Grulka Blackhand from Titan Wargames.

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Hello folks! Way too long since the last update :) Not that much painting has been happening here, been cycling a lot, wasted my time on some indie games like Terraria and Limbo, and I've also been on holiday. More on that later, but we'll start with the painting action shall we? Oh and there's more I want to tell you about, but I'll save that for another ok :)

Last month I finished two Titan Wargames miniatures, of which you have already seen one appear on the blog. If you missed it click on the image below for more angles. The other chaos dwarf (a female in fact!) will be uploaded this weekend or shortly after.

Apart from the chaos dwarfs I've started a rather tedious project: a unit of Blood Angels Death Company. During my holiday I assembled them, and as some kind of test I started painting an arm. This allowed me to define a recipe for each of the colors which are on the complete models. Pretty pleased with the results... going for an 'Eavy Metal style of painting here in case you didn't notice :)

Here are the rest of the guys waiting to be painted. Oh yeah there primed in white. Didn't have any black primer in the house, and I'm always to eager to start working on a new project that it can't wait a week :)



I've also been using a non-metallic Citadel paint again in a long while. I think the reds in the Vallejo Model color line aren't that much good. I have several of them but most of them have changed in a thick goo, with a layer of transparent medium (thinner?) on top, in such a way that shaking won't help. The other which are in good condition don't have the brightness which I'm looking for. So I decided to try out Evil Sunz Scarlet and the foundation paint Mephiston Red. Works as a charm! I'm really pleased about the paint, in fact I'm considering on buying some more the line.

But I'm still not a huge fan of the paint jar-type of thing. Of course they're a huge improvement over the old screw capped ones I had in the beginning of my painting career, but I think taking out the paint with your brush is still quite cumbersome when you're used to dropper bottles. I think I will pick up some empty Vallejo bottles soon and transfer the paints. I also noticed some paint hardening near the "hinge" of the lid so they're still not entirely perfect in my opinion. But the paint quality is certainly top notch!



I already mentioned my holiday. Well there isn't that much to tell about really ;) My family and I visited the sourth of France this time. The first few days we had some bad luck with the weather but that was okay since it allowed us to visit some cool places instead of cooling down at the swimming pool like we did all the other days :)

Highlight of this trip was probably a visit to the fortified medieval town of Carcassonne. A very inspirational place!

Thanks for reading, see you soon!

Marrog Blackhand from  Titan Wargames.

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Quiet month for me, I've been on holiday :) Regular posts will return soon.

Paintjobs

Hypnotic Beat by Raffa
Big Boris III by Avicenna
Hotaru by Suou
Chaos Hero by James Wappel
Imothek the Stormlord by C'tan
Diorama by Baphoment

New releases

Red Box Games May 2012 releases
Samaritan Grenadier by Studio McVey

Other

Finecast, six months later...
Interactive Color Sphere with color theory.

Last month's news was headlined by, yet again, a lot of announcements of new miniature lines, and some important competitions, like Crystal Brush.

Painted Miniatures

Varathar by Ithandir
Space Wolf vs Horror by dims
Crystal Brush winners
Timewitch by Dakan
CoolminiOrNot Owl by James Wappel

New Releases

Paolo Parente's Anastyr
Origen Arts
Infamy Miniatures
Servo Skull Collector by JRN

Other

Interview with Crystal Brush winner Jose Palomares

Last weekend (21 & 22 April) the Belgian club Conect'r held its annual Warhammer tournament, called Conflict. The organizers have the ambition to let this event grow into more than a tournament, so this year for the first time there was some room for painting. I was contacted by club member Stijn Aerts, a very motivated fellow, to get involved into setting up a painting competition. We worked things out through e-mail, and I paid the event a visit on Sunday to give a painting demo and help with the judging of the painting competition.

Here you can see the small hall, with a trader, a modeling club (red table cloth), and my painting table (right to the modeler's). This was also the place where the tournament players could have a snack and a drink between battles.

The painting competition. The guy with the red shirt is Stijn.

In total there were 100 entries, which was a lot more than we expected. The only downside, from my (a painter's) point of view, was that only a few entries were painted especially for the competition. Most entries were by tournament players which entered some well painted miniatures of their other armies. Nothing wrong with that of course! I was really amazed with the quality level of some "tabletop quality" figures.

Check them out:

Best of show winner:

The main hall. Sunday was the day the 40k tournament was held.

The friendly guys from Modelbouwclub Leuven:

This is Gijs Hagelsteens, a very talented figure painter. Too bad he only does historical large scale models :)

And finally this is me :)

My display:

I painted the following figure at the event. I think I spent 2 hours in total. I gave it to Stijn as a present ;)

It was a fun day, I met a lot of nice people and we already discussed how we could make the event better next year. The club's ambition is to raise more interest in painting in Flanders (Dutch speaking part of Belgium) again so I should really support this. As far as I know it's currently the only painting competition of it's kind in this part of our country.

If you're from Flanders and you're interested in competition level painting of sf & fantasy miniatures, please do not hesitate to get in touch with me: gerrie.schenck@gmail.com.

Not much painting going on lately... I think I only spent a couple of hours at the painting table last month. But before we take a look on what I'm working an announcement:

Next weekend I will be painting at the Conflict 2012 event in Gelrode, Belgium. I will also be judging the painting competition there. If you are at the event, be sure to say hi :) More information can be found here: http://conectr-team.weebly.com/11th-conflict-2012.html

Over to the desk. The Drune project is still status quo:

Spent some time preparing a batch of Titan Wargames Chaods Dwarves. Expect a review soon.

Going for an alternative color scheme:

And then there's this little side project. It's a cut-up Tau Air Caste by Forgeworld:

Happy painting!