New project: Miniatures for Dark Heresy Game - New story (Part 1)

In the beginning of the summer my friend, for whom Christina and I painted miniatures for Dark Heresy game earlier, asked me to paint more figures. He wanted to play another scenario that is why my friend needed new models. According to new storyline, he needed following formations: Space Marines, new characters, Eldars, Tau, Skitarii and Orks. I expected new interesting project, so I agreed. Few time later my pal brought me a lot of models, and I started to paint them. I needed to paint simply and quickly, as before.
After finishing couple of formations, my comrade said that he had to leave Moscow. That is why we decided to stop this project on what I have already painted. As a result, it was a small project.
In this and in the following posts, I am going to show you, what I have painted for this project. And I want to begin with the formation of Space Marines. My friend asked to paint 6 marines in Storm Wardens color scheme. After searching the examples of painted miniatures, I decided to paint in scheme that I found in this blog. I like this color scheme as it is uncommon and rare. It took me week and a half to finish them.
And now photos. 
All together.

Closer photos.

First

Second

Third

Fourth

Fifth

Sixth

Cleaning old miniatures

Some time earlier, I realized that I have many models, which were painted long time ago. Miniatures, which I am painting now, looks much better than the models that I have finished four or more years ago. That is why I wanted to do something with the old ones. 

First thought was to retouch and improve the old models. Then I threw this venture. There were a several reasons. First one - there were too many miniatures to improve them all. It would take a huge amount of time to bring them in one line with my recently painted miniatures. Second reason - as I mentioned earlier, I really do not like to get back to already finished miniatures for retouching and improving them. It is a really an unpleasant feeling to return to something that was finished. I think that everyone in this hobby have similar feeling. The third one - I needed more models for already started projects. And it is much cheaper to use old miniatures instead of buying new ones.

So I decided to clean up old miniatures. Christina helped me with this idea. She gave me special fluid, which clears the paint away. It called - methylated spirit. It was extremely useful. This fluid helped me to clean up many miniatures.

However, it is only a part of my old miniatures. For now, I have two jars, which are fully loaded with the models. Here they are.

On the photos you can see, what figures did I put in the jars.

It is simple way to clear models from paint. All I have to do is to find spacious jar to put as many miniatures as I can. Then I added methylated spirit there and left jar for some time. It does not matter how long models will be in the jar, because this spirit cannot hurt or damage models. Some time later, I pulled out models and cleared the remnants of paint using old toothbrush. After that, miniatures looked like new ones.

To sum up, both of improving and repainting methods are time consuming, so I chose to repaint old figures. Soon I will start to work on these figures. I look forward to a good result.

WIP Helbrutes in asian style

Yesterday I ended watching one anime about Japanise demon in Asian hell. 

I liked the style of it so much(its presentation, graphics, and plot) that I realized, that I want the miniature in this manner.

I opened to myself an artist whose name is Katsushika Hokusai-the artist of the Edo period. He has for about 30 pseudonyms and moved changed for about 93 times

I have 2 helbrutes from DV and I plan to modify some parts on them, to sculpt some horns etc.

The main modification is ready-this is the face of Japanese demon.

It took for about 2 hours to do it

I think I need to copy it, because it can be helpful to use the same mask on other miniatures.

But there will be problems with teeth...I need to broke them, copy the sculpt 

and rebuild them.

Horned demon and a lot of horns for different parts)

On another helbrute. I'm thinking to do a huge dragon on him, but not sure that there will be enough place. For now I started to sculpt the tail. You can see it on the pic, it is not ready at all.

Anyway, I will focus the attention on freehands. I hope to draw a lot of parts in style of orient tatto)