Showcase: Driago and Grey Knight Terminators

The Grey Knights are unleashed!  This was a commission done at the level 2 (showcase) quality level of painting.  Of the three levels I offer, level 1 = table top quality and level 3 = competition quality, this one gives the customer the best bang for their buck.  Each Grey Knight terminator got a custom urban rubble base that was made from the cities of death boxed set and their armor/weapons were painted with the highest attention to detail.

Let's take a look at the finished product!

Each falchion was painted with an edge glow on its blade and a runner of electricity on each side.  A light glow effect was also painted on the sword quillions to further the look that the blade is glowing.  Since one of this termi's falchions is so close to his helmet a light glow effect was painted there as well.

The main color palette was blue/silver armor, burnished copper and gold accents, and burgundy red contrasting points.

In true Grey Knight fashion, each termi was given a name and had it on their right shoulder pad.  Though it is partially covered by the purity seals, this guy's name is Leonatus.

Lord Driago is a badass, as is evident from the fiction he was given in Codex Grey Knights (how couldn't he be when he can stomp around the immaterium setting afire Nurgle's garden, shattering the impossible city, and slaying demons like he was taking his tea?).  Still, I wanted him to gel with the aesthetics of the squad by keeping the same color palette, but still wanted him to differentiate on the table top.  I mentioned last week that I'd do this by giving him a different colored blade.  It's a simple thing, but I think it works, and since it is a long sword and not a falchion it makes sense it would be a different color.

Driago's tiled base really stands out here, where you can get a good look at the alternating red and black check pattern.

I wanted to use a wide variety of urban themed rubble pieces across the squad.  Driago's base was definitely the "pipe" base as it has five different pipes peeking out around the side.

Like the falchions, Driago's force sword has an energy current running up the blade.

Basing with an urban theme gave me an opportunity to try different techniques I don't use often when painting my own Eldar and demons, specifically rust effects.  I made a simple rust pattern by stippling on Mournfang Brown (it already has a red tint) and a lighter stipple of Khorne Red.  I lightly hit the edges around the rust with Administratum Grey to give a slight impression that the rust had eating into the metal and wasn't simply sitting on top.

For more on weathering, I'd highly recommend checking out Cameron's blog Rust and the City, he does fantastic work there and has many great tutorials.  His blog is definitely one I enjoy going back to and checking in on each week.

Besides cities of death pieces, the basing is made from a mishmash of odds and ends I pulled out of my basing box.  In this pic we can see a plaster cast arch and a plastic bit off of the Imperial Guard chimera sprue.  Medium and small Woodlands Scenic ballast finished off the base.

Of course the squad's justicar received the coolest of the accessory bitz from the termi sprue, included are his sword and book banner and extra optics helmet.  I think the helmet I used for this model was meant for a member of the squad who would carry a heavy weapon, but it works just as well to denote the veteran status of the justicar and the probably eye/head injury he suffered in his long years of service.

I wanted each base to look realistic in little ways and one of those efforts was to pin brass pinning rods in as "rebar."  Often, exposed rebar has pieces of concrete and stone still attached to it, so I was sure to glue a few bits of rock and ballast to the exposed portions on this base.

That same idea used on the justicar's base was taken to the next level with the standard bearer, where the rebar is still struggling to hold the fractured pieces of his base together.  Each of the three tiled sections are pinned into the main vent section by a brass rod.

The banner was done in the same silvers, golds, and brass tones I used for the armor in order to save time, but I think they ended up looking great anyway.  The grey knight on the banner was washed in blue to mirror their armor whereas the ribbon above him was washed in black to be a more neutral silver.  Agrax Earthshade washed all the brass and gold portions.  You might have noticed that the GK is slaying a golden demon, a little tongue-in-cheek from the artist.

This is by far my favorite of the Grey Knight terminators, I absolutely love his pose, it's incredibly light for an eight-foot-tall super human in tactical dreadnought armor!  I had a lot of fun with his basing as well, adding rust to the I-beam he's perched on and modeling the splintered remnants of a collapsed building around him. His basing is the best of the group in my opinion and really captures the jagged nature of a building's collapse.

