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 :)

Imperial Guard Leman Russ

After trying my paint scheme out on a few guard miniature i thought i would try it out on a tank, and as you all know the back bone of any Guard army is the Leman Russ battle tank.
so after i Doug one out i thought i would see if the army painter skull bone would be able to cover the already painted Leman Russ which had been under coated with chaos black and then painted with Dark angels green.

this is how it turned out with one coat!

As you can see it came out better than i thought :)

so after this good result i set about painting all the silver bits.

after this i tried the same wash process i used on the other miniatures, using Devlin Mud and Badda Black.
this is were it went abit wrong, after about three hours of trying to avoid brush stroke and pooling it wasn't going so well. after trying everything i could think to do nothing seemed to work. even asking the advice from dave at www.wargamestore.com.
It got to the point were i thought i would have to re spray it and start again, so i got the army painter spray can out and then thought i would try and scrub off some of the paint with some warm water and a nail brush.
after about three minutes of scrubbing gently i ran the model under the tap to rinse it abit and to see what had come off and i was amazed to see this.

I don't know how this has happened but it seemed to have weathered the tank brilliantly and given it the rough battle hardened look i was after. so once i get the time next week i will add the detail to the rest of it.

Yesterday i was asked if i would like to paint an Imperial Guard Lord Commissar for my local http://www.wargamestore.com/, but was also asked if i could show step by step how i painted by another friend using my previous paint scheme.

so this is a step by step guide to how its done and how easy a good paint job can be achieved with minimal effort.

• first after a small bit of Assembly i base coated my model with army painter bleach bone colour.

• once this was dry after about 15-25 min, i then painted the cape, peak cap, boots and shoulder pads with Graveyard Earth. iv thinned down my paints a tiny bit but normally one and abit coats dos the job, just so its a solid colour.



• Next i painted all the silver bits like his power sward, chest plate and any trim parts with Mithril Silver. i also painted the fur trim to the top of his cape with Codex grey.

• The next step was simple but it is down to you, i painted the sash with Mechrite red as this colour is a theme in my guard army but as its the most prominent colour on the model you can use any colour you want, blues are good and so are greens, because once there washed the give off a royal affect.
• i also added the first was to his face, using a detail brush i applied a thin layer of Ogryn flesh, allowing it to seep into all the recesses

• Next i painted the hilt of the power sword with Shining gold ant the peak of the cap with Chaos black, once this was dry i washed the whole model APART FROM THE FACE with Devlan mud and allowed to dry.



• next i added any final colours, i leave any small detail colours till after i have washed with Devlan mud so i don't dull or darken them too much. once these colours and final touch ups are done, you now was the model with Badab black APART FROM THE FACE. and allow to dry.

• The final step now was to lightly dry brush the fur to of the cape with a tiny bit of Codex grey, the edge of the sword, trim of the cap and shoulder pads or any part you have painted with Mithril silver just to highlight. doing the same with the hilt of the sword but using Burnished gold.

•  All you need to do now is decide on how you will base your model, sadly i ran out of PVA glue so will have to wait till i get some more

I hope you like this guide and the out come of this painting scheme, please feel free to comment as long as its nice.all the paints and tools use i bought from http://www.wargamestore.com/ which i highly recommend above all, this model will be on display there.