Something a bit Wyrd

Wyrds are a powerful but limited psychic in the 40k universe. Whereas a fully trained and disciplined psyker can throw all kinds of powers about a Wyrd is good at only one thing. But very, very good at it...

What we have here is the last of the warband groups for the Inq28 commission, there is one inquisitor left but he is a treat for when I finally get those Eldar tanks finished. In the group there is a beastmaster wyrd with her snakes, a summoner with her conjoured spirit and a too-skinny pilot who photographed terribly and thus is now Lady Not-Appearing-In-This-Post. Lets start with snake lady.

I've no idea who makes this but with the exception of a slightly odd face it is a fun model to paint. Her whole demeanour, pose and outfit just screamed "Indonesia" at me so a quick search on the Googles brought me a colour palette and some make up (which never photographs well). The snakes in her hands and the loose one needed to be different species. Well, needed to be is a bit of a stretch... I love painting animals and having a chance to play with three snakes was too much fun to pass up. For those curious, the loose one is a rattlesnake, green is a constrictor and the little one around her left wrist is a coral snake. As normal with my animal work, reference material is essential and the colours tend to be custom mixes fiddled back and forth until just right. When doing animal markings do not skimp on the fiddly details. The darker green around the white on the constrictor, the dark edges and pale borders on the rattler "lozenges" on it's back. If you just do a dark brown shape or the pale markings without the dark it won't look "right". Take the time and be thoroughly rewarded.

The summoner and her spirit servitor I decided to handle in an almost monochrome. Blue tones across the whole thing with only the twinned gold blades (which I see as being her focus to command the spirit) and her hair providing spot colours. With her ridiculously complex robes I thus needed several colours of blue going on to separate the different elements of the garment. I wound up using all of GW's blue tones - including blue-grey The Fang - in order to paint her. I also "black-lined" the edges of the garments to strengthen the boundaries. Black lining is painting a very dark shade, sometimes black, usually almost as a wash along where you want the shadow. I used a mix of the blue and black washes to do this and it makes more difference than you might think.

Her spirit servitor was simplicity itself. Just blue highlighted through to white and glazed back down again. I deliberately didn't go fancy on it, I wanted it to look like a being made of pure energy with no personality other than what she bestows upon it. Where the energy "grounds" into the scenic base I put some limited object source lighting in. I had to keep it restrained as otherwise the base would just be, well, blue...

That's all for today folks, more soon!

TTFN

Inquisitor Dredd

Hi folks, another quick Inq28 update for you. Today a servant of the Inquisition with a chin of granite and badass to spare:

This chap is an Avatars of War witch hunter with some 40k additions to make him into quite the badass Inquisitor. Like a lot of AoW stuff he's got plenty of character while also containing some wonky sculpting (on this one, head too large, no neck). We replaced his weapons with plasma pistols, added some protective scrolls, scanner, purity seals and a brass etch =I= for his hat. Given that the shape of his mouth is almost exactly that of Judge Joe Dredd from the 2000AD comics (and the brilliant Karl Urban movie) he became Inquisitor Dredd in my head for the duration of painting.

He leads this squad into battle so needed to look down to earth and threatening. A big black leather duster seemed to fit the bill. The camera struggled to pick it up but I'm finally happy with my method for black leather. A basecoat of Val German Camo Black-Brown is shaded with two thinned layers of Black Ink mixed with a bit of Lahmian medium. Then highlights are added with the Black-Brown again and then the edges are "scuffed" with Val Camo Black-Brown and Val Deck Tan mix (roughly 3:1). This gives the brown-ey bone scuffing to the edges of black leather. Otherwise he is quite unremarkable painting-wise. The details are nice though, bottles, pouches, a noose, vampire killing stakes (clearly anti-psyker) and so on. He's armed for bear and more than a fit leader for the "SWAT team".

As part of the last bits of commission, I was tying off a few loose ends that my client had found. A last four Death Korps of Krieg (above) and an orphaned daemonette from a long prior commission (below)

Thank goodness for writing methods and paint recipes in the blog! Records and journals are your friend folks! More soon

TTFN

Strength Enough to Prosper

There is a quote that floats through a lot of 40k publications:

Only the insane have strength enough to prosper;

Only those who prosper can truly judge what is sane...

