Stone Templars SM Log

[gorepants]

Hi All, it's taken about 15 years for me to get close to a (proper) complete army so I though I'd put up some picks of their WIP.

The chapter is the Stone Templars, their fluf is that they are basically codex Reasonable Marines from a rocky world. They use camo, tanks, and don't just charge everyone. But they are still marines and occasionally don't get it, like bright red pauldrons and shiny jewerly. I may work out something more later, but there's lots to paint first.

Here's the first (almost) fully painted test model. Still waiting for some weathering powders to arrive to finish him off (which is why he's still glossy).

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2621/4071961620_22cf5e01f3_m.jpg (http://www.flickr.com/photos/21136889@N03/4071961620/)

My first squad - regular terminators.

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3522/4071199317_1bf89223ca.jpg (http://www.flickr.com/photos/21136889@N03/4071199317/)

The mob waiting to be painted. All the foot sloggers have their main armour colour done. There's lots of dry brushing to get the stone texture so it had to be done first. Its captain, command sqaud, terminators, vanguard, sternguard, assualt squad, 2 devestators and 3 tac squads. It's a bit of a jumble because I was doing 10-15 at a time and it doesn't really matter what the order is.

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2470/4071993232_787b66bc84.jpg (http://www.flickr.com/photos/21136889@N03/4071993232/)

The style is weathered, but reasonably so (no CMON/Golden Daemon I'vejust walked through a storm of knives chipping all over the model! Scuffs, mud, dust and oil are the order of the day). Using stuff out of the forge world book - so the first two pictures have base paints, chipping using the sponge technique and a black-brown oil paint wash. Will add mud and dust effects.

The aim is to get a company plus support done (eventually, a little way to go yet). They'll be painted as detachments - the first being plain armour, full heraldry, then adding a euro style forest/plains camo and a dirty snow camo detachment (shouts to Tom at Castle Hill GW for finally convicing me to go the extra yard).

Comments and criticism are welcome.

[gorepants]

And while I'm at it, he's what inspired me to do this:

A blue marines sniper I did years ago. He's a newish plastic, but since I started with Rogue Trader marines in camo just make sense to me (I always have the image of space wolves hunting orcs form the old red book I think?).

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2698/4071199893_48a6c094b3.jpg (http://www.flickr.com/photos/21136889@N03/4071199893/)

His spotter, who didn't fit onto the diorama properly. He'll now get used a bolt gun marine in my command squad - an adviser on secondment from the blue marines. Would have done a blue marine army but *everyone else has them; * no need to feel like I'm trying to shoe horn stuff into the new fluff (and I can switch to using another codex if I feel like mixing things up).

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2577/4071962030_c7a4ed17b1_m.jpg (http://www.flickr.com/photos/21136889@N03/4071962030/)

And some Grey Knights. Still only part way through a squad since they're so damn fiddly. These guys inspired me to start painting properly again, but a Grey Knight army would be hela expensive and there aren't that many models. And they'd look silly in camo.

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2747/4071962270_d2142146be.jpg (http://www.flickr.com/photos/21136889@N03/4071962270/)

[The Plastic Surgeon]

Hey James! I like em! :D

[lobster-overlord]

All these great models, yet I don't see a Stone Templar Pilot. What's up with that?

(sorry, couldn't resist...)

[gorepants]

Thanks guys, no pilot's yet though :(. My brother has a big GI Joe flyer so I may have to steal it and rip off these guys some time:
http://www.tanksandtrolls.co.uk/40k%20Stormbird%20Troop%20Transport.htm
though I think it'll be hard to be quite as awesome.

My weathering powders arrived and girlfriend went crazy with macro on her new camera:

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3269/4085620770_7d4a43469c.jpg (http://www.flickr.com/photos/21136889@N03/4085620770/)

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2535/4084862759_d62e93c7e8.jpg (http://www.flickr.com/photos/21136889@N03/4084862759/)

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2597/4084862887_46bf331eda.jpg (http://www.flickr.com/photos/21136889@N03/4084862887/)

cont'd...

