I managed to locate an old CSM backpack afterall, as well as a 40mm base - he is now ready to be sprayed, once I have textured the base.

Well the paint-job was surprisingly speedy - must have been all the support and encouragement I got on MSN:









Now it's Greater Daemon time...

In the words of Shaking Steven's "Lovely Stuff".

But can you spot the annoying blunder to do with one of his weapons?

at last...finished painting Karandras yesterday eve.
just glued the head to the body,did the base and sprayed the purity seal on him.

instead of painting the head gold i did it green to match the style of my other scorpions.mainly that rare one.
also i hate painting gold onto things.its a bastard metallic paint to apply smoothly.
i also clipped off/filed down the mandiblaster things on the side of his face.the two bigger ones in my opinion obscured too much of the model and just get in the way.(also they would have meant painting more gold).
i think he looks better without the excess gold/huge mandiblasters either side of his face.he look a little more slick this way.
the fiddly scorpion emblem on his chest i painted with a mix of brown and red and it came out decent.
also i cant get the hang of taking pics without the bloody model looking too shiny.i think its a combo of the camera flash and the purity seal.
in reality the models do not look this shiny/wet.

anyway im gonna start on some old school eldar troops and a heavy weapon+team this weekend.they should be a lot quicker to paint due to less detail and also im gonna use one main coat and 1 highlight instead of 2 coats and highlight.this should save a lot of time.
i only think layering with 3 coats is worth doing if youre painting light uniformed models which have been undercoated black,
for example the howling banshees.

heres Karandras...TIP:sit about 3/4 feet away for best pic viewing results (seriously)

edit:i just went and corrected/highlighted the right hand side of his mouthpiece(as it was a bit of a mess).

even the standard green base looks too shiny.i tried pics without the flash but then detail is lost and it looks too dull.

James,what light/camera settings do you use for your pics?

James wrote:But can you spot the annoying blunder to do with one of his weapons?

No.

^ The ammo feed is back to front, the bullets are facing the wrong way! And I don't really want to change it now.

Excellent job Rik! All those highlights must require loads of patience - luckily for me Nurgle models don't have to look that clean It was worth spending the time on though, he is a cool centrepiece model.

I don't use any gold on my army, but I have in the past and it is quite a thin paint to use I agree. Here's a tip though: Citadel now do a paint range called Foundation Paints - they are awesome as there is so much pigment in it that it goes on really smoothly (usually needs watering down a bit). The reason I'm saying this is that if you put a brown Foundation Paint on the areas you want to be gold, then the gold should go over the top quite nicely, and the brown will hopefully bring out the gold colour.

I doubt you can do much more than you already are with the camera, because varnish will always tend to look a bit shiny close up. I don't actually have any varnish at the moment so I haven't sprayed my models. I will get some at some point though, but only the metal ones really need spraying.

Settings wise though, make sure your camera is set to "macro" mode - this is usually indicated by a flower icon. Also for really clear shots, I rest it on a table and then put it on timer, so you don't have to touch the camera with your hand. Personally I like using a piece of white paper curved up against something as a background, to get a seamless colour behind the model.

cheers James i'll try painting gold over brown.

also yeah...macro...good point. i didnt think of that and kept using the "auction" option on the "best shot" menu.
macro is for detailed subjects so i'll give that a try in future.
and use some plain paper for the background rather than the display unit or windowsill

funnily enough i found out that my 2"rare" scorpions were actually part of the 1999 range.i found 2 more similar 1999 scorpions on ebay earlier hopefully the last 2 in the entire scorpion range(£3 each inc p+p,bargain!)
that will boost my scorpion clan to 15 models.
also i managed to find 2 space elf/rogue trader era eldar guardians on ebay earlier.

Great Unclean One time:







~ ~ ~

Done:

Quite a skill you have there old bean.

holy fucking shit!!!!! james!!! the great unclean one!!!!!!

Yeah, I saw this earlier - it looks top. I like his man tits.

nice one James,i can see how youve progressed in the last half a year or so.really good idea of showing the model in painting stages.some clever and creative techniques youve used there.
you should put up an army so far vid if possible.rather than a slideshow just pan along/record while zooming in and out on the entire bunch.(if your camera has a record function).sound doesnt really matter.

radioactive rik wrote:nice one James,i can see how youve progressed in the last half a year or so.really good idea of showing the model in painting stages.some clever and creative techniques youve used there.
you should put up an army so far vid if possible.rather than a slideshow just pan along/record while zooming in and out on the entire bunch.(if your camera has a record function).sound doesnt really matter.

i remember whitedwarf used to have a painting section that never helped me at all,

A recent issue had a really good article on painting faces - the 'Eavy Metal version looked impossibly good. I never buy White Dwarf though, it's way over-priced and is basically a glorified catalogue these days.