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RecklessFable's Journey to Mediocrity (Painting an IG army)

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#1 · (Edited)
Pre-ramble

Well, I've finally committed to Imperial Guard, which means I've committed myself to a future that will be cramped, blind and looney from rank upon rank of tiny little models with actual human faces.

Human faces, the hardest thing in the world to paint since everyone knows when they don't look quite right. Screw up an alien and it might look like you meant it to look like that. Space marines? Heck, you might paint 3 faces in 2000 points!

Good grief, what have I done to myself? Oh yeah, I love painting, even though I am horrible at it.

Yes, if you continue reading you will embark on a journey with someone who has played this game for over a decade, but is a horrible painter anyway. Good luck to us all.

Getting Better

Once upon a long time ago I bought a pile of Tallarn models. They've been sitting around for a long, long time, waiting for their turn at my table. After 10 years (on, off, on, off and on again) I finally finished 4000 points or so of black power armored Space Marines of varying and often dubious quality. Here is a prime example:



It is time for the next level. I'm going to get better at painting, even if it kills me. For that I need to practice which is one thing a pile of IG are good for.

Hopefully this thread will be a log of one gamer's journey from dreadful painter to a level of at least passable mediocrity.

So fill up your glass and settle in for a long trip. Hopefully this will be an inspirational thread for those of you who still "spray and play" their armies so you can see that anyone can have a decent army if they actually commited to trying. Barring that, at least you can feel smug about my pathetic attempt to paint better! I'm trying, but my expectation is not to go from Spray and Play to artist in one go.

As always, constructive comments and outrageous flattery are appreciated.
 
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#2 · (Edited)
Getting Started

As with any project, you have to start with something resembling a plan. However, folks like me tend to get caught in a cycle known as "Analysis Paralysis". The short definition is "A state where you are thinking so hard about what you want to do that you never get around to doing it." Longer definition here. It isn't quite procrastination, but it smells the same.

The difference is that procrastinators generally know exactly what they should be doing, they just aren't doing it.

That being said, I finally came up with a concept. The orignial thread is here: "Aiel cadin'sor color scheme". Thank you to everyone who helped me figure things out.

So my concept model is this one.


I'm still not finished figuring out how to highlight it and I'm not happy with the weapons, BUT I MUST BREAK OUT OF ANALYSIS PARALYSIS AND PAINT ALREADY! So I decided to start painting the first platoon and figure out the finishing details AFTER.

Colors:
Codex Grey (Tunic)
Graveyard Earth (Trousers, Shoulders and slashes of color on the tunic)
Scorched Earth (Boots and Leather items)
Chaos Black

Thought for the day: "Analysis Paralysis can kill a project more effectively than making mistakes along the way and fixing them."
 
#3 ·
'ere we go!

So I am cheating a little. I actually took so long to start my blog that I've already been making progress with the first platoon. I'll still post in chronological order.

Here is the obligatory workspace shot. Please note the lamp over my left shoulder. I can't thank <I NEED TO FIND OUT WHO IT WAS> enough for mentioning that tip. I was living with overhead lighting and my swing arm on the right side of my desk for far too long. Lighting over my left should has helped me see details my crummy eyes have never seen before! I'm a lifelong wearer of strong glasses so I always figured the probelm was me. It was me, being stupid, rather than being blind!



And so, after removing some flash, we are ready to begin.
Bare Metal Tallarn!


While removing flash I came upon my first, horrible, realization. Some of the old GW models were cast so bad they are nearly unusable. I had a flashback to 10 years ago when was at a store and had the owner allow me to put together a single usable dreadnaught from his stock of boxes. Then he returned the insanely miscast pieces to GW.

Well, I don't have that luxury now. Besides, even these horribly casted ones (I'll upload pics another time) are a few dollars each now. So some models will just be horrible, but I'm taking a deep breath and moving on.

Thought for the day "Forward Progress is better than lamenting setbacks"
 
#4 ·
Figuring it out

So, I have a color scheme. Now how do I paint the first batch of 45 without losing my mind or giving up?

Well, thanks to Undeadair's tutorial, I learned that I might finally be able to paint faces without a zillion layers of paint thanks to basing the face with GREY! I'd been doing so many layers of flesh tones that I was going batty and losing facial deatil in the process.

So that being the case, I changed my basecoating plan midstream and switch to grey, as you can see here:


The best part is that this also allowed me to use the same Codex Grey on the faces for a basecoat while I was doing the tunics.

My plan was to do all the faces, then do the grey basecoating, then the graveyard eath basecoating. The plan changed slightly after seeing the tutorial to doing all the grey first, then the faces, then the rest.

