Another Hobby Update: 40k Paired Painting

As I paint more and more of my lead and plastic toys, I continue to be amazed at the great skill I see all over the various boards and blogs dedicated to the hobby. Recently I was trying to put together my Immortals starter box for Hell Dorado. The main character of the faction has a really unique design and as such, has proven a huge pain in the ass to even just put together. It's a lot finer detailed and has smaller parts than I'm used to. But wow what awesome sculpting details! I'm nearly finished, but am quite honestly afraid that he'll break should I even look at it wrong, let alone when I try to pick it up. I really, really should learn to pin things better. However, I do think it'll look great when it's painted... Here's an excellent example I found on James Wappel's blog.

I have no illusions; my figure will look nowhere near that good.

But back to the topic at hand. Long ago when all I owned were copious amounts of 40k miniatures the gf asked if she could try her hand at painting something. After doing a sample model for her she started working on a small batch of ten Ork Boyz...but her interest waned and only three or four of them were gifted with a base coat of paint. But last month she started up again, and has spectacularly finished her first squad of Ork Boyz!

These guys are from the Assault on Black Reach starter box that came out for Warhammer 40k's fifth edition. I did one model as a guide from start to finish to show her the various techniques she'd be using. Once she had her base coated colors on she did some washes on the skin and weapons. She followed this up with little dry brushing on the black then asked for some more help. So I did a little bit of the metallic highlighting on their armor, and a quick dry brush over their weapons and skin. The bases were also done by her. I think they look very good, and she's quite proud of them (as she rightly should be!). On the downside, she has no interest in playing a game with them, even though I've tried to convince her that she should try it. "There's nothing quite like playing a fun, cinematic game with figures you painted yourself," I said. But alas, she's not buying into my marketing scheme!

As for me, I haven't been idle either. In keeping with her painting of Orks I decided to press onward with painting more of my own Space Marine chapter: the Obsidian Fists. I have a back story and a few named characters written up somewhere, and will happily post that up along with some photos when I get my 1000 point army all painted. I think I only have the Devastators and Terminators to finish painting but until then I'll simply share my finished Dreadnaught: Brother Robinius (also from the Assault on Black Reach box).

Not knowing what to paint next I decided to try out a little social experiment to see if people would actually fill out something as goofy as a "What Should I Paint Next?" questionnaire. I created a simple one-question survey using Google Docs and posted a link to it over on LAF. I put several of the items I've had hovering on my to-do list up for vote. Here are the results of my survey:

I'm pretty sure the results are a little skewed by a little quintuple voting as a huge string of votes came in for the winning entry spaced very evenly apart, but that's alright. If someone is dedicated enough to fill the thing out multiple times, who am I to say that it's not allowed? I've got one other model to finish before I get started on the winner, which is ironically enough, also a Pulp City figure.

Until next time.