Kabal of the Suffocating Void

I arrived home from work today to find that my models and equipment had finally arrived. Naturally I took the time to organise a painting station and spent a while looking over the various model permutations and decid...okay I can't keep this lie going, instead I giggled like a school girl, busted open the box double time and put together my first 5 man band of kabalites before i'd even taken my coat off.
My first thoughts when putting these guys together was how fiddly they are to construct. Compared to the good old Space Marines I used to be able to throw together blindfolded while wearing mittens, these models are an absolute pain (or maybe my fingers have just gotten fatter in the last 8 years.) However i'm pretty happy with the poses I managed to get, particularly the kabalite reaching behind him for a hook if only because he stand out a little.
Anyway the eagle eyed among you may have noticed that a member of the squad has been painted up. This poor unfortunate soul was subjected to a quick and dirty test to see if my planned paint scheme would work and more importantly whether i was still capable of holding a paintbrush after a long time away from 40k.
The result was...interesting, there's certainly a lot of room for improvement but at least now I know I'm not going to disgrace the awesome models and i'm happy with my paintscheme (which is actually pretty matte contrary to the photo's, but i'll be damned if i know how to tweak the flash on my camera)

I aim to get the rest of the squad finished this weekend before starting work on my venom, plans are also afoot for a converted archon. Goodbye free time and disposable income

I think your paint-foo is just fine, that's a great start.

I dig the scheme, feels like a Aurora Borealis (though maybe that was not what you tried to achieve ). Any idea about their landscape (i.e. bases)?

I like the paint scheme although I am thinking that the rifle part is bugging me.

What I mean is that it looks like you have a dominant gold color and a dominant boltgun color. I would go with one or the other. My thought is black instead of bolt gun. less shiny and now those color complement the blue you have going instead of drowning it out with the shine.

Also, the bodysuit, in my opinion, should be a different shade or color from the armor. Nit picky to be sure, but the armor stands out so much more is you de-emphasize the body suit. Black is an easy color and the blue will stand out against it.

All that being said, I know that is a quick and dirty test model, so take my comments with a grain of salt.

looking forward to seeing more.

GAR wrote:

I like the paint scheme although I am thinking that the rifle part is bugging me.

What I mean is that it looks like you have a dominant gold color and a dominant boltgun color. I would go with one or the other. My thought is black instead of bolt gun. less shiny and now those color complement the blue you have going instead of drowning it out with the shine.

Also, the bodysuit, in my opinion, should be a different shade or color from the armor. Nit picky to be sure, but the armor stands out so much more is you de-emphasize the body suit. Black is an easy color and the blue will stand out against it.

All that being said, I know that is a quick and dirty test model, so take my comments with a grain of salt.

looking forward to seeing more.

i agree with GAR the shininess is a bit overwhelming but apart from that i love the paint scheme .
please excuse any bad spelling/grammar its not my strong point

Hey guys thanks for all the comments and advice, I didn't expect so much feedback. I'm glad that the general concept of my blue/turquoise colour scheme was well received.

In response to saintspirit's comments I must admit to my shame that rather than being based on the Aurora Borealis my inspiration was WoW's saronite ore deposits.
As for basing my models i was thinking of snow or ice to contrast with my dark colour scheme but I haven't tried it before so it may take a little experimenting before I risk tying it on my models.

I've taken your criticisms on board and can confirm that my pot of Boltgun Metal has now been locked in a vault to help me resist the urge to drybrush it over absolutely anything black. In it's place I've substituted shining gold for metallic details to try and keep them uniform across the entire model.
So here's kabalite mk.II. The image quality isn't brilliant but the picture gives a much better representation of how the model looks in the flesh unlike the shiny flash happy shots of my first model.

I like Mk.II much much better.

The black really makes a difference.

Please do continue. I get a sense of some very good things to come.

cant wait to see the venom in the Mk.II paint scheme, it should be a really nice army.

Well the first 5 man squad of kabalites is finished and here it is along with pics of the 3 newest members. The kabalite in the mk.I armor is mooching around out of focus at the back, he is not long for this world.
I've also been working on a venom which has been hard going, I'd love to be able to blame the kit but I feel my difficulties may have more to do with me going at it like a headless chicken and starting painting before construction. Queue lots of gluing painted surfaces together meaning there's a fair chance the whole thing will fall to bits sooner or later.
I'm planning on painting a pattern across the nose but i've yet to come up with a suitable design and I don't want to copy the pattern the box (trying to copy picture on the box can only lead to tears and spoiled models.) The gunner isn't on board at the moment as his skin is still undergoing a number of experiments and so far the results have been so hideous that they'd make a haemonculus balk.
Aaand here's the underside of the venom which i felt the need to show bearing in mind the disproportionate amount of time I spent painting it.

The next jobs on the cards are to paint up the second kabalite squad (who aren't getting a venom until I'm happy with the one currently in progress) and to get to work on my planned Archon conversion. Will it end up a crowning moment of glory or a shameful pile of plastic and metal in a bin, place your bets now:)

I absolutly love the gold on the Warriors! Althought I'm not completely sold on the gold window on the Venom.

The gold is extra bling. It works really well with the green highlighting. I think the venom looks awesome.

Cheers for the comments guys. I've been a bit lax with the painting recently and Deus Ex tranq darted my weekend but I have finished off the venom bar a little bit of varnishing.
The parts I wanted for my Archon weren't in stock anywhere online so while I'm waiting I decided to start work on a custom Haemonculus to break up the monotony of troop painting. It also gave me a chance to have my first play around with some green stuff.




