First Steps

Figure at this point to give a quick update on how my project is progressing so far..

I am finding that time is a premium having a family to take care of!! But I am able to get some work done later in the evenings.

I've made myself a wet palette, picked up a bottle of liquitex matte medium

To start everything up, I based the models with Chaos Black spray from GW. I took the easy way out here since the majority of the models will be black with random pink shoulder pads, legs, helmets, arms, etc. One thing I like with this Chaos legion is that there isn't really any set pattern, I can basically paint pink wherever I choose to, how very chaotic..

Chaos Lord - black base with screamer pink to start

I think in total I have something like 100 models: A lord, 2 sorcerers, a bunch of terminators, marines, obliterators, possessed, chosen, weapons for Noise Marines, a Rhino. I still have some minis sitting in glass jars filled with Super Clean; aka The Purple Stuff which I've found works much better than Simple Green but to each their own.

So the Chaos Lord above, I've given him two lightning claws since I only want him to fight in HtH, is essentially the template for the painting of my army and the following paints will be used. Screamer Pink, Pink Horror, Emperors Children, Carroburg Crimson shade, Fulgrim Pink and Changling Pink for when I get all advanced on them.

that's a lot of pink..

My technique so far was to base all my models with the chaos black spray, then randomly pick parts of each model (shoulder pads, helmets, legs, etc) and go with a base of Screamer Pink, shade it with the crimson and from there Pink Horror to Emperor's Children. Admittedly I'm not a master painter by any stretch and I wonder if I could get away with just using a white base coat on some parts of the models where I want it to be pink and head straight to Emperor's Children? Perhaps that will make it too bright and overly garish even for EC standards. I'm going for the pastel look of the pink and using EC images from Lexicanum, 40K Wikia and google images as inspiration for this - I feel that highlighting the pink will be next to impossible based on what I want it to look like, I will probably need to edge highlight the black armor with Eshin Grey or something similar to really make it pop out.

I think I will do a few test models first start to finish before deciding on which technique to follow... but comments always welcome. I haven't come across too many tutorials on how to paint Emperor's Children post-Heresy CSMs.. and the ones that I have don't really give me the pastel look that I am going for so I figure why not try it on my own. Found a few pointers online and will build from there.

WIP marine, screamer pink sections

That's about it for now, I've got screamer pink on about 30 models so far and a few of them up to emperor's children but not finished yet. Will get some photos up once closer to completion.

Back into the madness...

Oh boy where to start... well, for one thing, I initially got into the hobby back in 1998 when it was still in in second edition, a few months before 3rd edition and at a time when the internet was still somewhat in its infancy and before Google even existed! I originally played a Blood Angels and Chaos SM army but really found gaming groups hard to come by. Also being 18 and not owning a car made going anywhere a huge pain in the ass. I played for a few years, went to university and basically ran out of time to play anything before eventually selling both armies via ebay in about 2001 and hadn't touched the hobby since...

I played the Dawn of War (I & II) series on the pc, starting around 2004/2005 which somewhat brought me back into the lore of the Warhammer universe, I always found that to be one of the most interesting aspects of the hobby and really did wonder what it would take to get me back into gaming and modelling.

Fast forward to Winter 2015 and I was looking for something to do with my time.. what really brought me back into the WH40k table top fold was this dumb app 'WH40k Freeblade' which I play on ios (haven't spent a dime on it at least!!) and I thought to myself to have a look on eBay and see what's out there. I've been reading through Lexicannum and the 40k Wikia for years so I felt that I still got most of the fluff. I felt that if I ever get back into the hobby, it was going to be with a Chaos Space Marine force, I just really liked the lore and for some reason Emperor's Children really stuck with me. Maybe something about Fulgrim being somewhat of a tragic hero or the fact that these Marines are absolute lunatics... or the pink power armour.. I'm not sure, but I decided to build an army and get back into the game.

Thankfully I got the support of my wife to do this, she encouraged me to get into it again as I've always loved model building and this gives me a chance to do it again.

I managed to pick up quite a number of models over eBay and probably have somewhere around 2500? points of figures. I haven't exactly totaled them up and I'm not anywhere near done painting them. I've been struggling to find many resources on EC marines and painting guides so I figured I may start my own. I don't claim to be anywhere close to a professional painter so I'm learning as I go. Have most of my supplies; brushes, paints, wet palette, etc and I'm raring to go.

Looking to document my progress along the way, post pics of WIP and finished models and hopefully increase my skills over the coming weeks and months. 

See you on the other side..