So very close

New technique, new thumbnail size.

Monkey wrenches do abound lately, especially in my painting plans.  My still-absent Warstore order tops the list, though I have myself to blame for that one.  Apparently some of the stuff I ordered was out of stock, which is holding up the whole thing.  I have exactly two weeks to finish my LPC pledge, which you'll recall is the amount of time I wanted to have, at minimum, to do the Sanguinary Guard squad.  If my order doesn't show tomorrow, and I have no reason to think that it will, I'm looking at Monday at best and likely later into the week.  So I'll have maybe a week to do the squad, which is less than ideal.  I took a look at the models the other day to see if I could get a start on them, but no such luck.  The vast majority of the models will be gold, even more than the regular marines are red, so at best I could get the eyes done, and there aren't really eyes to speak of.  While this is unfortunate for getting a head-start, it does mean that once I get the gold down they should go fairly quick.  I'm considering doing the wings now, since I can at least do the "feathers," but I have other fish to fry at the moment.

Same old setup, new application.

The other wrench is that the assault squad is still not finished.  The marines are all done except for that bottom strip of black on the base, which can be done at any time, and the transfers, which are waiting on the Warstore order.  That means that I got the armor highlights done yesterday, and the bases as well.  I got a start on the jump packs, as you can see, and had a mixed bag in this first attempt.  I wanted to have something to hold onto while painting, so I stuck some paperclips in the hollow where the pack attaches to the body.  This worked great, as the pictures show, and served well as something to hold while painting.  I started with a single jump pack so I could figure out what colors went where and how to approach the thing.  A test pack, if you will.

The test pack, in progress.

I also tried an alternate method of painting black, though I should really say it's a tweak instead of an alternate.  I've been using a mix of black and Stonewall Grey as the base, then applying a Devlan Mud wash.  While this approach has served me well thus far, the mix will be different each time.  It'd also be easier just to use a color straight out of the bottle, so with this in mind I tried an unmodified Stonewall Gray.  This ended up much brighter than I'd hoped, but no more so than I expected.  The Devlan Mud wash didn't do much to help things along, nor did the second application.  I went to the big guns then, my ancient pot of Black Ink.  While the results were acceptable, they still weren't quite what I wanted, so it's back to the drawing board.  I may try an even black/white mix for the base next time, as that should be easy to reproduce and be a little darker than just the Stonewall Gray.

Almost tastes like victory.

Finally, a bit of good news.  I currently have in my possession one (1) nearly complete assault marine.  All that remains at this point is the varnishing, and perhaps a spot or two of black to touch up the lip of the base.  The picture to the right was taken last night and lacks the static grass that I applied a few minutes ago.

Since I nearly lost this post to an ill-timed click of a mouse thumb button, I'll wrap it up.  I hope to varnish the almost finished marine tomorrow, and thereby claim a finished marine.  The rest of the jump packs should go a little quicker now that I have an idea of what to do with them.  While time is growing shorter every day, I still think I can manage to finish on time.  It will probably require some extra painting hours at night and similar schedule sacrifices, but if it looks plausible I'm going to give it a shot.  Hopefully my order comes in sooner than later.