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Having been away from the painting desk for some time combined with that fact that I still haven't finished painting my hoard of board game miniatures I really don't need another project. That being said I could really use a simple breather project and luckily I recently came across the perfect one. For awhile now I've wanted to paint some Space Marine Scouts in the typical Cadian colors. Though Space Marines aren't my thing I really like the look of their old Scouts. I can't quite put my finger on what it is but I knew sooner or later I'd paint some. Having recently found a squad at my local shop now seems like the perfect time to complete a project I've been thinking about for a couple of years. Now in hindsight I really should have just bought a new box as the discount wasn't great, the poses were lacking, and being already assembled meant the cleanup would be a pain. Looking them over though I mistakenly thought they'd been assembled with superglue however so I figured a quick trip through my sonic cleaner would solve all of that. Unfortunately I was wrong and having been built using plastic glue meant extra work. In the end I did what I could cutting arms off, repositioning heads, and trying to clean the remaining mold lines. They're still a bit rough but I thought they were passable so I forged ahead adding grit to their bases and priming them. Which of course brings us to tonight when I "truly" started the project. Armed with my recipe card and a couple of reference models from my army I started painting. I only managed to basecoat their fatigues and armor but already they're looking pretty good. Looks like the Cadian color scheme really agrees with them too.

I've been working on some bigger projects and have been really bogged down with some of them. I decided to test out some snow following one of Mr. Justin's two minute tutorials. In order to give it a fair test, I painted up a Vahallan Heavy Bolter team. I did this to work on some leather texturing techniques I've been trying to perfect. So a lot of different things going on in this piece here. My color scheme is roughly following the Stalingrad army. I've been working off one of the Osprey books about the battle and have found it very useful. I'm pretty pleased with the results. The snow looks fantastic (I think anyway, I'm biased). I need to remember to spray seal the figures before I put them on the base.

Right then. I've been on a YouTube binge for the past few weeks watching various videos by a wargames painter and her videos have made me question the way I paint my precious Imperial Guard for 40k (here's the link to her channel). Sacrilege, right? Not so. After seeing one of her camouflage videos (and then watching all of her other videos on the topic), a thought dawned on me: should I be washing these guys after I'm done stippling on their colours? A little backstory should be given before I throw pictures at you. I've always liked the German Flecktarn camouflage pattern and decided to use it on my Imperial Guard troopers. Luckily, there was an article about stippling on the internet that I had found and the pattern clicked. So many years ago... Anyway, at the time, I figured you wouldn't be able to see if there had been wash used or not so none was ever used. After having watched these videos, it's time to figure out if this needs to be readdressed. My first reaction is to scream "No!" at you until you go away as I have many guardsmen already painted up in Flecktarn. My more sane reaction is to agree to this washing as the models could use some shading in places; eg, around their cargo pockets, between equipment, where the tunic closes on itself, and around some of the tunic piping. Here are the pictures for reference. These are old pictures as they still feature the paper towel background I was told not to use. Guardsman Lieutenant The question, after whether they should be washed, is what colour wash should be used? Spectre Miniatures has a gorgeous tutorial on how to paint Multicam (which everyone should check out) and they use Athonian Camoshade - an olive green wash by Citadel. A brown shade was the first thing to come to mind but Flecktarn features more green than brown shades of colour. Perhaps a black wash would work better - thinned, of course? So, yeah. I'm leaning towards giving them a wash but don't know what colour to choose. Maybe a thinned all-over wash and then a recess and pin wash? Any help would be appreciated. Also, I apologize for the bad lighting. It would be neat if you could see the Lieutenant's cigar in his left hand.

When I first started painting armies some years back, I was contacted to paint up a few old-school Praetorian Imperial Guard. I played Imperial guard back when the Praetorians were first released (originally meant in the limited edition box set). I'm also a big fan of the film Zulu! that inspired them (Michael Caine is always good). So I was excited. I figured I wouldn't get a lot of chances to paint Praetorians again, since they were no longer being made, and they weren't ever produced as a regular line of imperial guardsmen. Somehow, I was very wrong. He has expanded his force many times, with more classic out-of-print minis than I thought I'd ever end up seeing. Now, I like me some close ups, and I did put a warning about this thread being pic heavy, so:

Here's an Imperial Knight that I painted up to match an army of Praetorians. Some of the casualties on the base are the LE casualties from the original Praetorian box set. Anyway, here are some pics: