Bikers done!

1st squad of bikers done and dusted. Bases finished this morning. I will at some stage work out magnetising the bases for easy transport and less likely hood of breaking them but in terms of the challenge they are my 1st completed squad. The vyper is coming along nicely although no pics up for it yet. I am about to start my farseer conversion. With 12 days left for month one's painting points I am leaving him a little late!

Bikers nearly there

OK, last night saw some frantic painting of gems. Each bike has 8 gems, 9 bikes = 73 gems!! God I am bored of painting them! Not very happy with the way they look either so I may have to go back and do them again....not looking forward to that! Also started the go faster stripes on the front body of the bike. I marked off a 4mm wide line with masking tape and used foundation Iyanden Darksun as a base coat because of its opacity over the blue. I have then put a couple of thinned down layers of Vallejo Sunblast Yellow. Tonight I will start highlighting up the top of the band with Vallejo Model Colour Deep Yellow and Light Yellow.

Bikers are nearly complete

Well yellow is a horrible colour to paint! My instant and undivided respect to all you Imperial Fist generals out there! Here is an example of the bikers which are now pretty much finished. I am rather happy with the way they have turned out! The yellow was a complete nightmare. I used a tip from one of Jawaballs YouTube videos for the yellow. There is about 7-8 coats of yellow on there. I don't like the grills at the front. The sepia wash shading doesn't work for me so I will need to decide what I am going to do with that. Otherwise it is just the holsters and the eyes to go and they are finished.....then onto the Vyper. Nearly halfway through the month and I have yet to start my farseer conversion. I am not confident I will get full painting points this month!

Highlights stage 1

Started on the 1st stage of highlights in the bikers last night. Got a couple of them done. For the bike squads I am just going to do simple edge highlighting rather than any blending which I am hoping to have the time to do on the farseer when I get round to starting him! 

Here he is mounted. This photo has actually turned out to be useful research. I needed to know how light falls on the domed areas of the bike frame for highlighting and this serves as a pretty useful illustration of the areas I need to highlight. I am not looking forward to it though as it promises to be a lot of work blending up layers for each bike. I might just chicken out and go for edge highlights.

At this point I want to let you know the address of a great blog on the web for painting tips. It is run by a guy in America who goes by the alt Jawaballs. His blog can be found here http://warhammer40kbloodangels.blogspot.com/ 

It's full of great painting tips and he does "how to paint.." videos that are available for purchase for most of the major armies which he is updating all the time. Def worth checking out. Both him and Fritz who I have mentioned below I have found a great help in better understanding 40K tactics and painting.