Heresy Era Thousand Sons - Iskandar Khayon and Gyre built

As a reward for getting a mess of painting done, I built up the first of a few characters I have planned. After reading Talon of Horus, I knew that I wanted to do a late-heresy version of Iskandar Khayon and his Daemon Wolf Gyre. After working out a trade for some Space Wolf bits I ended up with all the things I needed to bring him to life!

 

Khayon is remarked in the book as carring a reclaimed Space Wolf axe that he picked up during the razing of Prospero called 'Saern' which he refashioned into a force axe, as well as firing off a plasma pistol a few times. That's weapons sorted! His Daemon Wolf Gyre was recovered from a half-built state that included some goopy glue which I'm hoping to downplay a bit in the painting stage. I scraped off the various straps and buckles and tried my hand at a little greenstuff fur which turned out passable - I'm definitely not much of a GS sculptor but gotta keep practicing I suppose!

 

Of course, technically speaking one can't mount a character on a 60mm base so I'd designed it such that Khayon is magnetized and pinned to it, allowing him to be placed on a 'correctly-sized' base for gaming. I haven't come up with a good in-game explanation for Gyre and the big base so for the most part it'll just be a mini vignette for art's sake!

Now back to the firing line and laying in the reds on the Rhinos this evening. If all goes well I'm hoping to have them done by Sunday's end!

Heresy Era Thousand Sons - Infantry flocked and sealed!

I don't want to call 'em "complete" per se, as I'm still casting about for where I put the waterslide transfers for the shoulder pads, but they're done enough for the event on the 30th! As I've pretty much pounded these models into the ground I'll just show off the pics!

Terminator Squad Ankhet

Terminator Squad Phosis

Veteran Squad Khalmekt

Tactical Squad Hesyre

  

Sorcerer of the Corvidae Cult

  

Centurion Delgatus

Painting chart ahoy!

That marks what is probably a record for me - 1,145 points painted in a week. Phew! So at this point I have 8 days to paint two Rhinos. Quite pleased with how the army is cranking along - of course, now the challenge is repressing the urge to sell 'em off and start a whole new project. Haha!

Heresy Era Thousand Sons - Batch Painting Breakdown, or, Lets Get Critical

This marks the penultimate post about the infantry, I believe! While batch painting mixed models like I have been doing recently means that I'm never quite painting the exact same miniature more than a couple times in a row before moving on to a different type, it also means that certain fine details start to get missed when they aren't common to the various types. Generally towards the end of the process I'll pull things back out into their constituent squads and take some pictures (generally not posted to the blog) which allows me to review the models in absurd scale (which naturally enhances every flaw) and take notes of what remains to be done before the sealant stage. So, these are those notes to which I will refer next painting session! Usually I'll just scribble these down on a legal pad and reference it and delete these interstitial pictures, but it's been fun documenting the whole absurd process...

Terminator Squad Ankhet - Highlight the eye lenses, and give the loincloth red a further highlight. Specular dots on the green gems.

Terminator Squad Phosis - Ditto.

Veteran Squad Khalmekt - Highlight eye lenses, metal on the helmet grills and hoses. Red stripe around the hem of the sergeant to match the terminators.

Tactical Squad Hesyre - Ditto.

Centurion Delgatus and Librarian - Ugh. For pete's sake, I forgot to finish the librarian's face! Highlight the loincloth detail, script on the oaths of moment, white highlight on the horned skulls on the librarian. Eye lenses, helmet grill and hoses in metal, wash and highlight the wrist terminator medal and chain, wash and highlight chest skull and hoses, green gems on the helmet vanes.

So a fair bit of fiddly details to do yet, but for the most part it's going to just be a few subsets of batch painting as for the most part they're all getting the same sort of cleanup within each squad. Overall though, I'm fairly well pleased with how they're coming along!

Heresy Era Thousand Sons - On the home stretch with the infantry!

Was able to get an hour in after work this evening and finished up the leather and bone on the infantry, and laid down the initial brown color on the bases. I really find that cleaning up the base towards the end of the process really helps snap the models into focus.  Perhaps not literally with these quick progress pics, though!

