Dark Angels Legion #2

Posted on by spbdave

After being a little disappointed my my attempt at a subtle black/green in my previous post I decided to have another go. As the models were pretty much black anyway I didn’t waste any time going back to black. I went straight in with a white pre-highlight using the airbrush. This time I made sure to go brighter with my white airbrushing. Achieving a strong contrast in miniature painting is key to making a good looking mini.

As you can see I revisited the Aion Advancer too. With a white pre-highlight going right up to a pure white on the highest points it was time to go green-black. I mixed Contrast Templar Black with Constrast Dark Angel Green in a 2:1 ratio, and airbrushed that mix over the white. Below is a side by side of the newly painted green-black armour compared to a black undercoated mini.

At this point I am now wondering if I could have achieved this with a simple dark green airbrush, without faffing with the white and contrast paint mix. Still, I have what I wanted, and by the time I’m finished it should be darker again.

Next task is to get silver painted on to the trim of the mkIII armour, and some details of the tank. You can see the tank got some panels painted red, I think some white checker decals are going to look great on those. Hopefully i’ll make more progress over teh course of the week – i hope to have these dudes completed before HH2.0 arrives on my doorstep*.

Thanks for reading – here is the usual affiliated links paragraph. If you’d like to support the blog, please consider making your own hobby purchases through one of the affiliate links. It doesn’t cost you anything, I just get a little commission which helps pay the WordPress fees etc. You can click the links below or the webstore banners on the site.

Element Games (get double element crystals using code DAV615), and The Outpost.

*I absolutely pre-ordered Saturday morning, did you? 😉

Jubilee Nail Art

Posted on by spbdave

Need some brownie points?

Is there possibly a large delivery landing on the doorstep in two weeks time?

Well have I got a plan for you. It’ll cost you some time and maybe an old brush (unless you use your own paints – nail varnish is horrible to paint with).

My wife asked for Union Flag nails. Time to put those painting skills to use.

Dark Angels Legion #1

Posted on by spbdave

Well Horus Heresy Age of Darkness second edition is just around the corner. Its spurred me on to actually start doing something with the models I’ve been slowly collecting in my WH30K pile of shame. Yes I know, the standard pile is so large I’ve been sub-dividing it to make it seem smaller and more manageable. This particular pile manifested itself a few years ago now with the acquisition of an unbuilt out of production Cerastus Assault Ram, but really took off with the release of the Dark Angels special units and the Lion himself.

So what was the first models I decided to work on? The gorgeous Inner Circle Knights Cenobium terminators? or the tasty Interemptors? Nope, I’ve started with the basic troops, a simple 10 man tactical squad in Mk III armour. If I ever end up playing HH then I’m going to need some basic troop choices. It also means I can afford to screw up the paint job/scheme on the less expensive models.

Continue reading →

Another year, another cake

Posted on by spbdave

If you have followed the blog for a while you’ll have seen an occasional birthday cake pop up. I use my ‘hobby skills’ to decorate my son’s birthday cake. This year he asked for a minecraft cake, which had to include Steve and a tree.

Obviouly I cheated and used a Minecraft Steve toy, but the rest is just icing. I had fun painting the TNT with food colouring.

I didn’t make a cake for my lad’s 7th birthday, so its nice to be able to this year. I still think the BB-8 cake was my best effort.

Crimson Fists

Posted on by spbdave

I mentioned painting some Crimson Fists in my last blog post. I figured I would show off the complete squad. I have slowly been gaining the new* Primaris marines as I really like how they look, better proportioned than the older ‘firstborn’ marines. My go to Chapter would be the Dark Angels, since their first codex release in the mid 90s. However I felt like doing something completely new for the ‘new’ marines. The Crimson Fists sprang to mind for a few reasons, I like blue, they have some iconic artwork** that has branches across the many editions of 40k, and they have a background reason to have a purely Primaris based force which is what I was thinking of building.

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New Year, New Hobby

Posted on by spbdave

It’s that time of year when I traditionally* look back over last year’s posts and see how I faired against the hobby goals I set myself at the start of that year. I would also set my hobby goals for the coming year too.

However, this year I really don’t feel like it, it is bound to be a disappointing result, the amount of hobby time and completed projects** have been sorely lacking through 2021.

I can remember starting a few different projects last year, and I have a couple of others that I want to get finished from previous years (eek!). But I know I have not achieved either. There is a surprising number of models built over the last year but not painted knocking around in my house, or more likely built and primed, with maybe even a coat of paint or two. There is also a surprising number of draft articles behind the scenes here at Splayedpaintbrush Towers*** that never made it off the drawing board.

