painted for others and by others, part deux

I don't often schedule posts but since I have been focusing on my Novamarines up to now with getting prepared for astronomi-con (see pt 1, pt 2 & pt 3) and it will probably be a few days before I can get a post up about my first 40k tournament I thought this will give you something to read.

nb. Well that's the second time that blogger has failed to post when I've "scheduled" - anybody got any tips or  does it just not work??

Well I enjoyed posting up the pics in my previous "for others and by others" post. I especially like getting nice pics of the minis I painted in "staged" or game situations.  First up I have some pics of the dark angels captain model I painted for Mik @ Mik's Minis as the prize from the second GWpertinent contest.

common basing theme = win!

I'm pretty happy that his basing scheme has helped to make the paint job look better. These are some pics from Miks game using the SuperSystem rules, which looked like a hoot btw!

epic battle begins!

tracto gets slammed by an escape pod!

Next up I have a pic from Mike over at Constantly Risking Obscurity - a fellow I have been following for quite some time.  Ever since his submission to a painting contest called "Take Cover" with this incredible entry. I love the burnt piece of wall and battle damage.  In this instance I was fortunate enough to NOT win a contest he held on his blog to receive a painted model - and by his great generosity received an offer to paint a mini for me regardless of the contest. How awesome is THAT?

early stages of what promises to be an awesome addition to my collection

I have been slowly collecting the spare harlequin here and there whenever I can get them pretty cheap.  My plan is to have a different person paint up each one, and use them as a brat gang in my games of Necromunda  - using Anthony Cases rules.  You can check out the first harlequin I had painted (by Dave from mini painting 4 free) in my post here.

Finally - Mik recently showed me some love for the dark angels captain model, and he took some nice close up pics.  I think they are nicer than the pics I originally took (and he looks better based) so I thought I would post them up too.  The pics definitely help me to think of what I could improve.

power sword details

I went with the same power sword as on my space sharks champion. I think I should have blended out from the white instead of into it. Lesson 1.

full frontal :-O

As for the armour and details, I wanted to use a single wash (devlan mud) over everything to really unify the piece.  I feel I did go a little heavy on the wash, next time I do something over the whole piece, I am going to thin down the wash. Lesson 2.

knee pad & shoulder pad details

The knee pad was re-painted after the wash to get the company colours exactly right. The wash really dulled down the (probably too subtle) red highlights on his shoulder pad and headdress. Greater contrast highlights work better with the unifying wash (as seen with the green details).  Lesson 3.

cloak

This one is the maybe.  I wanted his cloak to be very green to ensure he still fit with the rest of the dark angels - however it is just a big flat area, possibly a decal (artistically - perhaps half the chapter symbol) might have really made this pop. Lesson 4? What do you think?