Colour Conundrum: Space Hulk (seeking advice!)

I've been fiddling around with my Space Hulk miniatures again, and I'm struck with hesitation regarding the Genestealers, and by extension the Genesetealer Cult.

You see, I've a fair bit of Genestealers to paint:
-Two full Space Hulk sets (the 2009 and 2014 editions)
-A full first Edition Space Hulk set
-My own personal Space Hulk set (collected and converted from 40K miniatures for my Long term 3D Space Hulk plan)

And a good bit of Genestealers Cultists:
-The content of the Deathwatch Overkill set
-The Genestealer cult I'm building/converting for my own personal Space Hulk Set (Which, once/if ever completed, will include all the miniatures to play every edition of Space Hulk...)
The choice I make for my Genestealers, will also influence this Cult, as they will need to match visually.

Originally I always just assumed I'd be painting them in the Classic Genestealer colour scheme.
As evidenced by my test models here:

But now that I'm on the verge of actually painting the Genestealers from my Space Hulk 2009 set, I'm beset by doubt.
You see, I'm being tempted by a altogether more dark and sinister colour scheme, inspired by the PC game Space Hulk Deathwing... Something more like this:

These pics I found in my Inspirations folder, I have no idea whose these are, sorry. (Curse my digital magpie nature!) If anyone knows, please tell me, so I can give proper credit to an excellent painter!

This will also mean that my Genestealer Cult will follow the same darker and sinister colour palette.
Both the own conversions and the Deathwatch Overkill ones, as these will also be used in combination for Necromunda, Inq28, possibly even 40K.

For the classic 1st edition set, there is no choice, it's self-contained so will be in the classic colour scheme, as an homage to the "good old days".

Leaving me several options for the newer sets and my own collection:
-Everything gets painted in the classic scheme.
-The Space Hulk sets go in the "new" scheme, my own collection (plus Cult) in the classic scheme.
-The reverse: the Space Hulk Sets go in the classic scheme, my own set (plus Cult), go in the "new" scheme.
-Everything in the "new" scheme.
-One set goes in the classic scheme, one set in the "new" scheme (for me, preventing them being combined into a large mega-hulk, because my brain works that way...), my own collection goes in either the new or classic scheme.
And I can't decide...

Of course, the Genestealers and their Cult won't exist in isolation. They'll be inside my Space Hulk terrain (either the cardboard sections, which I assume everyone knows the look of by now) or my 3D terrain, which looks like this:

And they'll be facing my Terminators, consisting of the Blood Angels from the Space Hulk sets (in their traditional colours), a set of Deathwing Terminators, and of course, my own beloved Howling Griffons First Company. Pics for reference below:

My Deathwing squad

The Deathwing and Genestealers in their natural habitat

My Howling Griffons:  

As well as against my =I=Munda/Inq28 Salvage crew:

If you have an idea how I should proceed with the colour scheme, or any other suggestions, please let me know. I'd love to have your feedback in solving this conundrum!

Thanks, and see you next time!

Blood tests

Don't worry, I don't have any scary diseases or conditions!
I've just been doing some test paints for the Blood Angels for Space Hulk. It suddenly caught my fancy to finally paint the box set.  I'm trying to figure out how to quickly paint them, in a satisfactory manner. As I've been discovering the joys of airbrushing over the last few weeks/month, I thought I'd try my luck along that avenue. So research was done (through the medium of Youtube instructions mostly) and air plus paint was sprayed over various miniatures from orphaned projects.

Here are the most promising test subjects:

With the Space Marine getting finished to see the final results.

To be perfectly honest, I'm not yet 100% happy with the outcome of this testing. I seem to be just missing the trick (and/or skill) that is needed to make the vibrant red with deep dramatic shading that I'm after.

