Competition entry

Hey folks.  I've entered in a miniature painting competition and a component of that is that the image of my model needs a bunch of likes.  If you could go to the GW wellington page and like my entry I'd appreciate it.

http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=277648215591004&set=a.276711652351327.65714.196918670330626&type=3&theater

Weathering and Battle damaging 40k Tanks: Part Two

Here it is.  The article you've all been waiting for.  Painting your battle worn tanks.  I have had more people coming to me and harassing me to complete this series than any other. Sorry for the delay.

At the end of the last article I suggested that you under coat your chosen vehicle in Chaos black, so it should look something like the above.  The next stage is to do the base coat.  I personally do not currently own a Spray gun or an air brush, so I have hand basecoated the model.  If you do have access to one of these I highly recommend you use it.  That said there are benefits to using a brush.  For one thing you don't need to mask things off if you want the to stay black.

Right, first things first.  If you are going to hand base coat the model the first thing you will need is a really big Brush.  I used a Citadel Large Drybrush.

Go through and dry brush the tracks and anything else you want metallic with Boltgun metal.

Now, not to belabour the point,  the one i make every time I give out painting advice.  WATER DOWN YOUR PAINTS!.  It's important to do this with any model but it is even more important with tanks.  You will be laying down a lot of paint in one hit so if the paint isn't watered down say goodbye to all the detail.  If  you have to do more layers to get good cover so be it.  I went with a 2:1 ratio paint to water.
 

Paint all the basic colour areas of the model in the base colour of your choice.  I used Knarloc Green for this one.  I also basecoated the Dozer blade at this time, but I forgot to take a pic of it.

Next,  I basically drowned the model in Badab Black wash.  Don't be afraid to really pile it on. you want to get a pretty muckey look in the end and this will help give your paint work a basis for the patchy weathered paint job we're after.







So far so good.  Now if I wanted to take this to a pristine finish this would be where we go back and do cover coats and highlighting, but this is a beast of war! No pristine polish will grace it's form.  So now we go straight into a nice heavy layer of rust.

First up, get your self a nice manky brush with stiff bristles.  I used a drybrush which i'd forgotten to wash properly after using it with PVA glue, but a better option would be a proper Citadel Stippling Brush.


Get yourself some Solar Macharius Orange and water it down a bunch then apply it to the model using a fairly vigorous stabbing motion so that the paint blobs and splatters onto the surface on the model.


Once this first layer has dryed go through and do it again with a different orange. In this case Blazing Orange.

The key with the stippling is you want things to look rough and patchy, so the first layer of orange should be visible in patches.

Now we move on to the metallics.

This time we want to use a combination of stippling and Drybrushing.  The Drybrushing is used to make sure that areas which would recieve a lot of wear and tear are nice and shiny.  So the teeth on the dozer blade received the heavy treatment.
 





Finally we want some evidence of paint which has not yet been worn away.  To achieve this first give the model a nice soothing bash in your finest Devlan Mud wash.  Then stipple your base colour back on while the wash is still a bit wet.

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This will leave your model with the finish below.  Give any battle damaged areas a little going over with the bolt gun metal to make them stand out and you're good to go.

Next time out we get onto the dirty tricks and non paint techniques. Oh and how to paint the Melta damage

Till then, Have fun with what we've covered so far.

This Week In Warhammer.

Hey folks and welcome to yet another post which isn't one of the ones I've promised, but hey,  Content is content, so lets get on with it.

Last weekend my Chaos army saw it's first outting.  I played Jeremy and his (filthy) Darkelves in a 1000 point game down at GW Wellington.  I had a blast.  and My army got smashed to pieces.  Both our sorcerers detonated taking chunks out of the units they were with.  He annihilated my unit of knights early on, taking out a quarter of my army in one hit.  The game wound down to a close with my Knights, my Warriors and my warhounds all glaring at me from the dead pile, and only my Marauders still wandering around.  We ended up calling it rather than playing out a couple of turns of movement till his big pointy units could catch and evicerate them.  It was extremely entertaining.

So, on to what I've got planned for the next few days...

The Three day Challenge


This week I have fled the fair city of Wellington for a hermatage somewhere in the boonies of the manawatu. My intent whilst hiding away in seclusion is to get a number of projects done.  The first will be to post the next part of the Weathering and Battle damage articles.  In addition I have given myself the following tasks.

1.  Island of Blood:  Paint all the Skaven in Three days, and as much of the Highelves as i can manage.

2.  Dreadfleet:  Paint as many of the ships as possible and get at least one finished for the competition.

3.  Badab War:  Work out my painting methods for the upcoming Badab war campaign at GW Wellington.

4.  LOTS of BLOGGING.

So what will you, my glorious readers get out of this three days of madness?  Well first up there will be plenty of pictures of the various projects as they progress  Secondly there will be a number of new articles.
I'm thinking How to paint white, for the High elves.  Stupidly fast painting, for the Skaven.  And painting  and battle damaging silver marines for the Badab war.  Also possibly, painting for competitions, army themeing and maybe a few other articles.

So on with the madness.

See you soon.

