Topic: Progress on painting an entire space marines army. *VERY image heavy*

[Focslain]

When I get back into my guard I have to get me some simple green. I can now see why you said you had 3k+ pts for marines, you have the start of a deathwing army there. nice work on those nids, though your red is more orangish as oppsed to my purplish red I use. Still very well done indeed.

[Deathpepper]

It's actually red with bright yellow drybrushed over.  I was going for a "volcanic camo" sort of scheme.  Thus the kitty litter rocks on the bases.

UPDATE-
Terminators are coming along nicely.  Finished the red basecoat and red highlighting.  Picked out detail areas in black (to do in metallic later).  Started on the grey base for skull and scroll details.

[Deathpepper]

Taking a break from the terminators to mess with my landspeeders.  I have 2 painted and magnetized, but there's a few more laying around.  One is stripped and primed in good condition.  Another is a typhoon with a very bad paint job (stripping now).  And I also have a partially assembled one that's put together all wrong.  I bought it years ago and just couldn't get it together.  It's since been damaged during moves and is missing it's wings and a few other pieces.  I've decided to convert it.  I'd like to add a sidecar and some extra armor to cover up the missing driver bits.

I cut up an old expired target credit card because i don't have any plasticard.  The first few pieces:


I used a chopped up bit of terrain from the termi bases for the sidecar.  I'll add a gunner later.  The drivers are mostly enclosed.  The whole thing needs some greenstuff to hold it together better:

[Deathpepper]

UPDATE-
Covered up the missing back doors on the speeder.  Found the spoiler and wings, attached them.  Added various bits and greenstuffed some gaps:

[Deathpepper]

UPDATE-
The other landraider is done!





As for the converted speeder, I'm working out how to fit my gunner in the sidecar.  He's not glued in yet, so as to make painting easier.  I've got a big HB that should fit in front of him.  Added some little landing gear feet under the sidecar.


Glued on a scroll bit, and some leftover half-spheres that will be part of a little art piece.  My fluff is the marines come from 3 mini worlds, so these little things will be painted to look like them.

[Dryad]

Well dude, you have officially inspired me to re-do my Eldar! I will start a blog as well when I finish off the rest of my Chaos.

I picked up a thing of Simple Green yesterday, and today the first guardian squad went in for a swim! I got 5000 points of painted Eldar, but I started painting them about 10 years ago, snd they are no where near the way I would like them to look.

So thank you for giving me the inspiration to take the plunge. I'll make sure to call one of my Warlocks "Deathpepper" 

Just a quick question about Simple Green usage; can you seal the containers for the couple days that the minis are having a bath or do they need to have air for the process to work?

[Deathpepper]

I'll make sure to call one of my Warlocks "Deathpepper" 

That made me laugh.  I actually got the name when my wife's foreign workmate brought in some super spicy pepper with lunch, she called it "the deathpepper". 

Glad to hear you're going the non-toxic route.  From my experience, you don't have to seal the green for it to work.  It's just concentrated detergent i think.  A lot of other kinds might work just as well.  I put some plastic wrap on top of disposable containers, but that's just so my dining room doesn't smell like soap. 

It seems to work a little better once the green is watered down a little (my bottle was 10x strength, it's probably half that now).  You can basically reuse the stuff indefinetely, I've used my one gallon jug dozens of times in the last 3 months.  It takes around 24 hours at room temperature for most paint, plus lots of scrubbing with an old tooth brush.  I'd just soak em again for another day if there's too many layers (lots of primer/gloss/etc). 

I left models in the basement this winter one time(for 2-3 days), and the green didn't touch their paint, maybe it was too cold.  I'll bet if you heat the green, it'd work faster but I haven't tried it (microwave!).

[Deathpepper]

Started stripping my razorbacks, they'll probably get magnetized so I can use them as razorbacks or predators:


Group pic of the finished assault terminators + Landraiders.  I'm calling them the Bloodwing:


Update-
Still working on those tactical terminators.  Grey basecoats and the copper metallic areas done.  This is taking forever:


EDIT-
Gold areas done:


UPDATE-
Brown on the skull areas.  Silver details, some work on basing bits:


UPDATE-
White bits done:

[Deathpepper]

Update-
Well the terminators are finished:




Detail on the chaplain:

The missle launcher guy came out really well:



Detail of the powerswords:



Big picture of everything so far:


Next I'll be moving on to a walking librarian, more tac marines, landspeeders, and a coupla dreadnoughts.

