05 Thursday Dec 2019
Posted in Finished Work, Space Marines
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Just a quick update before I get to some juicy stuff later… Brother Russkikh is a lovely old Rogue Trader Chaplain which has some fantastic details on it but a horrible helmet. I did the best I could with the face but it doesn’t look very skull-like. I have to say that it looks better in the metal, as it were. The picture here is not very flattering at all! Oh well, its hardly spoiling my chances of getting called up for an invitational 😀
27 Wednesday Nov 2019
Posted in Finished Work, Orks
You know how it goes, you have so many projects going on that none of them ever seem to get anywhere… so it has been with my Ork Freebooter army. In order to field a valid Freebooter army I need a warboss, retinue, and big mob to attach all the Freebooterz to. I did the big mob some time ago… https://leadmess.com/2016/07/02/waargh-dakka-dakka-its-grimsniks-ouseold-boyz/ so maybe I should get a shift on… therefore, here I present Wazgut Uzbog, Bad Moon Warboss. Wazgut is only a minor warboss at the moment, but he has some grand ideas, if only he had the boyz! So he’s spending teef like there’s no tomorrow in the hope of carving out a decent Empire for himself and winning some good scraps at the head of an army of freaks and outcasts…
The miniature is, I think, from Knightmare. The sculptor has really caught the essence of Ansellite Orkishness, and yellow contrast paint is really very good indeed. This mini was so quick to paint that I think I should go back and try and do some black and white checks or something… but i always fuck it up when I try to get too clever so maybe its done!
26 Tuesday Nov 2019
Posted in Eldar, Finished Work
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The Eldar of Craftworld Lugganath are considered savage and uncivilised by other Eldar. There are far more of them devoted to reaving and piracy than from other Eldar societies, and they are warlike and cynical, hasty and bloodthirsty. As the 41st millenium (by human reckoning) breathes its last, Arthmael’s Corsairs are struggling to find their way back to the spires of their home.
Eldar Corsairs are often young Eldar who have been blooded as Guardians in war, but who have not yet devoted themselves to the path of the warrior. They travel in search of new webway routes and entrances, reaving and stealing as they go, hopping from real-space into the webway and back again, acting as scouts and pathfinders for Lugganath society.
Arthmael led a corsair gang operating on the far Eastern edge of the Segmentum Obscurus, and was mid-way through a standard exploration expedition when the Great Rift opened. This explosion of chaos damaged the webday, destroying some paths, pouring daemons into others. Whilst Arthmael’s unit were not in the webway at the time, they have struggled since then to find a way back. Shortly after the opening Arthmael, a skilled and cunning Warlock, was killed by a ricochet during an attempt to gain entrance to a webway portal occupied by the Death Guard.
Since Arthmael’s death, the rest of the corsair squad has been whittled down by attrition in any number of battles with chaos and Imperial forces. They lack basic equipment and have been reduced to plundering human weapons and even food. They are squabbling amongst themselves, and becoming nihilistic in outlook…
I have never painted Eldar before, so this was a fun diversion. I used mostly contrast paints, which I am starting to get used to. The Eldar themselves are a mix of Rogue Trader Guardians and Third Ed. Dark Eldar. Bits of this work and bits don’t, but I’m fairly happy with it. I chose Lugganath because I wanted a nice bright colour-scheme, which it certainly it. One thing I never noticed before is that all the RT Guardians have cloths hanging from their belts. Could this be a reference to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Handkerchief_code? Considering that Orks called Eldar pansies I suspect it might be.
