brothers. It definitely worked better live than what I captured here.

Last up is the two handed wildmen. The less said the better.

Rhys has a bunch more of these guys but has sort of stalled out on them due to just not liking the scuplts so we'll see if he pushes through or changes gears.

And the side shot.

This entry is:

13 x 28mm foot models x 5 = 65 pts

2 x 28mm mounted models x 10 = 20 pts

Total = 85 pts

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Good work here Rhys, especially with those mounted Rohan models. I like that you're brining in more shading and highlighting into your painting. It really pays off. I definitely sympathize with you on the early GW plastic horses as I had several that broke near the hoof - VERY annoying. As to winter priming, I would recommend a cheap airbrush  (the ones with their own internal compressor in the handgrip) along with any of the Vallejo series of airbrush primer paints. They have been working well for me. Here's a link to one that has had decent reviews. I hope this helps!

- Curt & Huck

From BenitoV: M8 Greyhound (20 points)

I had the opportunity to undust the airbrush this week, coinciding with a visit to my parents' summer house where I have all my airbrushing stuff, making a quick work on this M8 Greyhound that sadly sitting on the desk for a few years now.

The M8 was an ubiquitous light armoured vehicle at the front of the  the US and British tank spearheads in the Second World War units, seeing service since 1943. They were mostly allocated to the scout units of the armoured divisions, but also served in independent formations attached to infantry divisions.

According to Wikipedia more than 8,000 units were built of different variants during and after the war. It saw service well into the 70s in different world armies, including the Spanish Foreign Legion while patrolling the former Sahara colonies.

I painted the vehicle in a dark US Army green base; and for the panelling, I mixed the base colour with  a desert/sand yellow colour. The final step was the weathering using some AK pigments (European light Earth and Truck rust).

The model is an old 28mm resin and metal Warlord reference, that was replaced a few years ago by a new plastic reference. Quality is not too bad but the upper HMG ring over the turret (soft metal) was very feeble and difficult to affix to the turret.

You may notice that I did not add any crew. Unfortunately, I thought I had some spare models US tankers in my lead pile, but not, so I'll have to print or buy and add in the future.

This M8 in 28mm will add 20 points to my Challenge score this year. 

     

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I always enjoy your WWII work Benito, especially your efforts with vehicles. Beautiful work on this M8. Even though there may have been a few aspects that were challenging, you really did a spectacular job on the painting and weathering of this workhorse (faithful hound?). Well done!

- Curt & Huck 

   

From TeemuL: A Fistful of Skeletons [Heresy] (121 points)

One of the many sideprojects I have (I guess I don't really have any main projects:)) is this Warmaster army. I have painted couple of bases before for the previous Challenges, here's one example: Heavy Metal. In December I heard there might be other players in my area, so I decided I need to paint couple of more units to my army. I need some character at least to lead an army, but with these I have enough units for a very small army for a small battle to learn the rules. I guess. There are six bases of basic skeletons with handweapons and shields including two command bases and one base of cavalry. I have now six cavalry bases in total and some archer units from earlier painting sessions.

These are all painted with Contrast paints excluding the metal areas and freehand skulls on the shields. Basing is simple and traditional, goblin green everywhere, then some PVA glue and green sawdust and they are ready to battle on the legendary green grass graveyards of Khemri... I understand the gravestones kind of underline the fact, that these are undead from the graves, some skeletons are still emerging from underground. But why there would be battle in the graveyard? Happily this seems to be a human graveyard and all the warriors were buried with their green shields (with skull motifs) and red shafted weapons! I mean how ragtag they'd look like if they were just random unarmed people from every race in different coloured rags? No Necromancer would never accept a chaos like that!

I must say they look rather nice, grouped thightly together like this and seen from above. Quite pleasing, I'd say. And still enough details and size to actually paint them. And they can be painted in reasonable amount of time, too. Hmm... What would be an ideal "scale" for a wargamer, I guess that is a question I must ask myself (and everyone else on the internet forums). It would be much simpler, if all the miniatures would be the same size, don't you agree? :)

Here they are from the side. As you can see, they are not nicely glued to the bases... They were painted by previous owner and I stripped the paint. I tried to be clever and not remove all the basing material, believing it would make it easier to hide metal bases. Yeah, you can see. The sawdust is so light, it doesn't really cover any gaps, I need to be more careful with the next batch and add some filler to the edges. Additionally some of the strips are not in 90 degree angle, but leaning a bit forward, something I noticed too late. Or was too lazy. But I believe they look quite ok on the battlefield.

