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.