Golem's 2 Day Army Painting Workshop Part 1

At the Golem Army Painting Workshop weekend you will learn the skills and techniques used by a professional studio to:

• Save you time
• Create cohesion and visual impact across an army
• Approach painting larger groups of models with the right mind set

...all of which will make your army look awesome on the table top!

What do I need to bring for the weekend?

Miniatures: Obviously you will need to bring something to paint! This could be an entire force or a few units that you might like to focus on. These models should be built in advance of the event so that we can get straight into the good stuff! It would also be a great idea to bring along some of your existing paint jobs so that we can assess what will be the best way to help you along.

Brushes: We find that most painters have their preferred brush types, so bring something you feel comfortable using. For army painting we would suggest always using a good brush, but we personally like to save our best ones (like Series 7s) for characters.

Brush suggestions: For really good yet cheap brushes, you can't go wrong with Rosemary & Co. Series 33 brushes. A size 2 or 3 and a size 0 or 1 will give you enough variety in size. I would also suggest a large flat headed brush like the Citadel Large Flat Drybrush for larger areas.

Paints: Paints will be provided on the day. However if you have a specific colour scheme in mind using a particular paint range, it would be a good idea to bring these paints along with you.

Notebook: It would be a good idea to bring something along to write down what you are being taught so that you can reflect back upon it at a later date. A camera might be useful for the same reason

We will provide...

Paints: We have a large selection of Citadel paints in the studio which you will be able to make use of.

Lunch (both days): We will provide a selection of food and soft drinks. Tea and Coffee will also be available throughout both days.

But where are you?

We're only 10 minutes walk away from Manchester Piccadilly Train Station, 5 minutes walk from the Ibis Budget Hotel and we have free parking on site.

Golem Painting Studio
5th Floor, Hope Mill
113 Pollard Street
Ancoats
Manchester
M4 7JA
England

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If you want to contact us to secure your place or if you have any questions, then don't hesitate to email at:
events@golempaintingstudio.co.uk

Mass Effect Infinity Yu Jing

Following on from my Orange Combined Army, I've been given some Yu Jing to paint. The client asked for a "a dark glossy red and blue colour scheme", similar to this chappy from Mass Effect 2.

 

It looked a lot like Optimus Prime when I came to blocking out the base coats.

 

But when it was shaded down really came together for test piece. 

 

Here's the SÙ-JIÀN Immediate Action Unit, skimpering through the bushy undergrowth. I really like the bots in this scheme.

  

Slightly fiddly model, considering it's metal, and reared up on one toe. No room for pinning legs. Luckily I have a secret glue formula that means this is rock solid.

 

Here's the whole lot. I like their glowy eyes.

 

And the whole force, defending some shelled out buildings. Pow pow.

 

Chris "Curis" Webb

Little Red Riding Hood

Hey guys! Just finished Little Red Riding Hood.

Now on CMON: http://www.coolminiornot.com/323232

Thomas Moore

Mike Newman Speaks...

Chaos Dwarfs

Part 6 - Bull Centaurs

And we're back. After a short break (some would say too long) for the holidays, its time to return to blogmosphere.

I'm going to be lazy though and return with a rather picture heavy blog, featuring my Bull Centaur Renders.

I'm a big fan of the Bull Centaurs. I find they have their uses either in small units to harry opponents chaff units, and lend support to the other big combat threats, or in big units as a real hammer unit. Their high Toughness, Wounds and good Armour Save also makes them a very resilient unit to both light arms and weaker troops. For only 40pts a model they are a real bargin.

Usually I run my units with Great Weapons - with only 2 attacks each, I want to make sure that when they hit, they kill, to give them the greatest chance of winning combat, and as they are so tough to kill, the Always Strike Last rule is less of a disadvantage.

Even though I only have a champion and standard bearer painted, it is the musician I never leave home without (they never made a model for one sadly) - the ability to swift reform after running down an enemy unit is crucial to maximizing the potential of any combat unit.

These last two Bull Centaurs have been used as my Taur'ruks in a good number of games (I now have new Taur'ruks painted - keep your eye on the blog to see them in future editions). The great weapon one is probably my favorite of the BC models, as its full of character, while the hand weapon and shield model is a conversion from a old Chaos Dwarf Lord - with only Sorcerer-Prophets as lord choices in the Tamurakhan book, I felt it fitting for this model to get an upgrade.

