One of the things that came out of the 2020 COVID pandemic that I thought was actually a huge net positive was the concept of a hobby streak. For a hobby streak, you commit to building or painting minis for 30 minutes a day and see how long you can take that.
I didn’t start one up officially back then because I was regularly hobbying for 2+ hours a day at the time, and it seemed kind of redundant. 5 years, a third kid, and multiple new responsibilities later, and a friend has inspired me to start one up, and as a bonus I’m going to try and use it as a way to start making content again with short little posts once a day, maybe a weekly wrap up.
I’m also going to broaden the definition of “hobby” a little bit to include playing games or participating in tournaments, because on tournament weekends I’m completely out of town and can’t really build or paint things most of the time.
Also, I’m going to post them the day after the actual day I did them because that’s how my time works out.
On this first official hobby streak day, I spent about an hour painting on this Exodite Eldar Shroud Runner that I converted last week. It is made from an Aggradon lancer and parts of a Windrider bike. I’ll be using the sniper rifle Shroud Runner model as the rider for this guy, manning both the rifle and the Scatter Laser turret parked on the back there.
I have a really strange workflow when I’m figuring out the paint scheme for a new unit. I fully finish half the model so that I know exactly how I want to do things, and then I go back and do the other side.
The challenge for this one has been making a dully scaled lizard interesting. These are supposed to be stealthy models, and I know I’ll do something much brighter for the shining spears later.
This is how the unfinished side looks right now.
I went ahead and did the entirety of the armor panel because I already know what that’s going to look like, and doing the highlights all at once on something smooth like that makes the most sense to me.
I’ve been having some frustrating issues with the GW primer of late, where if I thin my proacryl paints at all, this weird splotchy thing happens on the first few coats.
This makes doing anything textured kind of difficult, because it forces me to get a solid basecoat first, and it’s slowly driving me crazy. The GW paints cover just fine though. I’m starting to wonder if it’s worth getting a 0.4 mm needle for my airbrush to prime things with it en masse instead of doing individuals with the brush and armies with the rattlecan.
Here’s a quick look at the freehanded symbol on the armor plate. I believe this is the correct one for exodites. It’s not quite right yet, but I’ve been using nothing but huge brushes lately and I need to hunt for a size 1 or 0 to crisp up the edges.
Quick recipes for paint because I suspect I’ll get some questions.
Underbelly:
ProAcryl Golden brown mixed with black, worked up to Golden brown mixed with ProAcryl Ivory in textured lines.
Red Skin:
Citadel Khorne Red mixed with black, highlighted up to Khorne Red and then Khorne Red mixed with Ivory.
Green Scales:
Basecoated Kimera Phthalo Green, highlighted up with a mix of that and ProAcryl Camo Green, adding in Ivory to get the edges. Some ProAcryl Burnt Orange glazed in places to dull the tone down a touch.
Here are a couple pics of other models from the army that I’ve already finished. The plan is to take a pretty bike heavy list to the Tacoma Open this year to show off the fun conversions.
Anyway, I’m trying to keep these short fairly deliberately. Tomorrow, I’ll likely have a small battle report and some workflow shots of painting up this Shroud Runner.
Thanks for reading, see you next time!
