Master of Puppets (Charity)

Isn't it funny how you come to depend on certain paints? This has been brought home to me this week by my running out of Nuln Oil, discovering that my FLGS has also run out and it wasn't in their order this week indicating that Games Workshop has run out. Bumsticks. This has brought progress on the titan (and indeed a few other potential projects) to a crashing halt. Instead, I looked for something that I could work around the lack of black wash on. The answer? Finish the Bushido models for the Paint the City Pink auction.

This motley lot are the Cult of Yurei, the Geisha and the Nezumi rat dude article can be found here. Today we focus our attention on the Puppet Master and his hideous undead marionettes.

I just love this fella. This is the second time I've painted him in fact although the first one was rather more colourful! I also decided not to string the marionette this time as I think having it being controlled by magic makes him a bit more mystical. Once again I was struck by how gorgeous the sculpting on the smoke lady is, thorough enjoyed working on her again. I deliberately kept the colour pallete subdued to allow the bright white masks and his vibrant skin tone to dominate. Given how drab a lot of the Cult were going to be this would help him stand out from his zombified charges.

Speaking of which... These things are called Kairei by GCT Studios which roughly translates to "puppet". While painting them I figured out how they work, the Puppet Master uses freshly dead corpses, ties one of his Nō masks to the face and awakens the dead. Creepy or what? I painted this chap in the same scheme as the Prefecture of Ryu models that I'd finished the other day as his clothing matches. The Sashimono (back banner) I kept simple and just found the Kanji for Death and Puppet. Probably horribly drawn and with the grammer of a three year old but forgive the Gaijin!

Something I'm really happy with is the skin tone on the Kairei. Rakarth Flesh is rapidly becoming one of my go-to paints. In this case it is simple, Rakarth Flesh, a general wash of Agrax Earthshade and then patchy glazes of Druchii Violet; Reikland Fleshtone and Athonian Camoshade. This gives the patchy bruised lividity and decomposition I was looking for. It'll certainly be my standard zombie method in the future. With this one I decided that the very thin haft for the weapon could only be bamboo so I freehanded some junctions on to create the striped bamboo feel.

When everything was finished I then went over all those wounds with my blood mix of 3:2 Red:Chestnut ink and then added black ink in roughly a 3:2 (Blood:Black) mix again. I went over all the wounds again with this second mix and the combination created a "nice" dead blood look. Less is more with blood. You have to use less than you would even for stage blood as otherwise your model looks like a bystander in a Tarantino movie.

And so that is it for the charity epic, the group shot above shows all of the models I have done for Paint the City Pink. Time to crate them up and post them off to Cornwall. If you want to get your hands on any of them just pop over to Tales of a Tabletop Skirmisher and contact Hendybadger. He'll sort you out!

TTFN