More progress means less modesty

Return of the group shot.

First a little bit of blog business.  June has seen the highest traffic by far, and I can put that down to one thing: blogrolls.  From the Warp provided a noticeable bump when they came on line about a month ago, and BoLS bumped it up even further.  When I get off my duff about the Internation House of Paincakes, whose tongue-in-cheek 500 word essay has held me up for more than a month now, I imagine I'll see another bump.  Clawing my way to the top of the heap isn't something I'm interested in, but I spend enough time on this blog that I want people to reap the "rewards" of my labor.  If you're in a similar boat then hitch yourself to these fine trailers.  You won't be disappointed.

Where did my highlights go?

In painting news, more progress has occurred.  I got the rest of the armor done yesterday and basecoated the helmets.  Today I finished the helmets and started blocking in the black and metal areas.  I took a pass, for now at least, on highlighting the armor, but I did do highlights on the helmets.  These pictures show why I'm hesitant to do the armor: I am inevitably too subtle in my highlighting, so much so that it doesn't really show up.  Since this is a known issue I should be able to correct it, yet history shows otherwise.  I can always add a sharper highlight if I want.  With any luck I'll get the rest of the black done tonight and perhaps either the greens or bones.  The chest eagles are going to be a pain to do with the bolters in the way, but there's not much I can do about it now.  Short of ripping the arms off of course, but that's not going to happen.  This batch has certainly gone quicker than the previous assault squad, thanks to the lack of detail on the armor.  While I haven't painted any detail yet, not having to paint around it or figure out how to shade a gem socket has made things simpler.  With any luck I'll be on pace to get these marines done this week, though with most of my prime painting time behind me it's not looking as good as I would like.