Obviously he's still very much a work in progress, there's plenty more detail to add and somehow I managed not to buy any red paints hence the empty vials and lack of details on the fleshy bits. I've still got to throw on a couple more arms; probably taken from the venom hangers on I didn't use and I'm working on a flayed skin mask for the head.

Unfortunately It looks like once he's finished he's going to be a pain in the behind to field since his robe easily covers two bases and he's taller than Peter Crouch, but even if i end up using a standard GW Haemonculus at least this weighty chap will make for a handy dark eldar paperweight.

Very nice! I really like the sythe.

Brilliant conversion.

I like it very much.

Since i'm up at this ungodly hour i thought I'd post some pics of the two Archons I've got on the go at the moment. I like to think of them as a married couple who enjoy long walks on the beach, rainy days doing jigsaws and the occasional mass vivisection.
Mr Archon is just the standard GW huskblade/soultrap model with a syrabite back blade. I didn't actually intend to get this model but i made the mistake of walking into the gaming store with cash burning a hole in my pocket and as usual found it impossible to leave without buying something. I'm not that big a fan of it to be honest, next to my other troops he looks a little bit too much like a regular kabalite. I've always had the idea that an Archon would make sure he looked the best and had the most ornate armour just to make sure nobody forgets who's in charge.
Mrs Archon is based on the body of a Privateer Press Hordes model with the pistol, agoniser and grenade launcher coming from the kabalite kit. I went with this model as the armour is intricate enough to show her importance without being too high fantasy to fit in with the rest of the army.

Now I've thrown this lovely couple together I think some incubi are in order

Well I braved the weather this weekend to pick up some Incubi and ended up with some Scourges too. The Incubi are going to take a fair bit of tidying up before they're fit to paint so I decided to start on the Scourges first.

I've got to say these are easily my favourite models in the range, it seems no matter how you put them together they're guaranteed to look dynamic. I decided to give them gold armor since the codex says they're made up of the richest Dark Eldar and if you're the sort of person who gets wings grafted to your body it's safe to assume you want to stand out.
The blue wings help to tie the models in with the rest of my forces in their darker armor. I'm going to use the same colour for the wings on every model but in different ways to make each model unique while maintaining squad coherence.
Sorry for being a little gratuitous with the photo's but I absolutely love these guys, why can't all my models have wings;)

Hmmm.

I like what I am seeing, my only thought is I would like to see more shading on the hellions. The metallics look a bit flat, from the pictures.

other than that, very nice.

Yeah you were right about the gold looking flat, I've since been back over the model to sort it out. I gave the edges a highlight of mithril silver, the armour joints a thin bestial brown shadow and then washed the whole thing with ogryn flesh. Its quite hard to find that balance between giving the metallics depth without making them look too worn and tarnished.

On an unrelated note just thought I'd mention that i got round to ordering some basing goodies so soon I'll be able to put up an image of my force so far complete with bases. I always find basing can be a real deal breaker, an average model on a good base can look awesome but the best model in the world will look plain awful on a dodgy base. (My old Emperor's Champion was testament to this, spent ages painting him then decided to smother his base in a few thousand points of badly painted orks...for shame)

At first glance I thought this was going to be a Black Heart Kabal but it is turning into something truly original. Your venom is fantastic, the freehand is very good, reminds me of Lucky No.5's.

I see you've ordered bases, which ones and what shade are you going for?

Peter Crouch is a good conversion, probably score more goals too.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Maz9ddxEQnM

Very nice, and i do admire a man who takes the time to paint the underside of any vehicle. I tend to just spit a random mouthful of paint under my vehicles and go "Yeah...that looks fine. They never look at it too closely anyway..."

Of course, it never ends well.

Anyways: Very nice!

***The Tax Man would like to apologise for the low quality of images in this post but unfortunately his digital camera is damaged beyond repair. Rest assured that the 5mp phone camera used to take the photo's below has since been taken outside and shot***

Good evening ladies and gentlemen, sorry I haven't posted anything in the last few days but i haven't had much time to get any painting done. I have however taken the time to sort out my Incubi and well...I don't really like the models, there I said it. Perhaps I've been spoiled by the variety and customization options in the Kabalite and Scourge kits but I've found the Incubi models frustratingly inflexible (in terms of modelling opportunities, the models themselves are floppier than wet lettuce.) My ire is particularly directed at the two workmen that come in the box, you know the ones I mean.
On a more positive note i did manage a small kit bash to add a little variation to the squad, all I had to do was clip the pointing hand from an unused arm (I think it's from a Scourge) and attach it to this chaps wrist socket.It's not perfect; the klaive certainly looks a little unwieldy, but I still prefer it to the standard pose. Worryingly this was the easiest of the models to tweak, I'm really going to have to think outside the box for the rest.

@Skyserpent
I bottled it in the end and aborted operation snow base, instead I lumped for the standard rubble strewn wasteland theme. They're still a little bit plain and featureless at the moment but I've been prowling ebay for people offloading their bits boxes so I can add the odd item of interest.

The first of the shoveling Incubi has been reworked into a more tolerable pose. I adopted my usual tactic of taking a run at the model with little more than a scalpel and some good intentions but against all the odds I think it turned out okay
He still needs a grip adding into his bendy Klaive and I'm thinking of either adding some hanging chains or a dangling severed head into his clenched fist but those are things that'll taking a bit of playing around with. Now I need to work out what to do with the other offending model, i'm thinking he may end up being a standard bearer either with his klaive stowed away on his back in a green stuff sling or perhaps stuck in the ground for dramatic effect.

What do you guys reckon?