Revisionary

Warhammer Forge - Event Exclusive "Skin Wolf"

I've been thinking about this blog a lot lately for several different reasons.
Firstly, a few of my regular friends and younger customers have often asked me for step-by-step guides (like in 'How to Paint Citadel Miniatures') for various different armies, especially, it seems, for ones I don't do. Yeah, go figure.
Secondly, the recent rise of Tom Fern's rather awesome Calth Burns blog.
Find out more after the break!

Despite the order I laid those reasons out in, I'm going to tackle them in reverse. Why? Because I can.

Tom is a regular customer of mine and a really stand up guy. I really enjoy our chats and the guy's a really great hobbyist. I personally think he's a much better painter than he gives himself credit for (despite a 'desperately pretentious' comment about artistic endeavour ;) - it made me giggle, in a good way!) and the fact that he's currently working on an smurf Ultramarines army really has me impressed.

Some of Tom's Pre-Heresy Ultramarines

I'd like to add that I am a huge fan of Ultramarines and have defended them on several occasions; trust me, just read "Know No Fear" by Dan Abnett or the "Ultramarines Omnibus" by Graham McNeill and you can't disagree.

But I diverge.

Reading through his blog made me yearn to get mine up and running again, and so here I am. Jumping on the bandwagon.

A Mantis Warrior Space Marine

But what about that second point? Well, I'm a fast painter. I'm certainly not the best painter out there (not by a LONG shot) but I do paint to a standard I'm happy with and receive compliments for, quickly. 

Hobby Centre Managers are always being asked how to paint things, it's part of our job, and a part I generally enjoy. I like to paint many different things. As I put in a tweet recently, I collect models to build and paint, to tell a story, and sometimes enough of these projects coalesce into an army. This means the variance of models I paint is quite drastic. One day I may be painting a Mantis Warrior Space Marine, the next, a Beastman Bray-Shaman, then some Riders of Rohan.

This means I tend to try out a load of different colours, colour sequences and techniques. The Iron Warriors I painted today use a totally new technique of painting dark metal to the Necron models I painted, for example. I like to think this variance gives me a lot of ground to work on when giving suggestions.

Sometimes, though, rather than just "How do I do the purple/pink on an Emperors Children Space Marine", I get asked "How would I paint an Emperors Children model? What colours would I use for each base, shade and layer? What brushes do I use for those?". 

Games Workshop produces a fantastic book called "How To Paint Citadel Miniatures" (HTPCM). This is not a shameless plug, I honestly learnt a hell of a lot when I got my copy of this book earlier in the year (April?). Charlotte and I then both sat down and watched the DVD and both of us had moments of "Wow, I had never thought of that...". The way the book works is to lay out the basics of a few techniques:

• Basecoating
• Washing
• Drybrushing
• Layering
• Glazing
• etc

And the book continues with some astonishingly useful guides that just about cover everything you could need to paint, in a very simple step-by-step approach that uses these techniques, the Citadel Paint Range and a little "use this brush" bit too. As such, as part of the ongoing blog, I intend to pop up some HTPCM style guides for various different models I paint.

For tonight, however, I need sleep. So I shall leave you with this image of a model I converted from scratch back in August, next to a model being released on the 3rd November.

Can you tell which is which? :D

The pose, the horns, the shield... even the skulls on the base!!