That's all for now folks, its good to be back, and I'm already planning next weeks edition, which may well be a look at some of my warmachines.

Untill then

Painting Armies the Golem Way - Part 1

Armies make up a big proportion of the projects we work on at Golem Towers, and we get a lot of questions and comments about how we go about undertaking such a task.

I've recently completed a Wood Elf Army and thought it would offer the perfect opportunity to show some of the stages we go through to keep things quick, neat and looking great on the table!

Here's a stage by stage look at how I approached a Glade Guard Archer for this army.

Stage 1: The model is assembled and flashed, and has sand glued to the base. It's then primed  grey.
 Note that the cloak is kept separate.

Stage 2: Airbrushing complete; The boots, bow and base are all basecoated  with the same shade of brown which saves a lot of time. The cloak and hood have had a basecoat and highlight applied with the airbrush.

Stage 3: Basecoat brushwork complete

Stage 4: Washes applied; care is taken at this stage not to run into the cloak or hood.

Stage 5: Line Highlighting complete. This really helps define the surfaces and folds. The base is also drybrushed. All that remains now is some small detail areas and the basing...

The Tyrolien Oak Guard on patrol at the borders of Lorien. 

If you'd like to learn more tips and techniques to help you paint your armies more quickly and to a higher standard, then our Army Painting Workshop will be just the ticket! Click on the banner below to visit our Events page and book your place.

Thanks folks, more army goodness to come soon...

Mark Elsdon

Raven Guard Part II

Hello one and all again, as promised here is part two of my Raven Guard commission! A few close ups of units and a few units that were not in the last shoot.  Dem sneaky beakies.

A Raven Guard Squad Corvarian advance through the ruin of An'korts Primus

Raven Guard Squad Avarntine supported by Land Speeders probes the enemy flanks for weak spots

Terminator squad Alanian transported within a Redeemer burst forth to take on the Imperium's toughest enemies

Assault Marine Squad Cravis surge forward, capturing vital fuel lines

Stern Guard squad Ovidius supported by a Chaplin Clorr secure ground disembarking from their Drop Pod

That's all for now, I hope you enjoyed reading this blog post. Enemies of this mighty first founding chapter beware - the raven's claw will tear into its enemies mercilessly

If you would like to paint cool armies like this one, why not attend our 'Army Painting Day' at Golem Painting Studio! http://www.golempaintingstudio.co.uk/events/index.htm Thank you for looking :-)

Mike Mee

Pict Perfect

If you were in Golem recently you'd have seen a horde of beareded men in tatty clothes. No! We it wasn't us - the painters - it was an army of Picts.

These Iron Age Celts were a commission of largely Foundry miniatures (with some minor conversion work).  They lack full bases as the client himself will be mounting these in elements of eight for the Impetus games system.  For the purposes of the photos they're stuck to the board with dobs of Blu-Tack.

 

The richer Picts go into battle on horseback.  These horses are great fun to paint - I like their little equine faces.  Classic Foundry models. 

 

The Berserkers are covered in woad spirals to scare the enemy while the charge - all dangly - into battle.

Chris "Curis" Webb

Going Coastal!

Wargaming is an open an varied beast with a huge range of topics, environments, scales, and settings and my personal favourites have always been small scale wargames depicting massive epic engagements, with a special fondness for fleet based games and the extra tactical dimension they add with limited manoeuvrability which forces forward thinking.

From my early days of GZGs Full Thrust and Games Workshops Man'o'War fleet engagements have always captured my imagination and heart, which eventually led through the void of around 10 years without any major company making such a game to Spartan Games. Spartan now produces 3 such fleet based games, and a whole host of exceptional minis to go with them.

The Russian fleet advances through the Baltic just off the Polish coast.

Destopian Wars is by far in my opinion the most enchanting of these games, set in a rich Victorian Sci-Fi setting it offers many weird and wonderful steam powered war machines and a whole batch of different painting techniques and styles to match.

The Russian fleet is an extra challenge in itself with white as its main colour, which I generally try to avoid when possible, especially when using a more realistic, non-cartoony painting style as it is all too easy to mess up.

Borodino class battleship

Suvorov class cruisers

Novgorod class frigate

Myshkin Bombers

Tiny flyer tokens

So there we have the Russian starter box all painted up in the default colour scheme in all its glory! Watching this space for more bits and pieces from Spartan. 

