14th Grand Company

Another quick tip for painting: using brush soap to clean your brushes.

I picked up this tip from the manager of my local GW store. I had been having trouble with my brushes getting stiff and clogged. I know I should be washing my brushes with soap and water after each session but sometimes I just don’t want to be bothered or don’t have the time.

That is where this little dish of soap comes in handy: simple dip the brush in the water pot, wipe it across the soap a few time and rinse it again. While using this method I haven’t had any problems with dried paint in my brush and in fact older brushes cleaned up so well with this, they were actually usable again.

I picked up my soap at a local art supply shop but I’m sure any bar of soap could work, this is just in a handy, closable case.

So after being inspired by DezartFox’s  World Eater Rhinos I started painting my heavy sentinels with a streaky red pattern. I quickly decided to modify the color scheme a bit to fit better with the rest of my army and started painting a fade to yellow to match my commander’s cape.

After painting the red/yellow with the large dry brush, I repainted the metal parts black before adding silver and soon the brass. As the first deadline for the ToEMP hasn’t yet passed, 73rd hasn’t released the details on the second challenge yet, so I am not sure if these sentinels will yet fulfill the requirements. If not, well I still have plenty of other models to get done.

Although I’m trying hard to finish 1k of my traitor guard by the end of the month I thought I would also share some of the painting tips and tricks I often use.

Today’s Tip: The magic eraser brush.

Whenever I’m painting I always have two brushes out: the one I’m using and another to erase. The need for the second brush arises because I don’t like to do touch up painting and my hands shake a bit. To solve both of these problems I have a second, clean brush always on hand that I can quickly wet and “erase” any spots of paint I put on the wrong spot.

This technique is not completely fail proof but it usually removes enough paint to make it unnoticeable. The trick is to wipe the paint away as soon as possible with a wet brush. If you wait to long or use a dry brush the paint will no longer come off easily. I prefer to use a large, stiff brush for this, such as the medium dry brush, because it both springs into the cracks a bit better and grabs the edges harder than softer brushes.

For my traitor guard I have used this technique many times to remove spots of orange on metal parts or metal on skin areas (though the metal paints often leave a touch of aluminum shavings no matter how hard you try). Because of this I have had to do nearly no touch up.

Thanks goes out to 73rd for putting together A Tale of Even More Painters and adding me to the list. Although I am shooting for my own challenge deadline for completing 1,000 points by the end of the month, I look forward to 73rd’s challenges to keep me motivated past that point (painting 60+ guardsmen is tiring!) and providing interesting challenges to keep things fresh and enjoyable.

The first challenge is to have 75 points painted by the 17th. This should be very doable as I am planning on having my company command squad done by the end of this week, but you know how life goes, something always comes up. Speadking of which I will be spending most of next week out of town for work, oh well…

Even with the 90+ temperatures in my apartment this week I was able to get some painting done and am still on schedule to finish 1000 points by the end of the month. Part of what made this possible is the suggestion from Dweomer in my last post to get paint retarder to keep my paints from drying out so quickly in the hot weather. I was having to add water between every model or two just to keep it usable, now with the addition of this paint retarder I was able to paint a color on a whole platoon without having to add more water. It didn’t work as well on the metallic paint for some reason, perhaps I didn’t add enough retarder to the mixture.

Use Paint Retarder to keep paint from drying out quickly in hot weather

The second platoon is nearly done with the base-coat layer, which is arguably the longest part of the process. Once the base coat is finished the models are washed, highlighted, based and then clear coated.

Most of the base coat finished on platoon two

My plan in to have the last of the base coat done by Tuesday to start the washes and have this platoon done by the end of the week. Next up is the company command and the two remaining heavy weapon teams. If I still have time before the 27th I will paint the sentinels to and an extra touch to the army.

This week it is in the upper 90s here in the PNW and I know there are much hotter places in the world, but it hardly ever reach the 80s here in Seattle, let-alone the upper 90s. Because of this my apartment isn’t set up with air conditioning. This means two things hobby-wise: I’m staying up much later since I can’t sleep and am able to get more painting done, and my paint dries out faster than normal. When doing the washes this is actually a benefit as I can paint the next coat not long after painting the first. The problem though is when putting some paint down on my pallet, I am adding water between each model to keep it liquid. This is causing me to struggle keeping a good paint-to-water mix so my question is this to my fellow hobbyist in the warm/dry climates: what do you add to your paint to keep it from drying out quickly?

So my local GW store announced that next month’s painting challenge is for a 1,000 point army. I know I could easy submit my finished Iron Warriors, but where would the challenge be in that? Instead I see this as a excellent motivation for me to finish my traitor guard army! Well at least the core of it.