Kinda sums up a lot of why the 40k universe is the way it is. The subject of today's post has more than strength enough...

This chap is a Black Scorpion miniatures "Mad Hatter" being used as yet another Inquisitor. Appropriately, he leads the group that I dubbed the Bonker's Brigade, yep, the ones with a drunken Macaque as a part of a warband:

So a special bunch at the best of times. Given the general red, black and linen colour scheme it was fairly straightforward to fathom how Inquisitor McNutcase should be painted:

I made only one small alteration, the brass etch =I= symbol cut and attached as a playing card in the hatband. Much more "Alice" Mad Hatter. The cloak was a new red for me; I'd not used Khorne Red much as, frankly, I thought the unmodified colour was a bit 'meh'. It is helped a lot though by a Carroburg Crimson wash and the proper highlighting (Wazdakka Red and Squig Orange glazed with Bloodletter). Ends up quite a nice tone. I couldn't fathom what the hell he was doing with a chained (and farcically busty for her height) girl at his feet until... she's got a demon tail. Obviously she is a relatively early stage demonhost. The alterations haven't gone far yet. Given her pose I dread to think what their relationship is.

That'll be all for this week, it's been one of those weeks where circumstances have kept me away from the desk more than at it! More next week. Have a good weekend folks.

TTFN

A Rovin' A Rovin' Inquisitor

Hi folks, today we are looking over a fair sized brick of Imperial armoured power, the mighty Land Raider.

This one has been requisitioned (and given the amount of decoration, I'd say permanently) by an Inquisitor. Inquisitors come in all shapes and sizes, some are quiet, discrete men and women who investigate in secret and only reveal themselves to make a high profile arrest or to stage a trial. Then there are the ones who stamp in dressed head to toe in gold power armour seconding entire guard regiments to their cause and taking main battle tank/transport hybrids as their personal rides. This one was pimped up by the client with some scibor panels and forgeworld doors, more on those later.

This tank needed to match (ish) the two rhinos I'd painted before so colour selection was more planning where on a Land Raider the bands of red would go. You can't take them all the way across the front neatly like you can on a rhino but you can make it look similar. Grey drybrushed edges (which have shown up in photography not at all of course) took care of the black then it was in with the block colours. Ooh, in the photo above you can see the cabling on the lascannons. I've finally figured out the fastest way to paint these. Pick a neutral colour for your scheme (I went with Waargh Flesh) and paint the whole bundle. Then you only need three other colours (red, blue and yellow for me) and paint every other cable in the bundle with one of these. The majority colour is the green but you don't notice it. Feels a lot faster. Agrax Earthshade is a nice way of shading and delineating the individual cables as well as muting the bright colours.

Quick view from above, the twin heavy stubbers were a good idea, helps reinforce the "not belonging to space marines" vibe. You can also see the Scibor top panels to which I added brass etch =I= symbols. A quick word on the panels... I'm not keen. Don't get me wrong, love the design work, they add a seriously gothic vibe if you are into that with marines. What bugs me is the loss of function (the side doors cannot open with these panels in place) which causes that "why would you add this" tic in the back of your mind. Combine this with a more and more common problem of really, really thin, low lines as decoration which cause real painting headaches and I'm not a fan. Why do they cause headaches? Well, dear reader, just because you can sculpt and cast a line a quarter of a mm across and about the same high doesn't mean you should. [As an aside, Scibor can't cast a line a quarter of a mm across, the damn things fade in and out] Why should you not? Because they're too low to take paint from the edge of a brush. Surface tension pulls the paint to the panels beneath. This is the easiest and neatest way to paint these sorts of details, you'll notice Citadel only sculpt lines at about 0.5mm at thinnest and then they make damn sure their raised, that's designing with the painter in mind. Because of this problem you have to essentially free hand paint every... damn... line. Frankly, you'd be better off with freehand, easier and I would warrant neater. Worth thinking about. Either pick a scheme without a gold contrast (seriously) or use drybrushing to pick them out and then fill in the background. Mild grumble over.

