Inspiration!

I get my inspiration for my armies from several different areas of the 40K universe. Sometimes it is from blogs... it could come from some cool pictures... a thread at a website... and even something as simple as a conversation with Rik.

My very first inspiration for MY chapter came a couple years ago by reading a simple line in the SM codex...

If you don't want to paint your army as one of these famous Chapters, but rather want to create your own heroes of the Imperium, the examples given in this book should pose a great source of inspiration.


At this time I was not a "regular" at my local gaming store. I mean, I guess I looked really mean (so they say) so no one would talk to me. As I look back on that, and I look at my current demeanor, I would have to agree with them. (haha) Now painting is not very easy. To become good at it, or even paint to a table top quality, is something that takes a good amount of time. I am also like everyone else out there, we see what we do as better than it really is. This leads us to biting off more than we can chew. My only source of painting advice came from a friend of mine, Jimmy. He worked at the store and was the reason other people started talking to me. (haha He prolly told them I wasnt going to murder them even though I looked like I would.) Jimmy, god bless him, would never say my painting was bad. That is a double edged sword. He would say it looks nice and I would be all happy like a 12yr old, skip back to my bar stool and glow with happiness. I would paint the same and my painting never got any better. I realized this one day when he turned to a kid who looked to have dipped his model in a paint pot and Jimmy gave him the same praise. I was like "Dude, that is the same shit you say to me." and he shrugged and smiled.

When I came to Jimmy telling him I was going to paint white, he was honest and said "White is really hard to paint, homey." to which my response was "Fuck you, I am a painting god who has painted for two months!" I really wasnt a painting god, I had just been hyped up like I was. :) Well I went home, built myself up some assault termies and painted them up to take to the store a couple days later. I set them out and asked what Jimmy thought and his response was awesome... "What do you think of them?" I looked at them again and they looked like shit. Complete and utter shit. Like I had dipped them in a white paint pot. :) They were then stripped and turned into Raven Guard. :)

I have never gone back to painting white. I did paint some white helmets on my Raven Guard vets... and all the chests... but never a complete model. It is something that would still be a great challenge to this day.

That is the story of my first thoughts into the inspiration of MY own chapter. My current inspiration comes from something we all should take time to do... Read books. :)