05 Tuesday Jan 2021
Posted in Chaos, Finished Work
Initially I painted these to go with the War Alter I posted last week. Both are fine miniatures, from different eras, and I think its not contentious to suggest that the earlier one is the better! I like the big nose and tusks look much better than the blobby LOTR troll-esque look. I thought they’d go well with the Alter, as if they had been tasked to pull it and had stopped to throw rocks at something. But I had a brain fart, and did their bases differently. C’est la vie!
26 Saturday Dec 2020
Posted in Chaos, Finished Work
Tags
This is a bit of a one-off project that I painted for the hell of it, though I suppose that over the last few years I’ve probably painted enough fantasy squads that I could put together some sort of Chaos army, especially if you consider all the Battle Masters stuff… which reminds me, I must finish that sometime. Yeah, a chaos army would definitely work, some beastmen, chaos knights, I’ve got some plaguebearers and some pink horrors, some tzeentch wizards, some chaos dwarf artillery. that would make a good army. Anyhoo, when I pulled a war alter out of the leadpile, I struggled to think what to do with it. It was incomplete, missing a horn, and I considered trying my hand at sculpting but in the end decided that it would be more fun to tell a story with it.
Recently captured by a Nurglish wizard, the alter is just beginning its descent into chaos. It has been desecrated in Nurgle’s name, and sacrifices have been made on it to Nurgle. The statue hasn’t yet begun to change, but is degenerating. When enough sacrifices have been made, our wizard friend is possessed by a demon of decay and his physical form changes. Then men will tremble and plagues will run free!
Happy Christmas everyone, hope 2021 is a better year for us all.
23 Friday Oct 2020
Posted in Chaos, Finished Work
Tags
I love John Blanche’s work in all mediums, and have done since I discovered it – I did my GCSE art written project on John Blanche’s drawings, all the way back in 1994, and I bet I’m not alone in that. I have a particular love for the whole Blanchistu thing and whilst I’m no great painter I’ve wanted to have a go for some time. My first attempt was the Dark Mechanicum squad I posted last year, but somewhere along the way I lost confidence and fell back into old ways. This time I have looked at more models, done some research, and thrown myself into it. I am pleased with the results. Not White Dwarf standard by a long shot, but a good start. Next time will be a bit better. If you’ve got a squad of cultists that have been on the path too long and whose humanity is starting to degrade, then they need a leader who aspires to greatness, whose mutations are more pronounced and less debilitating, and who, maybe, glows with an eerie light! Eagle-eyed viewers may note that he is snapped at the knees and has been glued to that gravestone in order to give the illusion of completeness… this is because my mini was bent and my attempts to fix it were spectacularly unsuccessful. There was some swearing that day, I can tell you.
10 Friday Jul 2020
Tags
This is the second of the three pieces I’ve finished since March, an experiment that failed. Having painted a Night Lord next up on my journey through the Chaos Legions was World Eaters. Now the World Eaters started out as the Warhounds, and were blue-grey and white. When Angron took over he called them the World Eaters and reversed their colours. When Khorne took him over their colours gradully migrated to the red and brass we know today. So I thought that I’d paint a squad of each!
Hunea’s squad were based a long way from the rest of the Warhounds on garrison duty in a distant stronghold, with irregular updates by astropath. They followed at a distance the change from Warhounds to World Eaters, the butcher’s nails, the rebellion. They were able to hear the Legion break down into madness and bloodlust but not be part of it. Finally there were no more astropathic transmissions, the galaxy was at war, and the squad had to decide which side they were on. They decided that no-one cared for them so they cared for no-one, and started to carve out a petty empire for themselves on the edges of known space. After the heresy came the Scouring, and Hunea and his gang fled in the face of overwhelming Imperial retribution. They tried to use a warp storm to hide in and wound up in the Maelstrom where they made a base which they used to raid the Imperium and in which they gradually succumbed to the lure of chaos. They act as sell-swords and security detail for lesser chaos warlords in the Maelstrom, and are mostly trying to avoid notice by bigger fish like Huron Blackheart!
I didn’t enjoy painting Hunea’s squad that much, it felt like I was fighting the minis’ natural ‘feel’; a colour scheme that works for the clean lines of loyalists doesn’t work very well for the complex lines of chaos marines. It felt like I was forcing the paintjob. One of the plastic marines was one from a parts lot that had been stripped but was very badly built. I should have just chucked it in the bitz box and used a different marine instead of trying to repair and reuse it, it looks crap! But you live and learn, innit.
