Fire Angels: How doing a fully metallic army breaks your spirit and how alclad saved me from alcoholism

The title is a little dramatic, but to be honest i found myself eagerly painting up wolves and looking at my templars thinking "i could paint you up all nice and shiny like" because the silver dudes with their silver ways only ever seemed to evoke a "meh" from passers by and my efforts to paint them were getting lazier and lazier at the expense of quality.

So with a new job.. less dedicated hobby time and a knowledge that the current marine dex is either mediocre or boring (and sometimes both) i was finding my hobby time to be directed at other stuff.. Now seeing as i have a whole bloody companies worth of marines waiting for the Fire Angel treatment this was a really bad position to be in, but the effort the painting took (prime, spray, zenith spray, gloss, wash, gloss.. for just the silver with no highlights) wasn't worth the end result after id slacked off..

Now i've spoken briefly about Mark Bedford and his Astral Claws.. for the few of you who dont recognise the name hes one of the head honchos at forgeworld.. I asked him how he'd painted them after getting vague answers from the fw web team at gamesday and sat on the recipe for a fair while waiting for a time when i A: had all the stuff i needed to try it and B: felt the need to do some fire angel stuff.

now this wall of text may seem like over indulgence but im just painting a picture of where im coming from..

in my search for the best method to obtain the results i wanted for the silver armour of my dudes ive explored damn near everything.. every combo of gw paints, the vmc metallics, revells aquacolour metallics, the vma metals, oil washes, every type of varnish and their effects on metallic paints and in the end i found out that i should have just bloody well listened to Mr Bedford.. stupid ass guy who does it for a living!

so i bought me some "dark aluminium" alclad because dark makes it sound cooler and because my dudes were ment to be all aluminium looking according to my brain.. I also got me some Rubb n Buff which sounds more sexual than id like.. especially when you're asking some old dear in an art shop.

So the experimenting went as such... gloss black primer, alclad, wash, drybrush with sexualised metal crap... look at results and go "Ah fuck.. i'm gonna need to order more of this stuff"

ill be uploading some more pictures of stuff thats been sprayed with the liquid miracle that is alclad soon.. but for now i need to go shopping.

alclad 2: the revenge

rightio.. i said id post a pic of my messing about with alclad.. so here it is.

This is alclad dark aluminium with a quick dirty black wash (with added klear) then a quick run over with some silver rub n buff (ie based entirely on mark bedfords astral claw paint scheme) due to the nature of the alclad it means a whole lot less pissing about with metallics, is an incredibly fine layer of paint.

the legs look a little too drybrushed for my liking atm.. but that will be sorted out with some weathering etc.. overall im very impressed and need to buy more (and more gloss black primer too)

back to the primative

only because back to the shiny doesnt sound good.. and its from an era from "days gone by"

yeah shut up.

This is khiros pretending to be an ironclad.. hence the massive hammer (its siesmic dont you know!) its also a bit self indulgent as ive not reduced the size of the image to see if uploading here is better than photobucket (who auto resize my stuff.. grrr!!!)

okay so this also reduces image size apparently.. god i hate the internet sometimes.. heres a 1:1 of part of the pic of khiros just for examples sake then.

wolfy mc wolf wolf on his wolfing wolf armed with a wolf wolf and a wolfing wolf.

im quite liking this whole space wolf painting lark.. so heres some more.

also.. doing non metal coloured armour with an airbrush is a cake walk.. i honestly reckon i could get a 2k wolf/dark angel/blood angel force done in about a week.

Vlka Fenrika

i've been secreting my wolves away for some time now, having them lurk in the shadows as befits erik morkai and his sinister ways.. essentially waiting for me to decide wether i was going to do 13th company with warp rifts (drop pods) or do normal wolves.

as per usual im still not fully decided but i thought id model up a terminator lord type because i have a thing for termie armour and because why the hell not.

thought id run some colour over them and see how i felt.. im liking how "easy" the wolves are to get to a nice standard. but theyre not shiny or fire angelly enough tbh so work on khiros continues.. hes knee is finished.. need to figure out some shoulder heraldry and make the gold look a bit less flat before im ready to base him and call it a day i reckon.

now to ponder what to make for tea tonight and what to watch..

(otherwise known as an excuse to put a picture of me looking thoughtfull up.. thanks to the ladywife for taking this)

How to ignore a blog and why i want to marry my new camera.

Okay so first things first, i went and bought my new camera today.. It is made of win, magic and more win.

I'm a camera whore at the best of times (behind them not in front of them) and this thing makes the old piece of garbage i was using make me feel embarassed that i was showing you photos taken with it to be honest.

im going to be a bit self indulgent now (not that i havent already been with the pics of stuff you've already seen) and talk about how much happier it makes me to be able to control everything manually.. everything from shutter speed to the focus.. *fap fap fap fap fap* would be how my dear friend sorrowshard would put it over on rant in e minor...

New Jobs, Dubstep and how C.O.D tries to steal your life.

(im returning to an old favourite here.)

THATS RIGHT! (ah much better) I have a new job and am no longer a bum..

So.. (yeah bitch two in a row!) some of you might be thinking "how does this affect the Fangles??" whilst the rest of you are thinking "what was lorin alpha again.. why am i here?" but if past experience is anything to go by my productivity goes up when i have less time on my hands.. due to the fact that it becomes "precious" due to the fact that you spend 90% of it working rather than doing stuff you like.

Its all a load of bollocks though, when you have nothing but time you waste it doing things that dont need doing and sleeping a lot.

anyway..

have some dubstep.. normally dubstep sucks balls, because it just sounds like somebody going "im going to quote a movie!!!!" then farting into a mic.. ephixa and his portal lovin' is made of win.. as are his zelda remixes.

oh and dont play C.O.D whilst jobless.. you end up playing it for like 17 hours and getting shouted at by loved ones when you're holding off going for a wee till the end of the round..

anyways i have burn notice, walking dead and cod to be getting on with.. because burn notice is cool, daryl "fucking" dixon is a badass and i like shooting people in the face.