Of course it is also at this stage that I start to discover all the little odds and bobs I'd missed on various models, a pouch here, a set of eye lenses there, and so on. Lots of going back and fixing little things. Nevertheless, quite close to the end with these chaps, then it's on to the pair of Rhinos for the Veterans and the Tac squad. Ever onwards!

In other news, the bases arrived for the NOVA Open 2016 Charity Ork Army that I have been asked to help with, so there's a whole mess of filthy Xenos charging down the painting table just as soon as these Thousand Sons are complete!

Heresy Era Thousand Sons - Pressing onwards with the batch painting

Things progressed nicely over the weekend hobby-wise! It more or less dumped snow on us the whole time which meant my usual outdoor activities were cancelled and I got a fair bit more brush time in than I expected.

Two hours on Saturday evening saw the gold step completed, took as much time to pick out all the little filigree and detail as it had to do all the reds. This is the stage in the batch painting process that really gets tedious - so I fired up a Heresy audiobook (listening to Pharos at the moment, Night Lords vs. Ultramarines) to keep half my brain otherwise occupied and not thinking "27 to go... 26 to go..."

Once the gold was done, the various areas that were intended to be either white (cloth and trim) or blue (power cables/weapons) were all given an Ice Blue basecoat. I find the blue undercoat gives the white a cold tone which sets off nicely against the reds of the armor, and prevents it from being pinkish as it may become when laid directly on top of the red areas. This took another hour - not nearly as fiddly as all the gold detail work, but I still have to be rather careful from this point forward not to splodge any paint around as I could in earlier stages.

White areas get a pass of Ghost Grey and an extreme edge highlight of skull white. That detail is pretty blown out in these quick progress pics however.

Next up all the various weapons, armor joints and miscellaneous vents and whatnot got a pass with Boltgun Metal and a black wash. At this point I had to stop for the day as I was beginning to go a little mental from all the painting!

Most of the army will be helmeted, but I did want to give a couple models here and there actual faces. Or half a face in this terminator sergeant's case! I love this head, and was pretty pleased with the milky eye effect, as though while he still has half a face, it's only the augmetic side that actually works.

Really happy with the progress on the models so far, and am feeling confident I can get them done before the event on the 30th!

Heresy Era Thousand Sons - You got red on you... (again)

Got everything laid out for batch painting and starting powering through the red steps yesterday evening and this morning - moving right along!

Started off with a Vallejo Dark Flesh basecoat.

After that, the models get a heavy drybrush of Gory Red, focusing on the upper surfaces mostly.

Next is a Blood Red pass concentrating almost exclusively on the upper surfaces.

Lastly the Carroburg Crimson wash step to blend everything together and add a little shading. At this point the wash needs a good hour or more to dry before any further work is done. Next up, a metric buttload of gold trim and filigree later on this afternoon after I get done with the daily chores and whatnot.

The reds took about two and a half hours to do, so far so good - well on target to get 'em done before the end of the month!

Heresy Era Thousand Sons - Bases! Glorious bases!

It is an exciting day on Mordia - the bases that I'd ordered from Dragon Forge Designs have finally arrived! With inclement weather bearing down on us this coming weekend, I hurriedly got them washed and all of the currently-built models glued down and primed this afternoon while the weather was still nice. Really jazzed to finally be able to get stuck in!

Now comes the challenge - On the 30th there's a Heresy event going on up in Fort Collins (about an hour north of where I live) to which I had pretty much resigned myself to taking the Spireguard as they were the only army of sufficient size that I had painted. I'd really much rather take the Thousand Sons instead, which means I have 15 days to get the army completed! On the plus side, if it turns out I fall short of the finish line, I have the Spireguard to fall back on so this is more of a fun personal challenge than a drop-dead timeline.

In order to keep things on target, I whipped up a painting chart for the intended force and here's where things stand as of this afternoon. So, 30 infantry and a pair of Rhinos in two weeks. On your marks, get set.... GO!

In other news I had a chance to go see Iron Maiden this week (Up the Irons!) and I gotta say, for a bunch of guys pushing 60, they can certainly still rock!

  

Glad I took my earplugs - they rocked out LOUD. Really fun show!