I've also forged ahead and did the gold on the Space Hulk set:

 This is after the first airbrush passes. Later this will be gloss varnished, shaded and highlighted. the skulls will be steel and the blood drops will be painted with Tamiya clear red, to give them a vibrant, jewel-like sheen. Then I'll mask that and paint Lord Napsalot sat on it along with rest of the Terminators

I had hoped to paint the Terminators over the Easter weekend. But I still haven't found a satisfactory recipe for red, and I discovered yesterday that between work and private life, I may be better off taking a rest over Easter, instead of going at the airbrush hammer and tongs. My batteries seem to have gone a bit empty, seeing how an afternoon of airbrushing yesterday left me absolutely knackered and a bit testy to boot. No fun for anyone... So the Easter plan may be out the window.

It's no news that my focus has been all over the place lately, another sign that I should really recharge and regroup. So many projects, so little time...
There seems to be a common thread to the things that have caught my fleeting fancy lately though: Necromunda, Space Hulk, building a fantasy dungeon. The common thread seems to be the dark and derelict underbelly and outskirts of mankind and tunnelcrawling. Might as well explore that theme.

See you next time!

Wood, Steel and Gas; Ups and downs

Hi folks!

It's been a fairly busy weekend, so let's tell you about it.
Friday started with a scare, as my wife messaged me at work, that the decorative pieces of apple wood she had in her study had suddenly sprouted holes! Turns out we had a case of interlopers, longhorn beetles to be precise. This was a bit of a scare, as her study is very close to the garage. Where I do all my woodworking. Even more as she found one of the beetles right at the doorstep!
So as soon as I came home friday, I sorted through my wood supply. Sadly my worst fears were confirmed when a lovely large oak tree cross-section I'd been saving for a table showed fresh bore holes.
So a cull of my wood stack was necessary. I had a pile of pallet wood for small projects, that has now been redesignated as campfire wood (more as a precaution). Luckily my fancy woods are treated/kiln-dried and the beetle we found only goes after untreated woods. Still, getting some bug remedy for my wood next week. I'm going to try and save the big oak slab. It's currently sealed in air-tight plastic wrapping with a few pots of alcohol inside, hopefully I can choke/poison most of the bugs that way in preparation for the proper wood treatment.

Saturday afternoon was spent with the airbrush, touching up the primer on my second Necromunda building:

As I had the airbrush out, I also progressed on the Necromunda 2017 cover and doors.
I'd found the proper dilution for the chipping medium, so I've started applying colour to a batch of them, over the rust basecoat:

These require some more faffing about in the future, but so far so good.

I had planned to continue painting my Goliath gang today, but after a visit to the in-laws, my muse thought otherwise. (Fickle thing that she is...)
Never one to argue with inspiration, Gaslands conversions it was. I just pulled out a few cars that I had prepped for conversion (rivets drilled out and metal parts stripped of paint) and started to randomly do thing to them:

I started out with marrying the body of a low-rider pickup truck to the chassis of a bigfoot (The plan is to evoke, rather than outright copy, the bigfoot truck from the latest Mad Max movie). I've been fiddling and adjusting it throughout the afternoon, switching back and forth between it and other conversions. In the back of the picture above you can see a hot-rodded VW Beetle above a donor car that would supply part of it's wheels. I wanted the Beetle as a buggy. I've also added crew to the open-topped Rat Rod. Several cars you see in the pic had nothing done with them today, they were just there to witness the mutilat...erm.."elevation" of their peers.

Here's the Rat Rod with crew (guns and Mad-Maxification to occur at some other time).
Also, the buggy with it's new wheels. (I love the stance it has now!) There is a rather large gap between the rear wheels and the bonnet, this is intentional, as I will be fitting zoomie pipes there. :D
The cab on the Big Foot has reached it's final position as well.

As an encore, I pulled out these two. Same basic car, but the frontmost one has had it's rear wheels/axle mounting replaced to give it more ground clearance and "rake" and it's trunk hatch sawn out (the second one will get it's trunk hatch sawn out as well). Any guesses as to which cars these will be?

See you next time!