Distracted by Rhinos...pt1

The 3 rhinos, in the state that they have been in for close to 10 years...

As I played through the last few games, I grew more and more dissatisfied that the vehicles that I tend to use the most were only half painted (and barely even to that level). Worse, they were this weird fusion between the old style (see the Space Wolf Gallery: Vindicator) and the current (in the same gallery, see the Land Speeder Typhoon). The current being of a darker tone over all with more Shadow Gray, as opposed to the older style which had Space Wolf Gray as the dominate tone. Oddly, these 3 old (this frame remained in production longer then ANY 40K models! I challenge you to find another!) Rogue Trader era models were in my collection in a weird transitional state where one was highlighted up to Space Wolves Gray, one in the middle tone, and one half-assed base-coated.

In recent games I have been only using the two with the most color, and I decided that I just needed to finish them. In October I took a small vacation and during that time while working on the Bastion (another blog entry coming soon) I decided to throw some paint on these things with the delusion that this would be fast (ha!).

The 1st thing to do a was tone down the over-bearing highlights, so I went in and did that with a watered down Shadow Gray using pure paint for the darkest areas.

This particular one I really deepened it quite a bit.....

 

One I was satisfied with this recovery of the deeper tone, I proceeded to tighten up the the middle color (a sort of ...Masta Cheef don't start...Baby Blue-ish color) and the Space Wolf Gray highlight. As well as the free-hand forms of the Grey Hunter pack icons.

 You might spot in my battle-reports that I don't glue down the rear hatch or the smaller pair of hatches that the bolters rest on. This is so I can remove them during game play, as well as swivel them when the tanks become imoblized. I am contemplating magnetizing them...

It's a bit subtle, but here is the transitional state of the storm bolter hatches. And the hunter-killer (guaranteed to miss!) missiles as well...
 Well, over this past weekend I picked these rhinos back up and damn near finished them!

 They are not done yet, but i  am very pleased with their progress up to the this point!

All I have left to do is to paint the lights, finish the metallic areas, and apply decals.

 Also, during the aforementioned vacation, I decided to spend some time (and money) organizing my bitz bins to a more user friendly state. I think it has done wonders for my whole modeling area and saves me time from having to look for weird and wonky bitz.

Another update coming soon!