[gorepants]

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2477/4084862565_c8967d335b.jpg (http://www.flickr.com/photos/21136889@N03/4084862565/)

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2448/4084863285_17bc9860a7.jpg (http://www.flickr.com/photos/21136889@N03/4084863285/)

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2629/4084862277_4bf5947d1c.jpg (http://www.flickr.com/photos/21136889@N03/4084862277/)

Weathering powders are interestnig to use. I applied them with white spirits over gloss varnish. Was a little shocked when I dried off the spirits and everything changed colour, so I brushed a lot of the powder off, which meant a much weaker pigmentation in the end. But better too little than too much. A couple of coats of dullcote went over this. My two main observations from using the powders are:

- these are really sticky so be carefull where you get them

- when the white spirits dry the pigments appear much stronger (some parts of my guys appeared totally white from a dust coloured powder). If you varish again the pigments dissolve and blend in (but osme colours not quite as much as with the spirits). So: if you are using them with white spirits be sparing - better too little than too much; if you are using them dry be prepared for your work to dissapear if you varnish. But like I said above, better too little than too much!

[person person]

Like the stone-ish texture, comparedto the crisp and neat eyes.

[gorepants]

Like the stone-ish texture, comparedto the crisp and neat eyes.

Thanks pp. I was aiming to get the eyes (all the better to see you) and guns (all the better to shoot you) looking cleaner (my dad was a naval officer so I've had a little about how important it is to keep guns clean!). And as a contrast since otherwise they blend into a blur or brown. That's why the helmets and pauldrons, even if chipped are smoother colours. Glad it worked :D

[imperialsavant]

Thanks pp. I was aiming to get the eyes (all the better to see you) and guns (all the better to shoot you) looking cleaner (my dad was a naval officer so I've had a little about how important it is to keep guns clean!). And as a contrast since otherwise they blend into a blur or brown. That's why the helmets and pauldrons, even if chipped are smoother colours. Glad it worked :D

:) Very nice work!
and as Cpt Sweet William Fredrickson said in "Sharpes Enemy"--"Men are dirty, rifles are clean!"

[person person]

Makes sense to me. No one likes a jamming gun.

OTOH, Love how the stone texture has a camo effect without taking away heraldry etc.

[archimbald]

immense
love the origonality




people call it wierd, i call it cool

[gorepants]

OK, it's been a while on this, but I've been busy and these metal guys a pain to paint with all that detail and stuff but I've managed to finish my jump pack chaplain. Since these chappies are full of religious zeal he's forgoing the camo armour for the more tradition sky pilot black. No weathering since all the time he's not clobbering baddies and being pious he's polishing his armour. He's on a big base since some of my vanguards kept falling over, and it means he gets to be even more heroic (that is higher) leaping mightly leaps with his shiny winged skull club.

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4020/4205344053_2edfdeb022.jpg (http://www.flickr.com/photos/21136889@N03/4205344053/)

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4017/4205344741_aa80db5ab8.jpg (http://www.flickr.com/photos/21136889@N03/4205344741/)

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2620/4205344405_cdedc200d1.jpg (http://www.flickr.com/photos/21136889@N03/4205344405/)

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2680/4205344249_2bcf1e5f0d.jpg (http://www.flickr.com/photos/21136889@N03/4205344249/)

[Herald of Nurgle]

How the hell do you get that effect on the normal guys? I officially love this army.

[Duke]

Your doing a great job... Perhaps a small tutorial on how your doing things? (in one consolidated post)

Duke

[MarshalAdamar]

Looks good, I like the color scheme. Nice work.

[person person]

Chaplain looks sick, how did you get that nice black colour.

[gorepants]

Thanks guys.

The black was pretty easy, but time consuming. Here's what I did:

pallette: Chaos Black, Shadow Grey, Fortress Grey, Badab Black wash

- paint black

- drybrush shadow grey to fortress grey in 3/4 steps

- decide I didn't like it (the flat panels were too light, the edges not crisp enough)

- wash with badab black (this was a good move, the whole thing was pretty black, but with a hint of lighter shades giving some shape

- starting with 50/50 black/shadow grey start building up washes to 50/50 shadow grey/fortress grey. these were very watery - if you put your brush on a towel the paint will immediately seep in.

