Changing gears

Now that the painting league is finished, I've decided to switch gears and try my hand at Warhammer Fantasy.  I've chosen Tomb Kings as my army and what other model has such a presence as the Necrosphinx?

Painting league winner

Recently the Mission Viejo Games Workshop hosted a painting league that started late last year.  The goal was to have 1500 points of your chosen army built, painted, and presented along with a few extra credit items along the way.  I barely won by just a few points but I can now proudly say I have a fully painted army to play with.  The below pictures were my entries into the league.

The Blood Angels 2nd Company:

HQ: Librarian with Jump Pack
Elite:  2x Sanguinary Priests
Elite:  Blood Angels pattern Contemptor Dreadnought
Elite:  Furioso Librarian Dreadnought
Troops:  10x Assault Marines in a Rhino
Troops:  10x Assault Marines with Jump Packs
Fast Attack:  Baal Predator
Heavy Support:  Stormraven

Miscellaneous:  1x Custom building and 1x Crashed Aquila Lander for terrain pieces.

 

Blood Angels Stormraven

After spending about a week on this thing, I finally am almost finished.  The only thing left is to base it, and do some very minor detailing.  But for the most part, it's about 97% done.  Every weapon is magnetized, the interior is fully detailed with each computer screen displaying something different from temperature gauges, to ammunition levels.  The Dreadnought winch in the back is magnetized to actually hold my Furioso Librarian Dreadnought.   

I got the strobe to work a little better with the lighting to bring out the details of the shading.

Inside the Stormraven

Just a photo of the cockpit.

Pre-shading with an airbrush

One of the things I utterly hate doing is shading on vehicles.  There are so many recesses that manually shading them is what really makes me hate painting them.  I came across this video and it really appealed to me as it makes shading so much more convenient:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1hpvg2lRlsc

I applied this to my Stormraven in the following steps:

1. Primed the model black using GW's Chaos Black primer (I find this primer to be the best spray primer for matte black.  I like P3's spray nozzle, but GW's formula works best for me) then  I airbrushed Vallejo Grey Primer, covering it completely.

2. Using a mix of GW Fortress Grey and isopropyl alcohol (50/50) I airbrushed just the raised areas.
 

3. Going back to re-touch up the recessess, I mixed 50/50 Chaos Black and Fortress Grey then mixed in isopropyl alcohol to airbrush the recesses.










4. Then spray Blood Red over the entire model in thin layers so that the shading underneath was still apparent.

The overall effect was astonishing.  I wish that the effect was more apparent on the last photo. Apologies for it not coming out clearer.

Gear:
Iwata Eclipse CS airbrush
Badger compressor (model unknown)

Super cool iPhone app

I've always had a problem trying to find an analog to Citadel paints when I want to use Vallejo or Reaper.  I found this handy app called Paint Converter for the iPhone.  It gives comparisons as to what paint matches each brand.

The only brand of note for miniature painting would be P3.  But they seem to do their own thing.

Apple/iTunes link:  http://itunes.apple.com/si/app/paint-converter/id465643256?mt=8
Android link:  https://market.android.com/details?id=com.hexxus.paintconverter