At once Madam Commissar!

Greetings all! I'm back from holiday and all sorts of rested, Mulder seemed to throw the switches as planned so hope you all enjoyed the holiday content. I'm back to work and have shiny things to show you:

The next commission I have on the desk is Imperial Guard again, more of these lads in fact. Along with these is another female commissar for the client's collection. She'll join her previously painted partner. The model in question is a War Forge - Viktoria Skivlana, haven't worked with any War Forge models before (to be honest, hadn't heard of them before the commission landed on my desk) so I can't say how it compares with the rest of their range.

For the most part the sculpt is nice, good strong, dramatic pose, little bit "pin-up" on the uniform front and guilty of the usual problem of sculpting fairly large breasts (not comedic this time thankfully) on slender women. An accident of genetics that occurs very rarely and tends to make the model look like they have implants and thus a slightly vain air. The only real problem I have with the sculpt is the face. Looks great from the profile - i.e. the front of the model - but from head on...

Tiny bit lopsided. Lets forget we ever saw that though and talk about painting! The majority of the model's colour scheme is fairly straightforward to say the least. My usual trick of one colour for the leather (Val Leather Brown and black mix) and one for the cloth (Stormvermin Dinge) shaded down with Val Black Wash in order to differentiate the fabrics. To help this I gave the leather a coat of satin varnish to further emphasise the different textures. Green sections were basecoated in Caliban Green and highlighted by gradually adding Warpstone Glow to the mix until the highlight was pure Warpstone Glow. Then I glazed the coat lining with Coelia Greenshade and the sash with Biel-Tan Green. This gave the green areas similar but distinct colours.

The flesh was just my usual feathered layers of lightening skin tones. I do really like having the new Flayed One Flesh edge paint though, really gives a nice top highlight when mixed in with the Kislev Flesh, I used to use bone for this but the Flayed One Flesh is better. I decided that the epaulettes and other braid elements would look best in my not-quite-non-metallic-metal rather than an actual metal tone.

The ammo box gave me a chance for some nice battered contrast to the otherwise clean colours and lines of the model. Usual method of first sponging on chips, scratches and dings in Nurgling Green over the Castellan Green basecoat, a black brown mix for dark chips is painted into the centre of the biggest chips and the edges then further highlighted with AP Plate Mail Metal.

All in all a fun model to paint - despite face issues - and a finish that I'm happy with. Looking forward to ploughing into the next 55 Fecktarn Guard!

Until next time folks.

TTFN

PVP Reviews - ProCreate Putty

Avast crew! As promised earlier in the week I am posting my thoughts on using my new favourite sculpting tools. Firstly ProCreate sculpting putty:

ProCreate is a fairly new product. See, for years and years the putty of choice for sculpting has been either the venerable "Green Stuff" (Kneadatite) or Milliput. The problem has always been that neither is really ideal for the task of miniature sculpting. Green Stuff is actually a plumbers putty designed to be sticky and very hard when cured. Milliput is designed to mimic ceramics and has a grainy texture that can make life awkward. People have tried all sorts of tricks such as mixing half and half greenstuff and milliput to get past the fact that they aren't really ideal. This stuff though was designed from the ground up to be a miniature sculpting putty. It even talks about how many vulcanisations (the process by which a metal model is made) it can withstand.

Like all epoxy putties ProCreate is an 'A/B' type, you mix the two and it will gradually harden. There is a really handy guide inside the bow for how much of each you need for different tasks. So how does it perform? The only way I can describe it is to compare to Green Stuff. It mixes fluidly and with a minimum of fuss - and crucially a minimum of jamming sticky yellow stuff into your fingerprints - to a smooth grey tone. It is weird how nice it is to work in grey rather than green. Grey is the colour of a finished miniature for me and so having the sculpting in the same colour stops that jarring colour perspective shift that can make you think things are the wrong size or just "look odd". It is far less sticky than green stuff, that means less lubrication required for the tools but a little less adherance to the model - like cling film though it sticks to itself very eagerly. A double edged sword but I have to say one that I think cuts more in favour of the sculptor than against.

