First bit of paint

So I took the plunge and decided to base colour my guard :/

As my airbrush is being cleaned at the moment and not wanting to wait I've gone for the use of a coloured primer as its an easy option

I've gone for leather brown as this is roughly the base colour I was after and I had a can sat about.

 Again abit sunny today so my pics seem grey/ light.

As you can see the army painter spray covers well, it didn't pool in any places or spatter and settled well giving a good surface finish

There is plenty of detail left and I'm now going to do a couple of test to decide on the colour of the armour plates and what shade I should use to highlight the uniform  

The other stuff

So why has it taken over a year to get the guard army started?

Well I moved house twice got married and had a lot on in work and there were other painting bits like these

These are a current bit of work and not quite finished :)

Had a dabble in dystopian wars :)

Painted a lot of saga bits for fleebay :)

And for my friend Dave at WarGameStore 

Still chipping away with my vampire counts army but 90 zombies are TOTALY finished along with 75 skeleton warriors :)

Painted a lot of fames of war for me and for friends

Dipped a lot of FOW too :)

And got into bolt action :)

And along with all this 

Had major stomach operation

Got married

Got an asbo cat

Got a silly dog

And in 5 months this little person will arrive :)

So I've had a good excuse to put the project to one side but now it's seems like a good chance to kick start it into life and get it going :)

To Dip or not to Dip

So as I'm getting ready to start painting my new army I'm finding myself torn on the decision "should I dip them?"

 I've used the Army Painter dip loads of times now with great effect on 15mm upto 28mm but most of it has been rank and file so lots of models with little detail.

 I find the army painter primers are very good, both value and quality and come in a good selection from white and black primer through a decent selection of colours that match both 40k like blood angels, space wolfs and ultra marines all the way through to German grey for FOW or Bolt Action.

The dips come in three shades 

Soft tone.

Strong tone.

Dark tone.

Although there are a fantastic product and will deliver fantastic results for a decent painter it can feel like you are cheating or being lazy.

So this is my conundrum, do I make my life easy and just dip or do I put the effort in and paint my guard and use the standard method and take my time and build up the layers of paint and apply washes and highlights?

                           Or

Do I venture into that dark dark mysterious world of

Oil washes!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The start

So after two days of clipping sanding and gluing this is what I have

(Sorry about the pic, very sunny today)

HQ with creed and kell 

7 rough riders 

Veteran platoon x3

As you can see the FW kits I used are old  you can tell this by the colour of the resin, I've mainly used the FW heads and helmets and backpacks to add a small theme and when I can model each guardsman without a helmet but ensuring one is attached to the left side.

Each Sgt or Nco has a peaked forage cap so I can again add a small theme.

I've decided to make sure each squad has a heavy weapons team and also decided all three of my veteran squads will have heavy bolters again adding a theme to my army. Any addition weapons teams will have other heavy weapons but il have to sit down and dig through all the othe bits I have and see what I can make up.

So for now this is my guard

Il be working on the paint scheme later today and once I've decided ill get cracking with it.

Thanks for reading

Fear naught

The Guard Will Rise

After a break away from 40k for over a year (sorry) I've decided to build my guard army, or should I say re build after a insurance claim for an old guard army that was lost had now been settled (one for one) I've not really got any excuse for not building it.

This time I've decided to try and make it look different without slapping tones of green stuff and doing daft conversions.

I've used some old forge world IG conversion kits that I've had sat about since 2004-5 is and some rough riders that I've had since 1991.

I'm going to run it with veterans mounted in transport and try to have it as manoeuvrable as possible, and avoid rank and file and mass numbers.

The paint scheme will be slightly different to what I was going todo as I want them to stand out slightly without being OTT.

Again sorry for the delay and for not posting but please keep an eye open on this and do follow my progress :)