[Deathpepper]

Been busy with campaign batreps, but now I'm back to painting marines.  Green basecoat on a big batch of figures:  2 dreads, 3 speeders, librarian, some marines.

[Focslain]

Oh boy, our apoc game is going to be massively sweet. The two dozen terminators are going to be trouble (that and the two land raiders).

[Deathpepper]

Update-
Still painting basecoats.  I realized the squads are going to need more heavy weapon troopers, so here's some conversions I've done this weekend.

2 pretty boring flamer guys, a plasma gunner staring at his broken knife, and 2 converted heavy bolter marines:

A converted lascannon guy.  The gun is probably too big, but what the hell:



A converted ML scout.  I did this guy a while back with a plastic drinking straw, but was never happy with it.  So I redid his ML using a hunter killer vehicle sprue:



UPDATE-
WIP Dreadnoughts:

[Deathpepper]

UPDATE-
Finished dreadnoughts:



Rushing through the landspeeders tomorrow, hopefully in time for a game on saturday.

[faithlessmonkeigh]

Jesus mary joseph thats impressive, how long did this all take you to do?
And how could you find the mental space to do it?
my god thats an epic force, kudos


faithless

[Deathpepper]

I started painting this batch around mid december, 2007.  Some of the older minis are about 2-3 years old, though.  I just try to paint a little everyday to keep the project moving. 

UPDATE-
Done basecoating the landspeeders:

[Bournstar69]

Looking good.

This is amazing work man, seriously. Even if I had such a huge amount of unpainted / older models lying around, I still don't think I'd have the patience to work on them so regularly, and to such a consistently high standard. Look at those Terminators. Gotta tell you, I haven't seen regular termies with powerswords in a while. They must be some of the 2-3 year old mini's you had lying around right? And that Terminator Chaplain is completely retro and awesome.

Nice colour scheme on the dreads, I expect that's gonna be echoed on the Landspeeders?

Also love that Lascannon conversion; such a simple idea but it looks so effective. Just one question about that, what did you use to make the handle type thing?? I mean, I can tell it's some kind of wire, but what kind?

And finally to complete my appraisal, great plasticard work on the Landspeeders. Overall, perhaps the best project I've seen on here, so congratulations man. Hope to see a battle report from Saturday?!

~Bournstar

[Deathpepper]

Thanks!  You'd actually be surprised how low the standard really is.    (I rarely paint eyes for instance)  The lascannon uses some stiff metal wire I bought from walmart a while back.  It's really cheap.  The hard part was fitting/getting it into shape around the cannon and marine.

As far as batreps, I've got 3 done from earlier.  Just waiting for Focslain to add some tyranid fluff to them before I post it all up.  And of course a 3600pt apoc game today.     I don't even know the apoc rules.

UPDATE-
More than halfway done on the speeders:

[tryanotherone - smurfernating]

Looks like they had a mid-air collision or something like that, or, "hey honey I got stuck in the traffic jam".

Back on topic, the army looks nice but I don't like the lascannon conversion. The LC is way too big.

[Deathpepper]

The LC is way too big.

No argument there.    

UPDATE-
Finished landspeeders!

Details on the converted speeder:



Next will be lots more marine infantry.  Tac and scout squads, mostly.

UPDATE-
Still painting infantry:

[Deathpepper]

I really want to use Vulkan in a list, so I'll need to convert one. 

Started out with the black reach captain, removed his head and the bolter arm. I replaced the head with a skull bit that comes in the black reach sprues.  Skelecaptain is born:


I want a huge relic blade on this guy, so I wittled down a long chunk of sprue and attached it to one of the black reach termi power fists.  The fists are all right handers, so the thumb is cut off and glued to the opposite side:


-I then cut some cork for a scenic base.  Two more chunks of sprue were shoved into the cork as a stabilizer and glued to the base and skelecaptain's feet. 

-Another old termie hand is now his right hand and will hold the flamer later.  I also combined part of an old termie heavy flamer and a spare lascannon to make the beginnings of his flamer. 

-Glued on a prayer bead thing from an assault termies box.

-Two square pieces of plasticard are glued together and will later be a shield.  I intend to add the shield at his feet to represent his invulnerably save rather than molding a mantle:


I'm out of green stuff, so here he is till then: