Ghostly Goblin

Just a quick picture of one of the titan forge goblins, i’ve not gone as bright as their colour scheme, but I’m pretty happy with it, and it will be something I use throughout for my ghostly theme – I just hope it doesn’t clash too much with the purple.

Warlord games day

I was meant to be going to warlord’s games day today, but due to work commitments was unable to attend. Andy went though and I gave him a shopping list. Now to go collect it as soon as possible.

 

This list includes:

Bolt Action German Army:

Hanomag
German Infantry
81mm Mortar Team
Stg44 Sprues
HMG
Nebelwerfer
Leig 18
SDKFZ 221

And The Servants of Ra for INHM, should I try another 5 day paint challenge? 🙂

Titan Forge

I bought a few miniatures a few months ago from Titan Forge to expand my Vampire Counts army. I’ve been looking for some fell bats and spirit hosts, but the GW models for these are ancient and ugly,  so I wanted to get some decent substitutes for them. Titan forge produces some stunning models in there ranges, but the one that caught my eye was the Drakskulls Menace, which are undead Orcs. I now have some flying squiggs and ghostly orcs/goblins to complement my army, and it ticks the boxes in many ways as my other army are Orc & Goblins. I purchased them through The Outpost as it worked out cheaper with the postage and discounts.

Today I finally got around to pinning and gluing them all together,  I’m really looking forward to painting these! I’ll post some pics of the ghosts once I’ve got those finished and pinned together, they’re currently drying after their wash.

Skeleton Reinforcements

I currently have 20 skeletons in my Vampire Counts army, but as I usually run them in rows of 6, I was generally subbing them with some of my many zombies. Cue a box of 10 extras to let me run 2 more full rows 😀 Finished these tonight, so the backlog is reducing ever so slightly..

Church: Day 7 & 8

Yesterday I spent time finishing off the floor of the church, doing the stone tiling in sections. Today, after deciding that trying to get the church body flush with the base as it stands with all the lumps and bumps of the tiles was going to be a difficult task. So I decided to create a stone plinth on which to place the church, the benefits of this being that I have a pretty flat surface to put the church on, as well as it giving more depth to the interior/exterior with the ledge around all the walls.

I wanted to ensure I got a uniform height throughout, and having worked with the clay for a few days now I knew I couldn’t do this easily without assistance. To solve this, i stuck sticks of 3mm balsa down to make a frame around which I can create the plinth. The end result I’m extremely pleased with as even though the edging isnt straight, these are stones after all, so its never going to be. Rather than carving the stone gaps in while the clay is wet, I’ve decided to do it after the fact, I imagine I may get a cleaner line from doing it that way.

I tend to do work in progress shots as black and white, but I’ve left these coloured so you can see the differences more easily.

Balsa frame in place

Stone flooring

Plinth in place

Isabella Von Carstein

I’ve had Isabella for a long time now, but I’ve kept putting off painting it, mainly due to the detail levels on the mini. The head being the main culprit, with the very fine threads, it seemed too challenging. Anyway, after the vargheists were finished I wanted something less tedious to paint, and embarked on painting Isabella. I’m pretty happy with the outcome, although the skin isn’t great – I’m not so good at the undead skin, and it came up a bit chalky. The hairpiece I’m extremely chuffed with though, and the flowers on the dress look rather pretty, the photos don’t really do them justice. I loved finding more and more detail as I painted the miniature, like the hairpiece in her bob is a spinal column, thats a brilliant touch.

Tankettes

I received a parcel in the mail today from Gran Canaria and was rather baffled who was posting me things from there. Turns out it was the ramshackle games order I placed last week! Slightly bizarre as its a uk website and you pay in GBP with free shipping.

Anyway, as you can see, its mostly a selection of wheels, and a few tank hatches (and a driver) to the top left. My intent is to convert the washing liquid ball that you see in the top right into some kind of tank for In Her Majesty’s Name. The quality of the plastic is a little rough around the edges, and its made from a very hard resin, which appears to be coated in a very shiny and slightly sticky surface. It also pongs! These are going to need some cleaning up and washing, but for £10.50 for the whole lot of bits and pieces, you can’t go wrong really.

Church: Day 6

The wife is away in London tonight, it’s a work trip but she’s managed to blag tickets for Spamalot too, so I’m extremely jealous. It does mean however that I spent all night in the basement working on the church. I started off with finishing the end of the roof – at least for the interior, I need to decide on how I want to cover it, probably individually cut slates, I’m just putting off the tedium of it by procrastinating.

The aisle was next, originally I was going to attempt to mould this out of the putty like I did on the raised area, but I wanted to have it clear enough to paint a pattern on, so decided in the end to score some plasticard with the hatchings. This was then roughed up slightly with a stone, and I will probably apply some goop to it to fill in some of the gaps. The areas either side will likely be putty as these will just be large stone tiles with benches on.

Finally I started on putting putty on the walls of the church, this is the first time I’ve done something like this so I was a little nervous about doing it, but the putty is extremely forgiving so I just kept building it up with little discs, then smoothed it down. Theres a lot of church to go though, the bit you see took approx 40-60mins, so I estimate theres some 4-5hours worth of putty work to finish off the church, especially as I want to add in some frames around the windows.

Cardboard templates for roof end.

Balsa wood in place.

The church aisle, with spacings marked out for tiles.

Tile scoring.

And the other direction, tiles finished.

Glued in place.

Putty on the tower

More putty

Roof in place

Tower view, with roof in place

Church: Day 5, Part 2

Just a quick update with pictures of the roof now my camera is charged.

Church back

Church Front

Roof off.

Church: Day 5

A quick post tonight to show some progress from last evenings work. I spent most of yesterday morning putting up new shelves in my office/hobby room, and with various other activities throughout the day ended up rather exhausted by the evening. None the less, I put some time into the church and cut out the balsa panels for the roof and glued them down. I also produced another truss for the roof as three didn’t balance very well. The glued together roof now looks great and is completely detachable, however my camera batteries are flat so I can’t take a picture this evening. I also just had the realization as I typed this up that once I apply the layer of modelling clay to the tower, its going to need some minor resizing of the roof as it’s pretty snug. I’m sure it’ll cope though.I also built up the base with modelling clay, but that’s ugly right now and not worth showing.

Anyway, progress shots:

Roof on

A shot of the roof inside.