I kept the weathering light on this one, just rusty exhaust system (Ammo rust streaks over AP Gun Metal and Nuln Oil) and dirty tracks (Vallejo Track Primer, drybrush AP Gun Metal, wash Nuln Oil). I wasn't completely happy with how the concrete dust weathering went on the rhinos and my usual policy is avoid what you aren't happy with. Besides, an Inquisitor egotistical enough to claim a damn Land Raider as his own has valets too...

TTFN

TwInquisitors

TwInquisitors, Twin... Inquisitors... see what I did there..? I'll get me coat.

A quick update today on these chaps:

I was working on the last three Eldar Corsair tanks - have been for a week now, WIP picture below - and the slow progress was driving me slightly nuts. Needed a quick and fun win, Inquisitors to the rescue!

with my wrist being the way it is, this sort of thing takes forever...

As there have been a lot of Inquisition types on the blog recently, I thought these two would be an interesting angle to take as an article. They're identical base models, with only minimal conversion work and a paint job to make them look different. A nice illustration of how you can add a little variety even with limited resources.

First up is an Inquisitor whose warband is still being painted, shades of red and blue are the main colours hence the jacket and trouser colours. Against a bold colour like the red I needed fairly simple choices for the armour and coat. Reddish-brown leather complimented the red of the jacket - my normal Rhinox Hide, highlighted with Mournfang and glazed with Agrax Earthshade - and gloss black with steel details for the armour and weapons. Something to note, the arm holding the plasma pistol is made from a skeleton forearm and the hand holding the pistol (it's a Forgeworld DKK one I think). Skeleton bits make for elegant, cheap and simple bionics if used sparingly. While I'm talking modelling, I have to say, the face of this model is one of the ugliest bits of sculpting I've seen in ages. I complain often about a lack of defined features, well, this chap is the other way, defined features that do not conform to any facial anatomy I recognise. I've minimised their impact with painting and I realise that the sculpt was probably difficult to achieve with the heavy undercuts of the hat and collar to consider but yeeesh. Not a good job, rare for Citadel. Were I to do another one of these for myself I would probably either transplant the entire head or fashion some sort of mask as the rest of the model is splendid.

For wave two of TwInquisitors we have a man who leads the Elysians I painted earlier. He therefore received the same Vallejo scheme of English Uniform, Flat Earth leather and Cam Olive Green armour as the girls in order to bind him to them. The black hat is mandatory for all inquisitors in this commission but with this chap I felt a black coat would be a win too. Counter the fairly bright jacket. The little death-cherub thing is a resin piece from an unknown manufacturer (this has been happening a lot in this commission, sorry!). I chose the part of the model that made the cherub look most "weightless" to attach him to. He carries the tattered Inquisitorial Mandate authorising the every action of puritan-hatted man. Of the two, this is the one I am happiest with but that is probably because the scheme is more in line with my usual aesthetic.

More soon, especially those corsair tanks. Very almost finished with the commissions, will have to give some real thought to the direction and style for the blog soon. Want to try and keep some variety to the content here!

TTFN

Rangers with Character (part two)

Head over to part one if you haven't already read it ;)

Welcome folks, to part two of rangers with character. This time, the real characters of the force, the Odd Squad:

These are the weirdos of the rangers, the ones who do more than just shoot crossbows and whack things with greataxes. Thieves, vagabonds, a pirate and a lunatic, good company! Lets start with the lunatic...

I have fallen in love with this model. It's a Reaper dwarf hunter and I suspect is very old, it comes on an integral metal base with a nifty animal cage. I had to remove it to fit him on a normal sized base though. There is just so much interest on this figure. From the mad rat-pelt cloak to the mangy moggy at his feet to the eye-patched face. He's a brilliant character. Painting wise, there was a few challenges, first was to make the rat cloak look "real" and allow the rats to stand out. This was fairly easy as I just adapted my stonework painting method for rats, vary the base colour a little and make sure that no two of the same exact colour are next to each other. I'd love to tell you what colours I used for them and the cat but I can't, like with most of my animal painting it was a dab of this and that mixed until it reached the colour shown on the reference photos. The loincloth thing might have been just a boring scrap of cloth but I figured he could have a map of the tunnels where he does his ratting easily to hand. A few quick lines and presto, mappo!

