Elven Royalty

Yes, you're right if you think that title of this post is a reference to Viruk's earlier Dwarven Royalty. On my part I was working on set of heroes containing mainly of elven heroes such as Rumil, Gil-Galad, Gildor and Stormcaller (Elrond and Cirdan still in progress ;) ). These are made similar to codex painting as you may see. Only unsual thing is look of "Aiglos" i.e Gil-Galad's spear. Friend asked me to fix it with part he supported so no decision on my part here, just plain old "do what you're told to". Definitely it looks...different :D

Stay tuned for more updates involving mentioned heroes and some wolf-releted hero (feel free to guess who ;) ) 

To top that some lovely music that accompanied me for duration of work on this set. 

Sir, yes sir !

Two days ago I submitted some pics of Terminator squad. As we all know what's a unit without a leader. Now it's time to present 3 Sergeants for each equippment variant, so we have one with Power Claws, one with Thunder Hammer and one with Storm Bolter and Power Sword. In my opinion the best is the one with Thunder Hammer, really badass looks reminds me of Chapter Master ;) But it's up to you to decide which, if any, you like the most.

Some energetic music piece that accompanied me during assembling those bad boys , it's Polish band , hot debeut of 2011 ;) 

Malifaux!

I've already mentioned Malifaux earlier on to show some awesome models released for this game. There are quite a few articles about Malifaux spread around the blogosphere. I became interested in the game after reading Kerrys' entry at his blog - check it out here. Great models, amazing atmosphere and a quite interesting approach to playing the game (flipping cards instead of rolling dice) are some of the most interesting features of Malifaux. Another great thing is that it's a skirmish-based game, which means you only need a few models to play it. The rules are quite interesting and you can actually download them for free.
My main criterion in choosing models to paint and play is how they appeal to me. It wasn't an easy choice but in the end I decided to start with the Guild and Lady Justice crew. I was particularly impressed with Death Marshals so I had to start with them - definitely one of the most original minis I've seen so far.
Death Marshals are basically men who have been exposed to necromancy to such a degree that they've pretty much became undead. All of this for the greater good as it made them better suited for hunting... the undead. They use special pistols and... coffins (no kidding!) as their weapons.
Painting them was very enjoyable as the quality of the sculpt is great. Just a few mold lines, excellent quality of details (especially their grim, undead faces that are full of character at the same time).
I decided to use a color scheme that's slightly different to the one used in the Wyrd Games catalogue. Instead of brown cloaks I went for slightly darker colors. Since the coffins are the biggest part of each mini, I paid extra attention to painting the wood, making sure it looks more realistic. Resigning from the drybrush technique was the key here. It helps with quickly getting the basic highlights but if you want to have a more detailed surface, traditional highlights are more effective. Their skin was another important detail. I needed it to look like not-quite-dead-but-still-pretty-much-undead. I started with two thin layers of dheneb stone, followed by ogryn flesh wash. After that I added some highlights using a 50/50 white and dheneb stone mix and a pure white highlights. At this point they looked a bit too pale so I started adding glazes (leviathan purple and baal red) to add more depth. In the end I added another very light highlight of pure white to the most protruding elements. I also left dark surface around their eyes, which were paintet using only bright yellow (I aimed for the "evil eye" look). So, there you go, my first Malifaux models are here. I still have Lady Justice and the Judge to paint from this set but I'll definitely buy more minis (and at least one more crew) from this range, they're really fun to paint.

100 and counting!

First hundred followers are the hardest but here they are! Yesterday we reached this nice number. I'd like to take this opportunity and express our thanks (mine an Haldir) to everyone who subscribed to the blog as well as to all of you people who visit, read and leave comments on our blog. All of this keeps us motivated and encourages us to paint, take pics of our works and share our ideas and thoughts.
We decided to celebrate this fact by starting a FB fan page. You can find the "like me" on the left upper part of the main menu of the blog or you can simply visit the page here. We'll be using it more frequently than the blog so if you want to stay in touch with Independent Painters, feel invited to join us there :)

And to finish off this post, here's a nice little song :)

Another batch of Terminators

Close up on Heavy Flamer Twins

Guess I should start my newest post as almost each and everyone so far this year...but I won't ;) Though truth be said I finally managed to steal some time to reintroduce myself to paints and brushes. My newest project is revolving around 40k (suprising heh? :) ). Up on the agenda are three sets of Space Marines Terminators: Assault Team with Power Claws, Assult Team with Thunder Hammers and plain old Squad with Storm Bolters each squad in power of 10. Idea is to achieve more machine like look than the usual Space Marines. Hence more plasticard will be involved :) As you can see on attached pictures, even some ripped limbs (so far only one that still needs some cosmetics so it would look more natural, I'm thinking some GS and PE foil should do the trick.

Whole happy family

Gatling Twins

Also I've decided to add some multipart function to some of the fellas. As a result we get squad of 10 Terminators with Storm Bolters and Power Fists that can be equipped just as that or we can do some switiching and have 1:1 ratio of Heavy Flamer and Multicannon, also we can decide to use either one of them in count of 2. Also Two additional Termies have some magnets in top part of Armour in order to allow attachment of Cyclone Missile Launcher systems ;) Pretty usefull I guess. No I just can't wait to lay my brush on them as Terminators are pretty much my favourite mini of 40k universum :)

Caulties of war

Cyclone System focus

And for the finishing touches music piece that should suit climax of such "cheerful" team. (I know for sure Viruk would love this pick ;) )

Pick of the Week

Taking good pictures of models isn't easy so it's always great to find some good advice. I've recently come across this blog and found a really great tutorial on taking pics there. Not only the author shows how to set things up for taking photos using artificial lighting but he also gives some good hints about post-editing the pictures. Check this out, it's definitely worth reading!



Click this link to see the whole thing.

Dwarven Royalty

As promised in my previous entry, I'm catching up with my blog backlog. There are quite a few pictures I haven't posted yet. So, here we go. I described my impressions of finecast in one of the earlier entries. They were rather positive and painting these guys hasn't changed them. Paints flow really well on this kind of resin and the fine details (they both have eyes, though it's hard to tell by the pictures - you have to take my word for it) are a little better than on the metal versions. I used resin bases and more vivid colors to mark them as royalty (see the warriors color scheme for comparison).

Durin and Mardin is another due that is used together. Durin was one of the greatest dwarf kings and Mardin served as his personal bodyguard. He uses a trident - the same type of weapon that is common for Vault Warden Team as he is a veteran of this unit. Here I also tried to keep the colors richer than on the regular soldiers. I also painted the metallics using brighter shades. And that's pretty much it as far as dwarven royalty is concerned. There will be one more here, a captain and some elites so stay tuned.