Wolfguard Test Model

I got this Wolfguard conversion from a friend who was clearing out his Space Wolves stuff. Unfortunately too much of it was heavily converted or painted for a fussy person like me, but that didn't stop me from taking 1 of the wolfguard who was less detailed than the rest, but awesome all the same.

You can see how I've applied my Space Wolves colourscheme to him. Havnen't finished the highlights and other small details yet, but all the essential colours are there, giving him a nice neutral tone with different greys and browns. I'm really happy how this wolfguard has turned out, even if he was modelled a little long in the body.

This wolfguard was made from Khorne Bezerker legs, a Chaos Warrior torso, Blood Claw arms and head, Green stuff and more Green Stuff to blend the wolf cloak accessory into the fur around the shoulders and back.

As far as test models go, he's a keeper, and I'll be basing my Space Wolves characters on this conversion.

I'm also quite amazed at how blue Codex Grey looks when placed alongside various tones of brown.

Planning to Paint Space Wolves Part 3

My Space Wolves painting quest is almost over. As you can see from this photo, I have my 'Space Wolves' grey down to a tee thanks to a simple and veyr neat highlighting technique.

So now that the basic Space Wolves base colour and highlight have been finalised, it's on to sorting out all the complimentary colours which will make every miniature in my Space Wolves army look colourful and realistic -while retaining that feral Space Wolves character of course.

You'll no doubt notice that the wolf tail attached to the helmet is grey instead of brown. There are two reasons for this. Firstly, on the cover of Prospero Burns, all the Space Wolves have grey wolf pelts which match their armour. Secondly, the Space Wolves are grey because the wolves on their planet are grey. Makes sense really. It was only the 'Eavy Metal team back in 2nd edition which painted all the wolf tails/pelts brown for a contrasting colour.

You'll notice that I've gone for a brown base this time around. I was particularly taken with the way Games Workshop are painting their bases lately, which is a Bestial Brown basecoat, drybrushed Bubonic Brown on the flock (quite lightly), followed by a light coat of drybrushed Bleached Bone. Finally, the edge of the base is painted in Graveyard Earth (must go and buy some of that) and then some static grass is stuck to the base.

As you can see, I haven't got very far with my first Space Wolf model, having only highlighted the top half of the model. He's looking very clean right now, but all his Space Wolves pack markings, chapter badge, etc will make him look awesome when I get round to doing them.

So what's the excuse for my pitiful lack of painting progress? A new gaming room of course. Or rather, I've just bought my first property and have spent every waking moment away from my job decorating before I move out of the parent's place and into my beautiful masonette.

This photo is from when I first got the place and it was horrifically pink. However, it's been 5 weeks since then and a lot has changed. I've been redoing the entire thing pretty much from scratch with the help of family and friends. Obviously this doesn't leave much time to paint little plastic men with little plastic guns, but I'm doing my best and will post before and after pictures when its done.

As for the gaming room, that will be my living room. I have a massive cupboard, which will store all my Space Wolves, Warhammer Tau and assorted Games Workshop stuff while an extendable dining room table from IKEA will providde the perfect 6'x4' playing area.

Getting The Right Space Wolves Grey

It's a great annoyance for Space Wolves players that Games Workshop don't actually make a Space Wolves Grey paint. And by 'Space Wolves Grey' I don't mean the light paint that's horrendously bright, I meant an appropriate base coat for Space Wolves space marines in general, in the same way that Dark Angels Green is a brilliant base coat for Dark Angels.

So after butchering my Whirlwind, I decide to sit down this evening with another test model (this time a surplus Space Marine vehicle crewman), mix up a variety of grey basecoats and grey highlights to work out which colour is going to be my Space Wolves grey base colour.

Inspired by the newly released cover art of Prospero Burns poster (which I will preorder, frame and cherish forever), I am still convinced that I can paint my Space Wolves a simple grey, abandon the colour yellow entirely and resort to the original red wolf Space Wolves chapter badge. This will make my Space Wolves a less colourful than the grey/blue and yellow warriors we see running around nowadays with bright orange hair, but this is war, not a madigras!

So after an hour's mixing and applying to different parts of my spare Space Marine (who has that look of "Please...k-kill...meee"), here are my results. I tried various combinations of Privateer Press Paint (P3) Greatcoat Grey, GW Codex Grey and GW Fortress Grey. The P3 Greatcoat Grey is just too dark and far too blue, even when you try to tone down the colour and brighten it up. I applied a mixture of P3 Greatcoat Grey and GW Codex Grey to the right arm, but it looks kind of green. I then mixed GW Fortress Grey with the P3 Greatcoat Grey to make a highlight and got a very cold and greenish/blue tone. Not good.

My greatest success has come from a basecoat of GW Codex Grey, highlighted with GW Fortress Grey (Sorry about the poor photo. My camera sucks). I was so pleased with this I decided to paint a Space Wolves symbol on in red. Scab Red base colour, Red Gore on top to lighten it up, then some P3 Khador Red Base around the edges to make it stand out some more. Khador Red Base it a big too orangey. I'll mix it in with GW Red Gore next time. I also need to start the symbol higher up on the shoulder pad next time.

I decided to follow the pre-herest Space Wolves look a little further, favouring dark silver over the golden bling that cling to Space Marines nowadays. A simple coat of Boltgun Metal with a Badab Black wash and it looked really good.

Coming back to the Codex Grey basecoat followed by Fortress Grey highlight: Like the way I paint my Tau army, the highlights have been VERY neatly painted on. If you make a mess of them your army will look rubbish. Oh and you'l probably make yourself short sighted by staring at the details of your models so very closely...which is why I now where glasses.

To conclude, I'm really happy with what I've achieved this evening. When mixed with some brown, leathery and earthy rustic colours (I'm thinking of wooden shields and primitive axes for my Blood Claws) this scheme is going to look amazing.

You're Doing it Wrong!

After a mess of my Space Wolves Whirlwind, I have concluded that Space Wolves are not an army you can rush when it comes to painting.

I proceeded to use the Badab Black wash technique over the grey primer base with highlight as previously discussed only to find that washes don't seem to work so well on vehicles, leaving me with a rather blobby looking Space Wolves tank.

I then slapped on a quick coat of Shadow Grey and it started looking a little better. So it's back to the drawing board on how to paint my Space Wolves. And to make things worse, the first installment of my Space Wolves army has arrived in the post!

So having experimented on and potentially ruined a tank, I've decided to paint my Space Wolves using a similar technique to my long lost (sold) Deathwing army which used successive layers of lighter colours on top of a dark base. Nacho's method of painting Space Wolves is quite similar, so no doubt the final painting technique will be a combination of both.

While I may have sacrificed a Space Wolves tank in learning how to paint this army, I know that had I used these techniques on a normal trooper, I would have gotten away with it. Only later would I have struggled when it came to painting my Space Wolves tanks, drop pods and dreadnoughts.

My eagerness to play games with my Space Wolves army needs to be calmed. In stead I need to sit down and take my time painting them properly. Then I'll have a Space Wolves force that I can be proud of, just like my Tau army. Now it's over to Nacho and his Space Wolves painting method.

Nacho says:I use Shadow grey for all miniature, leaving white in the shoulders and black for the metallic objects. Then I do a wash with water diluted Chaos Black over all the grey.

Later I apply Sunburst Yellow over the white coat and start to apply sucessive coats of Shadow grey mixed with Space Wolf Grey in order to highlight the miniature(Each new coat with more proportion of Space Wolf Grey)Just repeat this until you obtain the desired grade of highlight. Final lights are thin lines of Space Wolf grey.(My wolves are a bit darker than the GW typical)

For the Furry amlets and capes, I use bestial brown, washed with diluted black (just a bit)then I do a mix with brown and flesh for the borderline. Highlight a bit the brown part and more for the border part, with more proportion of flesh.

I actually tend to paint my minis in the same cell-shaded form I do the color for my comics, hehehe.

I use Dwarf Bronze for the armor details too.

Planning to Paint Space Wolves Part 2

ATTENTION!
Since this article, we have a much better way of painting Space Wolves.

Check out: painting space wolves by Dave

This colourscheme is more suitable for a Pre-Heresy Space Wolf army.

Rolling on from last week's planning to paint Space Wolves - My Space Wolves army hasn't arrived yet, so I started planning how to paint my Space Wolves some more by experimenting on the spare Whirlwind artillery tank I bought from a friend.

It's been a bit of a haphazard evening actually. And when you're not sure how to go about painting your army, perhaps you should be experimenting with a spare Space Marine opposed to a brand new tank costing over twenty quid! But anyways, back to painting Space Wolves.

I started with a can of Halford's Grey Primer and undercoated the model components while they were on the sprue. I tend to find that I miss bits otherwise.

With a proper primer I could the paint on whatever paints I liked for my Space Wolves base colour and wouldn't be restricted to Privateer Press Paints (also known as P3 paints).

I trimmed the components off the sprue and began assembling the tank using polestyrene cement glue, leaving certain parts of the whirlwind turret incomplete. There's no way I could get a brush in there if it was fully assembled.

It's at this point that my Space Wolves painting plan went out of the window. Last week my Space Wolves were going to be painted Shadow Grey, but now I liked the colour the Halfords Grey primer had produced.

Another search on Google for Space Wolves Painting brought up a really old site which was half built, but had a relatively simple scheme that met my needs being quick, easy and quite clean looking.

Hesitant to madly experiment on my Whirlwind any further, I broke out the Badab Black wash and tried it out on the inside door and computer I hadn't bothered to glue inside the Whirlwind hull. Once dry it looked alright, but needed some highlights. So out came the pot of Fortress Grey and a raggedly old Standard GW Paint Brush. I painted along the edges and hey presto a beautifully shaded peice of detailed plastic.

Due to all the straight lines and sharp edges Space Marine tech is extremely easy to paint compared to the curves of the Tau Battlesuits I've become accustomed to panting.

I've never used the washes before, prefering to paint my Warhammer models with a layering effect, but was eager to give Thrakka Green a try on the computer screens, mostly to see what happens without fear of consequence. It looked really good!

The inner detail is now slightly darker than the Halfords Grey Primer basecoat with darker areas where the Badab Black wash has run into the corners and crevaces. The neat highlights finish it off beautifully.

Am I a convert to the new Games Workshop washes? Not yet. But I do plan to spray my entire Space Wolves army in Halfords Grey Primer, cover them in Badab Black (and wash down where applicable), paint highlights with Fortress Grey and then work out how to paint all the details later. But neutral understated colours will be order of the day.

Having read 'Wolf at the Door' from the Tales of Heresy short stories and having been engrossed by the Space Wolves Horus Heresy art, I think it's time that the Space Wolves were a darker shade of grey instead of the happy bright colours which characterised 2nd edition Warhammer 40K.

Hopefully my Space Wolves army will have arrived in time for next week's post. A Space Wolves painting guide will follow shortly. In the meantime I need to figure out how to paint a variety of squad markings and the Space Wolves chapter badge by hand (I hate transfers).

Finally, an aside about Halfords spray paints:
If you're in the UK and you're using Games Workshop spray paint to undercoat your miniatures, you've really missed a trick. Not only are Halfords spray cans avaialable in a wide range of colours, including Black, they are also twice the size and cheaper by a pound!

For a more modern way to paint Space Wolves, check out: painting space wolves by Dave

Planning to Paint Space Wolves

With my Space Wolves on their way, I thought it was time I planned how I was going to actually paint my Space Wolves army.

The biggest mistake, which a lot of people make, is presuming that Space Wolves should be painted Space Wolves grey. The problem comes from Games Workshop's packaging which points at various parts of a model of the back of a box, stating very simplistic colours for the different areas when most of us know that the colours are in fact an incredible mixture created by the Games Workshop 'Eavy Metal Team that us mere mortals could never mimic.

So, being a little unsure about how I was going to paint my Space Wolves, I typed 'Space Wolves painting' into Google and got all kinds of results.

The Space Wolves miniatures that appeared varied from monstrosities to masterworks, as you would expect. But there was no middle ground. Now, I could possibly paint a masterwork had I the time or patience. I have the patience, but I don't have the time. But then again I don't want my Space Wolves to look a mess. I wanted a nice, quick and simple scheme to follow.

Those of you who know my from my Warhammer Tau blog will know that I apply a basecoat, my own mix of highlight and that's it. Okay, there are some washes and shading for more important parts, but you get the idea.

So essentially I wanted Google to show me someone who had painted their Space Wolves the way that I wanted to paint my Space Wolves. Except it didn't.

However, I found a man who does.
His name is Nacho, known online as Nachomon and he produces some excellent artwork. He also paints the occassional Space Wolves miniature.

Of course, I only know about his gallery on DeviantArt because I recruited him back when I ran Firebase magazine. His stuff never seems to appear in a search on Google or on DeviantArt because he doesn't enter any keywords.

I think it's something that fans of Warhammer 40K are generally guilty of when it comes to things online. We don't tend to link to things we find interesting either.

So I called him up and asked him how he paints his Space Wolves.
"Shadow Grey," he said "and a 50/50 Space Wolves Grey/Shadow Grey highlight."
That was it.

I guess if this kind of simple scheme can work for my Tau, then it can work for my Space Wolves.

In other news Tales of Heresy has arrived in the post. I'm looking forward to reading Wolf At The Door by Mike Lee.

I guess that will keep my mind occupied until my Space Wolves army gets here...