Thought for the day: Much like rock-paper-scissors, Codex Grey beats Chaos Black Primer, Elf Flesh Beats Codex Grey...
 
#5 · (Edited)
Codex Grey > All

Just a short post here so you can see my progress.

How did I pick skin tones you ask? Well since this entire platoon is a learning experience for me, I went and basecoated a a handful of models at a time in each color of skin tone I owned. My big mistake was washing them all in Flesh Wash. Flesh Wash is sooooo freaking dark that it essentially ruined the lighter-toned basecoats.

Black Primer -> Codex Grey Basecoating -> Face Painting -> Graveyard Earth Basecoating -> Skulls in Bleached Bone






One day I will go back and fix all the faces, but I must make forward progress and my next 50 guardsmen will have better washing!

Oh, and somewhere in there is a melta gunner with skin that looks like sunburn. Yeah, I meant to do that. He is, after all, carrying a 1.21 gigawatt microwave in his hands!

Thought for the Day: My Imperial Guard are Racially Diverse.
 
#8 · (Edited)
I like this thread very much. Nice determination to get up and paint so many models. I play tau, and I've only painted 2 out of my 3 squads of 12. But I am an extreme procrastinator.

I must say, rep for making your IG racially diverse. I am tired of seeing every model in the game be white, like all the sisters of battle will be white. They are sisters for god's sake. (bad joke, sorry).
Yeah, but all special characters are white in all of the pictures, etc.
And your post is humerous and fun to read.
 
#10 ·
Once again, my army progress is ahead of my posting progress. Time to catch up.

The first batch are almost complete. I experimented with highlighting and t wasn't really noticable. When I used a lighter shade, it was noticable and detrimental... sigh.

So this is the almost finished group. Just needs basing and something less boring on the guns. I'm saving the basing for waaaay last.



The special weapons lads:


I really hate the "Drybrush with Boltgun Metal" thing for these guys. It looks horrible. I could really use some ideas on how to make these fellows look like they are carrying "tactical" looking guns, as in matte black, without making it look like the modelas are unfinished.

I tried using tin-bitz accents, not sold on the idea though...

Thought for the Day: Matte Black Tactical Weapons are cool in real life, boring on the tabletop.
 
#11 · (Edited)
Ok, that's nice. Next?

I've reached the milestone of getting the first batch to "near completion" which is what I was aiming for. What I mean by that is I've actually painted to a tabletop standard but left the open-issues uncomplete. Those issues being Bases and Weapon Highlighting.

I actually feel pretty great about that. Hell, what I have now is better than a lot of what I see around. Not better than what I see around LO. Certainly Not! But better than what I see at the local stores.

And now I have a few decisions. Prime among them is Lascannons. I wanted more mobile-looking lascannons than the standard ones. But I might settle for the old-style ones if I can't work out the ideas from this thread. Comments welcome there too!

As for the next batch. Here is the beginnings of the standard bearer. I bent his wrist with pliers and then drilled the grenade out of his hand to fit a brass rod:

Company Standard:


Converted Plasma Gunner:


The rest of the lads:


Now all I have to do is stop changing the armylist! I also have tanks and such to post. Need to take pics first.

Thought for the Day: "Be better today, than you were yesterday" --My Daily Motto
 
#12 ·
Nice to see someone who isnt michaelangelo on this forum!! One way to stop your guns being boring is to paint rust on them, i just generally use a brown and water it down a bit and drybrush it on.

Are all your models metal? If they are your army will weigh a ton!!!

Keep it going, I'm a spray and play kinda guy and want to get better but dont have the time, space or money to do it :(
 
#13 ·
Thanks for the encouragement!

I'm actually "restoring" some Chimeras right now. I forgot to take some of the before pictures. Essentially, I bought a Five Chimera's off eBay to save a little money, but they are really not in perfect shape. Some have bad gluing, OVERGLUING, or are a little broken.

I'm using a hobby knife to take them a little apart and reworking the models.

Firstly, I dislike the lasgun port on the standard Chimera. I'm taking them all off and plan to plug the holes

Second, I want to use autocannon turrets sometimes, so I ordered the predator autocannon bits from BW Bits so I can swap up to three of my Chimera turrets ro have autocannons.

Third, I forgot that the Track gaurds are on only the new vehicle accessory sprues, so I have to figure out how I want to deal with this. 2 of my 3 chimeras won't have the newer bits...

Fourth, I plan to build my own Hellhound turrets so I can have up to three hellhounds just by swapping turrets. I've always though the external promethium tanks were incredibly silly and now that Hellhounds don't have the additional explosion rules, there really isn't any reason to model them anymore.