All the writing done on banners and purity seals was done with a 2:1 mix of Abbadon Black and Khorne Red.  The slight hint on red for the lettering gives it an appropriate color variation for small text that has aged a bit on antiqued parchment.

Thanks for stopping by and checking out my work, come back next time to see what else I'm working on here at the Monster Lab!

What's on My Desk: Grey Knight Terminators

I'm back to work this week and have a squad of Grey Knight terminators and Lord Driago on my desk.

This is a commission piece at the showcase level of painting (level 2) and I wanted to do some great scenic bases to match.  Ruined cityscape is always a good basing choice for the armies of the 41st millennium and even more so for the Grey Knights.  Whether they are coming in as a MIB style clean-up crew to purge the heretic and alien or be they battling across a ravaged city-hive fighting to the heart of a demonic invasion, city bases look great and give that extra umph to Grey Knight models.

Let's take a look at some of the bases and break-down how they were made.

Each basing was built on a foundation of Apoxie Sculpt, a great modeling apoxie ideal for large projects that need a lot of coverage.  Apoxie Sculpt is also much easier to spread and shape than green stuff and can be easily carved after curing.  I purchased the white apoxie kit, although tons of colors are available from Aves.

I began by mixing a portion of the two part Apoxie and applied it to the center of the base in a clump.  With a broad modeling tool I smoothed it across the remainder of the base and then pressed broken pieces of the cities of death boxed set floor tiles (I don't think they make it anymore..) and rocks into it.  I also bent and then pinned brass rods into the sides of the tile piece to look like broken rebar. The whole thing is finished by brushing on white glue (Elmer's) and then applying Woodland Scenics fine and medium ballast to bring together the rocky debris.

For this piece I cut a section from a Plastruct I-beam and set it into the Apoxie Sculpt.

When I was building the bases I tried to keep the figures I had built in mind, but for the most part, I made bases that I thought would look cool and then matched the Grey Knight who would look best on a base to that one.  There's just something that's super cool about this guy, he looks like a G.K. ninja about to lay the smack down!

Plastruct cylindrical tubing makes ideal pipes.  The base at the rear of this group has an assortment of small, medium and large tubes jutting out from the ruined tile above it.  The tile also has fractured pieces hanging off its side, supported by the rebar between them.

Another of my favorites, this G.K. has a strong sense of forward motion. I wanted to place him on a base that paired well with his posing and ended up on this one.  He's coming down from a higher vantage point on the base looking almost like he's jumping, but definitely about to bring the Emperor's justice to some heretic/alien scum/demonic menace.

I don't get to do space marines often, and I have to say, the work so far on this commission has been refreshing.  I'm looking forward to getting some paint on these guys and think I might try my hand at a non-metallic metal scheme instead of the classic blue-silver.  I really want these guys to shine on the table top and have been pretty happy with the pale armor I've done on a past commission.

Thanks for stopping by and checking out what's on my desk!  Come back next week to see what other projects I'm working on here at the Monster Lab!

Pre-heresy conversion Pt. 2

All right! After a long week it's time for the second installment of the conversion! Leaving off from where we were last, we need to clean all of the warp filth from the legs, arms, shoulders and weapons.

Now is also the right time to gather basing material. For these conversion troops I'm using an urban theme. Here is a look at the stuff below-

These are all pieces of plaster molds of urban building rubble and random crap, but all good for the look I'll be shooting for. Also the fact that most of this stuff is made of terrain plaster, it's easy to break up. Now keep in mind that my experience in this sort of basing is limited to Flames of war 15 mm stuff, but it's all the same in theory, so we'll see how I do.

