'nids part 260 - Biotitan Tyranid Hierophant pt.14 - Flesh and bone

The Chitin highlights are all done, but rather than post another 'save point' progress shot I;ve just cracked on with a first set of Vermilion highlights on the fleshy bits.

There are still some pink bits to do on the tongue and pipework on the torso. It looks a bit garish at the moment but gloss varnish and Tamiya Clear Red X-27 will change all that.

As stated the chitin highlights got completed.

It was a hard slog in the end but the Hobby Season deadline is just 46 days away now and I'm itching to see this complete so I can tackle that last of my Big 3.

With the fleshy bits done I moved on to the bone highlights. I'd gone with Army Painter Skeleton Bone first time around and as Valejo Bonewhite is lighter I did the next set of highlights with that but honestly I'm seeing very little difference. I'm not sure if this approach is worth the effort

You can see here that the right hand side has had a Bonewhite highlight and the left hasn't. It's almost impossible to tell the difference and I think I'm just covering up a lot of what I did anyway, making the fine lines thicker.

But I also applied the 'third highlights' in places - ends of ribs and the first two striation to the front of each rib. Even that is difficult to tell, so I'm just going to continue to use this second highlight colour instead of the Bonewhite across the entire model. Hopefully the increased contrast between my highlight mix and the Skeleton Bone will help.

I'm also going to add some shading under the ribs, unsurprisingly in the shadow areas. Hopefully it'll add a bit more definition as it's looking a little one dimensional [although technically with width and height it's two dimensional]. Half the ribcage in 45 minutes though was good going. Hopefully I can be happy with that finish the body and then crack on with the legs.

Principles or toy soldiers?

This month the staff recognition scheme thought our team deserved the reward. Previously I hadn't engaged with the process as it's built on staff recognising each others efforts which smacks of 'fishing for likes' and having an employee of the month based on that can be open for abuse. I'd much prefer the powers that be were directly aware of what we do instead of crowd sourcing nominations so they can remain arms-length.

However, I know what all our team members nationwide did last month and as there's 20+ of us that means the reward is shared between us and isn't one person pocketing the lot. It's a far more equitable recognition than I'd previously observed.

The key fact is that the reward can be taken in Amazon vouchers which means when I add it to the birthday and Christmas gifts already accrued I could blow it all on the Renegade box set, because who doesn't want another two Imperial Knights - they're all the rage! Not to mention the terrain too...

It does mean my grey tide has suddenly become somewhat of a tsunami again and will require a re-think of next season's To Do List but that's the hobby right? So, when someone asks what price your principles?, you know my answer is "screw principles Heretic - for the Emperor!"

'nids part 259 - Biotitan Tyranid Hierophant pt.13 - Chitin highlights 2

I'm cracking on with this beast now, made just a little bit tougher by the silly heatwave. On the plus side I added a new fly-screen to my window in the shed so I can have it open at night and not be swamped by flying bugs [wanting to meet their Hive Queen no doubt!]. Unfortunately it can still be 26°C in the evening, mainly because it's topping out 32°C during the day. That temp is really uncomfortable and the paint is drying on the palette. I'm sure Marcellis has no sympathy for me ;)

Anyway, the highlighting continues and I have finished the legs. What is pleasing is that these took about 9 sessions to highlight first time around and I managed it in 5. So my 75% time saving estimate was particularly conservative. 

I think you can just about see both sets of highlights on the striations. I honestly think there is a much finer touch on this than my recent Trygon.

The brush strokes are a bit bolder on the shins for instance but I think overall I'm achieving the best I can. I still wish the striations could be finer but I see an improvement and subtlety in places so at least I'm doing my best and not rushing it.

Bio-cannons also got done which meant I was on to the back carapace.

When I did the head and carapace sections last time I got really despondent afterwards. There was something that made it feel like an enormous task ahead but this time round I felt great. Also interesting was the fact I am highlighting the spots as I go, whereas I think I did them all in one or two sessions first time round.

That means I'll save time at the end too. I've two big plates to do next and their vents. The vents can be quite tedious, I did consider doing them separately and just focusing on the plates. However, like the spots its just something I can do as I go along.  

The dots in particular are handy as with all the fine control of the striations and the paint becoming sticky in the heat it's always easy to blob in a dot. I don't get hand cramps but it's much harder to do those lines than dots, it breaks up the monotony. Again that's important because despite the good feeling I had after the last session I was once again wracked by doubts before doing these plates, but feel much better now they're done.

Here's a close up of my highlights so you can really see the detail in the brush strokes. It amplifies everything so you can see they're much chunkier than I would like but c'est la vie.

And the head itself, you may have spotted earlier I've painted the eye orange, you can't see it here. That's the base for the rest of the yellow, it'll be pretty cool to get that done. I'm also looking forward to highlighting the fleshy bits eventually.

I have three big plates to do next and then it's just lots of progressively smaller/easier tail plates. I'm really anxious to see this done, there's actually still a lot left do though. All the second bone highlights [and maybe third!] fleshy bits and green glows on the vents, not to mention the claws/talons. But my hobby season is drawing to a close and I'm thinking about next year's To Do List already visualising those projects boxed off and complete. First things first though...

Warhammer Underworlds Shadespire Chosen Axes Basing TO DONE!

Don't worry, after the big show of prioritising the Hierophant I've not immediately lost interest. This is where I was at on the Fireslayers before I got focused. As usual I did the bases first as I knew I'd be scruffy with the drybrushing.

