I’ve got the audio sample for Servant of the Crown – once again narrated by Simon Vance – to whet your appetite in anticipation of release day, which is now only 11 sleeps away, on 10 March! You can listen to the sample below, or over at SoundCloud by clicking through the embedded link:
I think Simon has done a wonderful job once again, and I love having him narrate my books. I hope you enjoy the sample, and also the full work when it comes out on 10 March!
Don’t forget, you can preorder you copy right now over at Audible or Amazon:
Space Marine Number 4 is a Salamander, which is a light green colour scheme. Overall this wasn’t a difficult colour to work with, and I’m pretty happy with the tonal range I had – as a reminder, I don’t use GW paints as I don’t own any, so have to work out an approximate paint recipe from the range I do have.
The main issue with this guy is that the photos really expose how rough my blends are, not just in transition but also in shape and smoothness. This is something I really have to work on, but I think brush control is a large part of this, and it only improves with a lot more practise!
The other thing I didn’t get right here, which I usually make a reasonable job of, is the eye lenses. I don’t have a strong enough transition of colours here, and they’re too light as a result. It was the first yellow lens I’ve painted, so live and learn!
The weapon and chest logo are non metallic metal. The barrel of the flame thrower was a bit of a challenge, and to be honest I think it looks slightly better in the photo than in reality. I get the idea behind how reflections should work on NMM objects, but I can never seem to get them to look quite as good as they do on Youtube videos!
Time for photos!
I still struggle a bit to work out where to highlight, and in my next batch will focus on the edge highlighting technique. It kind of defeats the purpose of using these as a practise vehicle for highlighting, but I want to see what type of a result I can get with the edge highlighting!
As always, feel free to send any hints or tips you might have, they’re always appreciated! Also, if anyone has any suggestions on chapter colour schemes for my next box of marines, let me know!
In the third instalment of my Space Marine painting adventure, I’ve painted an Imperial Fist. Yellow is the colour of the day with this guy, which presented its own set of challenges, some down to the nature of the colour, and some self-inflicted.
I’ve a few initial comments to make on this one. The first thing is that I usually undercoat my models with a black rattle can spray. I think I’m going to pick up a can of mid grey and a can of white, and experiment with these a bit when I’m painting models of a mainly bright colour. I’ve read that once you get to 3-4 coats (which I do anyway), any effect of the undercoat is minimal, but I think I’ll try it anyway to see if it makes life any easier.
The next thing is that I’ve started to use a wet palette, and an acrylic thinner medium instead of plain tap water to thin my paints. The issue I had here was that I didn’t mix the thinner through the yellow well enough, meaning I got the nice saturated sunburst yellow colour in places (see the pauldrons), and a milky, chalky yellow in others (see the gun and leg plates).
Now, on to the photos!
The yellow colour represented less of a challenge with the photography, rather than me doing anything different, and getting things right!
Another painting mistake I made with this one is that after the initial 4 layers of thinned yellow base coat, I washed the entire model in a sepia ink. That’s given the flat panels a bit of a muddy effect in places. In future, I’m going to try and keep this application as precisely to the seams and recesses as I can, which I should have done from the start…
As always, if anyone has any comments, tips, or painting experiences they’d like to share, feel free to drop them in the comments box below. If you want to take a look at my previous efforts, here are the links to Part 1 and Part 2!
To celebrate the upcoming release of Servant of the Crown, the final part of the Dragonslayer trilogy which will be out on Tuesday 10 March, I’m running a giveaway over on Goodreads for 5 signed paperback copies of the first book in the trilogy,Dragonslayer.
I’m afraid the giveaway is only open to residents of the US and Canada. Once again, apologies to everyone else for this, but it’s completely beyond my control.
With release day for the final part of the Dragonslayer trilogy now less than a month away, on Tuesday 10 March, the nearness of it all hit me today when these two beauties arrived all the way from Tor in the US.
The covers always look a little different in the flesh than they do on the screen, and the green background is a bit darker than I was expecting, but looks even better than I’d hoped for. I’m really pleased with how the covers have turned out for all three books in the series, and it feels hard to believe that I’m almost at the end of the road with this trilogy. The last couple of years have gone by so quickly!
The second of my 28mm intergalactic super soldiers is a Blood Angel. The focus here was on getting a nice red that didn’t turn too pink or orange in the highlighting process. As a reminder, I don’t use the official paints for these models, so getting the recipe right is always a bit of trial and error (usually more of the latter!). On to the pictures.
My photography is letting me down again here – I just can’t seem to get enough light, even though I have a small light box with leds, so I need to keep tweaking this setup to get it right. The highlights on the model appear more subtle in the photo than they actually are in real life.
Photography clearly needs improvement, so I might try a grey background with my next batch of photos when I paint some more models. I’m hoping the mid tone background colour will allow me get a better exposure on the model itself.
Once again, some things worked here, and some things didn’t. I’m quite happy with the red paint recipe, but my recess shading is still a bit messy and patchy in places, so I think is the main area that needs work. I stuck with the same non metallic approach on the gun as I did with the previous one (which you can take a look at here), as I quite like the end result.
Overall, there are positives and negatives to take away from this one. The eyes worked really well, but recess shading needs improvement, and highlight placement continues to be an issue!
Once again, if you’ve any comments or tips or personal experiences of painting these guys, I’d love to hear them!
I had a little painting time over Christmas, so I decided to paint up a box of Space Marines. With so many chapters to choose from, I decided to paint each in a different chapter colour. The idea was that they’d be a good opportunity to practise shading and highlighting different colours! To the photos:
I decided to go with an Ultramarine for my first attempt. I don’t use the official paints, as I already have the full range of Vallejo paints still left from when I used to paint a lot. I’m afraid I didn’t take WIP photos for these, so only have the finished results.
I don’t like metallic metal paints on small fantasy models (I do use them on historicals, though), so this guy gave me the chance to try gold non metallic metal. The NMM steel on the gun ended up looking more like some kind of polymer/resin, but I quite like this look.
I painted each major part separately before assembly, which was a mistake, as the highlights don’t match up. This is most noticeable on the shoulder pads. I still do that a bit now, but pay more attention to this issue.
Overall, I’m happy with how he turned out. The shades and highlights are still a little clunky, but I’ll only improve on that with practice. My brush skills are slowly improving, and I think my colour choices got pretty close to what I was looking for in the end result.
I’m still finding photography to be an issue, and I’m struggling to get a decently exposed image. I’ve boosted the brightness a bit in post-processing to help, but that’s the only alteration I’ve made. Any suggestions on that are more than welcome, as are any on how to improve in the paintwork!
