Continuing work on a long overdue project, I’ve been working on more Mark V marines for a client wanting an entire army of them. Most of the squad is in the progress of being assembled, but I pieced together the sergeant trying to figure out his pose and get a pic at the same time.

I always think Lightning Claws make a model difficult to pose, especially when wielded in pairs. In this case I’ve tried to point them both in the same direction but with one drawn back which gives it a balance of sorts. The claws came from the Chaos Lord boxed set with the thumb claws trimmed off and replaced with normal powerfist thumbs to help lose the Chaos styling.

I’m not certain about the leg raised in the air. I was trying to give the impression of him stamping down with it, but I’m not 100% sure about it yet, so I may reposition it.

Almost the entire squad have had their feet replaced with greenstuffed feet (using a silicone putty one piece mold – I should probably show a pic of this at some point). This should make running and landing poses far easier to make and provide some variation amongst the squad.

I’ll also be trying to implement Doghouse’s method of converting Power Armour arms for these Actual Scale models. I have a feeling this will be rather difficult, but his turned out very nicely and all the assault weapons I need for the squad are already attached to the arms.

Work in Progress Assault Squad, Lightning Claws, Mark V, Silicone Putty

Hi all. It’s been a while. The last week has been a major pain, trying to clear out about 20 years worth of junk from my home (I’m a terrible horder), and so I’ve not had a chance to get much done. On top of that I ran out of greenstuff today and my latest order of the stuff seems to have gotten lost in the post (aaarrggh!!!). I’ve got a bit of an update here, but until I can get some fresh GS I’m gonna be flexing my paintbrush for a change.

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).

Work in Progress Actual Scale, Grey Knights, Purity Seal, Salamanders, Silicone Putty, Space Marine Bike