The most important difference is quite an airy-fairy technical one and I'm going to try and explain it as clearly as possible. ProCreate has far less "shape memory" than Green Stuff. Shape Memory is the tendency for a substance to return to its original shape if pulled, squashed or twisted. In other words, sculpted! Consider hard rubber vs stiff custard. A hard rubber has enourmous shape memory, you really struggle to alter its form at all before it springs back. The custard has almost no shape memory, prod it and it stays prodded. Green stuff can have an annoying tendency to resist subtle changes while sculpting and sort of retreats back to where it was happy. ProCreate is much more willing to go where you push it. Very pleasant. It seems to cure a little less plastic than Green Stuff too, it has the ability of Milliput to be worked after curing, I've carved it, sanded it, all sorts.

I honestly feel that this is the best putty I've tried. I am far from an expert sculptor but even an enthusiastic amateur like me is able to smooth this stuff nice and easily and get the effects I want. I really, really recommend giving this stuff a go. You won't be sorry.

The eagle eyed and sharp of mind will have noticed I said tools at the top of the page. Well, the second tool I want to talk about is this set of silicon clay shapers. These are essentially brushes with rubbery tips shaped into a variety of different heads. These are size 0 and have been brilliant. They make smoothing an absolute dream. In terms of texture they are about as stiff as a hard drybrush but much harder, they will happily leave marks in the putty but will yield a little as you press so you don't inadvertantly swipe your careful modelling off the figure! Ive found myself using the round one (like a rubber paint brush), the chisel one and the long sharp edged one most of all but all of them have been useful.

Both of these are available elsewhere I'm sure but in the UK; Heresy Miniatures is a good bet for getting hold of the ProCreate (they also stock the clay shapers). I've got no connection with Heresy beyond customer so my recommendation comes free of reciprocity!

I'm back from holiday in a couple of days so will see you all then with more pictures of shiny toys!

TTFN

On the Workbench - more Inq28 converting!

Greetings all, this post should have gone up while I am floating in a pool on holiday - assuming Mulder can be trusted to push a button in my absense that is. I thought I would share with you all the progress that is being made on the last few members of my Inquisitor's retinue for our Inq28 campaign.

We saw the early progress on the Ogryn in the last On the Workbench. Since then the leadbelcher arms arrived! I had to carve off the gnoblar from the shoulder (could not get a pair of the great cannon arms for love nor money) but after some smoothing with fine sanding sticks you really cannot tell it was there. With the arms in place I could finish off the vest by killing off some undercuts and adding a ridge to the edge where the fabric ends. Then it was time for the firepower. The multilaser I was using came from the sentinel kit but just wasn't quite hefty enough. So I sliced up a guard lascannon and added the multilaser barrel to the cut end. Some shaping and carving to merge the bracing strut at the bottom and it was there. I added a large battery pack by slicing the top off a meltabomb and gluing it where the cables normally go on the normal lascannon. The meltabomb handle made a nice carrying handle on top of the multilaser. I'm going to hold off on attaching the weapon until I've painted the torso. Mrs PVP noted that he looked more like a biker than anything else and so that is his new identity! A sort of Ogryn "Hell's Angel". A more interesting paint scheme than my "sort of a catachan" feel I was going for at first...

Remember the autogun from last time? Well, its got it's home now. This chap is made from Victoria Lamb Miniatures legs, torso and arms (can't recommend her highly enough, great models, free worldwide shipping for very cheap orders - $10 - and got here from Australia within a week). The converted autogun was carved to fit and an Empire head gave the right tone. This fella will be an Imperial Guard demolitions/engineer type, hence the underslung grenade launcher, and will mostly be working in the retinue as an "obstacle removal expert", no door is safe!