- with slightly less watery fortress grey, highlight exposed upper edges, add some black and do the lower edges

- apply satincote (from an airbrush)

- realise such a heavy coat is too glossy and faintly mist with dullcote (from a spray can)

Since shadow grey is a little blue it gives goo depth to the colour, and since fortress grey is very monochromatic it brings the colour back to a true black, rather than blue-black. The other part to the effect (not that I planned it, but looking back at the pictures) is that the sharp edges of the black form a contrast against the smoother shading of the red, gold and bone. I'm not too precise painting - you'll see the highlight is a little shaky on the left knee - so there was lots of mixing back to darker colours to touch things up.

And Sakura micron pens are great for doing the squiggly writing.

Duke: I'll see what people want and jot things down. When there's enough stuff I'll consolidate it and maybe even remember to put in some WIP pictures (I still have a termie chappy to paint).

[Duke]

Great, as a fellow painting enthusiast I really like to see how other people do their work. Not just in the finished product, but all the steps involved.

Duke

[person person]

And Sakura micron pens are great for doing the squiggly writing.

I knew it! I like to use pens for writing too, helluva lot easier than a brush .

[Herald of Nurgle]

Umm... I was mainly wondering about the rest of the force lol. The Chaplain looks badass though.

(You know that Stone Templars are also on a Beasts of War video... only this scheme's rather different http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3r0tD5hR5OY)

[gorepants]

Hey Herald, no problems.. And yes, a little different scheme. I guess that's what happens when you choose a generic name :-)

pallette: Irydian Darksun, Devlan Mud Wash, White, Charadon Granite, Burnt Umber (oil), various weathering powders.

Prime:
I use GW white and get a dusty coat. This help texture the model for the stone effect.

Base armour colour:
this is best done before any other colours are done since it's a little messy
- paint armour in Irydian Darksun
- wash with Devlan Mud
- drybrush Irydian Darksun
- drybrush with Darksun lightened with white (repeat)

At this stage you will have something like the first picture in the blog (minus the gloss varnish)

The drybrushing needs to be pretty dry to get the stone effect since you need to pick out the imperfections in the primer. The high contrast between the yellow and brown accentuates this.

Details:
Details and decals get done now.

Damage:
With a sponge (eg from a blister pack), dab on Charadon Granite. This is all I did for this. There are two reasons. 1) speed: these are tabletop minis so I don't want to spend hours lining damage on each one. 2) justification: if I was going to make a super metal I would make sure it wasn't going to rust, this means it needs the properties of aluminium which will tarnish very quickly, forming a matt layer protecting the underlying metal. Also, unless they have rusted, or a very fresh, damage to paint work tends to just look grey spots from any distance. I used a dark colour to accent the light armour.

Seal:
Seal the mini with gloss varnish

Weathering:
Oils:
- mix bunt umber with white spirits to for a fluid mixture
- line the model with this mixture. By diluting it it should flow fairly easily over the varnish. DO NOT DO THIS TO THE WHITE. Unless you want it to be really dirty.
- Dry the solvent in the paint (1-2 hours, or 2-3 mins with a hair dryer).
- Take a brush and make it damp with white spirits.
- Drag this over the paint to streak it, cleaning the brush frequently. Because of the uneven surface the oil paint will tend to dirty up the whole surface.
- Any where there is too much oil paint, go over it repeatedly with the brush to remove as much pigment as possible.
- go over any areas that were not initially treated with the oil paint (eg the white) with the brush. There should be enough pigment on it to dirty the surface slightly, bringing the colours together.

The effect at this point is one of griminess, with the shadows reinforced.

Powders:
After the oils a re thoroughly dry
- lightly coat with clean white spirits.
- dust with powders: soot around vents, light dust on top, mid dust lower, mud on legs. Blend in a blobs with a soft brush. This should be a very subtle layer or colouring.
- dry thoroughly.
- don't freak out. Once dry the pigments in the powders will appear very strongly. Since we are going to varnish again, they will be muted down.
- in the models above, I dusted some of the powder off at this point (because I did freak out). This will not hurt, since the varnish will probably not mute them quite as much as the white spirits.

Varnish:
- a heavy coat of dull cote to seal everything in and cover up the earlier glosscote.

Things left to do:
Fix up the metals: The dullcote means the metals are now totally matt, and look a little less metalic. I'll satin cote these, possibly using some metallic pigments. The aim is to have a poor man's metallic-non-metallic-metal effect.

[person person]

1 marine goes through all that? Kudos to you, I know Golden Demon painters that would envy that kind of paitience.

