Blog Ribbit of this, bit of that

The lizard wizard looks so awesome! Great base too!

 

Hey gang I've not been around for a while so I thought I'd post an update here. I have been chipping away very slowly at my army on and off but I'm a bit of a hobby butterfly flitting from one thing to the next and I have trouble concentrating on one hobby for too long.

One of my friends I mentioned before has finally caved and got the stormcast vs chaos starter set so it's motivated me to try and finally get my army painted. Up to now I've been painting five or so of one unit to my tabletop standard and then moving on to do a bit of the next but it feels like I haven't done anything. I'm going to change tack and paint each unit one by one until they're all done, starting with my warriors.

I'm going with a nice light blue with a creamy underbelly like those sweets you get that are half foam and half jelly. I'm thinking about having a pale yellow stripe up their backs and maybe red shields with black markings.


Next up are my little skinkies. They're a little more teal than my warriors but I'm going to give them similar markings to tie them together.
I always feel like my miniatures don't 'pop' so any tips here would be appreciated.
I had the quite frankly genius idea to re-purpose the objective marker I made into part of an astrolith bearer conversion. I feel like it has a very similar shape and I even put a little spike on the bottom of the pole so the warrior can 'plant it'. Do you guys think this would be a fair proxy?
Made a few more objective markers as I've one less now! I had four spare banner toppers so I snipped the heads off two and the tails off the other two and joined the matching ones together to make some tall snakes. Also there are some snakes there too. Just the base and the alternate arms left to finish on my carnosaur! I snipped the tall throne down so it's more like a saddle instead. It looks a little precarious but I felt like the spikes were distracting from the carnosaur. I've been wanting to have a go at painting some primaris marines since they came out and I thought it would be fun to do it using the same colours as my warriors. It's slowed my army down a lot but I had to scratch that particular itch!
Thanks for reading guys hopefully I can stick to it a bit better now I've got some more external motivation!
Ribbit

 

Really nice, you have a very clean painting style!

 

That's a good idea, I am working on magnetizing my carnosaur saddle, I might do what you did instead.

I am also wondering how hard would it be to make a spiral saddle-horn on the back of the saddle as well?

 

One thing you can do to make your models 'pop' from far away is to increase contrast.
You can do so by applying darker shades in the recesses and very light highlights, or if you don´t want to go that route (edge highlighting takes a loooong time) you can add a contrasting spot colour. To choose the colour that will contrast most just pick the colour opposite on the colour well to that which you´re using on you models. For your blue tizzies you can go with orange, and paint some detail bright oranges, such as the shields (or the shield markings), face paint, eyes, the crest, and so on, but don´t go overboard or the end result won't be as nice. IN this case less is more .
Sorry for the wall of text, hope it helps

And also, love your idea for the carnosaur saddle! Might copy that at some point

 

Thanks guys

@Warden It probably wouldn't be too hard to make a saddle horn, it would certainly improve the look of it. You could always sculpt the general shape as one layer first and then add the spiral. You'd have to take the rider's tail into account though.

@Jorgik Do you think painting my skink's scales a darker colour would help add some visual interest?

Here's a work in progress pic of my warriors. Still got the gold to wash and details like the teeth, claws, tongues and eyes to do. Should I call the underbelly and the blue and yellow scales done or does it need something else? I'm a super slow painter!

Ribbit.

 

The yellow doe have a lot more pop.
You could turn it up a little more with some brighter blue highlights on your blue scales.
(paint them more like your avatar.)
also a bit of a gloss coat can help a bit too.

 

I've made some progress towards the look I'm going for today. I repainted the dark scales Macragge Blue, then painted them Lothern Blue and then went all the way up to Baharroth Blue. I picked out some lighter highlights with Baharroth Blue on the arms, legs, snout and crest at the same time. This is the first one I re-did as a test and I'm quite pleased. I think I need to add a little texture to the crest but they're starting to 'pop' a bit now. Thanks for the suggestion @n810 !

