The original concept was to have him in this pose with the shoulder mounted CB and carrying a 2 handed thunder hammer/wrench. As I was building him it seemed a shame to obscure the sculpting on the model with a big weapon held in front of him, this was my main reason for switching to a single handed thunder wrench. I also really like the scanner arm from the (Thunderfire Cannon) Techmarine, for some reason, and it fits the torso nicely.

These two images were central to the concept I had in mind.

Anyway here you go. Pretty sure I’ll be painting him up as a Lamenters chapter Master of the Forge (he’ll be my new forum avatar, and I’ll work his image into the banner of this website too).

This is more out of necessity than anything, as I need to raise some funds for a new computer to replace the steam powered one I’m currently making do with.

I’m pricing them at £250 which I feel is fair considering I would probably charge £300+ to convert and paint a squad of miniatures like these.

He could probably do with a few small touches here and there to finish the paintjob properly and he needs a coat of Dullcote to remove the glossy look he’s got going on, but I’m pretty pleased with the result.

As a bit of fluff for him I’ve given him the title of Guardian of Names. He carries and protects one of the Grey Knights sacred tomes, a book that records the name of each and every Grey Knight to have died protecting mankind. If that’s not a role for a Chaplain I don’t know what is.

On the subject of Grey Knights, there’s now some chatter on the old interweb of a new Codex and new miniatures, hopefully this year. Personally I’m hoping for a surprise August release. This does mean that I’ll probably put some conversions on hold until I can see what new models I can use for converting my own Actual Scale Grey Knights and also what is potentially in the Codex. Whilst searching for rumours about this I came across one mention of Grey Knights getting Jetbikes, and I have to say I really like this idea. I hate the notion of giving them Jump Packs, but for some reason Jet Bikes sort of seems very appropriate to me as a Fast Attack selection. I’m sure we’ll see Stormravens and I’m hoping for Storm Troopers and GK Chaplains (for obvious reasons).

So it’s about time I posted some evidence of progress, so here goes… the heading towards finished Grey Knight Chaplain.

Whilst painting him I decided I wasn’t totally happy with the positioning of the shield arm, mostly because the direction the attached purity seal was hanging looked odd. So I rebuilt the arm with the shield in a slightly more dynamic pose and the seal hanging more naturally downwards. Whilst doing this I realised I’d missed an opportunity to take the rather awesome Iron Haloed Skull and repeat the design on his own shield. So before continuing with painting I’ve sculpted the Iron Halo design onto his Storm Shield.

Originally I’d wanted to have all of his power armour black (as described in the novels) with just a few gold details and a silver skull helm, however, the all black armour just didn’t really look that good, so in the end I opted to paint both shoulder pads the same silver as his helm. It certainly requires a lot more attention on the painting side of things, but you can certainly imagine how the finished model will look now.

I’ve also managed to gather bits together for more members of a Grey Knight squad. All the legs are quite obviously from GK Terminators, the torsos from MK8 armour and a Black Templar plastic bit and the heads come from Black Templars, a metal veteran model, a company champion and a AoBR marine.

First up today, SIlicone Putty!

I’ve mentioned this a few times over the last few months so I figured I’d give an example. As I’m working on a Grey Knights army, I decided to make a mold of a special purity seal for them. In some of the GK artwork they can be seen with really long flowing purity seals, which I think not only look really cool but are especially useful for hiding less than perfect sculpting.
So here I sculpted a long flowing seal onto a piece of plasticard.

The silicone putty comes in two parts, both of which are of, well a putty consistency (obviously).

Take two small equal sized amounts. They are very easily mixed just using fingertips and takes probably no more than 20-30 seconds. It’s not exactly messy, but you’ll want to wash your hands afterwards.

It hardens very quickly, so as soon as it’s mixed into one colour, press it onto whatever it is you are molding, being careful to sort of spread it over the piece so as not to capture air bubbles.

