Hi, I'm Sigur. Maybe one or two of you have seen me post on other forums (mostly around on Warseer really. Shame it's down for the week). Apart from my private painting exploits, I'm running Battle Brush Studios, a commission painting and modelling service. Lately, a very nice chap contacted me about doing an Empire army for him. An Averland army to be more precise. Here's the results so far (before you ask - sorry, I won't get to do the bases on these guys because my customer wants to paint them himself so he can match them up with his own armies and table):























Some army shots of the first batch:







Here's the second batch:















...and here's the latest - steam tank!



Next up for this army: Horse-mounted BSB, General on foot and a unit of Ironclad handgunners. :)


Apart from this army, I also started working on this thing this weekend - my very own little side project:


...but it needs much more work in terms of filing and stuff. I basically just stuck it together for the size comparison picture but in fact, not a single piece is glued yet. ;)

Anyway, I hope you guys like the pictures so far. As mentioned above, there's more coming up but for now feel free to leave comments, critique or any other sort of feedback. :)

Very nice.

I really like the wizard on the right, really excellent  :::cheers:::

Quote from: Le Pistolet on April 25, 2011, 10:19:06 PM
Very nice.

I really like the wizard on the right, really excellent  :::cheers:::

My thoughts exactly, how did you get that particular color?

Woah, that was two quick replies. Thought I'd have some more time to finish adding all the pictures before anybody would reply. ;) Anyway, about that wizard in the right - I got that question a lot and to be honest, I can't really remember. When doing more or less one-off character models, I don't tend to keep notes on the exact recipe. All I can say is that it was a wild mix of bleached bone, white, Vallejo Model Colour Ice Yellow, VMC Khaki Grey, Snakebite Leather, some glazes of said colours, gryphonne sepia and devlan mud and tons of very thin layers. ;)

 :Ohmy:

I've never seen an averland army look this good, in my opinion black/yellow (and black/white) is the hardest color scheme to paint and still have it look good. You're work is really impressive... annoyingly impressive, makes me wanna snap all my brushes in two. Dare I ask what your rates are?

That is one of the finest Empire armies I have seen in a long time.

I've seen some of these pictures last week while I was searching for something...

Top notch work !  :eusa_clap:

Absolutely gorgeous army Sigur! Truly stunning, your brush control is exceptional.

May I be so bold as to inquire how you highlight your yellows? I really like the yellow-cream color you've achieved for it.

Edit: Actually just generally how you did the yellows would be fantastic.

 :Ohmy: WOOOOW!!!

Really amazing stuff there!!

To bad warseer had to go down before you came here  :happy:  would have loved to see your work earlier!

Maybe you could comment on our other threads to give some pointers here and there  :unsure:

Absolutely jawdropping !

Superb, your banners are exquisite

Very nice army!

I notice you have the Marienburg Landship, how warped were the parts when you go them? My wheels were wrecked when they arrived

Amazing stuff. The two things that stuck out to me most on skimming through were the quality of the wizards- You managed to make those new plastic wizards look really great and I haven't seen much of that- and the long rifle on the outriders, looks so natural and well posed. Don't know if you put them together too, but even if you didn't great paintjob.  8-)

Thanks for the overwhelmingly positive feedback, guys. Really makes me feel welcome. :)

@noibn: Thanks. I hope you don't bin all your painting stuff though. ;) My painting rates are done individually for several reasons. First, the complexity of miniatures varies widely. For example, I recently did a Khornate Chaos Space Marines force consisting only of 2nd edition miniatures which means lots of quasi-monopose Khorne Berzerkers which by today's standards aren't very detailled. I won't charge as much for painting one of those as for let's say a Grey Knight in power armour. Second, each army, unit or character is a project for itself and each customer wants something different in terms of styles, materials and techniques involved. Due to all these reasons, I really feel like prices have to reflect this individuality of projects. I know, it makes things a bit more complicated and requires more communication but I prefer to work with a wide variety of miniatures so prices also vary and so far, customers appreciate the individual attention their project gets. If you want me to paint something for you, feel free to contact me via PM on this forum or via e-mail (battlebrushstudios@gmail.com). )

@Irresistable Force: Many thanks!

@Silver Wolf: Cheers. I try to infest large portions of the interwebz with my pictures. ;)

@Falcatarius: Cheers. It's all practice I suppose. As for the yellows, it's fairly simplistic: Iyanden Darksun (along with Dheneb Stone the most useful foundation paint) basecoat, thin wash with something light brown. I use Gryphonne Sepia most of the time. Then we can start highlighting with mixes of Iyanden Darksun and VMC Sand Yellow. You can also use regular yellow, bleached Bone, white as well though. Highlight with mixes of varying ratios of the colours involved up to almost pure white. That's it really. Hope that helped. Let me know if you want to know anything else.

