From the other side of the planet

Hi everyone!

Here's a quick post from the other side of the planet. My family and I are in Australia for two weeks (a trip planned and paid for prior to the crazy car crash) and having fun catching up with friends and family.

Two things for you today. The first of these are pics of Kor'asso Khan. Here's the model I showed you a few posts back, now resplendent in his painted White Scars finery. I hope you like him.

Item number Two is my first real foray into teaching classes at a convention. I'll be at BoLSCon in Austin, TX, at the end of July, running three classes as part of what will hopefully build towards a great hobby "Mecca" over the coming years. For information on the classes, you can check out the announcement here.

Take care folks, and enjoy the good things in life!

Cheers

Dave

The Big Bad(don)!

With all the Primarchs I've worked on recently, it was fun to work on a classic character at regular scale. Abaddon, right-hand man of the Warmaster during the Heresy, and now wearing the Warmaster's Talon. The original metal model, released 14 years ago, is still a great model. He's just a little undersized for the slow but inevitable scale creep.

My client was looking for a fairly simple solution in plastic that he could add to his growing Black Legion. Wonderfully enough, the Chaos Lord in Terminator Armor has a lot of bits that match the stylings of the original Abaddon armor. There was quite a bit of kit-bashing, some brass rods (from GF9), and a bit of putty work to clean up the Talon and create the screaming faces on his daemon weapon, Drach'nyen

This one was a conversion only job, I hope you like him!

Cheers

Dave

Just another Thursday night.

Let me begin by saying, this Hydra is NOT mine. It was built by a mate of mine in New Zealand. Hagen has been building kick-ass armies for years (most notably an excellent Space Wolves army and an even better IG army). Hagen liked the truck design that Thomas and I came up with that he built his own variant half-track Hydra. The tracks are from the Ork Battlewagon, and the Hydra autocannons are those from the Aegis Defence Line box set.

I've got to say, it looks awesome. I'm going to have to steal it ; )

On to what I've been working on this week. I wrapped up these five Blood Angel Storm Shields for a commission. Some fun little sculpting bits.

And I've done some more work on the Tanith Scouts unit. The keen-eyed amongst you will notice that I have added cloaks to all the models now, and switched out a few of the helmeted head for hairy (and other) heads. While this may seem like a capitulation, it isn't. After chatting with Mr Abnett, the conclusion was that Gaunt's Ghosts do indeed wear helmets that would be part of the standard IG kit. The Tanith were less likely to do so, The Verghastite probably more so, and the Belladon are very fond of their headgear. Plenty of opportunity for mixing and matching ; )

So, I hope you all had a great week. Have fun.

Cheers

Dave

Men of Tanith, do you want to live forever?

Let me begin by thanking those who came out to my Pre-Heresy Space Marine clinic at GW White Marsh last night. I was fun to go through the process again and chat to those who were truly interested in learning more and sharing ideas.

I know there are a few of you that do not live close to Baltimore and couldn't attend something like this. While it is true that I could put together a lot of tutorials to cover the basics of Pre-Heresy Space Marine modeling, I would much prefer to point you in the direction of mywargame.com. The folks who put this together have done a lot of comprehensive work on PH SM armor styles, something you can check out here. I tip my hat to them, great work guys.

On to the next job!

It has been quite a few years (11 or 12, I think) since I last worked on my Tanith army. That was way back in the day, before the plastic Cadians. I spent a lot of time converting them and painting them to match my idea of the Ghosts at the time.

Now, all those years (and many more books) later, I'm tackling the Tanith again. I have a client who want's an entire army of Tanith infantry, including approximately 20 named characters. Fortunately I've have some time to build and paint them (ie. no deadline...currently).

I am starting with a Scout squad (Veterans with camo cloaks). The client has a list I'm working to, I just need to develop the right style for the Ghosts. These pics are all very WIP, with a lot of work still to be done to give them all cloaks.

Scout Sergeant Mkoll, is first up. A tightly wound, silent man with the best scouting skills in the entire Crusade. He carries a lasgun, because he is always described that way in the novels. Anyone remember the time he killed a rampaging Chaos Dreadnaught with his lasgun?

Meltagun and two scout troopers.

Two snipers and a vox operator.

The final three scout troopers. I was kind of thinking of Wes Maggs as I worked on the guy in the middle.

The army will eventually be a "best of the Ghosts" kind of force, characters from different warzones all appearing in the same list (like Bragg, Cuu, and Maggs). Should be fun and no-one gets left behind. So the men of "Tanith" really will get to live forever.

I hope you like them.

Cheers

Dave

100th post! and Pre-Heresy clinic

Hooray for 100 posts! This means I'll be on track to rack up another 75 post year. Not too shabby, an average of 1.5 posts per week.

Anyway, onto the meat of this one. For tonight's viewing pleasure I present Kor'sarro Khan on Bike. This is another commission, and it really shows the best side of the commissions I get. I've always enjoyed putting together the odd Space Marine in an interesting pose on a bike, but haven't really been interested in building a big bike army, I've always wanted to paint up a few White Scars models, but haven't wanted to paint a whole army. Now I get to do the good bits, without having to worry about the bad ; )

I wanted to keep the bike fairly simple, no long forks or anything like that, but I did add a few saddlebags, boxes and pouches to give it the feel of a "long campaign" bike, something the Khan wouldn't have to leave on his long hunt. I added the winged fairing from the DA bikes, I wanted another place to feature some deep red or gold. These wings will work perfectly. I also added the sensor array from the DA ravenwing sprue to the back of the bike, I'm thinking it's a tracking/comms relay device. Finally I added a couple of trophy heads from the Plague Cart Zombies. Oh, and the White Scars symbol on the front fender.

For the Khan himself I basically kept the pieces I could use and rebuilt the others. His lower legs, shoulder pads, sword, head and backpack are all from the original model, the rest are from plastic Marines or scratch sculpted to match the detailing of the metal model closely. I hope you like him!

PRE-HERESY SPACE MARINE CLINIC!

That's right! I'm running a Pre-Heresy Space Marine Modeling Clinic at GW White Marsh this Thursday (April 29) from 5pm til about 8pm. Bring your Space Marines (or buy a box at the store) and some greenstuff and a sculpting tool. I'll bring the rest. Get ready to learn the best ways to create Mk IV legs, shrapnel guards, and Mk IV helmets.

Call the store for more details: (410) 933-2008