Good weekend!

Well, the fam was away this weekend, and so to keep me occupied and out of trouble I comandeered the dining room table and got some painting done.

What did I get accomplished? Well, despite what I said last time, I decided that having an unfinished Terminator squad was just not going to cut it. Yes, they had orange and white armor with green eyes, but they looked very blah... and the sergeant just didn't pop either with his boltgun grey power sword.

So I took some time to review some tutorials on power weapons and set out to do my own. Since the army is orange, I didn't think a blue power sword would look right, so I decided to do a red "lava lightning" sword.

This was accomplished by first repainting the entire sword black, and then tracing a lighning pattern over the black with some Gore Red. Once that was dry, I retraced the pattern with some Blazing Orange, and then took some yellow and traced a very fine line inside the orange.

As I usually use a magnifier to help me get up close with details, I wasn't too impressed with the result until I looked at it without magnification, and wow! The sword really pops!

Emboldened by this success, I then decided to go for some blue lightning on the power fists of the other terminators and a Rogue Trader Captain that I have been working on. For the power fists, I started with a base coat of Regal Blue, then some highlights of Ultramarine Blue, moving up to Ice Blue, and then a baby blue that I got from Walmart in random "slashes" to simulate some lightning. Overall, the effect is a nice one, not as much of a wow factor as the sword, but definitely nice enough that it looks like I spent some time on it.

Then I mixed up a pot of black wash, and gave the stormbolters a nice black undercoat, along with all the guns for my tactical squads I've been working on. Once they black was dry, I took some boltgun metal and drybrushed it over the guns, and made them nice and metallic.

Finally, I got some of my Burnished Gold, and hit all the badges and decorations.

And voila! One terminator squad finished and ready for action.

I then took my two landspeeders and gave them the black and boltgun treatment on the bumpers, and highlighted the aquilas to get them done (except for the pilots, I know, I know)...

And then I finished up some more members of my tactical squad. I now just need the missile launcher to have a fully fleshed out squad of 10.

Once my eyes got tired, and my hands got too shaky, I decided to fish my Vanguard Veteran squad out of the simple green bath they'd been sitting in for a week.

Usually one week of Simple Green is enough to get models looking brand new, but these fellas look like they've seen some rough times. All the paint came off, but there seems to be a bit of oxidation on them which makes them dull and crummy looking... I'll do some research to see why this might be, and what if anything I should do about it...

Finally, just in time for their appointment with the Simple Green jar, my squad of Sternguard Veterans arrived in the mail. One of the models is bare metal, but was super glued horribly, with some globs of glue showing at the joints, and the left arm not matching up to the boltgun correctly. I put him in a plastic ziploc bag, and applied my precision ungluing technique: I dropped him from about 6ft onto the tile floor. The arms flew off, and I was able to get all of the superglue off of him, leaving him ready for priming.

The rest of the squad went into the vat. They look like they were meant to be some sort of Blood Angel squad or something, but the painting was very globby, and their white painted helmets were almost devoid of all detail. But they'll be nice and shiny by next weekend.

Whew... I was so productive, I don't know what to do with myself now...