Grgobart needs to do some converting and painting again

[Grgobart]

It's been way too long since I worked on my army! The last thing I did, was my Repressor Coversion and that was March last year!!!
So in order to get back into converting and painting my Sisters, here's what I'm currently working on:

A new Banner Bearer

Still needs a Fleur-de-Lys tip, two decorative ropes and at least one Purity Seal somewhere. Once it's ready for painting, I will try to put a pair of printed emblems of my DIY Order on the banner.

But before I will paint the Banner Bearer, I'll have to check whether my painting skills have suffered from this long period of inactivity. For that I'll re-paint some of my female Priests (Bretonnian Damsels), which I have somewhat SciFi-ified by adding some pistol holsters and grenades, since I last uploaded pictures of them in my Gallery.

And lastly, a rather long running but sadly barely progressing project of mine, my conversion of an organ Exorcist:

Not much is done about this one, yet. I'm planning on working an old Penitent Psyker model into the loading Servitor. For the Pilot I'm going with leftover Immolator parts from my regular Exorcists. And then it's planning while building (and managing to get as many decorative bits onto the model as possible, for the genuine Exorcist look! ).



Feedback, Criticism, anything anyone is particulary interested in?

[WarriorFish]

That banner looks epic, do you have an idea what you'll be painting on it? There's a lot of room!

[Grgobart]

That banner looks epic, do you have an idea what you'll be painting on it? There's a lot of room!

As I mentioned, the central piece will be the Emblem of the Order of the Blazing Grace, next biggest thing will probably be a column or two of text and then a whole lot of iconography (Fleur-de-Lys, Ecclesiarchal I's, etc.).

[Servant of Dante]

Holy Emperor! That banner is awesome!

 

Out of curiosity, what does your order's emblem look like?

[dracpanzer]

Love the exorcist, gives me ideas about making some up that dont burn up an immolator top.

 

That banner, WoW!

[Grgobart]

Out of curiosity, what does your order's emblem look like?

[Servant of Dante]

Out of curiosity, what does your order's emblem look like?

I love all of it. Especially that model! Since I play BA (even though I haven't painted them), I made myself minimize the amount of red on my Sisters models. But red just looks so good.

[A.T.]

That's a cool banner. The regular blessed banner is just so... tiny.

 

I have to say I wouldn't know where to start with it myself (terrible freehand).

[Aqui]

Your Order emblem looks epic

[Grgobart]

I have to say I wouldn't know where to start with it myself (terrible freehand).

I'm not exactly confident in my freehand skills either, hence why I will use emblems printed on photo paper in order to hopefully not have to paint anything of it myself.

But I had some success overpainting templates/masks.

For instance, with my old Banner Bearer I printed out the Order of our Martyred Lady emblem on ordinary paper, cut it out, glued it to the banner and then overpainted it. Otherwise I'd never could have done anything like it.

Similarily on my second Canoness - where I also first tested true freehand with a bunch of tiny (= not much detail required) Fleur-de-Lys on the bottom of her Cloak - I used a regular decal for the Ecclesiarchal 'I' and overpainted that.

Now some might ask, why I'd needed to overpaint a decal red, when that same decal is available in red?

The answer becomes immediatly apparent, once you place one of these so called "red" decals next to some Purity Seals which were paindet with Blood Red, like I did back then! It's just pale in comparison. Anyone else familiar with that problem?

And this technique comes in handy, when wanting to put a golden symbol somewhere.

[Servant of Dante]

Who says Sisters need new models! :P

 

I love it!

[Naminé]

Looks awesome! What is the banner actually made from Grgobart?

[Grgobart]

Looks awesome! What is the banner actually made from Grgobart?

It's made of some transparent packaging plastic. My guess would be from the translucent green template set, but any such material would do it.

From then on, it just needs to be cut to the right size and then bend into shape via heat gun and/or candle.

[Grgobart]

Work on the Banner Bearer is continuing, just having a bit of a problem with the emblems. I should've made sure the banner itself is bend horizontally only, where I intended the emblems to go! Since I didn't, there are now considerable gaps between banner and glued on emblems, which will take some time to fill and smooth out.

Meanwhile, as mentioned, I did repaint two of my female Priests (the middle two):

What do you people think? Good enough for painting the Banner Bearer?

Now about WYSIWYG and model conversions, how strict are you on your own models and how strict are the rules where you play?

The Tournaments I took part in, did require WYSIWYG, but not very strictly. Nobody really cared my Priestesses didn't carry neither pistols nor grenades. So me moddeling them on, was more of a whim, than a necessity. But I ran into a problem with the middle right one, her cloak covers basically all the area where I would have put pistol and grenades!

So, presuming there'd be full on WYSIWYG required, would you allow the explanation/excuse, that she carries pistol holster and grenades hidden under her coat? And in combination to the fact She'd be identical in load out, with the other three Priestesses which have modeled on pistol holsters and grenades?

[Servant of Dante]

I like them!

 

As to WYSIWYG, I've never done any tournaments, but I prefer to have all my stuff be WYSIWYG. Except for grenades and such , since even the GW models are inconsistent on that. Heck, Dante's model has a bolt pistol in a holster on his left side.

[Grgobart]

Well, I am aware, that between converting and painting, converting is certainly my stronger skill. But am I really that bad at painting to warrent this awkward silence?