Next up we have a father and daughter pairing, thieves, both of them. Again, Reaper minis designed as a father and daughter, I even liked the name they gave them Copperthumb so stole it. These were some of the easiest to paint as I had pretty much no decisions to make! The clothing and cloaks needed to match their existing ranger compatriots and all that was left was skin and wood really! I've talked about the cloak weathering on the original Ranger post so I'll leave it there if you want to find it.

Then there is the pair of murderers, sorry, sentry eliminators on probation. Once again, Reaper dwarfs, the cloaked one is probably my least favourite sculpt of the bunch but even he carries a certain something, a sense of flashing blades and swirling cloak. The hidden face makes it quite sinister as well. Neither of these got any of the normal linen-cream contrast that I use against the Incubi Darkness main colour. wouldn't have worked on people whose job is secret murder in the dark. Instead they got black (most clearly seen on the more feminine of the two stab happy nitwits). There's an ugliness to these two that I think underscores their role nicely.

And finally, another old favourite that I've been hoping to find a place for for a while now. The arabian dwarf. In the fluff he's a pirate and trade envoy that went a bit native. Painting-wise he offered me a few rare opportunities for colour and opulent fabrics on a dwarf. First, I painted the waistcoat and shirt in the normal Stormbourne scheme to tie him to the rest of the army. I realised that the trousers would probably also have to be turquoise if the balance was to work. To differentiate them I first painted them as silk (i.e. much, much higher highlights than normal and in sharp folds) and then added the not-really-NMM gold band around the waistcoat to seperate the areas. That left the cummerbund sash. Up until now I had been thinking to paint it cream silk, keep the theme rolling. But I realised that he needed that spark of bright colour to pull him out of the herd, make him seem different. A quick glance at the colour wheel told me all I needed to know. Bright red-orange it is then. I'm glad I did, it really sets off the whole model. Gives him an individual flair.

And that's all! Hope you've enjoyed the companion fluff articles over on Beard Bunker, I've loved painting and creating these guys.

TTFN

Models! Git Chore Bargain Models Here!

Hi folks, in the final wave of Operation "make room for and finance new projects" I'm selling a few more bits. If you want any of the lots below then send me a message through the "contact us" button above:

Pretty big, mostly fully-painted space marine army. Captain, Chaplain, 3 full tactical squads, 10 assault marines without jump packs, dreadnought, 3 land speeders, 5 terminators, 11 scouts (mostly sniper rifles). Older army, painted about 12 years ago and has been around the block a bit, few repairs here and there. Would be £225 to buy new and a scary amount more to buy painted (another £420 on cheap rate). I don't want anything like that. For all these, anyone want to give me £180 uk post included.

Classic, nastily painted necromunda wyrd telepath. Only really good for stripping and starting again in my opinion. £7 including uk post anyone?

Classic ork army booster. If you've an older style ork army or are wanting to inject a bit of variety into your force then this is for you. OOP warboss, 8 stormboyz, 5 tankbustas, 2 deff dreads with skorchas, bunch of dread and kan bits to change weapons or just for bits. £60 (less than the price of two new deff dreads) gets you the whole shebang. UK post included.

White Dwarf 300 celebration model, looks like this (link) assembled. Still new in packaging. £30, uk post included.

Hope to hear from happy buying type people soon. I'll happily post elsewhere in the world but will need to work out P&P individually.

