Wednesday 31 October 2018

CXCII. Ghoul Knight Kazmer the Defiant; Painting Ghoul Skin

A new knight/Crypt Horror for Queen Ligia's army: Kazmer. The model is based on Citadel Lord of Blights, with a heavily greenstuffed Goblin Town goblin head. This one is not one of Janos' witch hunters, I just wanted to finish him 'cause he sat on my WIP shelf for months, poor thing.





Sorin the Vigilant's halberd broke, so I replaced it with a hammer. Here they are together:

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Since I've been getting requests, this is my usual recipe for ghoul skin. Enjoy. 

Basecoat: Citadel Celestra Grey.

Wash of watered-down Citadel Rakarth Flesh over the entire skin area.

Wash of Citadel Agrax Earthshade to add strong shadows and define detail.

Wash of Citadel Carroburg Crimson on the face, hands, feet and warts.

Highlight with Citadel Celestra Grey. Special care on the details of the face, as that is the main focal point on the miniature.

Another highlight with Citadel Celestra Grey + white, to enhance depth.

A subtle glaze of blue under the eyes, nose, in the ears and on the lower lip.

The rest of the miniature painted.

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Tomorrow morning I'm hopping on a train to Belgrade, where I'll be participating in a Inq28 game titled 'Cerulean Gate' this weekend, and giving a talk about 28 Magazine and my work so far. Full report on that when I get back, though I may put some photos of the game on Instagram as it unfolds.

Thursday 25 October 2018

CXCI. Folda Witch Hunters

The past few months here in the Gardens have been heavy with 40K projects. Time to steer back to the Isles of Brume for a bit, with a handful of new additions to the ranks of my ghoul kingdom.With this I'm moving away from representing actual unit types from AoS Flesh Eater Courts into making it more a faction of its own, as you'll see.

You may remember Janos the Cannibal, ruthless exterminator of all things Chaos. When he vanquished the 'vile witch' Vanga in The Hag's Hovel Carnage, his warband consisted of some wolves and common ghoul rabble. After presenting the crone's head to the Queen, Janos was granted the authority to form, and take command of, a small force dedicated solely to the task of combating witches and their ilk. 



Hand-picked by Janos himself from the ranks of Folda's standing army, Ghoul Witch Hunters are the basic grunts of the crew. They are trained and armed for combat with hand weapons as well as crossbows. The models are based on Nurgle Rotters from Bloodbowl. Those are 30mm bases, so the Witch Hunters are bigger than my basic ghouls. 
 
I made two more of these grisly sticks. One is another yellow-robed corpse, and the other is a holy symbol from Folda's religion. The lore behind this faction has developed quite a bit, but it's not yet ready to be made public.


I'm actually preparing this warband for the next instalment of the campaign that started with The Hag's Hovel Carnage, in which Janos and his minions will have to face a new, even more dangerous threat. A few more models for this project are coming in November.

Wednesday 17 October 2018

CXC. Blood Angels and The Forsaken


O.O

I sometimes do painting demos at conventions and similar events for my LGS. I get a table, promo sprues, some paints and basic equipment. Anyone can sit to paint with me, and I help them out with their work. For many, it's their first introduction to miniature painting. I last did this at the ETC in August, and as usual I ended up taking some minis home, both mine and other people's. I uncovered these the other day and turned them into two small, simple warbands convenient for gaming demos.

BLOOD ANGELS



These are some of mine from the ETC painting demos. When I wasn't interacting with the other painters at the table, I was painting some red Space Marines. Deliberately mostly flat colours, with gloss varnish in the end. Sometimes it's satisfying to go back to basics, and I love this retro look. To complete the band, I now speed painted a gold-coloured leader figure. It's kitbashed from one of these snap-fit marines, a Stormcast head, and weapon hands from my bits box. And that's it. The second warband is more interesting, as we'll see in a minute.