Give it a minute to set, and pull it off. It captures details very nicely (you can see my fingerprints on the putty in the photo above). Whilst normally on larger objects the mold has some flexibility, on small pieces like this there really is none. It’s very easy to cut and will break if you use too much force, but the beauty of this material is that Greenstuff will not stick to it at all, so there’s no need for any kind of release agent.

When making the cast a soft mix is highly recommended (ie: at least twice as much yellow as blue) and you’ll need to press it into the mold with a wet tool, otherwise it’ll stick to the tool and be pulled right out of the mold.

I’ll be using this particular mold to add flowing purity seals to all my Grey Knights, which will certainly add a sense of movement to a fairly static pose that most will have.

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Actual Scale bike.

This is the bike for an Actual Scale Salamanders character (will count as Khan). The rider is currently in bits, but the main structure of the bike is built as you can see. The exhausts might be a little bit flared. The whole thing is about half as long again as a regular bike, hence the need for a custom base. The front of the bike is a little rough but I’ll be sculpting a large imperial eagle on it as soon as I can get some more GS. The plastics are a combination of Ork and Space Marine bikes and I think the exhausts may have come from a Baneblade (I’m not too sure).

So I finished a number of projects recently and have managed to clear a bit of space on my desk for some fresh stuff.

I’ve just started piecing together 2 Actual Scale Salamanders characters that will count as Kantor and Khan. The challenge of an Actual Scale bike is proving challenging, but I’m starting to make progress with it (pics incoming).

I figured I would try and have a few different projects on the go at once, so I can keep switching over whenever I need a break. My second currently running project is a set of 3 more Red Scorpions captains. These will be regular scale (for a change) and painted.

I also decided I wanted to do some work on my own collection, else I’ll never have any Space Marines of my own. I’ve been quite keen to make a Grey Knights Chaplain for quite some time, and whilst there are a hundred other models I want to work on, this is the one that’s peaked my interest right now. I was also highly inspired by this amazing image.

I’m sure some of you would argue against the existence within the fluff of GK Chaplains, but I rather like the idea, if nothing else just for aesthetic reasons – Chaplains always look cool, but a Grey Knight Chaplain should be something really special.

I started this with a few ideas in mind. When finished it will fit approximately the description of the Chaplain mentioned in Ben Counter’s Grey Knights book, ie: all black power armour and a gun metal skull helm. I also had this idea of him carrying a thunder hammer that looks similar to a crozius arcanum. I’ve made a largely scratch built double headed TH, but I’m not entirely sure I’m satisfied with it yet.

You can probably see where the parts have come from. The legs are from the Grey Knight Terminator Brother Captain, and the torso/head is from one of the standard Chaplain models. Normally I would make the torso from plastic and green stuff to give it extra depth and position the head properly, but in this case I felt it look good as is. I’m not decided yet on his final pose or weapons. You can see a selection of possibles here (swords, thunder hammer (crozius), stormbolter and storm shield). Any thoughts?

I do know I want him to have a large book (in photo), either on a chain, or held in his hand, as imagine one of his roles in the chapter is to record the names of the Imperium’s greatest unsung heroes.

In games terms, he will “count as” one of the Grey Knight Squad’s Justicar.

I forgot to take size comparison photos again, but you can kinda see how big he is just based on the fact he’s on a 40mm base. The cloak looks a lot worse than it does in the flesh. I’m fairly pleased with how the Hamadrya turned out, a little larger than I wanted but the positioning and pose are spot on how I wanted him. The plastic torso on the Hamadrya came from a Warhammer Zombie for those who are wondering.

Overall I’m most pleased with Huron’s Power Fist. I’ll definitely be attempting to better it in future, but it’s a nice start.

EDIT: Here’s the scale comparison with good old Lamenter Bob.

Click for larger image.

I’ve been putting some time into the long awaited tutorial, which will be finished soon. A little later I’ll also be putting together a tutorial for these Terminators.