So what’s the point of this post? Well I suppose it is just to remind myself that this is a hobby blog about my hobby. The definition of a hobby is an activity or interest that is done for pleasure or relaxation. In others words, I build/paint/play with models for fun. This purpose of this post is to remind us all that it doesn’t matter that project X didn’t get finished as long as you had fun whatever you did do. Sure it’s good to finish a project, but it’s also not worth getting down about either.

Thinking back over 2021 hobby wise, now that I have got to typing this article up, I do remember enjoying a number of things in particular. Some of which made their way onto the blog, some didn’t. So instead of counting successes as finished projects, how about I just list some of the projects I had most fun with last year.

Continue reading →

Legio Tritonis the Dark Tide

Posted on by spbdave

I traded some models recently for yet more AT stuff from a mate, because I just can’t resist these awesome titans. My idea behind these was to paint up some already built models quickly to enable a couple of forces to get on the table.

Did you see there mistake I made there? That’s right I said “paint” and “quickly”. If you’ve looked at more than maybe one article on this blog you’ll know that wouldn’t end well. So where did that simaple aim go wrong? What am I up to with Tritonis Titans?

The first snag is that the titans I had acquired were not in the best examples of assembled titans. I had two Reavers, both of whom had awkward or absurd poses and a Warlord that could do with a little TLC. This was not my mate’s fault, he’d got them built second hand too. I think he’d sorted out the Warlord, and made the best of a bad job with the Reavers, but I’ve taken them apart as much as possible to try and re-assemble in more reasonable poses. While doing this i came up with the idea of making custom armour plates for the titans.

overtaken by the dark tide

Grimdark Terrain ATC Tower

Posted on by spbdave

Its the beginning of September, so obviously this is where I tell you all about the massive success in completing the month 1 pledge of my #ATClashOfTheTitans challenge, by Battlebling Store and Maximal Fire Podcast.

…

Well…yes, about that, I’m a little behind with my pledge to complete my Warbringer. However, check out what distracted me!

Motorised Radar dish anyone?

#ATCLASHOFTHETITANS 2021

Posted on by spbdave

#ATClashOfTheTitans is a challenge organised by BattleBlingStore and Maximal Fire Podcast to encourage people to paint up their Adeptus Titanicus backlog, or inspire a second Legio to get painted up. Essentially a community challenge to build and paint up some titans. This is running from August through to the end of October.

I’ve got a backlog of titans, hell my backlog has a backlog. So I figured I’d try and ride the #ATClashOfTheTitans motivation train and hopefully get some of my partially built titans finished.

My August challenge is to get the Warbringer titan finished. Its been sat gathering dust on the shelf since April last year. Seriously, I had to brush the dust off before taking this photo:

The green armour is the only part completed. There is a lot of work left in the model yet. Dusting it off is all that’s happened so far, 11 days of August left.

If all goes to plan I’m hoping to have an Arcus Battleline Maniple completed by October, at least a minimum strength maniple anyways. An Arcus Maniple consists of a Warbringer and from two to four Warhounds. If there’s any more motivation left in the pot I might get some knights painted too.

What’s the community part of it? Well, Maximal Fire and BattleBling are encouraging participants to post their progress on social media channels using the hashtag: #ATClashOfTheTitans – as you may have already guessed. Maximal Fire also have discord server (link) and on Wednesday evenings a ‘hang out and hobby’ chat group runs to basically hobby with other folks from around the globe. If you’re joining in the challenge, it may be worth you buying a BattleBling Clash Pack, its got a cool little certificate, some scenery and a clash plaque, but it also puts you in the running for claiming prizes from the BattleBling prize pool. Wednesday sees BattleBling pick out their favourite post from the #ATClashOfTheTitans posts which they’ll award a prize to that person to reward them for their progress.

The clash pack is available from the BattleBlingStore on Etsy.

July Update

Posted on by spbdave

…and June’s…

…and May’s.

Crikey, I’ve been a bit lax recently on the blog. Life has simply got in the way a bit. I’m still working from home – unbelievably it might be May 2022 before I’m back in the office – and my hobby area has been overtaken by my office. After sitting at ‘work’ all day the last thing I feel like doing is sitting in the same place to do some ‘hobby’. That’s not to say I don’t want to do any hobbying, its just that I can’t face sitting in same place any longer. Working from home has its advantages, but i’m now sick of it. The other thing is that I’m a dad again, we recently adopted a 1 year old daughter, this certainly makes life busy lol.

So what hobby have i done recently?