12 Tuesday Nov 2019
Posted in Finished Work, Imperial Guard
Final completed work for now, this little lot is another attempt to play with Constrast paints, again with mixed results. Commissar Raine is firmly newhammer, released within the last year or so. I thought it was a great sculpt, full of life and hyper-realistic despite being perfectly in-universe. When I opened the box I was surprised and disappointed. If I hadn’t received this item directly from GW Mail Order I would have thought it was a recast. The detailing is lost, the resin feels flimsy, the pieces didn’t fit together very well. I have only positive experience of GW’s resin before this, and if the internet hadn’t been full of people making similar complaints I would have complained myself. I’ve made the best of it though, and generally I am happy with Severina. Sanctioned Psyker Sturm I am not so happy with. I just could not get his eyes right – I have so many problems with painting eyes, I really am not that good at the finework. I tried to paint one eye glowing with a green flame to indicate psychic doings, whether this makes it even more of a mess I don’t think I am qualified to say. Still, practice makes perfect they say, maybe next time I’ll be a bit better.
The non-GW minis in the squad are two troopers from a Bad Squiddo kickstarter. Nice minis, one of them has a really badly sculpted hand though. Hands are hard and plenty of early GW minis have similar problems. There is also Oleg, who has fallen through a fart in space-time from the Advance on Berlin and landed in a massed battle somewhere in the 41st Millenium. He is fairly clear on his orders though, do whatever the nearest commissar tells you to do, and so he has slid nicely from our dystopian past into our dystopian far future. His hands were well sculpted but his face is a mess that I lacked the skill to do anything with. Let’s pretend he earned the right to carry the banner by single-handedly knocking out a Nazi flamethrower team despite receiving serious burns. That’ll do!
Finally a handful of metal and plastic Imperial Guard that didn’t require much work, Contrast paints really good for simple paint jobs!
11 Monday Nov 2019
Posted in Chaos, Finished Work
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A newhammer diversion! A few years ago, just at the point when GW started releasing cool new minis again but we didn’t know how much awesomeness was to come, I spent a GW gift voucher on the Start Collecting Adeptus Mechanicus box. Then it sat there for years whilst I did other things… so I thought I’d better either shit or get off the pot, and decided to, er, shit…
What I was aiming for with these miniatures was to try out some fun conversions and learn some blanchistu stylings. I certainly did the first, but I simply am not a good enough painter to use such outwardly minimalistic techniques effectively, and my attempts to add layers and bursts of colour have made it all a bit of a dogs dinner. Still, I enjoyed myself, especially the process of imagining what the Dark Mechanicus might look like.
This Explorator Team are from a minor Forge World recently fallen to chaos. The team itself aren’t high enough up the hierarchy to realise that their worship of the Omnissiah is now chaos worship, they just follow their leaders and see their mutations as gifts from that Omnissiah. Sooner or later they’ll just be another set of fanatic berserkers, doomed to end up chaos spawn with interesting metal bits embedded in their protoplastic limbs.
10 Sunday Nov 2019
Posted in Finished Work, Orks
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Like almost everyone in the old/middle/war-hammer blogosphere, I have been experimenting with Contrast paints over the last couple of months. Results are varied, not least because I’m not really a very good painter! Some colours and techniques are better than others, and I think that Contrast paints are a useful weapon in the armoury. I think that their advertised use is probably the best use for them – to speed up basic army painting so that you can get more painted models done and on the battlefield. This is important, because the New! Improved! Games Workshop keep releasing more cool minis than any of us can ever hope to paint even if we didn’t have a leadpile consisting of all the cool minis of the last 40 years and people are starting to feel helpless in the face of it all. Like, why would I bother to spend however vast amounts of money on the newest shiniest fuckiest uppest tank when I have shitloads of unpainted minis already. So they help get the minis painted quicker and make some space for a Chaos Knight or flying uber tank or something like that. I kind of want a Chaos Knight, and I was recently a victim of the flying uber tank (that has a lot of guns and helped me get swiftly tabled on my third game against a guy testing a competitive list and was very embarrassed about the whole thing) which made me think i needed one… So anyway, these Blood Axes are an excuse to try some Orky camo shading using mostly Contrast paints. I have resolved after this to return to my Freebooterz Army, lets see how that works out!
Oh yeah, I know I’m a bit late for Orktober, but these boyz are Orkses what I painted in Orktober so there.