09 Thursday Jul 2020
Posted in Blackstone Fortress, Chaos
Well, hasn’t it been a while! What a few months its been. Some people have had a chance during lockdown to paint and paint and paint but sadly I am not one of them. My partner came down with a light case of covid in March which wasn’t too bad, but it turns out that covid can have knock on effects in many different ways. She’s been suffering a variety of symptoms including fatigue ever since, and so I’ve had to do everything in our household. Its not been easy, caring for her, looking after two dogs, and trying to keep the household functioning at a basic level – I’m the disabled one and she’s the powerhouse in our relationship. We’ve had no real income, I can only work part-time and don’t earn enough each year to even pay any tax. We dont know anyone else in this country and haven’t seen any of our family or friends since Christmas. So its been a challenge and there hasnt been a lot of time for painting toy mans. But I’ve found time here and there, because you need to take care of yourself, and it doesn’t matter what your limits are, how resilient you are, whether you’re weak or strong or whatever you want to call it, you need to spend some time looking after yourself or you will be no use to the people you need to care for.
Obsidius here is from Blackstrone Fortress and whilst he’s a Black Legion chappy in the game I painted him as a Night Lord because I’ve been working my way through the Chaos Legions over the last few years and Night Lords are where I’m up to.
Lovely miniature, fairly pleased with the paintjob, but there’s not a lot to say about him. I resolved not to buy any more minis until I’ve painted Blackstone Fortress and a Chaos Knight, but that might be tested by Indomitus….
15 Saturday Feb 2020
Posted in Chaos, Finished Work
Hello again and welcome to 2020. Since my last post its been Christmas and New Year, and then we’ve done something silly and got ourselves a new puppy. I’ve not had a lot of painting time since then 😦 She’s lovely though.
Now, the two main points of “interest” with this warband were 1) further experimentation with contrast paints; and 2) painting a random selection of miniatures in the way that I did when I was a kid! Point 2 needs no explanation, but point 1 maybe does. I followed some intructions for painting with source lighting from above. So I sprayed these minis black all over, then gave a grey spray from above, and then a white spray from above. I was hoping that the white would help the colours to pop out, as if there was a strong sun above – this warband is wandering parched chaos wastes. I think I’ve had mixed success. Mostly the source lighting failed and I don’t really know why. Likewise where it worked I don’t know why it worked. Was it my choice of colours or paint? Why are the mutants so dull whilst the Warqueen looks great? Still, I think I’ve learned a few things and I’ve painted some lovely miniatures. I really enjoyed painting the Warqueen – one problem with the beautiful modern minis GW is churning out at the moment is that they are so very detailed that it is hard for us mediocre painters to do anything with them. This one has just the right amount of stuff on it, a challenge but not impossible. The chap with the warhammer was fun too…. his tab just says OLDHAMMER but I can’t remember getting him. The chaos toilet was great, I really enjoyed painting it but I think that I could have done a lot better. The zombie ninja was fun too and simple. I messed up the shaman lady, I should have used different colours. The chaos warriors were tricky, I am not pleased with any of them really. The not-chaosette was a nightmare to paint, lots of faint detail, hard to get any of it right. The rhino-monster I enjoyed and I felt like I got the tattoos right too. In true chaos style, even the paineous bits were a pleasure!
05 Thursday Dec 2019
Posted in Chaos, Finished Work, Out Of The Pit
There are bad things going on in Warmington-on-Sea… a few years ago I picked up a box of Warlord Games’ Dad’s Army miniatures for their Bolt Action game. I was going to turn them into an Imperial Guard platoon, but this was a lot more fun…
11 Monday Nov 2019
Posted in Chaos, Finished Work
Tags
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.
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.
24 Monday Jun 2019
Posted in Burning Of Prospero, Chaos, Finished Work, Space Marines
I was sorting out my painting miniatures recently, following our house move. Clearing out the old and tidying up the new, that sort of thing. I was putting all the minis from the various games, assessing what i had completed and what I hadn’t so that if a visitor expressed a desire to play e.g. Burning of Prospero, I knew whether the minis were painted or not and if so, where they were. It turns out that, either by forgotten design or a common-or-garden brain fart, I had painted all the Iron Armour marines as Space Wolves. That wasn’t so bright, I needed a squad of Thousand Sons or the game would be wrong! I lacked a spare squard of Iron Armour or similar 30K miniatures and didn’t want to buy a set as I have more marines knocking around than I will ever get round to painting (and I sold off a big box recently too!). Instead I fished out some ‘old’ marines, making a squad of marines from the Imperial Space Marines, Space Crusade, and 2nd Edition box set (with a Tactical Space Marine as a sergeant). I gave them a random set of weapons to imply that this is a rag-tag collection fighting a guerrila war in the ashes of their home using whatever weapons they can find. Painted them as quickly and as roughly as I could (maybe contrast paints will make this sort of thing even easier). Nice work. Now does anyone want a game of Burning of Prospero?