THE FORSAKEN

The participants at my painting demos are welcome to keep any models they paint, and most do take their minis home with them. However, some don't. There are various reasons for that: they simply don't like the model, or they don't want to carry it around, or they leave it with me with intention to pick it up before they leave the convention but never come back for it... So at the end I always have a handful of these sad models abandoned by their painters. As I recall, sometimes I leave them to the LGS, and sometimes I bring them home with me. As you can see in the images below, they come in various stages of completion, done by people of various skill levels and ages. Many of them were that person's first miniature they'd ever painted. Many of these painters were children. 

I picked out five that had cold colour schemes, with little or no red. This was in order to contrast the Blood Angels. The paintjobs are rather interesting, especially those that obviously refused to listen to any instruction from me. As long as they're having fun and not causing trouble, I'm fine with that. Anyway, the chaotic look of their paintjobs, and the general incoherence of the squad, screams Chaos. Since they are now chaos guys, I got rid of the purity seals and aquilas. I just retouched those areas trying to match the original style and colouration. I made a few interventions on the paintjob to reduce the chaos a little bit, most prominent one being the eyes, the bases and splatter. 

And that's the Forsaken. They have an interesting origin story on the meta level, but I haven't thought of any backstory for them in world. By the look of them, I'd say they're followers of Tzeentch.



The original abandoned models.




After my interventions.

The Angels got the gleaming golden marine, so I made a leader mode for the Forsaken, too: the Anguished Man. Also converted from a Space Marine, though this one involved a bit of putty. I based him on The Anguished Man, an allegedly haunted painting. According to its owner, he inherited it from his grandmother. The unknown artist who painted it commited suicide soon after its completion, and had used his own blood on the painting. A dark apparition manifests around it, along with a bunch of other conventional haunting symptoms like cold air and noises... I must say the story they've come up with is not very inspired. However, the painting in itself is an awesomly unsettling piece of art. How it even occured to me as concept for this conversion, I have no idea. I guess the erratic painting on these left-behind marines reminded me of it somehow? In any case, I love the result, and it makes me wanna do more Chaos Marines in the same vein.

The painting.

I took pictures of the painting process with my phone, just trying to train myself to do this more often. So here is more or less the whole progression, a shot each time I put him down to dry:

White primer.

Blue applied as glaze over armour. Uneven and blotchy. The glaze is just paint+water.

Yellow applied as glaze on flesh and random spots of armour.

More glazing with blue, and black.

Orange applied as glaze on flesh.

Red applied as glaze to shade flesh. This required a smaller brush and a more control. Also on random spots over blue armour.

Dark brown and black applied as glazes to shade flesh and armour. I also highlighted the face with just a bit of light yellow to increase contrast around this point.

Splatter of bone colour, done by flicking paint from a stiff brush.

More shading with transparent black to add definition.

Simple dirt base finishes the model.


Thursday 11 October 2018

CLXXXIX. Inq28: Brother Jonas

Brother Jonas is Inquisitor Morbray's Grey Knight henchman. She picked him up when working on a case of a heretic cult involving daemonic presence. He proved a valuable asset, so she elected to keep him permanently on her staff.


Grey Knights are a mysterious special chapter of Space Marines who act as the military chamber of Ordo Malleus, the branch of the Inquisition that specializes in exterminating Daemons. Every Grey Knight is a psyker.




Unlike the other two, this guy is not based on any particular Blanche artwork. I wanted my Grey Knight to look rather low-tech. The conversion is based on a Stormcast Liberator. The armour got similar treatment as Obryn the Bold, a Liberator I did last year: proper breastpate, no insane shoulder pads, etc. The head is an actual Grey Knight head, though, and one of my all time favourite Citadel heads. 




The paintjob is in the same style as the rest of the crew. They fit well together, even though each represents a vastly different archetype.


Sunday 7 October 2018

CLXXXVIII. Kill Team: Necron Immortal Leader

The third Immortal for my team, and the designated commander for these metal husks.


As with the others, we have mostly Necron and Admech bits involved, with a human skull for a head. The triangular 'halo' makes him stand out as the boss.

With the other Immortals. Each sports a unique design.


With the Warriors. 


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Since I got a number of comments about my Warriors' and Deathmarks' poses looking like they're playing guitars, I had a bit of fun now that the 'frontman' is here:





\m/