Anyway, thanks Servent of Dante! Not only for the compliment, but also sparing me the embarrassment of having to do three back to back posts!

So I finally managed to fill and smooth out the gaps on my Banner. I tried to make good use of the multiple times I had, waiting for the banner to dry, to finish the remaining parts needed for the Banner Bearer. Here they are (it's an upside down overhead pic, so the banner lies properly without the lights reflecting too much!):

I also did a bit of work for my Exorcist. When I first starting working on it, I was doubtful whether I'd have enough decorative bits to properly "bling" it out. Now I layed out all the bits I have available(save for duplicates) and just had to take a photo and wonder if I should rather have to worry about not having enough space on the Exocist to use them all!

The ones I'm particulary proud of are the three from the right in the bottom row.

I use a Baal Pedator as base chassis for this conversion, for few reasons. First, I wanted a different front plate from the regular Rhino and preferably one with more space for bigger and/or more decorative bits. Second, I also wanted to convert my old Witch Hunter era Land Raider into a Land Raider Redeemer, for which I already got left-over Flamestorm cannons from my Buddies Land Raider Crusader set, so was still in need of a twin linked Assault Cannons. And lastly, I was hoping to convert some of the Blood Angels' decoration bits into Sororitas' ones. And that's exactly what I achived this week.

On the left one (of the three mentioned) I replaced the 'blood drop' with a Fleur-de-Lys. On the right one I re-carved the original 'skull cup' into a regular skull and complemented the cup's bottom into an 'I'. Lastly for the middle one, I replaced the cloaced Blood Angels figure with a de-framed version of one ours (the white one bottom row far left).

What do you people do, in case of shortage of decorative bits for our beloved Sisters?

[Isolia]

Nice work, I like the decorative conversions especially :)

 

I myself don't try to bling the tanks too.much, in order to contrast the (relatively more ) sober transports with the ostensibly decorated exorcists , so I only use forgeworld rhino doors and front plates for the transports , or just the classic sororitas set of these items, and try not to do too much more.

 

But I have a lot of Empire, Bretonnia and other WHfB bits to decorate stuff in the "royal baroque " way. They are patiently awaiting the day I'll find the time to start a big project where too much bling won't have any meaning ;)

 

Battle / Sigmar are good universes for bits with that retro-grandiose feel (chains, chalices, icons, ossuaries, swords ) and I got a fair share of such bits way back at an event in a store where the prizes were measured in cups of bits. Tomb kings, among others, can't have enough gold - they however are squatted nowadays :(

[Servant of Dante]

Awesome! That banner is going to look amazing!

[dracpanzer]

Love it, any laud hailer cherub bitz going in to it?

[Grgobart]

Love it, any laud hailer cherub bitz going in to it?

Probably not. I don't think there is either place or space to use one of those. I did once consider to use two of them as side-walls for the organist's cockpit, but with their wings sticking out awkwardly and their relative bulkiness, I soon droped that thought. There will be at least two spots for magnetized items to go on, however. And I do have my Laud Hailers magnetized, so they can be mounted. Why you'd need extra loud speakers, to play some rousing music, on a tank that already is essentially a big organ, I will never really understand though.

With my Banner Bearer, I really really suffered from the long break I had from working on my army. When laying out what additional stuff to the Blazing Graze emblem I would put on the Banner, I settled for a big Fleur-de-Lys between emblem and pole. But only now I realized, there aren't any big Fleur-de-Lys decals on our decal sheets!

So it's either rearranging the layout or trying to freehand a Fleur-de-Lys. Against freehanding, stands my general disablility to draw anything even remotely symetrical. But on the other hand the banner is bend in such a way, that spotting any a-symetricality should be rather hard.

I will try at least once today and see how it goes...

EDIT & UPDATE:

It didn't go well! It didn't go well at all!!!

Only good news is, I managed to repair the damage I did trying. Now it's going back to thing I'm actually capable of, printing, cutting, glueing on and overpainting. Might take a while till I will show the next progress pics, as it will be quite the hassle to take pics of this banner, that show all of its surface, so I'll propably wait for it to be finished before that.

[Grgobart]

So, it's been a few days. The first few of these, I spent with not really with a full blown cold, but a running nose and the occasional sneeze, which as you might imagine isn't the most ideal of conditions to get your painting done.

But with that gone, could finaly continue working on the banner, printing, cutting, glueing and painting the golden Fleur-de-Lys and Order symbol, which went reasonably well, except for the usual but inevitable misplaced stroke of the brush. I only ran into more problems, when I realized my matt varnish might have gotten old, which unfortunatly resulted in milky patches all over the results of my hard work. So another day gone doing damage control, but at least it was doable since these patches mercifully avoided the crutial Emblem prints.

But enough with the excuses, here is the current state of the banner:

And as always the question, what you do you people think? Too much stuff on it, or not enough? Not the right stuff? Any ideas for what you'd like to have on your own Order Banners?

[Aqui]

In the words of a certain George Takai - "OH MY!" I personally wouldn't add anything else to it. It doesn't need anything else

[dracpanzer]

Looks gorgeous, might add some weathering or charring to the edges. But only if you felt you had too, very very nice.

[Aqui]

Looks gorgeous, might add some weathering or charring to the edges. But only if you felt you had too, very very nice.

Good point actually. Some battle wear would just finish it off nicely

[WarriorFish]

I'd say it has enough on - don't want to over cook it when it looks amazing as it is :tu: