Something I've really struggled with is getting decent photos of my miniatures. I'm not a photographer by any stretch of the imagination but getting good lighting in my house to be able to get even a respectable photo from my iPhone has been a real problem (god bless Instagram filters!). In order to try and rectify this. I've bought a collapsible light box from eBay. Now, this thing only cost £6.99, so I'm not expecting to all of a sudden start taking incredible photos straight away, but after a couple of tests I'm pretty pleased. As you can see from the above picture, it hasn't been unfolded for very long, so the sides are still bending inwards. I'm also not sure I've put the white backing sheet thing in properly (the instructions aren't the best). I need to get in quite close to the miniatures to stop the holes in the corners from being visible. Here are a few pictures I've taken using it though. They're all models I've posted

Just a quick post this week. After calling it quits on the Imperial Fist I've made a start on the next Intercessor. This time round I'm going for a scheme I've been wanting to try out for ages: Red Scorpions. Basecoats are done and I've applied the gloss varnish, really happy with it so far. I was a bit worried I'd gone in too heavy with the varnish in a couple of places but it seems to have dried OK. Up next is an all over wash with Nuln Oil. I'm going to try out the gloss version of this wash, I've never used a Citadel gloss wash before. Wish me luck!

It was going so well... Having applied a couple of coasts of Vallejo gloss varnish to the Imperial Fist Intercessor, I decided to give oil washing another go. It had worked so well on Shazam and I was so confident I'd get the same result here. How wrong I was. I initially just tried pin washing the recesses but the wash just wasn't flowing correctly. I don't know if I'd thinned it down incorrectly or hadn't applied enough varnish or done something else wrong. As this didn't work I decided to completely wash the whole thing, let it dry slightly and then go back in with cotton buds and white spirit and clean up the flat surfaces. Unfortunately I think I let it dry for too long. The wash just wouldn't budge. I went in with more white spirit and scrubbed it as hard as I could but it was no good. Eventually layers of base coat started peeling off and the blue plastic underneath began to reveal itself. It's a shame because I was really startin

I've decided I need to practice on some slightly larger miniatures, and I think working with flatter surfaces would also be helpful at this stage, so I've bought a box of Easy-To-Build Space Marine Intercessors. I mentioned in a previous post that I was going to give Primaris Marines a miss but the models have slowly grown on me, and I wanted something cheap and quick to assemble. I'm going to paint each one in a different chapter scheme and try out a couple of things on the way First up, an Imperial Fist. I've painted Imperial Fists before and always liked the colour scheme (my original idea for a complete Space Marine chapter was going to be Imperial Fists). Yellow can be a scary colour to paint so hopefully this will give me some good practice. Also, I've got a load of Imperial Fist transfers lying around that need using! I started by priming the model using Vallejo Grey Surface Primer. I then based coated it in Averland Sunset and gave it a zenithal h