First Post!

Hey there, time for the first post on this blog.
Last week I've decided to start on a new Warhammer army. It's not really that new to me, as I played it back in 6th edition too, but since then my painting skills and budget have improved quite a bit, so it's time to "update" the army. When I decided to make an Empire army I looked at what I already had from 7 years ago and thought it would be a good idea to start on some of those guys first. Not only will I get to try out what colours I will use, but some of the models are the same now as back then.

The first few models will be:
10 Handgunners (old models, yes, but I think they still look good and I will only use 10 of them, so it doesn't really matter that they only have 4 different poses.)
1 Mortar (this is model is the same as the mortar they sell currently and in 8th edition template weapons got a buff, so this should be a useful addition.)
1 Captain (He is actually a unit champion, but I plan on adding some bits to him. He has way more armour already than regular State Troops anyway, so he can be a fine Captain.)

I think I will paint in the same order as in the above list, so here is the first model.



As you can see, the army colours will be blue and black. Feathers and other decorations will be painted in those colours as well, but I might use other colours for decorations on characters to make them stand out a bit.
I will post a step by step article somewhere in the future too (I got the idea to make a blog just after I finished this model too..), but for now I will just point a few things out.
First, I don't like the skin. It looks okay on this picture (might need to make some better quality pictures in the future, but this will do for now) but I think it's too light and you only see one colour on the face.
It was also hard to get the paint nice and smooth on the model, but this is because when I painted him for the first time I was 11 or 12 and used too much paint. I don't like to remove the paint (it never really works when I try it), so the paint is layered a bit too thick on him. After the first 15 models I will buy brand new models so I won't have this problem then.
Last, I really like how the eyes turned out. I once saw a tutorial (forgot who wrote it) on how someone painted the eyes of his models and I tried it out here.

<Pictures will come when I manage to get sharp pictures of just the eyes.>


First I painted the part where I wanted the eyes with Chaos Black (you could use a different dark colour if you don't like black).
Then I painted Skull White over it, leaving only a very thin line of black around the eye.
Last I painted a VERY small line/dot in the eyes. It can be tricky to paint that last part, because if you paint it slightly off it looks as if the model looks cross-eyed. If you fail the first time, just paint it white again and try again. On this model I succeeded on the first try, but I remember failing several times in a row on other models.

I hope you liked this first article. I will try to get sharper pictures so you can detect all my small mistakes ^^. I enjoyed writing this and I will try to post a new article every week with a new painted model every time. Other articles (tactics, ideas on army lists, random Warhammer-related stuff and perhaps even a battle report) will probably creep on this blog too, but I won't promise more than one model every week.