For the Interrogator I wanted to have a bit of the 40k madness creeping in. He's not ready for a rosette yet and I figured he could look a bit weirder than the hired members of Inquisitor Vandemar's retinue. I started from an Infinity model, used a Cadian bionic arm - cut and straightened - to replace the ultra high tech left arm. Replaced the power sword with a Tomb Kings Khopesh - a brilliant weapon designed to do lots of different things from parrying, tripping and focussing evil cutting power - and added a rolled sleeve to hide the join. Finally I carved away the metal head and replaced it with a haughty cadian command HQ head. I hated the hairstyle and knew I would be changing it, but to what? Then I remembered an old conversion that Jakob Nielson did with a dude with a huge gun, a top hat and a judge's wig. The legal wig thing seemed to work for the lunacy of the 40k universe so I thought, why not? I chose the more restrained barrister's wig rather than the full on judicial and it was only half way through the process of sculpting it that I realised it was basically just a powdered wig from the 17/1800s. Seems to work.

The last figure for today is the bike mounted version of the crusader conversion. I've chopped most of the extraneous bits from a scout bike to make a slightly more civilian version. I hacked off the legs at the hips and the boots. Built leg armatures out of wire to allow future sculpting to replace the legs. I need to thin the handlebars a bit, Charlie from the Beard Bunker pointed out they were as thick as her arms at the moment... The same head replacement with an Elysian helmet finished her off for now. I still need to sculpt the legs and I may well replace the left hand as the original sculpt is really not intended for gripping.

There we go! What I've been doing on my lunch breaks! I think I've finally used the putty I've been sculpting with long enough to do a review on it so expect on later this week. But one last thing before I go:

See, haven't forgotten or quit. Last time we talked about this I was 21st 8lb (302lb) and 44% fat. So far I have only managed to change my diet, the weather/finances have meant that going out for a run or similar has been a non-starter and I can't really afford a gym. However, even with that I am now...

19st 13lb (279lb) and 38.3% fat

There will be happy 12st people out there who do not realise why being 19st will make me really, really happy. The fact is that I do not think I have been this weight in more than a decade. At my worst I was 24 stone and a whale. Being in the "under 20st" catagory, even by one pound is a cause for much merriment! With winter finally deciding to leave the UK alone I will be able to exercise more and this rate of progress should increase. For now, huzzah!

TTFN

More Emperor's Children Land Speeders

Greetings folks and it is a farewell to something. A farewell to Slaaneshii TwiddlyBits, the project is done and so are they. Au Revoir TwiddlyBits, it's been fun.

These two form a wing of three speeders when combined with the other tornado from the last post. For the longest time I wasn't sure about heavy flamers on speeders from a practical standpoint, I figured that firing into the wind wasn't a great idea. While painting these though I got to thinking (this tends to happen when I am doing more mechanical processes like edge highlighting, try it, really helps to get inside the designers heads sometimes). The flamers are on turrets, they can be rotated down and around. Now think of this, land speeders are kind of like helicopters, fairly high speed, low altitude and fond of strafing. So you're an infantryman in cover, you think you are safe, then three of these things zoom overhead dumping burning fuel as they pass. Urgh, doesn't bear thinking about. I am no longer at all bothered about the practicalities! The combo of heavy flamer for anti-infantry and the multimeltas for anti-tank is a handy one in theory.

I'm not going to go into huge details on the painting, I went over that in the last entry on these lads. What I will mention is the lack of too much weathering. The tanks get plenty of dust and dirt but the aircraft do not. The reason for this is that it is way too easy to overdo aircraft weathering. Planes and the like are twitchy things and don't work so well if the parts get fouled with muck. I have seen dusty, dirty aircraft but it is a thin skim that gets cleaned fast. I've seen models recently that look like they would crash more than fly. A bit of chipping and dinging is fine, but go easy on the dirt.

I fear Mulder is about to be disapointed.

Next week I am off on holiday, Mrs PVP really needs a rest from work so we're going off with friends to spend a week near a pool. Relaxation for the win. I've got a couple of posts queued so I'm leaving Mulder behind to throw the switches and post them on time. Hopefully they'll go up as planned and I'll see all you lovely people a week on monday. Have fun folks.

TTFN

A trio of purple tank snipers

Arr shipmates, time for more purple marines!

This time it is a bevvy of Predator Annihilators. Three of these things caning out nine lascannon shots a turn at space marine accuracy is enough to make any armour commander's eyes water.