18 Wednesday Sep 2019
Posted in Finished Work, gobbos
A little warband of gobbo / grotz / nasty green buggers that I put together for Mordheim or Warhammer Underworlds or one of those games that I don’t play 😀 As you can probably guess, I rummaged through the lead-pile and painted all sorts of things. Grotbagz herself, and the gobbo champion with the wolfskin and axes, I think they’re Knightmare miniatures and they are lovely. The mushroom rider is from GW’s wonderful Gobbapalooza kit that came out this year. There’s a squig-rider and squig-herders from WHFB 4, a resin goblin that I can’t place or recall ever buying or being giving, some snot-goblins that came from a kickstarter possibly with a lead chimera, and a snotling from Warhammer Quest 1. Quite a collection of misfits!
18 Wednesday Sep 2019
Posted in Chaos, Dwarfs, Finished Work, old school miniatures
Having recently painted Old School Miniatures’ wonderful Bumcannon, I found their recent Baggage Train offering in my hand, calling out to be painted. I think this is a lovely set, though the daemon isn’t as good as the bumcannon daemon. The dwarfs are fantastic though, I especially love the one with the octopus. There’s not a lot to say about this group… oh yeah, there was a fifth dwarf but it became seperated from the group and forgotten about so who knows if it will ever be painted! Oh yeah, part dau, another thing I love about this set is the baggage itself. In amongst the boxes and bags is a small rodent. I’ve painted it as close as my fat gorilla hands would allow to my dear departed gerbil friend Lavender, pictured below on her uncle Doris’ knee having climbed up his trouser leg in search of seeds or indeed a big lump of cheese. Photo included so that you can see that a purple-grey-silver rodent is real and not my disordered imagination :D. Oh yeah, part tri… my first experiments with Citadel Colour Contrast happened in this paintjob. Mixed outcomes, too early to draw any conclusions.
22 Monday Jul 2019
Posted in Finished Work, Oldhammer Challenges
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So this is going tao be my entry for the Legacy Project 2019. I have no idea where this miniature came from. I think its a modern manufacturer, but I can’t be sure. I have bought way too many interesting minis over the years and my brain is kind of hazy about who made what or where they were sourced from. Octopus-man here is called Larry. Larry was once a mild-mannered fishmonger in Altdorf, serving up offerings from the Reik and further afield for rich and noble customers. But a wise fishmonger doesn’t buy goods caught in the Sea of Chaos, though he might buy them if the fishermen didn’t mention that fact. Perhaps fortunately for the great and the good of Altdorf Larry enjoyed a fish dinner that evening, intending to sell on the goods in the morning, only to wake to a certain cephalopodic aspect to his features. Larry skipped town and like many unfortunate mutants he made his way north. Now he is an important part of a marauder gang. He’s not much of a fighter, but if he can creep up behind someone he can twist their head right off. He’s also discovered the ability to predict the results of sports events, which comes in handy!
22 Monday Jul 2019
Posted in Finished Work, Necromunda
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I fell in love with these minis when they were released, so I quickly bought a box to paint, then left it on the shelf for months and months whilst other things bubbled to the surface of the gumbo of my mind.
These minis are tricky. They were tricky to put together, at least the heads were – I often found that I didn’t have the fit quite right. They were tricky to paint, so many fine details and textures were very challenging. They took months of gradual work just to get them to look this average. Mad Donna, she was the last one started and the first one finished. Still, I learned a lot about colour and clashes and what does and doesn’t work. I wanted them to look like a discordent swirl of colours, clashing and complementing each other, and I think I succeeded in that.
I recently purchased one of Green Stuff World’s portable lightboxes, and taking the advice that I sought a few posts ago, I have tried using black backgrounds. I think you will agree that the results are fabulous, and now my grisly paintjobs are clear as the day!
Finally, I played my second ever modern game of WH40K the other day, with the Steel Guard taking on the disgusting Death Guard. The two sides fought each other to a draw, though I think that if the game had lasted another turn my boys would have been wiped out.