TTFN

Rangers with Character (part one)

As most people who read this blog will know, I've been burning the painting oil pretty bright (or at least as long as my wrists hold out on any given day) to get the last of the commission work finished. This hasn't left much (any) time for my own hobby lately, so I started a fun little Dwarf drying-time project over the last couple of weeks and this is the result:

They are a sort of Impossible Mission Force of Rangers for my Dwarf army. We do a lot of narrative role-play style gaming to achieve non-battlefield objectives in the campaign (intelligence gathering, item retrieval, occasional straight up sabotage) and I wanted a crew of individuals to serve as my normal RPG force. Enter Dwalin's Dirty Dozen, twelve - slightly unhinged - Dwarfs dedicated to getting the job done, no matter the cost and with a minimal amount of ethics... Over on the Beard Bunker there is a series of companion articles to these two posts (I'm splitting the article in two so as not to have a nine mile long post) detailing their in game effects and nifty backstories. Here, we'll talk painting and modelling.

In part one we'll focus on the more "ranger-ey" half of the dozen, the "odd squad" can wait till next time and where better to start than with their fearless leader Stromni Skystride:

Stromni is a Hasslefree miniatures dwarf (you'll see more of Kev's Dwarfs as the army continues to grow) who is just perfect as the grizzled, taciturn leader of a bunch of hard-bitten rangers. Handily he's also armed with a shield so I can keep him alive a smidgeon longer than some of the others. In painting Stromni (and indeed most of the other eleven) I wanted to follow the scheme already set out in the ranger regiment so that I could add most of these nifty models in to the existing unit (and replace Bugman making him once more a special character). The classic Stormbourne scheme of Incubi Darkness and linen-cream (Val Deck Tan washed with Seraphim Sepia and rehighlighted with Deck Tan) almost gets lost under all the other colours on the model, the Charadon Granite (I kept a pot specially) cloaks, leather armour and other camp goods rather crowd it out. You can see it on the shield though, and yep, I got a bit excited with the shield design. I'm still not as smooth with the freehand as I used to be (stiff wrists do not help) but the overall effect is nice and complex.

Next up is Stromni's number 2 and new champion of the regiment. He's a Reaper ranger from their Pathfinder range and he... is... perfect for a warhammer ranger champion. Ideal armament and the gear he has is sublime. Look at the little tea-kettle attached to his pack! I added a fondness for Cathayan tea to his backstory just because of it! Something I will say about this model is that not one strap, buckle, pouch etc is pointless. All the straps link up (even under cloaks where it is easy to forget), all the gear has a purpose, he works. You wouldn't believe how often I see sculpting where someone has just put a strap around a leg or a random pouch with no thought at all to what it is for, just to have an area of empty space broken up. Highly recommended.

This is the fire support of the unit, a ranger with a reconditioned repeater hand gun! He's the only conversion I had to do, all the rest were stories informed by finding cool minis I wanted to paint. In this case it was a relatively simple matter of cutting off the existing rifle and pinning the business end of an Empire repeater handgun in it's place. I contemplated trying to get the left hand under the gun but it would have taken a lot of sculpting, as it is the raised hand looks nice. A sort of "everything is fine at the moment, I don't have to fire the gun'o'doom" pose. I did extend his cloak, the sculpting on the cloaks really lets the plastics down at the moment. Very thin rolled ProCreate was cut to shape, draped over the areas I wanted the cloak to hang and blended in when it started to cure. Surprisingly easy, I may have to do some more cloakage.

Finally for part one, we have the snipers, more Reaper dwarfs armed only with crossbows to provide some quieter fire support. All of these are covered in leather armour so to speed things up I started with the Rhinox Hide that I've used for the dwarf's leather all over the model, highlighting with Mournfang Brown and shading with Agrax Eathshade. Anywhere where there was a strap or pouch surrounded by more leather colour I used a mildly contrasting leather colour, in this case pure Mournfang brown highlighted with a little bone, to subtly differentiate the different areas. While the camera hates subtle changes the lacing on the armour of the lady in the middle is where you can see it clearest. Oh and a hat tip to whoever sculpted the head on the dwarf on the right, that thing is ridiculously expressive. Love it.

That's all for part one, the odd squad coming for part two!

TTFN

Last of Leviathan and General Sturm

Hi folks, another quick update for you to round off the week, this time the very last of the Leviathan command staff project and one of them was rather a lot of work...