TwiddlyBits are back too, you'll also notice that the weathering is a touch more subtle than last time. I managed to kill off the ridiculously saturated Karak Stone's coverage by thinning it with a bit of dilute isopropyl alcohol. Isoprop is one of those handy chemicals in painting as it is excellent for cleaning things, thinning alcohol based paints and in this case: killing the acrylic medium a little to thin the paint coverage a bit.

While we are talking about alcohol based paints, I am growing less enchanted with the Vallejo Liquid Gold. As it gets older it seems to start to clag up and form clumps. This makes it infuriating to both mix smooth and apply, you have to fiddle around and inevitably spend time cutting in with the basecoat as applying it cleanly is a pain. Sadly, it seems to be brilliant for a few weeks and then it starts to deteriorate. Did I get moisture in it on some overly humid day? Who knows. Suffice to say, I think I'll be trying out the Army Painter gold to see if it is as much a straight copy of the old citadel metallics as their excellent steel colours are. Frankly, all I want is shining gold.

Something I am very happy with though is the lovely patina achieved by the AK Interactive Rust Streaks. The trick of being able to use white spirits to alter the coverage and location of the paint without harming the acrylics underneath is very nifty. I will do a review at some point in the future.

The TwiddlyBits have become a major part of the army's character and helps tie the crew to the tank through the shoulder pad decoration. Speaking of crew:

Something I had never thought of doing; using a guard torso in a space marine turret. I like it. There's no reason at all that space marine tanks should be driven and crewed by space marines. In fact it makes no sense, you spend all of the time and effort to select, surgically modify and train a marine. You equip this fellow in the finest protective gear known to mankind (increasing his bulk by about 30%) and then sit him in the cramped confines of a tank. Makes not even a little bit of sense. Surely chapter serfs and servitors would be the choice? Most chapters (and indeed the chaos legions to a lesser extent) have a traditional selection process and secrets that they must protect. Fail selection and you can never go home. You belong to the chapter and serve as best you can. How better than in a tank? Frees the marines for the kind of mobile warfare they do best and saves killing elite warriors when the tank inevitably gets annihilated by one of the 40k universes many lethal thingies. I think I'll be nicking this concept.

Well, that is almost it for Project Purples, 6 predators and 2 speeders down. 2 More speeders to go. Hopefully they'll be finished by the end of the week. Until then...

TTFN

On the Workbench - Converting an Ogryn and an entire subsector to play in!

Greetings from a decreasingly diseased Cardiff. I thought I would share some progress I've made recently on more Inq28 models. Unusually for me, this isn't the finished article, far from it...

The model you can see above is the result of patient build-up of layers over this week's lunchbreaks. You can't just sit down and sculpt a whole model, you've got to do a bit, leave it to dry, do the next bit. Otherwise you wind up destroying the work you've done earlier! On this chap I have so far (in no particular order):

• Filled in the gutplate void
• Sculpted the belt across the gut.
• Reshaped the boots, added a toecap and tread on the exposed sole.
• Filled in the undercuts on the torso to represent vest fabric stretched over the torso
• Sculpted the neckline of the vest
• Added a mohawk and a thin bandanna tied around the forehead.

And that took a week. Granted, I am very inexperianced so plenty of trial and error but good grief. You want to have total respect for someone's job and talents? Try doing it. I'm mostly using ProCreate putty and Liquid greenstuff. The finished article will have a multilaser once the arms I ordered arrive! I've also been doing some more normal conversion work in anticipation of the next model in the warband:

This is an autogun with integral grenade launcher. Fairly easy job featuring parts from a boltgun, an old autopistol (the end of which I've just noticed needs straightening, grr) and a piece of plastic tube to be the barrel of the grenade launcher. I planned this one out before I started using some photoshop jiggery pokery:

Ended up a little different but it meant I knew that the overall effect was going to work. To make it, I first removed the bevelled lower edge of the lasgun forward of the magazine. I flattened one surface of the pipe and glued it into position leaving enough room for the grip of the boltgun. The magazine of the boltgun replaced the lasgun power cell and the autopistol muzzle replaced the lasgun. I wound up removing the bayonet lug on the front of the lasgun to make room for the grenade launcher barrel - a small section of the same plastic tubing. Finally I carved a little cartridge ejection port above the magazine release (you can just see it in the top picture). Doing a mock up like this is easy and really gives you a direction to follow!