So the Chimera project (pictures forthcoming) will share time with me finishing me Tallarn.

I also picked up a substantial Cadian contingent, which will supplement my Talarn. When all is said and done I will have in my collection:
6 Leman Russ Hulls
5 Chimera Hulls
2 Baslisks
55+ Tallarn
~200 Cadians
and many bastardized kit bashes and conversions for flavor.
 
#14 ·
Ok this is some what off topic but where did you get all those lovely Tallarns? I realy wanted to use them as my base trooper but the cost of ordering them all form the clasic range was a bit much...

Love your color scheam by the way, my Kastaforians might mistake them for more of their own command. Great Minds, eh?
 
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#15 · (Edited)
I got the bulk of the Tallarn a while ago off eBay. Probably my best purchase... ever.

Learning from that experience, I went and bought a pile of Voystroyans I have no intent of using for a long while. If I decide I'm never going to use them I figure they'll only go up in selling price down the road.

I'm uploading the Chimera pics right now so I should have some more to share shortly.

Thought for the Day: GW stock may not be a great investment, but GW price increases outstrip inflation!
 
#16 · (Edited)
WOW, an Update!

Hello again, this update will be unique in that it has no painting updates. Why's that?

Well, I've been slacking lately. I don't have anything to add as far as painting progress. I have, however been working on my fleet of chimera hulls. I'm planning on building interchangable turrets for Multilasers, Autoannons and Hellhound Inferno Cannons.

Most of my hulls were purchased off eBay for around $10 less than new. This leads to the obvious problem that they were mostly not well-constucted or were missing parts. I have a lot of bits laying around, including an extra track sprue. I also ordered Predator turrets from BWBits. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

The danger of eBay purchases is that half the time you buy something from a grainy, camera-phone picture, you end up with horribly substandard builds. Well, I managed to pull this off all five times! I really need to stop bidding after 11pm. I make bad decisions when I'm clicking around at 2am. Which, incidentally, is when I bought this beauty!



The amazing thing is even after all that glue, it was falling apart.

So, yeah, I'm doing Xacto surgery on most of the fleet right now. I've also got to figure out what to do with the front panel on this hull since the hole is a little on the large side:


I really hate the lasgun firing points on Chimeras, so I popped them out of the hulls and filled them in with greenstuff. This will also let me use three of the hulls as Helhounds whenever I want.


Ahhh, the old predator autocannon turret on a Chimera trick! Just shave out the inner diameter of the turret and it fits on fine.


The fleet, in all it's half-finished glory!


I was originally going to go with the "fresh from the forgeworld" look, but considering the condition of my fleet, I may have to go with the "battle damaged" look. After I'm done "damaging" the hulls, they might actually even look like I meant them to look beaten up!

Well, the entire lot are supposed to be from what is essentially a mercenary outfit. So instead of high-end Mercs, maybe they will be the scrounging types.

I can't wait to see how this turns out! It's like telling a story as you invent it.

Speaking of which, here is a quick rundown on how these lads end up "leaving" the Imperial Guard and go Mercenary.

A few weeks ago, I played a 1000 point battle with my (mostly complete) Rivans and my basilisks. I dubbed them The Rivan Siege Company. The scenario was a cityfight against 2000 points of Eldar. However, 1000 points of Khorne showed up to attack the Eldar as well. Although I my Rivans where not technically allied with the foul Heretics, their similar goal of destroying the Xenos defenders ended up with a vitual alliance with Chaos. (who in their right mind shoots at a Chosen squad and bloodletters when two Falcons and some Shining Spears are bearing down on you?)

Though the souls of the Rivans are pure, it may be difficult for them to explain this to the Ordo Malleus considering their failure to attack BOTH enemies of Man. It looks like The Rogue Trader, MacDougal, might have some new mercenary recruits from these lads as they'd rather become anonymous mercs, than bring shame to their regiment. Luckily for them, the orbital shelling during the battle covered their tracks admirably and they are all assumed to have been wiped out by the forces of Chaos. MacDougal is making sure the lads feel quite at home on his cruiser after having picked them up from the planet after a supply delivery to another base. MacDougal is quite the opportunist and trained IG vets are a valuable asset!

And thus I have my backstory for the origins of this unit, as played out from a random battle :D

Thought for the Day: When faced with both Xenos and Heretics, it is better to fire at both than face an Inquest about it later.
 
#17 ·
I like this blog very much.
I thought that you weren't posting at all for like 3 weeks, but it was because I had bookmarked the page and you had added after it. Oh well, now I have some catch up to do.

