Category Archives: Work in Progress

From the Painting Desk #6 – Bolt Action T-34/85, Citadel Spirit Hosts (Ghosts)

by

4

A couple of weeks ago, I bought a bunch of Bolt Action kits from Warlord. After checking out the T-34s, I noticed that the kit wasn’t especially complex, and so perfectly suitable to start and actually finish as well, since I’ve got a habit of ..not finishing everything I start. When my DeadZone stuff arrived this week and I found that they missed the additional rulebooks and a few other things, I had a bit of a rage for a bit, and then decided to start assembling the tanks to get my mind off it. I thought I took some photos, but this is where I’m up to at this point:

A trio of Warlord Games T-34/85

Basically, all assembled excepting the final assembly of the two halves of the hull, and the turret will just pop on. I’d have magnetised it, but I didn’t think of that until after I’d assembled the two turret halves, so…

The tanks have been sprayed with PSC Russian Armour, airbrushes with a 50:50 mix of VMA Russian Green and Camo Light Green, followed by a 70:30 mix. My airbrush skills are awful still, or maybe its the cheap POS airbrush I have. Either way, the results are far from impressive. Once that was done, a 50:50 mix of VMC Russian Uniform and Army Painter Camo Green for a final-ish highlight. Next will be some sandy/buff colours for weathering. Tracks got a coat of Vallejo Panzer Aces Track Primer with a drybrush of VMA steel over the top.

I still need to hit the whole thing with PSC weathering spray and have a play with weathering powders and the like. Add some decals and then finish them. Hopefully next update!

The other thing I’ve been doing today was opened up a care package from a mate. Quite a lot of loot in there, along with something I totally was not expecting – ghosts!

Citadel Spirit Host Ghosts on Back to Base-ix bases.

The ghosts were mounted three each to several goblin green-painted 40mm square bases. I pried them off immediately, and after a bit of faffing about, decided to mount them on some Back to Base-ix resin “ruins” bases I bought years ago. I felt they raised the Marine figures up too high from the “ground” and so never used them for the original intent, but they work perfectly with these undead. The weight of the resin also stops some of the more lop-sided members of the gang from toppling over.

Ghosts – Sprayed and freshly washed

After mounting them, I took them outside the hit them with some Rustoleum Heirloom White. You can’t really see it here, but it’s a slightly off-white with a slight touch of coffee brown to it. Better for projects like this than pure white. I mixed up a suitably-ethereal coloured paint wash using a mix of Citadel’s Lahmian Medium and Gauss Blaster Green. Stupid names, yes, but the paint being fit for purpose is all I care about.

ooOOooo ooOOo O OOo

They’re outside now. I was going to start on the bases right after I did this, but decided to seal them with gloss varnish, since it was a bright warm sunny day – so wanted to take full advantage of that. That stuff dries much much faster in the sun. This way I can work on them tonight, and maybe even finish them off. It’ll just be the bases and some touch-up work – then a coat of matt. Also hoping to have those T-34s finished tomorrow, or perhaps the following day…

…then I can get back to the grind of my other half-finished projects. Gondor, ahoy!

From the Painting Desk #5 – Citadel Craters

by

1

No, not the new ones made from dead Cadians and Skullz, but the older ones, made from cheap, vac-formed plastic with the softest of soft details. I got these around 8-10 years ago when a friend of my wife’s got me a GW voucher for Christmas. By this time I was buying most of my stuff from overseas, due to Australian prices being a rather steep gouging. So when I went in, I found something that seemed reasonably priced, so I picked these up. They then sat in various boxes, uncared for until 2014, when I was going through my stuff as part of getting the War Room into shape. I put them in a box I marked “Fast Scenery” while sorting through stuff. Fast scenery being scenery that I felt like I could paint… you guessed it – fast!

A couple of months ago I was moving stuff and spied the box. I pulled the craters out, and sprayed them with grey. They then sat around until tonight, when on impulse I brought them inside and gave them three layers of drybrushing to get to the stage in the photos. Now I’m putting them on my blog, in what must be the most underwhelming update I’ve posted so far. So why do this? Because I want to make myself finish the damned things, so maybe this will help me guilt myself into doing it. Also, because I’ve barely been updating for the past month or so, despite still doing a bit of painting. I’m just worn out, and a large amount of what I’ve been painting have been plastic Minas Tirith troops, which are about as uninspiring as it gets in terms of WIP (right up there with drybrushed craters, in fact – but a hell of a lot more of them!) The Gondor guys look great all ranked up on the table, but until then, they’re just meh.

To be fair, I’ve been finishing off some stuff that’s marginally more interesting. A little bit of undead, an Ogre got renovated, as did some old Familiars. I guess I’m just tired and a little burnt out. Hopefully the end of winter and the depressing gloomy weather we’ve had for so long now and a bit of time off work to sleep and recharge in a few weeks will renew my interest in blogging, and I’ll show off some newer stuff. Until then, let’s just hope I can wash, airbrush, powder and varnish these craters instead of put them aside for another 2 months (or 8 years!)