Are people interested in this kind of thing? Seeing the early work before the finished article appears? I can do more posts like this if there is interest. Let me know in the comments. Now I teased you in the subject bar with an entire subsector to play in?

Well, I wasn't kidding. Over on the Beard Bunker site I have presented the basics for the campaign setting that we will be running Inq28 in. The Cetus subsector. Go on over there and check it out! I'm properly happy with how it turned out. Believe me when I say you'll see more of this! Until next time folks

TTFN

Chaotic Land Speeders (yes really!)

Greetings one and all from the house of Nurgle. Yup, the grandfather is currently visiting me and is doing his best to lay me low with his little bacterial helpers. I have prevailed though and actually got some work done today. Hurrah! That work is in the form of a pair of Chaos Space Marine Land Speeders:

I've always been a little confused as to the complete lack of land speeders in the Chaos armies. They were around in the Heresy and indeed anti-grav was more prevelant in the Heresy. So why no Speeders? Can only assume it was to distance the Codicies and prevent them being nothing more than spikey loyalists. However, if you aren't a tournament gamer then your hobby belongs only to you! Do what you like! In this case, the client had assembled the four speeders on the workbench as a trio of tornados and a very nifty typhoon.

Small alterations give them a chaotic feel, the icon on the front and the marauder helmets being the example here. These speeders were initially painted in the same way as the Predators - preshaded and then painted purple through the airbrush.

The four typhoon launchers make for a really nice "X-wing"-esque configuration. The only thing I would plead with any future commissioning clients (and indeed anyone painting one of these) is to not glue the crew torso elements in. Assemble the models - arms, head torso - but do not glue them to the hips. It makes it all but impossible to paint the very visible instruments and really tough to paint the crew. I did my best with these.

I kept twiddlybits to a minimum on these as there are so many cut-in areas that if I applied twiddlybits everywhere it would be a mess. Instead, I kept it to shoulder pads, the tail and the flaps.

Apologies for reletively terse post but I am tired. Nurgle's minions are putting up a fight. Another pair of land speeders and the second trio of Predators still on the workbench so plenty more chaotic armour to come!

TTFN

A Gaming Table Is Born - Part 1, Schemes and Plots

Greetings one and all. Those with long memories (or, y'know following the archive) will recall that one of my gaming resolutions was that there will be a gaming table in my house by the end of the year.

yeahhh, now for some reality?

Well, I've decided that now is the time to start. As with most of my projects it is way, way more likely to be completed if I share it with the world! Plus, I figured that my musings, trials, tribulations and solutions might help some folks in a similar situation. To kick off, I need to identify what the situation is here and what I can make to meet my needs:

Early Considerations

The first thing to decide is: Permanent or Take-down table? Well, this is an easy consideration. I just do not have the space for a permanent table in the house. I only just have enough room to have my studio in a corner. So take-down table is going to be the win.

Awww...

I have a Realm of Battle board that has been waiting for this project to be used. These things are ace but really cannot be used without a hard surface beneath them. Thus, a take-down hard surface is in order. The next question is how large? Ideally the table would be 8'x4' so that a 6'x4' table would have an extra foot of space either side for rulebooks, casualties and errant cups of tea (all gaming essentials to the 33 year old Brit...). Sadly, this isn't going to fly either. The only space I have is in the living room and there just isn't enough room to get an 8' long table in there. 6'x4' it will be then! Tea will simply have to be drunk carefully.

Designing the Table - now we get clever

I have a plan here, I want to have the most versatile gaming surface possible. The Realm of Battle board will provide a nice hilly grasslands but the table itself can provide two other surfaces all by itself. By texturing and painting one side of the table in an urban grey-brown and the other in a desert-ey beige I will have the three most commonly played scenic choices in one table.

