UntraMarines Stormraven

Ultramarine Stormraven

 

                                                    

Mice & Mystics

                                                                 Mice & Mystics

X-wing update

Added a few filters and extra weathering using some tamiya clear smoke today. Hope it's not too much, or too subtle for that matter

Eldar speed painted

Inspired by Phil's sexy looking scorpions and Clement's awesome yellow Orks, here's some eldar I speed painted in a couple of days. The wave serpent still needs the details and guns painting though.

The wave serpent after some airbrush treatment. The metal parts were painted using silver and metallic blue. Painted the cockpit and the inside of the cockpit canopy with an OSL effect using clear paints.

The serpent's shading looked nice but a bit too subtle for my liking with Eldar and plus the flames were sticking out like a sore thumb so I added an extreme highlight with vallejo Ice Yellow using my airbrush. Made a greater contrast between the shadows and the highlights and tied the blue flames and yellow surrounding together nicely.

Underside was highlighted from black using white and then layered with some minitaire ghost tints. Tried using these for some OSL type effects on the pink bits too...

Used these guardians as test subjects for some home made paints so each one is slightly different

Chaos HellBrutes

                                                              Thousand Sons HellBrute

                                                                      Khorne Hellbrute

Striking Scorpians and Pheonix Lord Kandaras

                                                              Striking Scorpians

Pheonix Lord Kandaras

Scotty's 1/72 Tie Fighter from Fine Molds

Part 2

After waiting for nearly a week for my batteries to turn up I continued on with the tie fighter build. My original rig for the battery didn't work so well so I managed to find a button battery surface mount which is nearly small enough to fit in the bottom of the tie. I cut bits off and sanded it down and just managed to get it to fit right so the bottom lid piece will also fit. There's a magnet behind the battery holder which is mounted in the hole underneath the pilot seat and there's a magnet installed in the centre of the bottom lid piece so it can be easily removed to put a battery in for lit or a magnet in the batteries place for non lit. This will also serve as a magnetic mounting point for a flying base in the future.

The canopies were polished using tamiya finish compound and then dipped in acrylic floor wax. I masked off the canopies using the masking stickers supplied with the kit. These were printed on a kind of sticker and needed to be cut out with a scalpel blade. I've never used printed masking stickers before. They fit perfectly but the glue is very weak and the sticker material rather thick so I tried burnishing them down a bit with a blunted tooth pick to avoid spray going beneath the masks. I'm not sure how well they are going to work but I'll have to wait until the painting is complete to find out. Fingers crossed. Here's a great tip for gluing transparent parts to your models. Leave some acrylic floor wax in a paper cup over night. The next day the wax will be thick and sticky due to evaporation and the paper cup absorbing some of the fluid. This can then be applied to the canopy or whatever using a toothpick and when dry will be crystal clear.

I masked around the inside parts of the wings and sprayed them with black primer. I then gave them a coat of satin varnish which should give a bit of a textural contrast to the rest of the tie which will be all matt. I masked them before painting so a strong bond can still be attained when glued into the frames. I also drilled out a hole on the inside frame piece of each wing panel so I can mount a magnet in each later. I mounted a magnet in each wing arm of the hull. This will allow the wings to be easily removed and re attached to the finished model for safe transport.

Here's a pick of the hull fully built with the canopies attached. I sprayed the canopies and did some very basic pre-shading using thinned down black primer.

Thanks

Scotty

Scotty's 1/72 Tie Fighter from Fine Molds

Since I enjoyed bulding the X-Wing so much I've dove straight into building a tie fighter. This is a much simpler model than the X-Wing so It should build quicker. I'm going to do a light grey paint job on this one like on the first star wars movie. I'm going to do a build log for this one.

 I started today and got the Cockpit finished. Note I changed the kit part for the little computer thing on the front hull piece which was solid plastic. I thought a little H.U.D. would look cool, even if it's not film accurate.

I soon realised that, unlike the X-Wing model, when this is finished very little light will get into the cockpit and hence render detailing it nicely a complete waste of time. So I've decided to try and light the cockpit with an LED. Now then, I love models with lighting incorporated because it really brings a model to life. However I hate the fact that most lit models are powered externally and so they can't be picked up and moved around while lit. I also hate to see mounting holes on models. So if I'm going to light a model of a vehicle it must be powered by battery and be self contained. This is very tricky with such a tiny model but here's what I've come up with. I found a tiny little 3 volt button battery which is 10mm x 2.5mm, just enough to power a single LED and should fit in the hull underneath the cockpit. I couldn't find a battery holder small enough to fit which will also allow easy removal and installation of the battery in the model. So I'm making my own battery holder using magnets which will also hold the bottom piece of the model in place.

Well the circuit works well and the bottom holds in place very well so I'm looking forward to receiving my battery. To finish off the cockpit I added some tiny little detailing wires.