I'm looking forward to your next post.
 
#18 ·
Just dropping a quick note here. I've finally started working on the next batch of Tallarn to bring them to the level the previous batch acheived. That is, playablility. I'm already done basecoating most of them, but I'm not going to bother with picutres since there is little point in showing more black-primered dudes with codex grey basecoats.

I've actually been playing a lot of 40k lately and am learning a lot about piloting an IG army. Playing a lot takes time away from painting though.

I've also rounded out my heavy weapons for the Tallarn. I now own 5 metal lascannon teams. So it is pretty clear here, these lads will all be Las and Plas. The second platton for this army, which will be cadian models, owns the heavy bolters.

So there is a quasi-doctrine at play here. My Rivans will only use weapons you can recharge from the resources onboard the rogue trader cruiser. So Lasguns, Lascannon and plasma are their primary resources, with maybe a melta or two thrown in. This way, they don't need to worry aout the logistics of buying ammo.

But since a fully las/plas army is impractical to play, and I'm not going to buy a second platoon of Tallarn models, the as-yet-unnamed Cadians will have their own story, resources and equipment doctrine. I'm still working that out. I also have fallen in love with Bassies, so I gotta work 'em in somehow :w00t:
 
#19 ·
to give them a matte black look i would first highlight with a 1-1 mix of codex grey and chaos black. Then give them very fine highlights with the codex grey. You should really try to do a minimal of highlighting with the codex grey, because too much will invariable look bad. I am doing the same highlight scheme with my night goblin robes and it is turning out real nice.

PS. I am putting together 2000 points of night gobbos right now (180+ figures). I feel your pain.
 
#22 ·
I guess that is my cue to actually post! I don't have any new pictures, sorry about that, but I have been making some progress.

Part of my challenge is that I ran out of Tallarn models for how I wanted to set up my Platoons, so I've been shopping eBay for lasgun Tallarn models. I specifically want the ones that are in generic poses since they look less redundant than the "grenade guy" or the one making the sweeping hand gesture. Considering the cost per model when buying them by squad, it is hard to not end up spending money on models that will never be painted just to get the ones you want.

So while I've been collecting, I realized it was time to bit the bullet and work on the HQ... aka, the hard part, full of painful decisions.

MacDougal is a Rogue Trader, and as such probably deserves a better deal than the standard IG command squad. So, may my inner-powergamer forgive me, I'm going to blow some points on a fluffy HQ. I've decided that the best way to represent a fellow who has acceess to the best or everything, plus some Xenos gear, is probably to go with an Inquisitor. Since my Elite slots are already heavily contested but I will always have a spare HQ slot, I'm taking an Inquisitor Lord as my "counts as" MacDougal.

After much deliberating, I'm zeroing in on what I want. I think the old chap is going to have a nice fancy Xenos-based weapon (Psycannon). For retinue, I'm going to take his astropath (mystic), Navigator (Mystic) and bookkeeper (Sage). But since they make horrible bodyguards for such an esteemed fellow, I'm going to add 3 Sister of Battle who were lately being converted for my Sisters of Chaos army (Now probably defunct since the new codex will kill the list). I'm currently dremelling the ]['s off of them, but they will all be counts-as Heavy Bolter Servators when I'm done. I'm also removing some armor to make em look more like the proper 4+ save.

When all is said and done it will be somewhere between 180-210 points for a 3HB, 1psycannon squad with the ability to take potshots at deepstrikers. Horribly overcosted compared to IG Fire Support squads, but at least I'll have my fluff element.

As a little gift to myself I think he'll have 2-3 Death Cultists as further bodyguards. This man does love his dangerous ladies... It also gives me a minor countercharge element that I'm missing since Rough Riders would be my 6th Doctrine.

My main problem is coming up with a model for MacDougal himself. This'll take a while. In fact, I expect to end up proxying in a regular inquisitor for a while until I get a feel for MacDougal as a character.

In other News: I will actually be "abroad" for the next couple of weeks (England and Ireland, in fact) so don't expect another decent entry until mid-August. I promise to provide pictures when I start again!

Thought for the Day: Nothing can ruin a $15 model faster than a Dremel when you sneeze.
 
#23 ·
Thought for the Day: Matte Black Tactical Weapons are cool in real life, boring on the tabletop.[/QUOTE]

try painting it black and then giving it a pure black ink glaze(so slater it in black ink, use a small brush though so you don't overload.)
 
#24 ·
Back from Ireland!