This week in Warhammer

Hey folks.

It's been a weird week for me all up.  I've been job hunting recently and this week saw the fruits of this search. I worked a day shifting furniture, the first in 9 months leaving me a broken husk of a man.  I also had a scary intense job interview which may see me land a proper job with an income which might allow me to support my hobby a little better.  But hey.  Y'all didn't come here to hear about the dreary goings on in my "real" life.  You came here for hobby goodness.

This week I've been working on a couple of projects for the upcoming painting competition at GW Wellington. I'm working on another Pirate conversion, which is coming along nicely and not only features some cool conversion stuff, but also some of the best freehand work I've done in a long time.  I'm also having a go at an Interrogator Chaplain in Terminator armour, which will one day grace my Dark Angels army.  For him I've stuck pretty much to the original model but I've done a bunch of work on the base.  I'll post pics of these in the not to distant future.

I've also been chugging through my Dreadfleet stuff.  I've been aiming at around two ships a week and so far the Black Kraken and Grimnir's Thunder are pretty much done.  The Swordfysh and the Curse of Zandri are well on their way and I've started the base coats on the Seadrake and the Shadewraith.  These ships are a real blast to paint and make a welcome change from the intensity of painting competition standard models.  The White Dwarf has been invaluable for getting the ships through their basic stages and getting the colours I'm after.  I've then added a few sneaky tricks of my own to take them up a bit more and the end results are looking pretty awesome.  Pics to come.

Today (well yesterday if my clock is right) I had my first proper game of Dreadfleet, in which I took control of the mighty Grimnir's Thunder and had a thoroughly smashing time.  First I was smashed into by the Bloody Reaver who gave me a solid drubbing leaving me with 2 points of hull damage.  Then I was smashed again by a wayward living tsunami, which rocked me for another couple of points on the hull.  Then there was the final smash as my ship hit the sea bed having sunk due to being on -2 hull points.  Admittedly not the finest showing for the proud Dwarven race,  but there shall be a reckoning!  Gordon, Captain of the reaver and Staff member at GW Wellington.  I hear-by enter your name into the book of Grudges for damage to the pride of Barak Varr.  And Jarrod,  my treacherous team mate, for loosing a Living Tsunami so close to a stricken comrade, you too shall be judged.  It was however a super fun (if a little short for me) game.

Right now I'm Having a think about some ideas for a campaign to be run in store for Warhammer Fantasy, and I'm thinking about up coming projects for if I do manage to get this job I'm trying for.

Coming soon to Bellum Malleus:
-  Part Two of Battle Damaging and Weathering 40k tanks.
-  More Path of Chaos
-  Dreadfleet Pics and progress
-  Planning a themed army
-  Painting competition entries, pics and advice on how to give yourself an edge.

Cheers Folks

Weathering and Battle Damaging 40k Tanks: Part One

Hey folks.

I've finally managed to stay awake for writing time for the first time in a couple of weeks so I thought I'd better thrash out this weathering article now.

For the weathering project I decided to go with a Spacemarine Vindicator tank.  I've always liked this model.  It's a big Brutal siege tank with a massive Demolisher cannon, designed for smashing the defences of heretic scum.  I also decide to use this opportunity to do up a model for the Raptors Chapter, which have to be one of my favourite factions of the legions Astartes.

Here is an image of the model once I had striped off the old paintwork.

As you may be able to see,  I have used grey stuff to model in Weld lines.  I'll cover how to do this kind of detailing in a future post.  Today is for weathering and damage.

To start with I wanted to have some bullet holes and divets in the the Vindicator's armoured hide.  These are illustrated in the unfortunately blurry photo below along with some scrapes and the beginnings of a melta damage hole (I'll get to these later in the post)

To make the bullet holes take a pin vice and drill a hole a few millimeters deep.  Then take a modeling knife and put the point in the hole and twist it round so you get a ragged edge. (Be careful the blade doesn't break) This gives a nice little bullet hole to show a direct hit.  For a ricochet get a little Green stuff and role it into a ball a couple of mm wider across than your drill bit. Drill a hole in the surface you want the ricochet on and press the ball into it using a round tipped tool.  Draw the tool down to squash the greenstuff aside leaving a rim at the top.  (See below for a clearer image)

The Melta holes were made by drilling a hole and expanding it by twisting a modelling knife around in the hole until it reached the desired radius.  I then used some Green stuff to build up a rim and some dripping metal.  I was aiming to make it look like the melta had caused the armour of the Vindicator to boil away.

 The trick with melta effects actually comes from the painting, so I'll give you a glimps at the finished effect below, but the how to paint bit will be in the next episode.

In the Image to the left and above you can also see gouges in the armour.  This is achieved by cutting a v shaped channel into the plastic surface with a modeling knife.

Anyway,  here's that Melta damage.

That cover's the Pre paint work.  Now Bung a Black spray undercoat on it and next time we'll talk about the paint. That is to say, achieving weathering and battle damage with paint effects.  Then there will be a final article in the series covering the use of weathering powders and a couple of nice little cheats to take the model to the next level.

Cheers folks.