Monday 28 January 2013

Easy heat stained barrels: tutorial


Here is a really simple three-step way to create a heat stained appearance to gun barrels. You may have noticed the heat staining I painted on the assault cannon of my model of Barungr Half-said, and also on the plasma guns in Harald's Grey Hunters. I quite like it; I used to do brown heat staining but this blue-ish type is much more convincing to my eye.

I'll demonstrate it on a meltagun.

Sunday 27 January 2013

Wolf Guard: Barungr and Varungr



True brothers amongst Space Marines has become a bit of a trope now for something that's supposed to be very rare, so my decision to have two brothers amongst my Space Wolves is perhaps a little questionable. Still, I quite like the idea so I went ahead and came up with Barungr Half-said and Varungr Helblade.

I wanted these two brothers to be quite contrasting in style, hence Barungr wields an assault cannon while Varungr has a frost blade and storm shield. I did, however, try to choose their heads quite carefully. I needed to use two that looked distinct yet similar enough that they would be convincing as true brothers.

Incidentally, some of you may remember my WIP post for Varungr. Good to have him all finished.

Okay, so let me tell the tale of Barungr and Varungr.

Monday 21 January 2013

Shining power weapons: tutorial


There are so many variations on painting power weapons. This is a tutorial on how I do mine. It's based off a White Dwarf article from a few years ago, and it's a technique I really like as it's not that hard and the effect is good. Plus you don't need an airbrush!

What more could I want?

This is a little more involved than my other tutorials, but don't be put off by that. It's much easier than it looks.

Friday 18 January 2013

Wolf Guard Braegr Bearclaw

"Into the breach, brothers! Show these beasts what it means to fight the sons of Russ!"
-- Braegr Bearclaw during the final assault of the murder-make at Anayat Secundus

Here is the first of the ten Wolf Guard Terminators I will have in my Space Wolves army. Based on the Arjac Rockfist model, I added twin lightning claws to produce Braegr Bearclaw.

There are a lot of nice details on the Arjac model. And he's huge! Noticably bigger than a regular terminator. The pose of the Arjac model lent itself very well to the lightning claws and I'm really pleased with how the pose turned out.

The model wasn't the best cast, but I'd already returned my first Arjac due to a missing nose. Most of the details were fine, but the face still wasn't the best. But I decided to quit while I was more or less ahead and stick with this model.

Let me introduce you to Braegr.

Monday 14 January 2013

Simple boltgun casings: tutorial


Here's a quick little tutorial on how I paint black gun casings quickly and easily. This would work particularly well for casings with engraved details, like on many of the Space Wolf boltguns.

I really hate line highlighting gun casings. They are such a pain and I can never make them look any good. So I applied my quick-and-easy methods to them.

Read on for the details.

Saturday 12 January 2013

Pingo played a game!


I played a game today! This is a rare thing for me. In fact, it was only my second game of Sixth Edition.

The battle was a 1500 point game with my Ultramarines and allied Space Wolves taking on Chaos Space Marines.

I took the chance to test out my Space Wolves for the first time by including some of them as an allied detachment to my Ultramarines.

The saga of Rikkard Threadcutter: Part III - Grey Hunter

The third part of the Saga of Rikkard Threadcutter is told today by Jorn, Skald of Fyf. The previous parts can be found here.

Click for Rikkard's showcase!


Thursday 10 January 2013

The saga of Rikkard Threadcutter: Part I - Youth

This is the first part of the saga of Rikkard Threadcutter, the White Wolf and Jarl of Fyf.

This account is relayed by Jorn, Skald of Fyf.

Click for Rikard's showcase!


Wolf Lord Rikkard Threadcutter, Jarl of Fyf



I always plan to hold off a while on painting fun HQs, but inevitably temptation gets the better of me and I found myself painting up my Wolf Lord of the holiday period. It was a great way to spend the free time as I had a blast doing him.

Several months ago I wrote a WIP post about this guy, so go ahead and take a look. In the meantime, I'd better introduce you to the big man himself, but be sure to check out the four-part Saga of Rikkard Threadcutter. The first part may be found by clicking on the link below. A new part will appear every day.

Thursday 3 January 2013

Patrekr's Long Fang Pack


This is Patrekr's Long Fang pack. You may remember Patrekr the Sharp-minded from a previous blog post. He's now completely finished, along with his pack.

This is your typical missile launcher Long Fang pack. Now I'm not one to subscribe to net lists and things like that, but it was clear to me from the Space Wolf codex that Long Fangs with missile launchers are a steal being so cheap, versatile, and effective. These are the only missile launcher Long Fangs in my army, however. Personally, I don't like to duplicate units.

With this unit I tried to make them all look at rest to represent the calmer and more measured nature of Long Fangs. It's quite a nice contrast to the much more aggressive poses of my other units.

After the break, individual photos and background for these venerable old warriors.

It must be Faeit ...

I take an odd fascination in the number of hits my blog receives. I guess I just like numbers! I think it's exciting if you get a lot of hits, interesting to see what posts prove popular, and it's incredible to see the variety of countries readers are from.

Yesterday I received 72 hits all day. Not bad for me really. There wasn't anything new of interest.

This morning, bleary eyed, I checked the statistics for my blog.

472 hits.

Huh? There must be some kind of mistake. Some crazy person must be skipping between my pages or accidentally glued down their refresh button or something.

But no! Today, very kindly, Natfka over at the Faeit 212 blog featured my humble blog on his Blog Exchange!

I really must say a big thank you for Natka for doing that as I cannot believe the amount of traffic that this has generated for my blog today (update: 1468 views in the end; more than 30% of my all time hits came today). It's really nice to know that people have seen your work, and even nicer when you get a kind and complementary comment on a post. It's very motivating.

In case, by some strange twist of Faeit (geddit?!) you are reading this but have never visited the Faeit 212 blog, please check it out. Natfka does sterling work in compiling 40k rumours and posting them in a clear and informative way.

Not only that, but he helps out little blogs like mine get an audience. Awesome work for the 40k community.

So, once again; thanks a lot, Natfka for your help, and if anyone is reading this, whether you arrived here from Faeit 212 or not, thanks also to you and I genuinely hope you enjoy my work.

Pingo

Tuesday 1 January 2013

2013: the hobby year ahead

Since it's the first day of the new year, I decided to set out a few modest goals for the year ahead. I bet no other bloggers have thought of doing this ...

These aims are fairly broad, and I'm not going to put too much pressure on myself to get everything done. I used to put far too much pressure on myself to get things done in this hobby and found it sucked the fun out of it.

So, read on to see what my plans are, and therefore what you can expect to see on my blog!