Lets go in order of difficulty, which means the first will be the Rommel X on the left there

Readers with good memories will remember this chap from this post. Well, while the head I'd used looked ok unpainted, once finished, neither the client or I were quite happy. So we agreed that I'd ditch the head we had for him and replace it with one of the eisenkern heads. It still isn't quite right, scale wise, but better than before. Happens sometimes.

Next up is one of the Lupus chaps from the Flecktarn Project. This fellow is their liason to the command staff and so has divested the normal gas mask that the Flecktarn suited sorts normally wear. I've talked about how to paint the camo in some detail before so I'll just leave that link there to explain. The head is again one of the Eisenkern accessory heads. I've mentioned in the post about them that Dreamforge are better at solid objects than organic ones. The faces on these are non-existent. All the features you see granting him any expression have been faked in there with paint. Without that you would just get nose and mouth. Not too much of a problem if you've been painting a while and have a grasp of facial structure but could be an irritation if new to the game.

Finally, we have the very last of the Leviathan command staff. This is a vostroyan looking-chap from the same regiment as the others. He's based off the lord commissar model but the brief was to make him both vostroyan-ish and to have the combined mini storm bolter/lightning claw weapons that General Sturm wears in the Dawn of War computer games. This turned out trickier than I first thought. I went ahead and sculpted my best interpretation of the classic vostroyan gas mask and furry hat combo. My sculpting still needs to come on a looong way but I can cover a lot of sins with paint. The weapons though were problematic. First, I thought that the grey knight storm bolters would be a starting point. Nope, those things are massive on an imperial guard arm. Ludicrous size. That's ok, thought I, I'll make 'em out of two bolt pistols, file them down on the inner surfaces, glue together. Nope. Still huge. So finally I realised that I would have to straight up fabricate them to scale.

They're made from stacked plasticard strip. The bottom strip was left about twice as long as the others and then the claws carved from that. Brand new blades for the knife the order of the day for this job. The stack is glued together and then sanded and scraped smooth. I rounded the corners a little in order to stop it looking like just a box. I cut the back end of a bolt pistol for the mechanisms at the back and used the magazine on the side. Finally a thin cut bit of plasticard strip carved to shape formed the familiar iron sight ridge along the top. Worked better than I'd imagined. Shoulda just jumped in to fabrication first rather than fiddling around with the first two options. Live and learn.

With that, the Leviathan project is finished! Just Inq28 and Corsair tanks to go.

TTFN

Inq28 Ecclesiarchy warband

I am not asking for blood. I can take your blood.
I am asking for souls. Only you can give me your souls.
- Dolan Chirosius - Sermon On the Road to Gathalamor

In the 40k universe the church has a rather central and all-powerful role. The Ecclesiarch is amongst one of the nine permenant slots on the council of the High Lords of Terra. They have militant and fanatical servants and some even take to the battlefield in the form of the Frateris Militia. They're also the subject of today's post.

These guys are a part of the fast-finishing Inq28 commission, a gang of servants of the church rather than the Inquisition. Rather like the US law enforcement agencies the Imperium has many branches of it's organisation whose jurisdiction overlap. Rooting out heresy is as much the Ecclesiarchy's job as it is the Inquisition's. This sometimes leads to, shall we say... friction between groups in the field. A subtle Inquisitor's investigation might be blundered into by a loud and fervent Ecclesiarchy cell. Or a group that has been left alone to be studied and followed to a greater heresy might be captured and burned by a monodominant maniac. There's a nifty bit in Eisenhorn where he is pursued by a nutcase Ecclesiarchy Witch Hunter who is convinced that he is a chaos worshipping heretic. So a gang of pure Ministortum agents makes a lot of sense and can cause all kinds of fun.

Painting wise, we'll start with the basic frateris militia lads. As usual the client had done all of the assembly work so with some of the bits later on I don't know their source. In this case it is a mixture of Empire flagellants, Catachan lasgun arms and a marauder axe. The anatomically challenged "sack'o'footballs" Catachan arms look as good here as they do anywhere (silk purses and sows ears y'know) and really change the tone of the flagellant models. They look much beefier and less malnutrition ridden. As the gang was to fit in with another mob of religious nutcases that the client had already painted blue that was the overall tone. There isn't a lot to say about it. Kantor Blue all the way really.