@zak: Thank ye, Sire.

@StealthKnightSteg: Thanks. I meant to sign up earlier really but you know what it's like...you never really find the time, you think "I'll wait until I'm done with everything before I show it on there" and so on. ;) I'll look into other threads and comment indeed. There's some great stuff on here. For instance, misterjustin's Averland steam tank was a great inspiration for my own Steam Tank for this army. I also love the mini comparison thread because I'm always on the lookout for Estalian-looking minis for my own Empire army project and more historical looking minis in general.

@warhammerlord_soth: Thank you!

@Uryens de Crux: Cheers. There's a Battle Standard bearer coming up for this army who I plan to give a really dashing banner!

@Oxycutor: My Wheels were pretty okay, it's just the smaller "inner" parts that were kinda warped (one of them also snapped but nothing bad) as with all thin parts on the kit. No biggie. The hull was somewhat warped. Not bad and once bent into shape, it actually fit very well. For some reason, the frontal platform is kind of askew so I'll have to grind a bit there. The other parts fit well. The crewmen themselves are well well cast and didn't even have much flash. With one guy, one of the molds must have shifted by about half a millimeter but it's not as bad as that may sound in this case.

@Siberius: Yup, put them together as well. The wizards kit was very interesting to work with. I still believe that just a bunch of metal wizard characters would have been a better idea (or just re-releasing those very cool old ones) but that kit definately is an interesting one. As for the Hochland long rifle on the Outriders champion - I'm SO glad I waited for the steam tank kit to arrive (that order was delayed by a few weeks) instead of using the Hochland rifle from the handgunners set. Come to think of it, I read about using the stank one instead of the horribly oversized Handgunners on on this forum as well. Anyway, the conversion was so simple I'm almost ashamed. You just take that grenade launcher arm, cut off the launcher right above the hand, replace it with the Hochland rifle - done. ;)

Great Work I like it very much specially cannon and standards   :happy:

Big thumbs up on this Signur, bet the new owner will be very happy with it.
Looking forward to the BSB

Fantastic work!

Seconded. The Light Wizard in particular is scrumptious. The army has a very "rich" look, as it should have.

I hope you got a good price! :icon_biggrin:

Class , i'm speed painting 10 Averland scheme Halberds at the mo, will steal some ideas !

Very nice addition,

We should have a top 10 armies thread , you get to submit your whole army for voting!

This one would be in there

Quote from: mr chumley warner on April 26, 2011, 06:47:50 PM
We should have a top 10 armies thread , you get to submit your whole army for voting!

I think something along these lines is planned for when the gallery re-opens

Outstanding looking army. Well done. The lighter of the two wizards is very good indeed, looks like silk he's wearing. I like the knights and the steam tank particularly.

Great Work but I am waiting for EMPIRE MARIENBURG CLASS LAND SHIP  :engel:

@Kirgan: Thanks very much!

@Azyr: Cheers. I'm also looking forward to working with the Empire General box. Should be fun.

@Victor: Thank you.

@Gneisenau: Thanks. That's one of the things I really like about Empire armies is that they usually are very impressive visually due to the rather simple but striking colour schemes. I'm proud of this army eventhough I'll have to send it off but i'll always know that I pulled the yellow-and-black thing off. ;)

@mr chumley warner: Thanks!

@Hendrid: Thanks very much. I like the steam tank as well. :D

@Kirgan: Thanks. Let's see when I find the time to work on the Land ship again. It needs quite a lot of more filing than I thought.




Anyway, here's some sort of update. Originally I had planned to make this text only but what the hell - let's take some pictures! (brb)

So, let's start with the completed stuff. The Steam Tank is fully finished now:





Things that are up next:
.) 40k Orks!
.) Lots of Blood Angels Terminators!
.) Malifaux! (The Ortegas, yay!)
.) Ironsides Handgunners, General and Battle Standard bearer for the Averland army!
.) ....and another Space Wolves army!


Just a few more words about these Ironside Handgunners - I got the bits today and have to compliment FW on being sensible and sending 10 Bases with the Ironsides bits. They easily could have been less nice and not supply any bases because they're in the regular Handgunners box already. But this way they really make building one regiment of crossbow dudes and one regiment of Ironsides from the same box very comfortable.

Another quick question - Are we allowed to post pictures of things other than Empire (or Warhammer Fantasy) on here? Thanks.

So that's that. See you soon!

wow!!..  :eusa_clap: :eusa_clap: :eusa_clap:  once again very nice work!! I have seen all kinds of stuff posted here.