What does that mean for my painting schedule? Well I currently have one platoon (with two heavy weapon squads) done, so to get a legal army I still need to paint the other platoon and my company command squad. This would give me 1,000 points if I bulk out the squads with grenades and such, or I could really push my self and try to get my freshly built sentinels painted as well. Four weeks, 36 guardsmen and 4 sentinels, the math doesn’t really add up when I figure it took me over a month to paint the first platoon… but I could also pass that off as the warm up.

My plan is as such:

Week One: base coat both platoon squads and the platoon command squad

Week Two: Wash, highlight and finish the platoon as well as base coat the heavy weapon squads

Week Three: Wash, highlight and finish the heavy weapon squads and base coat, wash and highlight the company comand squad

Week Four: Paint the Sentinels and detail the command squad

This week is going to be a challenge though due to the fact it is in the upper 90s and I don’t have any air conditioning. Painting wise it creates the challenge of trying to finish a coat of paint before it dries out. Week 3 & 4 will be the big push, but with my wife out of town those two weeks I won’t have much else to do besides paint (and try to stay cool!).

I have finished painting the 82nd Platoon of the Iron Army of the 14th Grand Company. Some of you BoLS viewers may recognize the command squad as it was entered in their hobby challenge. Thanks for those who did vote for me, really I just entered the challenge to give an example of what is possible with the great plastic kits GW produces and to get any feedback from the community their.

Part of the Command Squad Hobby Challenge was to come up with a few lines of fluff for the squad. Getting a bit of inspiration from the Flagellant model heads I submitted:

This is the 82nd platoon command of the Iron Army of the 14th Grand Company led by Tiresias the Lost. Tisesias was a small boy when the 14th conquered his world and as the Warsmith strode upon the field of victory, Tisesias was brave (or foolish) enough to not look down. The Warsmith had him immediately blinded and promoted to the lead the 82nd platoon. He is accompanied by Niles the Unspoken, who is required to be gagged or else will continue to scream blasphemies until he passes out.

These are the two troop squads with a basic setup of a vox, flamer and Sargentwith a power weapon. I like the imaginary of the Sargentwhipping his subordinates into action with his flail.  I know there are some major gaps on the Catachan models between the torso and the arms but since I’m going for the full look of the army, I’m not too worried about some of the “floating arms.” Maybe in the future I’ll go back and putty the joint and repaint it, but at this point I’d rather spend my energy painting the other platoon, company command and the many other things I need to add to this army.

Two lascannon squads as my anti-tank support, and don’t fret, the heavy weapon teams in platoon two are missiles and mortars, I just decided to paint the lascannon teams first. The heavy weapon teams are not completely done, I still need to finish the base and a few minor highlights but I had the camera out and want to get the pictures up.

My light box is not large enough to fit the full platoon so I am going to have to wait until I bring them in the FLGS to get some in-action pictures.

Next up is to build the four sentinels that came in the mail a few weeks back then paint platoon two. Repainted my Khorne Berserkers may jump in line though, as there is another 1500 pt tournament at the GW store and they were the only squad that wasn’t painted well.

~Update: So I just realized that instead of posting the second lascannon squad I posted the first one twice!

I have nearly finished my Warsmith on a Juggernaut of Khorne (initial post here). I love the sculpt of the model, in fact that is the reason I got it (actually my wonderful wife gave it to me last Christmas!). I did very little modification to the model itself to pull it into the 4ok universe, but by the very nature of Chaos, it can easy pass off as archaic MkI, a bit twisted by the warp.

Iron Warriors Warsmith on Juggernaut

Iron Warriors Warsmith on Juggernaut

I did the base coat just I did any of my normal Iron Warriors: Mithril Silver and Shining Gold, Devlan Mud and Badab Black wash. The metals were then re-dry brushed before washing with Baal Red and Ogryn Flesh.

Iron Warriors Warsmith on Juggernaut

Still left to do is the power weapon, shoulder plate XIV, pouches, and the base.

So this morning I finished one more base color on 5 of my traitor guard. I was a bit intimidated by the fact that I have 50+ guardsmen to paint and I don’t often get hour stretches to paint. My solution: paint a little, often. Such as this morning, I had 10 extra minutes before having to leave for work, so I grabbed my brush and painted the boots, belts and any other dark gray part on 5 more guys. Sure I have 10 more in this platoon to paint that same gray on, but it is 5 less I have to do later.
Painting a little, often also will help keep my painting skills up. Its been a few months since I did any painting, and I can tell. I’m a little less steady, not as good at mixing the right water to paint ratio, and generally slower. I have plenty of projects to paint, so even when I get new projects in the mail (the sentinels are next) I will continue to paint a little, often.