Finally a closeup of the hand painted skulls and some bony butts. Geoff has made an observation that necromancy is heresy and I will follow that idea and claim 20 bonus points for Heresy circle (which is next to the Violence circle where I were).

There are 4 cavalry models, 3 points each. And then 89 skeletons in total (I have counted two half skeletons as one full) for 1 point each. 101 points from the skeletons and 20 bonus points, 121 points!

Additionally 90 skulls on skeletons (some are too hooded to count) and 3 on banners plus 83 hand painted skulls on shields and banners.176 skulls in total.

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Oooh, Barks will be very pleased with this entry, Teemu. Wonderful work here. Tomb Kings were my first Warmaster army way back in the day and I think you've done a great job on these boney fellas. I agree, 10mm is a wonderful scale to work in and it just works so nicely for close-ranked units, giving a terrific sense of mass. Also, nice work on hand painting all those skulls on the front ranks' shields - this will please Skully McSkullface to no end. 

Well done Teemu!

- Curt & Huck

From Millsy: Back in Black... More 28mm Arabs (90 points)

G'day All,

Apparently a week off from painting black was enough and I'm back with more Arabs. This time it's another ten infantry (Gripping Beast with Fireforge Games upgrades), two cavalry (again Gripping Beast with Fireforge Games upgrades) and the last four miniatures from the Reaper Miniatures Legends of the Sands box set.

A mate pointed out if you are doing Mutatawwi'a for SAGA you are better off leaning hard into either mounted or foot troops so I added another unit to the foot collection. Simple enough to assemble, paint and base, and although they are different style minis they mix well enough with the upgrades.

The two mounted miniatures upgrade one of my earlier units to five miniatures, plus add a mounted warlord for SAGA that'll do nicely until I either buy something fancier or just stop caring this isn't a fancier figure and forget all about it.

Finally, there's four more cracking character Reaper sculpts... two rather flexible ladies (I mean they are limber, NOT from a morals POV!), a wizardy vizier type and his lovely apprentice. The latter two will also do very nicely for Frostgrave which is a nice unexpected bonus.

Points wise...

• 14 x 28mm infantry = 70 points
• 2  x 28mm cavalry = 20 points

Total: 90 points

Next up, yet more Kruleboyz. Thanks for looking!

Artist: Adani & Wolf

Album: The Irresistible Dust on the Floor

Artist: Overcoats

Album: The Fight

Artist: The Mission UK

Album: Carved in Sand

Cheers,

Millsy

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Wonderful work on these black-clad Mutatawwi'a. The little punch of colour really adds the chef's kiss to these guys, especially the shields on the mounted fellas. Your stuff really makes me want to get back to my Siege of Malta project. Inspiring stuff! I also really like your 'local colour' with the Reaper models. The vizier and the red-robed dancer are my personal faves. Well done Mr. Mills!

- Curt & Huck

From SanderS: Saxons and Stompy Robots! (330 points)

Hoi,

Last week I missed my posting window because I was busy painting up this lot! We'll start off with some more Big Stompy Robots for the Side Duel okay? As I really love Battletech I have quite a few different factions. One of those is my FedCom Aragon Borderers regiment. The colour scheme for these involves a lot of blue and to make it a bit more interesting I included some white panels. 

Next up are some of my 1:72 plastics. These are early Napoleonic Saxons in their spiffing white uniforms. I painted up a brigade as that's pretty much all the Saxon infantry I have to compliment my early war Prussian army. 

Points wise this is rather a nice amount for the leaderboard: there's the 8 mechs at 5 points each counting up to 40 points. The 3 regiments of 24 figures each in 20mm/ 1:72 is 288 points unless I am mistaken, which makes the total a whopping 328 points this week. Pretty much the closest I will be getting to a points bomb this Challenge I guess. Off to painting contributions for the circles of Hell now!

Cheers everyone!

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Holy smokes, this is quite the bomb, Sander! I always enjoy your Battletech entries as they are so wonderfully clean and colourful. I really like the saturated blue you've used and I think your choice of a few white contrasting armoured panels is spot-on. They look terrific. The same goes for your Napoleonic  Saxons. Very spiffing and tidy work here. I love the early war uniforms with the bicorne - everything is better with a bicorne, I say. The only thing better is a czapska, but I digress.

328 points? Lets round it up to 330 to include the brave banners (and because it rolls off the tongue better).

- Curt & Huck