Here are some WIP shots of the Space Marine Drop Pod I'm working on.
At the moment only the metallics are done. I'm quite happy how the interior looks, this was done using a simple basecoat of Chainmail, then a was with black ink and then some cleaning up with Chainmail. Other, darker parts are done using Boltgun Metal and heavier washing.

I used two colours of primer on this model. First I opened the doors and sprayed the inside black. When that dried I turned it upside down and sprayed some more black on the bottom of the drop pod. Then I closed the hatches and sprayed the outside white. This will allow me to paint most of the metallics over black and blue over white. The interior also has some hard to reach places, this way I was sure everything is black so when I miss a spot with Chainmail it won't look as bad as with white primer.

As suggested in this post, I expected to have a lot less painting time than a few months ago. And yes, I was right.

Currently I'm not working on any big, or high quality projects. I'm mainly focusing on my Space Marine army. In the last couple of weeks I finished 8 Tactical Marines with special weapons and right now I'm working on a Drop Pod.

To get more painting done I constructed a paint station out of a cardboard box. When I have some time in the evening it's very easy to take the box and sit at the living room table or in front of the TV and do some work on the Space Marines. When I'm done I can close the box and put it safely away from little toddler's hands.

I will post some pictures of the paint station, as well as the Space Marines very soon.

In my small Crisis 2008 review post from last October, I mentioned the new French game Okko. Besides the fantastic miniatures the piece of scenery that was used to display the game was breathtaking. Here are two links to forum posts that display some work in progress on similar projects:

http://hazgaard.forumpro.fr/vos-creations-f18/tutorial-decors-et-plateau-3d-t474.htm
http://hazgaard.forumpro.fr/vos-creations-f18/decor-3d-le-fortin-du-col-de-betten-t482.htm

My best wishes for the new year go out to all the readers of my blog. May 2009 bring a lot of painting and gaming pleasure!

Last week my second daughter was born. Her name is Feline and she's doing very well. Here's a picture of her together with me and her big sister, Fiona.


Needless to say there won't be many updates in the next few weeks. Anyway: happy holidays!

Antenociti's Workshop is an online store selling all kinds of high-quality materials and tools for scenery building. From grass flock to ruins, they have it all at a really good price.

There's also an extensive articles section on the site, and two articles have caught my attention last week because they tackle two common problems when trying to create realistic looking ground.

First there's an article on ground covered by grass and how to make everything look very realistic: http://www.barrule.com/Workshop/Extras/extras%20-%20Groundwork%20-%20The%20Art%20of%20Flor(a).html

The second article is about creating realistic looking dunes and sand cover: http://www.barrule.com/Workshop/Extras/extras%20-%20modeling%20realistic%20sand.htm

I will have to read more of their articles in the future, because the level of realism achieved is fantastic! Of course I will post the links here.

I mentioned this little side-project in my latest desktop shot post, and here are the details. I've bought this boxed set about a year ago on eBay, but I never opened it. A few months ago I assembled and based the figures, and now I finally started painting them. I'm not really planning to use them for gaming purposes, and a very high-quality paintjob would take up a lot of time so I'm going for a very good gaming standard.

This picture was taken last week when I primed the figures and stained them using a dilluted mix of sepia and black ink.


After that I painted the skin area on all the models. Right now I'm focusing my work on two figures: Aragorn and Frodo. Here's what I have so far: