Back in Action! Crisis and Fishes

Hi Dear Reader,

I have been absent from this blog over a year my apoligies. A lot has happened tha last year. A few weeks ago I and a group of friends played some Warhammer 40K in our local Games Workshop store. I played as Tau, champion of the greater good against the oppressive forces of the Imperal Guard. That day the Tau left the field with a bloodied nose, thanks a lot to IG sentinels I could not hurt. That game and my friends got me returning to painting and collecting minis.

Today I have been working on two projects:

1. "Modular Weapon initiative (MWi)"
2. "Flying Fish"

First I almost finished my 3 XV8 Crisis Suites, the bases must be done, I will put some ruins and debris on the bases at some point. For the suit weapons i started the MWi. For this purpose I drilled holes in my suites and weapons the whole morning. 3x4 holes in the suites and some more in the weapons. In these holes I glued 5mm disc magnets carefully checking the polarity of the magnets. I put the magnet on the tip of my craft knife and checked if it would attract or repulse another magnet and glued the repulsive side downards (relative to the hole),

Here are some pictures of the project:

XV8 Crisis suit with magnets in arms and shoulders

My Crisis Suit team and their stash of MWi weapons (all magnetised)

My Second project is the Devilfish. The transport is crucial for the Tau to take and hold objectives and keep the firewarriors alive. I primed the body and other parts with Wolf Grey. Then I decided i wanted camouflage. I watched some youtube videos where they used stencils for camouflage painting. It seemed easy enough if you hade some stencil material and air brush, I got neither. But the Earth caste beeing resourceful I found some white paper stickers. I drew some polygon shapes on them and cut them out. For the first layer I would paint Deep Blue. Below is picture before and after.  

First Stencil layer on

Deep blue painted and second Stencil layer on. 

I almost knew for certain that my material choise for the stencil was a bad idea, but I went forward with it. After removing the stencils after the Ash Grey coat I almost cried. My Devilfish looked like some hippemobil from Berlin painted by a three year old. All the colours where a mess as the paint from the layers had gone under the stencil and mixed. I did not give up but took a small brush in my hand an started to define and clean up the patter. 3 hours later I was fairly happy with the result. The engines, hatch and landing gear are still unpainted. Until next time.  

Final camo after a lot of patching up with brush and wash,