Hey Hams, welcome back for the eighth installment of the 40k Hamateur Hour, continuing along with a total amateur through the process of getting his first painted army together for Nova 2019. I’m Dan, better known as FromTheShire on dead comedy forums, and let’s see what I managed to get done since last week.
Show us that sweet, sweet progress
We’re now slightly over halfway through the time between when the RtN series began, so this is a good point to asses the overall state of the project.
With this being my first full army project, it’s kind of hard to tell exactly how panicked or not I should feel about where I’m currently at. Most likely I’m basking in blissful ignorance, but I’m actually feeling reasonably confident that I should be able to get this done to a reasonable tabletop standard at least. As much as I keep comparing my stuff to the phenomenal work done by others, it’s not realistic to expect that I will even come close to equaling it on my first go around. I’m not where I could be with the amount of time that has passed and some very light progress weeks, but I have hit some kind of a stride and have managed to knock out 18-20 hours in each of the last couple of weeks, and that is making a noticeable difference. I’ve also realized I really should add an additional column to my board for color blocking to more accurately show where I’m at, so I’ll be doing that going forward. With that out of the way, let’s see some actual progress shots.
Yes, yes it is. Naturally, in addition to my massive RtN project, I’m still trying to sneak in time to work on my Legio here and there. Local goon sulecrist and I have gotten a number of games in which have been an absolute blast, but also continue to shame me as I field proxy dreadnoughts against his beautifully painted models. Were I not on a hard deadline for Nova, I would absolutely be cranking away on my Titans instead. Ok, actual progress time.
Close! There is the solitary DC Captain, pictured in the foreground, who is actually in there. Buuuuut, if one were to happen to have a squad of DC just sitting around assembled and primed, they would make perfect test models for your process though, right? if you think about it, since you already have the airbrush out, it would be hobby ….. deprogress? unprogress? if you DIDN’T paint them. It’s the same principle as buying one of the big box sets for an army you’re slightly interested in because boy that’s a great deal and think about how much money you’re saving by buying it now and not later when it’s more expensive. Totally sound. Alright, enough screwing around.
Oh god, everything is everywhere and most of my living room has been consumed by things I’ll definitely need soon possibly.
I used Scale 75 paint for the first time on Dante, and while I’m loving the color, I couldn’t seem to get it to mix quite as thoroughly as I wanted, so I’m holding off on the second coat for a bit. I had been planning on getting a vortex mixer for a while anyways, so this seemed like a perfect excuse.
Now comes the scary part, dousing them in turpentine and praying to the God Emperor that the varnish holds.
Oh thank you merciful Poseidon, everything seems to be fine. For this first squad, I did a complete all over wash, partially for expediency and partially because I wanted to compare the finished product to one that is just pin washed.
Because I don;t have a patient bone in my body, I tried doing a little bit of tidying on the backpack while it was still wet. This showed me that the current q-tips I own are wispy pieces of garbage, that there’s a reason you should let it dry to lessen the amount of paint you pull out of the panel lines, and that even so, it looks pretty decent.
Goals for next week
It’s time to get everything left to the assembled and primed stage I think. Not that batch painting marines isn’t fun or anything, but in the name of efficiency it’s going to be better to do the red on all the remaining BA stuff at once. The Catachans need a few small details like pouches etc added, and then it’s time to do mold line removal and get them primed. I picked up a can of Contrast primer from my FLGS while I was there playing Titanicus this weekend, and the paints themselves should be arriving in the mail any day now. The same is true of the paints I’m planning on using for my bases, so it’s time to get those primed up as well as long as I’m at it. I’m predicting a picture light week next week because scraping and gap filling and magnetizing dreadnoughts aren’t the most engaging things, but they need to be done.
Also of note is I’m going to be switching when my posts go up in the name of consistency – doing them Sunday evening so I knew I had a weekend’s worth of progress ready to go was good in theory, but in practice the last couple of weeks have been 10-12 hours of hobbying, after which I am just not there mentally to type a decent post up. Instead I will be putting them up Monday morning, which given how late Sunday I have been doing is likely the same for most people anyway. So check back next week to see which things tangentially related to my goals I actually do!