There is though one special frater. The chap with the massive flag. I do not know which company makes the huge burning banner but it was nifty to paint. By using the blue and white used on the rest of the warband to edge the banner I freed the inner section to be whatever I wanted it to be while trying it to the rest of the group. With that design, it had to be stylised flames, as usual, brighter flames closer to the source, red flames further away. Lots of gentle blending to give nice gradients on the bigger sections. I'm chuffed with the finished effect. The big cross needed to contrast without introducing new colours so either white, blue or black... black is more gothic... black it is! To make it stand out I threw some of my faux not-really-NMM-gold on the edging, I generally use the NMM-ish for "metallic" fabric. Differentiates it from the actual hard shiny stuff.

Lastly we have the pair that I mentally named The Cardinals. These are both Empire wizards with some 40k bits kit-bashed on and nifty mitre-hatted heads from I know-not-where. I especially love the shifty yet contemptuous look on the face on Sword Cardinal. The gas mask on Flag Cardinal means we'll never know his face. Speaking of Flag Cardinal, I was in a quandary about what to put on his banner. Some sort of devotional icon seemed appropriate, the dirty linen colour I'd achieved as the background colour got me thinking Shroud of Turin. That in turn made me remember an old Sister of Battle banner for the Order of the Argent Shroud which had a skeleton with halo. That seemed to work so I went for it. One stylised skellie later and job done.

With less than a double handful of infantry to go and one tank, this commission is well within site of the finishing line. There are 4 corsair tanks to go as well but the end is neigh. Mixed feelings about that but I really need to finish so I can start, y'know, the rest of my life ;) Until next time folks.

TTFN

Inquisitor Solomon Lok

Hi folks, a quick post for you today with just the one dude in it. Forgeworld's tasty Inquisitor Solomon Lok:

As the current batch of models I am working through have that bizarre "resist-being-finished-and -seem-to-take-nine-times-longer-then-they-have-any-right-to" quality that some models have; I needed a quick win to balance my humours. Enter stage left Solomon! The sculpt is a lovely one, they've balanced ostentatiousness with practicality, the hood over the face is good and intimidating and the armour peeking out from under the robes is a treat to behold. Likewise the little details like the Inquisition =I= as the sword hilt are very nice. Simon Egan knocked this one out of the park. My only gripe is that the casting I was painting had slightly soft detail on the chest and belt. Small thing, barely worth worrying about.

On the painting front, I knew that the hood was going to be black, that was a given as all the Inquisitor head coverings in the Inq28 commission are black to help them hang together as a conclave. I wanted to emphasise the practical ostentation so a leather coat to attach the armour to seemed a win. In this case the leather being supplied by Rhinox Hide shaded with Agrax Earthshade, highlighted with increased amounts of Mournfang Brown and then scuffed with some drybrushed edges and a mix of the top highlight colour and some Val Deck Tan. In order to provide some delineation between the gloves; belt; pauldron armour straps and the coat I used Val Leather Brown  for these, also highlighted with Deck Tan and with Agrax Earthshade as a shading a toning wash.

Of note is the lining of the coat visible most clearly on the far left image. I was using red as the main spots of colour (he hangs out with these guys at the bottom of the post) and thought that a dark wine red would look nice in the lining. Trouble is, there is no sculpted texture to show where the turned back leather meets the lining. So we fake it with some paint effects. First we shade the red down toward the edges of the lining. Then we paint a bright edge highlight around the border where the leather meets the lining (I used the scuffing Deck Tan mix for this). Finally, add a darker line between the edge highlight and the red lining. It essentially fakes the "depth" of the leather. The following early 90's era CGI image should help explain:

No expense spared there... none at all. Not a lot more to talk about on this fellow as everything else is mostly fiddly painting to bring out the lettering on the cloak edges (the camera has not been kind to these) and some basic metalwork. Fun quick project. Onwards! These six will not beat me, they will be painted...

TTFN