We can do it anywhere ! (At last some real pics of actual minis) - part 2

Summer is a hard thing you know...

I'm not talking about these insanely high temperatures but about these hard hobby times holidays are... Hard to get the time to paint, when you do, you find yourself lacking time, material or simply energy to do it...

I feel like a goldfish in its aquarium... I don't even have Kendo to get all this energy out since the dojo is closed during summer. Hard times, I told you.

BUT, now I'm lying on my towel at the beach, burning under the mildly hot sun of the Normandy coast. Can I still get something done? The answer (and you knew it already) is YES.

First of all, I managed to bring with me a few paint cans and some brushes to finish my entries for the painting challenge on the Blood Forum. 

First model is the dread with my first attempt at OSL on the plasma cannon, I'm not sure if painting the lenses red was such a rilliant idea and I still consider erasing all of this with pure black to give a more sinister feeling. The terminotor lord is quite to my taste even if the OSL on the power claws is weird and the face is totally messed up...

The jezzail Champion is my favourite so far in this army, I tried for the first time a "sort of Blanchistu" style with bright red and chessboard patterns (I find it almost insulting to sum up John Blanche's style to just that but you get the idea). This one is quite probably leading my cultists once they're painted.

At last I decided to get my Sorcerer lord in line to be painted with the others and I'm glad he's done. He will remain the benchmark for the whole army since it was meant to be built around him.

Chaos marines champions and dreadnaught

The squats next, they obviously need some sort of banner but I still don't know what to give them...

I've already painted the beards with brown and white vertical lines but I don't fancy it much, maybe it will come back on the painting range...

Chaos squats on power armor (Rogue trader era)

I maintained a very limited black pattern all across the army on purpose because I wanted to give them the most sinister look I could. This lead me to changing my basing habits. I usually drybrush brown, flesh and bleached bone to get some sort of dirty limestone ground effect but this being a 40k army I wanted to change things a bit. I also discoverd much to my surprise that Dark flesh + Bleached bone gives an unexpected purple-ish affect... I considered erasing it but then found myself enjoying this old school touch. I also decided to paint the edges in grey to enhance the black of the marines.

As I was getting hot at painting energy coming out of weapons I also painted some effect on the power gloves in the unit (in fact they look better than on their terminator captain).

Chaos traitor marines (Rogue trader era)

 (Sorry for the low quality here, it's just smartphone photos on the kitchen table...)

I said finished but I meant sort of finished, I could declare them done and field them shamelessly but I want to add a few things here and there beforehand.

Here is the start of my upgrading for this army :

The banner is a test for now (hence the pigeon looking eagle), I used it to have something to field and to try Orlygg's tutorial for banners which proved really useful. It's given me the will to try some new things...

The black spots you can see on some of the bases are meant to be some sort of oil leaks or equivalent and will be glossed once everything is varnished.

I'll update all of this once it is to my taste (a few touches here and there and varnish on top of that and then I'll give you good photos so you can judge the result).

Now, this was the start of what I could do during nap time for babies, but then I had to get all the family to the beach and everything : I took the time to go treasure hunting after getting inspiration from Don Hans.

I found a whole lot of broken seashells which should help me add some sort of organic feeling to the bases for my champions or stand alone minis. I don't intend to copy exactly Don Hans' bases but I love the idea of giving some bit of mutated look to the ground to represent chaos wastes.

 A mixture of all sorts of pebbles and small rocks for big bases and terrain :

And I decided to put my everyday morning tea to full use and dry the used tea leaves. This brand is quite good actually (don't know what it is since I'm at my wife's parent's) and is already cut in small pieces.

I have particularly great expectations of these tea leaves with my recent collection of birch seeds to make lovely autumn bases for my fantasy adventurers.

So that's all for now, I'll be visiting Southern UK for a week and won't get anywhere near a computer for that time. Once I get back from Holidays, prepare yourself for some Khorne champions and the finished Rogue trader Renegades (first wave at least).

Cheers.