Now comes the real "work" if you will. I have spent a good bit of time researching this project by looking up artists renditions of the different legions usually found on the book covers of the Heresy series, other hobbyists work random depictions and so on. What you generally find is that no one is truly "accurate" when it comes to the Mk patterns of the pre-heresy armor. You will see all kinds of goofy stuff in pictures, for instance a beaky appears on the back side of the cover of Prospero Burns. Mk VI in pre-heresy... I don't think so, but ultimately this works in the hobbyists favor in that we have artistic license as long as we try to keep the "flavor" of the Pre-heresy. My shoulder pads will be the biggest offender here, but, The ones I'm using will allow for an easier heraldry application. And quite frankly, if you find people are criticizing your  interpretation, tell them to go drink a bolter round.

Now I begin to gather together the pieces I initially want for each marine. below is an example of what I may end up using for the Night Lords.

As I work along I try to imagine what the Marine is doing in combat to find the right limbs and weapon combos, This step for me changes constantly, so I like to use thumb tack or poster tack to get an idea of what I'm working to, like pictured below.

This just gives me the rough draft opportunity, to see what poses i can play with. Take close look at the marine in the center, with the chain sword, he is going to change! I don't like how he is turning out, and I want something more "Epic" if you will. It was at this point that I decided that he would be my Luna Wolf. Can I get a "Luprical!" up in dis house? Any way the first step to creating an "Iconic" figure was to go after another modification to the helm. Something that would really stand out. A horsehair crest. And here's how I did it:

With Green stuff made a thin brick about 5/8ths of an inch long by 1/8ths tall. Then I stuck it onto the very end of my plain 'ol exacto knife to form the horse shoe shape. Turns out that this is the perfect arc for the size of the helmets. I used a flat sculpting tool to flatten all sides while still adhered to the end of the knife. I let it dry for about 12 hours, popped it off the knife and scored it for texture.

Next I requisitioned a frag grenade from a trooper and cut a piece at the first notch. This will become the crest "hilt".

Now I have glued the "hilt" to the top of the helmet.

And BAM! We have an Iconic helmet! now I'm getting excited! Next I start on bases, You can see below that I slapped together a 4 piece base using elmer's glue for the large pieces. Two pieces are below to give the base some height and at the same time tilting a slab. 

For the rubble I use kitty litter. What I do is take "unused" kitty litter and put it in a sandwich baggie. I then use a spoon to crush it down to "scale". I'll then separate half of the crushed litter to an opposite corner of the bag and crush that down again. then you just shake the two sizes back together giving you a very nice size variation. now I add Elmers glue again to all of the spaces and crack where I want rubble. I then just dip the base down into the baggie and there you have it, instant urban rubble. Let that stand and dry for an hour and then wash over the base with a 50/50 mix of elmer's and water to seal the base. Now to add our legs!

After the base has dried, I super glue the legs on, looking for the best possible pose.

This is a behind shot of the same base. And below you can see that I have legged all my bases.

If you look closely you will see that I do have some plastic scraps on the bases as well. What I do is use a lighter to heat them up and deform them on a table edge to make them look like broken and melted beams. plasicard I-beams work well for this, I just didn't have any at the time, so i improvised. I also replace torsos with thumb tack to further work out poses. Now remember that Luna Wolf from earlier? Below is a reminder...

Here he makes another pre-pose appearance along with a yet to be named on the left and The Night Lords legs on the right.

Here is the mighty Astartes again, but I just don't want those arms, so I'm going to swap arms for a truly awesome pose! In the mean time we need to take a quick look at modifying backpacks.

This is really easy. Cut off nozzles. cut away Extra "taint" , Glue nozzlesback on. pretty cut and dry. The right is before, the left after. Here's another type-

You may want to use a little green stuff, but not too shabby on its own!. So now with some backpacks ready and the Arms I want,  I assemble The Luna Wolf.

Charging into battle This company Captain will be know to me as Garviel Loken.

                                                   NAME THE BOOK COVER!


Thank you all for reading! Any questions, Feel free to ask. Part 3 coming soon! In it we will look at little mods to make each Legion represented look unique before we move to the painting !

The Emperor Protects!
-JOHN