A chance encounter with the 3rd Prussian fleet escalates into a bloody battle.

 Thats all from me for now! Hope you enjoy the boaty goodness.

-Gary

Divided Loyalties

Recently the studio has been rent asunder! Some of us have become black hearted devotees of Chaos, whilst others seek to uphold the Emperor's divine light.

Basically we've been getting lots of Chaos and Grey Knights commissions; hurrah!

First up, have a look at Luke's Bloodletter commission:

"I've never painted any Daemons before, being a staunch imperialist, and so I had to adjust my painting style. I lit my desk with a guttering candle of unclean tallow, set atop a polished skull...

In all seriousness though, daemons do require quite a different approach, with all that bare flesh. I painted some sinew and muscle tone onto key areas to make them more three dimensional. I also spent a long time on the swords, as these are key focal point."

Next up are Mark's Grey Knights:

"The client had some definite aesthetic ideas he was looking to incorporate into this force. The silver was to be of a much darker hue than is typically seen on GKs, and the helmets and tilt plates a striking split red and white scheme.

I also used a alternating blue/white blend on the force weapons to give them real visual impact"

 
Both armies were mounted up on custom resin bases featuring a plethora of skulls, so it seemed rude not to set them up in some dynamic action scenes!

Skulltaker leads his deamonic minions in an assault on the Chapel of Sanctuary. Kaldor Draigo will not let this stand!

A clash of steel! The savage hordes of the Skull God launch themselves wildly into the Grey Knight battleline

 Cheers folks, til next time :)

Luke Jordan and Mark Elsdon

Raven Guard Commission

Hello one and all, and happy New Year! I recently finished reading the 'Horus Heresy' book 'Deliverance Lost' and was quite surprised to find a rather large Raven Guard commission sitting next to my desk. I was very eager to get stuck in!

I found this to be a very enjoyable commission as there was lots of different models to build/paint. These models were greatly enhanced by the 'Forge World' transfer sheet which was a joy to use. 

 

I hope you enjoyed looking, more Raven Guard to follow!

 

Regards

Mike Mee

Mike Newman Speaks...

Chaos Dwarfs

Part 5 - The UK Masters and K'daai Destroyer

This week, as its relevant to the time of year I though I would talk a little about the UK Masters.

For those that don't know, every year the top 16 individually ranked tournament players in the country (as ranked by www.rankingshq.com) are invited to attend the UK Masters tournament.

An invite to attend the event is an achievement in itself, with over 900 players competing in tournaments in the UK this past year!

Each tournament is assigned a quantity of rankings points based upon its size (both players and rounds) - with the maximum score being 100 - and you earn a set amount of points depending on how well you do. With your best four tournament scores being counted towards the rankings.

This year you need over 367 out of a possible 400 to make it into the Masters - an average of a top 5 finish at four 60 player 2 day events (the minimum for an event to be worth 100 points).

I started playing Warhammer again at an event on the 16th of October 2011 - and coming into this year I made the decision to set the goal of achieving a place in this years Masters event - not an easy task, as a lot of very good players were going to miss out, and at that point I had very little experience of 8th edition!

But I am very pleased to announce I just slipped in - finishing the year in 16th place! Which obviously I was very pleased about, even if it was a bit anxious waiting for the final placings to be announced. I'll report back on how I, and the Chaos Dwarfs, did early next year.

And finally, as this will be my last blog post, most likely until the new year, I thought we'd leave on a high, and show off my K'daai Destroyer. One of the biggest threats in the Chaos Dwarf army list, and probably one of the most talked about monsters in the Warhammer scene.

With no official models I chose to use Krull from the Banelegions Range (click the images to enlarge)

Most of the red skin colouring was airbrushed on. Using the airbrush to create simple shades and highlights is a great way of  both speeding up painting large monsters, and getting the smooth blends that large areas of flesh require.

From there I used mainly a collection of glazes and washes - thin layers of translucent paint - to create a rich depth of colour. I shaded the skin with both purples and browns, and carried these colours over when shading other areas such as the gold and brown leather - keeping the shading consistent is a good way to tie the different areas of colour together and give the model an more realistic, unified look.

I added an extra layer of highlight to the K'daai's facial features - this is a trick we use often when painting models. Faces are always a focal point, and the area the viewers eye is naturally drawn to, so giving them an extra layer of highlight really makes the model pop!

So until next time, Merry Christmas and have a Happy New Year