[gorepants]

1 marine goes through all that? Kudos to you, I know Golden Demon painters that would envy that kind of paitience.

Ha! Those are the easy steps - all rough a painting that needs little finess. And can be done in batches. It's painting the detail that slows me down.

[Stormlord Aeirling]

Looking pretty good. the grey knights you painted a few pages back were very nice.

[gorepants]

So, finally time for an update. Haven't have much time for any painting in the last three months, but I've finally finished of a squad of assault marines. I've also rebased my terminators from earlier. I think this style suits a little better. It also means that when I get round to doing some snow camo guys for the company they will fit together better.

These guys were all done using the same techniques as before. The new things worth mentioning are:

- if you are using (light coloured) powders with thinner, then dry it out, you have to be careful varnishing it. If you don't put enough on to soak in all the way into the powder it will form a hard coat over any clumps, making them stick out just a little. There are a few patches of this that I had to wash over to dull down. Other than that I am happy with how simple they are to use, and how much they bring the underlying colours together (without powders the wear marks really stand out).

- I added a small amount of deeper mud colour powders on the legs to reduce the tonal contrast with the earth colour (also updated the already painted guys). New powder range was dust on top, (light) earth in the middle, mud on the bottom of legs.

- grass is a mix of grasses, both in patches and together.

- snow is GW static snow. Photo's are OK, but still not sure about it since it has a velvet texture!

- I'll be getting custom decals done since I'm not so good with straight lines and the numbers over squad marking are hard to get right. And it means a better consistency across the whole army. I will probably also get a decal for my banner since that's a whole lot of painting I don't want to do!


http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2756/4464503178_ed618487ca.jpg (http://www.flickr.com/photos/21136889@N03/4464503178/)
link (http://www.flickr.com/photos/21136889@N03/4464503178/)

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2759/4463726635_acc38153c4.jpg (http://www.flickr.com/photos/21136889@N03/4463726635/)
link (http://www.flickr.com/photos/21136889@N03/4463726635/)

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2783/4463726169_e6fa1f973a.jpg (http://www.flickr.com/photos/21136889@N03/4463726169/)
link (http://www.flickr.com/photos/21136889@N03/4463726169/)

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4060/4463725717_da70f2787b.jpg (http://www.flickr.com/photos/21136889@N03/4463725717/)
link (http://www.flickr.com/photos/21136889@N03/4463725717/)

[person person]

Nice, like how the powders get darker towards the feet, clever.

[gorepants]

thanks pp - I was looking for a quick way to give a slight sense of depth (height?) to the model, and it seems I got luck

[gorepants]

Since I've never done anything like this and wanted a break from painting I decided to do learn a bit of sculpting.I like the Njal model and his wolf pelt has a bear head on it, I decided to convert him to a vanilla librarian. The idea was that all my normal marines are pretty square, but the librarians are crazy mushroom eating mystics who have to travel to deep into the mountains an kill something before completing their training (hence the bear cloak and the charms).

The work done so far:
Trim off the wolf skulls, tails, raven mount, etc
Fill the runes
Rebuild his armour
Former for the bear tail
Horned skull (the skull is from a terminator shoulder pad)

Work to do:
Rebuild the rivets on his belt buckle (I have the insides of a water filter drying as we speak)
Tidy up his arms (mould lines, some of the crux may need more building up)
The fur

The putty is procreate with a bit of green stuff. I found the GS really hard to work, so switched. The PC suits me better since it's easer to carve and sand. I'll probably go over the whole thing with milliputty-water to even out some of my bodgery.

Tools were a set of metal probes from the hardware store, some clay formers (point and round chisel mostly), 400 git paper, and lots of water.

The whole thing is pretty straight forward, but any C & C welcome.

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2734/4499704184_ca92ae824c.jpg (http://www.flickr.com/photos/21136889@N03/4499704184/)

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2754/4499067919_002c6bed2c.jpg (http://www.flickr.com/photos/21136889@N03/4499067919/)

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4014/4499067703_54dfea5f71.jpg (http://www.flickr.com/photos/21136889@N03/4499067703/)

[ElTanko]

Love the look of these guys, the weathered look really makes the look old and more veteran and the colour scheme is really good.

ElTanko