It's been a while since I did anything with this army, but I have excuses! The main reason is that I took my first major vacation in six years. It was VERY difficult to force myself to come back from Ireland. To borrow an old Gaelic saying: "1r3L@nd R0><0R j00!" The translation has been lost in time, but means something to the effect that once you visit, even for a little while, it gets into your blood. I'm not Irish (maybe a little bit, but I'm not sure) but I felt like I was home... Ah well.

Here's a couple of shots so you can understand my wistful longing for a vacation too-short:




Imagine hiking around there, and then retiring to a nice pub for a delicous meal and some ale...

Where was I? Oh, yes, my Rivans. When last we saw them, the first batch was at 90% done on paint, awaiting final detailing plus basing. Those haven't been touched. Instead I have been working on the second half of the lads.

And here they are:


You may have noticed, I've backslide a bit in my techniques. I was a little out of practice and also forgot about a lesson or two I've learned during this journey.

1) Dilute your washes MORE than you think they need. I didn't dilute my washes enough for the pale soldiers and here you see just how dark the crevasses got. ICK! If I ever want to get done I can't go and strip them now. I'll work on them a little with a pick and home for the best, but hopefully I'll never make this mistake again!

2) How to drybrush. I'm not actually sure what went wrong, but I seem to have lost my feel for drybrushing. Where my earlier models have a nice vague Graveyard Earth drybrush over the Codex Grey, these boys have a lot of "oops stripes". I wasn't even drinking that heavily! HONEST! Hopefully I can correct this when I go over it again during the detailing stage.

To go along with this mild backsliding in technique, I bit the bullet and did the gunmetal drybrush on my lascannons. I intend to do something better another time, but in order to get to tabletop playable, I've done this half-step: *Bad Pic Alert*



Yeah, not very pretty, but it makes em playable for now. I think I'll try some sort of camo-netting later on. I'll be looking for non-greenstuff inspiration for that later this month.

Now for the Inquisitoral Retinue! I'm toying around with heavily dremeled sisters of battle for my counts-as heavy bolter servitors. Here are the very-preliminary attempts. The bare skin is intended to represent the armor save as 4+ (rather than the usual power armor 3+):



I also have been working on a Callidus and a... well, I don't know. The other model is a medic from Shadowforge minis. I like it, and if I needed a witchhunter chirgeon, she'd be it. I might put her in my platoon HQ as a medic. I just think it would be a nice distraction model. I also managed to remember how to wash before I ruined her like I did the Guardsmen. So, for that alone, she's my current favorite mini.



As for the Callidus Assassin, she was originally slated for brown leather since black-with-grey-highlights is so freaking trite at this point. However, during one of the test runs my brush decided it wasn't going to work until I got better at the technique. Now I'm trying for white leather. The challenge with wite was she looked like she was just primed and shaded. Since tanned flesh was a nice counterpoint to the white, I started to turn the bodysuit into more of a bikini. The result is a sorta-homage to Ursula Andress (the Bond Girl from Dr. No). I kinda like where it is going, though this is by no means the final plan.

For the record, the skin is the new Tallarn Flesh foundation paint with an overly heavy 50/50 mix of flesh wash (it should have had twice as much water).

I've also made some progress on the surgery I've been doing on my eBayed motorpool. Most of the are passable tanks now, but they will really never be as nice as if I built them from scratch (but I saved money! /sigh) I'm pretty sure I'm going to be "aging" them to cover their faults.

Thought for the Day: Experience is a wonderful thing, it helps you recognize a mistake when you make it again!
 
#25 ·
I'm still as impressed, or maybe that shoud be, I'm as impressed again, by your determination.
I wish I had but an ounce of your selfdisciplin *sigh*

On the Drybrushing, I returned to this echnique too a while back and made experience very similar to yours. I realised however, I underestimated just how dry the brush really needed to be. (how mnay times have I not told people to keep their brush really dry? and now I'm the one slob-brushing, gah!)

The Calidius is lovely in bikini. If you don't go through with this I most certainly will.
Ebay, I know your pain... What do they do to them poor minis out there. As soon as I get financially adept again I will buy me a huge jar and fill it with breakfluid so I can take care of tanksized things too.

It's a fantastic sight to see so many metals painted, keep up the good work now, and welcome back.
 
#27 ·
What can I say, I like 'em buff. The model's aesthetic is very nice though. Despite the somewhat overdeveloped musculature on the arms, it has a waistline and heroic lines. The only thing they flubbed was the feet. Even painted as boots they look blocky.

Anyways, I won't have time to pick up a brush for about a week. I've got a major project at work and I work off-hours to support it. Sleep is such a nuisance.
 
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