But, there is a problem (who knew right?) the table will be being stored behind one of the couches against the wall... of my rented house. The thought of acrylic paint transferring in neat 6' long lines doesn't bear thinking about. I needed a way of protecting the wall and the paint surface alike. Initially I thought about just having a long bit of pipe lagging along the upper edge but this would still leave the edges prone to wear and chipping. A more cunning solution was called for. The solution?

I'll screw a wooden strip edge all the way around. having a small - 5-10mm - lip around the table on both surfaces will protect the textured surface and will prevent paint transfer to the wall. It will also clamp the Realm of Battle board and prevent clumsy, ham-fisted types from knocking the tiles off. Huzzah! While I am putting screws in to the edge I might as well add some handles to the short edges. It'll help enormously when the table is being extracted from it's lurking-behind-the-sofa home.

The rectangles in the middle of the design represent the nice sturdy coffee table I have (with a cloth on it to prevent scratching) and a sawhorse at the other to support the end. This means I only have to make the surface and a simple sawhorse, not legs.

So what do I need?

I'll start with a solid, thick 18mm sheet of MDF. This will not bend. It is flaming heavy but the handles will help with this. If I pick my store right they'll knock off the excess 2' from the 8'x4' sheet for free. I'll have them cut the excess into a pair of 2'x2' tiles for future urban work.

I need to research the edging material, there may be a sensible choice, needs to be fairly tough though. Handles will need to be comfy to hold so quite large. For texturing, sharp sand and PVA make a concrete like surface that is hard to beat. Slow to dry but a lot better than textured paint. For the urban side I am toying with the idea of using textured wallpaper to look like tarmac. Might bottle out and go sandy again.

And that is it for part 1 of A Gaming Table is Born. Next time I'll share my plans for getting the very most out of this table with regards to the scenery sets I'll design for this and importantly, the order that I'm going to make them in to get to gaming as fast as possible!

TTFN

A Parade of Purple Predator Panzers

Hello to one and all, remember these chaos chaps [Emperor's Children]? Well to outfit them for the slightly more rough-and-tumble world of Apocalypse gaming, they are getting some heavily armoured friends. Rather a lot of them in fact:

These are the first three Predators for this army. Yup, you heard me, first three, there is another trio of Predators - this time Annihilators - to come. So lets take a look at some painting right?

These are the first marine tanks that I've used the airbrush with. Really speeds up the basecoating stage. With these I did some preshading (where you spray black into the recesses and leave the rest white) before adding a couple of layers of Minitaire Ecchymose - which, by the way, is the purple bit of a bruise and I only know that because I have a Biomedical Sciences degree. Seriously, what is it with stupid paint names at the moment? Why not add "Purple" to the end of that, descriptive while retaining that smart alec feel. Harumph. Anyway, tangent klaxon is sounding, on with the show. The result is that the edges glow white through the top coat and self highlight. It won't work for everything, but for Slaaneshii purple tanks, its a winner.

The TwiddlyBits(TM) elements of the scheme went a whole hell of a lot faster now that we have an actual paint to replace the dry Lucius Lilac. Hello Dechala Lilac (see? Obscure reference plus actual colour, that's how to do it, sheesh) and some freeform patterns. I deliberately kept them random but structured in the same way, mostly geometric with occasional curves and loops. In my mind these gradually change and shift with the mood of the crew. The weathering is perhaps a little heavy but I have a reason for that... beware Karak Stone. This thing is the most heavily pigmented paint in the damn range - I now discover - seriously, foundation paints weren't this dense. One swipe of a drybrush and I had inadvertantly painted a great swathe of Karak Stone over the purple. Well, you can imagine, sound the Panic-Tuba. Mercifully a combination of the client talking me down and realising that they could just have been driving though claggy clay mud and some remedial highlighting with bone fixed it. I think I just went into artist-meltdown a little as the result was so very not what I was expecting. Forgot my own advice. Everything is fixable.