I wanted something a little weird, hence the Coelia Greenshade and Purple washes. I'm not sure if it works and the drybrushing is a bit untidy when it's solely on plastic and not sand. However the white highlights brought some semblence of intent that tied it all together.

Obviously I went grey, but I think teal/turquoise might have been a bit better. As I intend to sell these the one silver lining that is helping me to part with them is I see it as an opportunity to play around with different colour schemes. These learning opportunities mean I have to part with them to move on to the next one.

The big skull turned out OK, no doubt because I'm used to painting bone so much. Next [when I've finished the Biotitan] I'll be doing the metallics and hair base colours. That seems odd not to do the skin but the plan I have for that requires the hiatus to help me accept the route I want to take. Patience will be my friend.

I still have to do the base edges, which will be black, that will be done at the end but in the mean time I get the Big Build Basing Big Gamboge Stamp of Approval.

'nids part 258 - Biotitan Tyranid Hierophant pt.12 - Bonewhite complete

Oops, spoiler. Obviously this is the pic that gets into the blog feeds so it helps if it looks good.

Which is obviously better than this WiP of the legs.

Which I finally got through and what a relief.

So I got a full built photo shoot so we can see how she is progressing.

And despite the hardship of getting to this stage it tipped me over the edge - the good edge and I can foresee how this is going to play out. Having recorded my efforts [show at the end of the post] I can see the second Chitin highlights will take possibly another 18 days.

Then the second Bonewhite highlights another 10. So I have 28 days worth of work, and I will be doing some additional 3rd highlight on both and not including the red fleshy bits, claws and talons all the glow effects and varnishing.

It's 62 days until the Hobby Season ends [when I wrote this]. I want this done and so it'll be my priority and if I crack on then the Razorback might just sneak in at the end. Shadespire Fireslayers and future containers seem a stretch at this point but who knows. Regardless this is big prize, and getting this out of the way in a timely fashion will provide opportunity for the others.

With at least 28 days worth of work it seems like a big slog but I'm up for the challenge and think now with a more positive attitude I might struggle less. With the first highlights done it's slightly quicker tracing over them with a second highlight. There's less to think about, which speeds things up but I have to take a bit of care that I don't obliterate all the first highlight - else what was the point. So I'd estimate it's 75% quicker to do.

But I have a deadline now and an overall guide of how long things take that I aim to beat, so although there's a lot and it'll take a significant amount of effort I'm raring to get it done.

Here's my updated log, which has been marked up so I can track the different parts to do again.

And finishing up the first set of highlights.

And there we go, almost a 'What's on my palette'!

Terrain is everything - 40k future container scatter terrain - Detailing!

With the Armigers out of thesurprisingly it was the future containers that drew my attention. The orange ones requiring four coats of paint to achieve the orange I was after and that's not including all the priming, shading etc. Strong Tone picked out all the shadows and then my pumpkin craft acrylic edge highlights.

Then I noticed that some Aquila decals would fit perfectly in the top space so they both had gloss coats, decals and then matt varnish [can't find my Lahmian Medium :( ], two side on both.

I've shipping company logos to add yet and then some more weathering and damage, probably not as much as the OOCL ones but we'll see.

The third container - I decided on grey.

Once again BIG numbers look awesome, painted some scuffs too.

Maersk Line shipping company, I did consider switching it for Magnus but decided to leave it as is.

The other big number. A simple stencil, tidied up and then scuffed.

The Maersk logo - a stencil with grey dots for the centre of the A, R and nicks in the S. The blue square was stencilled, then the white star stencilled and tidied up afterwards. Again still more weathering to do, as I say I got carried away with the amount of sand in the basecoats, it's a bit too rough but there's not much I can do with it now.

I then went and did the Hapag-Lloyd logos. Obviously with less success - stenciling the name was really difficult. Given the spacing between the letters I only really cut out the H, p, g, L, l y, and d and then hand painted the a, a, - and o.

Then I went back and filled in all the 'counters' [the holes in all the letters, like the o and d]. I tidied it all up, added some shading'highlights to the blue logo and although it's not perfect it'll do. Some weathering will help but I do need some additional decoration on the sides.

These last two pics were originally going to form the start of the next post update but I've since realised these will have to go on hiatus while I focus on the Bio-titan, so thought I'd share them now. And one day I still need to create an STC for a foamcore cube to replace the OOP Mentos cubes that form the base for these, one day...

Warhammer Underworlds Shadespire Chosen Axes Big Build TO DONE!

Now I know my love for the new Night Haunt models was almost uncomfortable and gave the impression I might want to dip into Sigmar but this is as far as it goes. I'd been mulling over Shadespire and in particular fancied painting something different inbetween all the things I feel I 'have' to paint. In fact I decided to go with the Fireslayers because there are only 4 in the box and they seemed a little more interesting than the Stormcast.

In actual fact I bought these specifically to paint and sell. I've never done that before. I'm a hoarder by nature so the very thought of selling something I've completed, it's like selling a child. However, I hope this will be sufficient to cover the cost of buying the game itself - even though I'm not sure we'll ever play it...

I really like the box though, and once the models are built they fit right back in too, which is a handy transport system in itself.

They're unbelievably easy to build, three snap-fit pieces for each model - highly ingenious.

I have a rather left field idea of how to paint them. I see them selling from £45 to £70 on ebay, invariably in the standard style on the box. I'll be going a little more left-field just to entertain myself. They might stand out a bit more when they go up for sale, who knows.

They were so easy to put together it feels almost a crime to get a Big Build Big Gamboge Stamp of Approval, but tough I take what I can get....