I must admit I was drawn to the Seraphon army by the look of the carnosaur and skinks models first and was a bit ambivalent about the warrior models. I just wanted to do a really fast, lazy paint job and get them out of the way but now I've been putting more thought and effort into it they've definitely grown on me and I'm quite fond of them. I feel like I want to try and improve my painting skills on these guys and give them the attention they deserve.

Ribbit.

 

I've had a relaxing couple of days off work this week to recharge and get some quality hobby time in.

I visited my local games workshop for a new brush and, because my resolve is weak, I ended up slightly overspending and came home with some other swag too...

I'm going to make these guys up as terradons with sunleech bolas. They look so cool and it's one of the units that made me want to collect Seraphon. What's better than a bunch of squawking pterodactyls swooping overhead to drop magical bombs on your enemies!

I thought the skulls set was a bit much to spend on something that doesn't have an in game effect but now I've got them and used a few on my bases I'm really glad I splurged and got it. The skulls themselves have good detail and you get a really good variety in there. They make the bases a lot more interesting and you get 340 skulls in the box so it should be enough to do my whole future army easily. I'm saving the one really big skull in the centre of the box art to go on my carnosaurs base.


I'm so happy with how these guys have gone so far! Just need to do the shields now and I can call them ready for battle. I've been snipping up my £2 aquarium plant and just shoving bits of it into holes I drilled into the bases. The little fronds are surprisingly secure and I think the colour really compliments the models. I feel like I might even be able to actually finish this army one day!

Ribbit

 

They look fantastic!

 

I really like your yellow-striped saurus! Yours are wonderfully painted; I did something similar for some of mine (not quite as expertly painted, mine have a base of green).

 

Thanks @Warden My problem now is that it takes me an age to paint anything. Hopefully my speed will increase and I'll get some more units done soon.

I really like your black scaled saurus, they look quite menacing.
Ribbit

 

Finally finished my first unit of saurus warriors!

I was thinking about adding shield markings but I quite like them as they are. I think I'm going to try and get my carnosaur finished next as that's the next closest to being done.

 

Thanks!

Fantastic work, I agree with you they look amazing, as well as the bases I just re-noticed the orky-looking skulls! Very well done

 

Carnosaur done!
I repainted the riders scales and added the yellow stripe to fit in with the warriors. I didn't find any cheap slate to make interesting rocks so I just ended up putting plenty of skulls on and used my aquarium plant in a slightly different way to make bushes.

I finished off the magnetised arm options so he can be either a Scar-Veteran with a warblade or warspear or an Oldblood.


At first I thought about doing my terradon riders a light orange like the box art for the rippers but I didn't want to wait to buy any more paints so I've just opted for red again like my carnosaur. I'm going to put some dark markings on the wings in a mottled sort of natural style.

I made a few boobs here because I've glued the riders on first instead of painting them separately, it'll make things a little harder later on but should turn out alright.

Also I somehow lost one of the little 'fingers' for the wings on one of my terradons so he's got the ripper claws on there like some kind of mutant hybrid now. Would have looked quite cool if it had been the alpha's terradon but such is life.

Just the basecoat and a wash so far. KAKAW!

Ribbit.

 

Very nice, that carnosaur looks like he killed something that didn't come from earth!

Are the skulls from that new "bunch of skulls" kit GW recently made available?

 

Thanks Warden,yes they're from the new skulls kit. I ended up painting them all on the sprue, then when I want to use some I can just snip them off and tidy up the bit where the sprue nib was.
Some of them are pretty 40k specific like the tau and kroot ones but I reckon I might pop some of those on anyway just for giggles. The games workshop description for the big skull is just "beast skull" so I don't know if it's meant to represent anything specific.
Also you get some daemon skulls in there which I thought was strange, I thought daemons didn't have corporeal forms?

Ribbit