While I kept the weapons nice and clean the trophy racks were lightly rusted with the AK Interactive Rust Streaks. (Given that I use a lot of different companies now I think I'll have to figure out a glossary of abbreviations), the trophies themselves were also weathered with a wash of very thinned Karak Stone, important as otherwise they stand out too much. An Imperial Fist and an Ultramarine graciously donated their helmets to the cause.

While we're talking trophies I thought I'd mention how I did the severed head as it came out nicely. If nicely is the word. A Rakarth Flesh basecoat was shaded with Agrax Earthshade and some patchy Athonian Camoshade followed that to give a mottled look. A quick rehighlight with Rakarth, some Pallid Wych Flesh eyes and then on to adding a discrete amount of blood. Given that this head was repeated on two tanks, I painted the service studs silver on one and as boils on this one. The boils are just Bugmans Glow with a Balor Brown "head", eww.

And that is your lot. Another three Predators and four renegade Land Speeders are on the painting table then it is back into more guard. Huzzah!

TTFN

Inq28 - A Very Fatal Femme

Hello to one and all, hope you've all had a good bank holiday weekend (for the UK readers). My bank holiday included - hang on to your seats - some painting. I know, surprising right? In this case it was a very nice final addition to my Grey Knights Inquisitor Retinue:

She is technically a crusader in the rules - storm shield and power sword. I'll probably use her as some form of assassin/infiltrator in battlegear for Inq28. The model itself is a Hasslefree Miniatures HFA004 Kat figure with a couple of modifications. Its an older model from Hasslefree but still a great pose and typically nice Kev White anatomy and sculpting. I whipped off the head and replaced it with an Elysian Drop Troops helmet. It might look a bit large to some but that is because we have become habituated to seeing helmets sculpted skin tight and paper thin. This one is more akin to a motorcycle helmet. Might have to try and get a version of her on a motorbike somehow... The shield is a Space Marine combat shield with added green stuff strapping.

Colour wise, there was only really one choice. Matrix-black PVC. I didn't want her to be monotone though so anything that could be leather - corset, webbing, holster, boots, gloves - went a nice rich, brown leather. Start from Rhinox Hide, add some Doombull Brown for first highlight, then add Tuskgor Fur to the mix for the second highlight. I chucked in some Flayed One Flesh for the final sharp edge highlights and then glazed it all back down with Agrax Earthshade. The black is simply Vallejo Black with gloss varnish. PVC doesn't shade much and highlights in very sharp catchlights. I could have gone through and painted every individual catchlight but there is this magical stuff called gloss varnish that will do it all in one hit and from any angle. I did the math.

I'm becoming very fond of this trick for making a reflective visor. Army Painter Shining Silver basecoats the visor. Then blue and black-green inks from Vallejo provide a vague landscape. Rehighlight with Shining Silver and then gloss varnish. Looks lovely. By the way, the steel above the visor isn't shaded with Nuln Oil, instead I used thinned Vallejo black wash. It is a pure-er black.

I wanted the shield to be a battered relic of the Inquisitor's. I freehanded on the design and then took a deep breath before adding tons of scratches and dings to show the hard usage the shield goes through. Note that despite being exactly the same colour there is contrast between the shield (and indeed the helmet) and the catsuit. This is because you can contrast with texture as well as colour.

Her glowing blade was made simplicity itself by one of the new edge paints. A couple of coats of Gauss Blaster Green made a nice bright basecoat. Highlighted by adding Ceramite White, glazed down with thinned Green Ink and rehighlighted. I then added green glaze to the hilt and the arm with a line of Gauss Blaster Green up the arm as a hard reflection. I then re-glossed the area to make for a nice reflected glow in the PVC.

So, as the workometer shows, the Inquisitor's whole warband is now complete. As far as the Grey Knights are concerned that is. I'm once more Inquisitor hooked and there is going to be more, much more being added! The rhino that will carry this unit is going to be represented by an Eisenkern APC, once they are finally released:

Won't that be shiny? Anyway, I'm back to work now with Purple tanks on the workbench. Expect pics very soon!

TTFN