Totally not an X-man, promise...

Heya folks, we're here again with a quick shiny for you, this time another cracking Hasslefree sculpt:

This one is Jynx, although I quickly began thinking of her as Scarlet Witch and had to work hard not to just go ahead and paint her like that! The concession to my mental picture was the glowing red eyes...

This one is part of the Green and Yellow gang that the Gunslinger and the Special Forces Dude belong to. So she needed a predominant green and black vibe with a touch of yellow thrown in. The yellow was going to be a problem for this model. Anywhere I looked the yellow wasn't going to work. Then I had a moment of inspiration. I could make the leather jacket more of a motorbike jacket and use some of the bright contrast patterning that's popular on bike leathers. This had the effect of making her even more of an X-man but worked nicely for getting that linking spot colour in. By the way, the dress is more intensely green but the camera said "no" to getting both the red and the green balanced and I don't like digitally manipulating just a part of the picture, feels like cheating!

Speaking of red, we need to natter about the face, she was in such an obvious "spellcasting" pose that I wanted something to indicate her power rather than just looking like a natty dancer. Glowing eyes fit the bill nicely. As usual, Object Source Lighting (OSL) is done mostly by building up layers of thin glazes. The trick is mostly where you do not light more than where you do. I talked about the basics of choosing a radius for the illumination etc waaaay back in 2011 (christ, 2011...) with my Blood Angels Librarian. The consideration here was realising where the face would be in "shadow" from the OSL, she reslly did not look right until I'd carefully rehighlighted the bridge of the nose and the brow. The light was spilling out rather than illuminating. I also made sure that the inside of her hair-do caught some light too, radius of illumination y'see?

That's all folks for another post, more shinies soon.

TTFN

Hasslefree Gunslinger

Greetings! There are times where commission painting is a real boon. I've really liked this model for a long time but haven't ever had a reason to get one. Today though? I got to paint one, a Hasslefree "Ryan" masquerading as a gunslinger for the client's Inq28 warband.

Seriously, this model is awesome. The sculpting - like a lot of Kev's recent work - is dynamic, the weight distribution is great and most of all, it works from every single angle. No, really:

Just like the Ratling pilot from a few weeks ago this works all the way round. By the way, now I know how to do animated gifs? Expect a few more 360's... But now, painting!

This chap is to go with the warband that started with the kneeling chap from this post. Thus he needed the green with tiny yellow accents. As the kneeling chap had a military green fatigue suit, I figured that I would carry over the olive drab too. Thus all the tactical webbing went a nice desaturated olive green. Ended up lovely. Skin tone was Dwartist's Burnt Umber/Beige Brown mix that I just love having the opportunity to break out. More people not sculpted as caucasians please sculptors! I like the variety!

That's all for today folks, more soon!

TTFN

Batmobiles! 40k Style...

No really, they really do seem to be Inquisitorial Batmobiles...

Today's offerings are a pair of Inquisitorial Interceptors made by Wargames Exclusive, another third party with interesting products and a loose interpretation of intellectual property... Seriously though, at least these guys don't do the Chapterhouse thing and just use TM's at will. I prefer the nod and a wink approach. As you'll see on the site, these are not what you'd call "roomy" in scale. Indeed, I started to think of these as 40k versions of Formula One cars, single occupant, built for speed and little else. I can see them being outriders for transports or pursuit interceptors very nicely. What they aren't is really inquisitorial transports. More like support vehicles. The styling is further toward the grimdark bonkers than my usual tastes allow for (commission though so irrelevant) but I will say that they've executed the bonkers nicely. They're on the right side of "way too much" and so they work. I like 'em.

We'll start with the more aggressive of the two. All of these cars came in a few solid lumps of resin. Assembly was a piece of cake and while painting them took waaay longer than I anticipated they were fairly straightforward to pull off.

The brief was for a mix of black, red and brass. Usual inquisition colours. I ended up going heavy on the black as - bluntly - it was cool. Heavy iron and satin black with occasional red accents? Yup, that'll do nicely. It's tough to see in the picture but this one got some subtle heat staining on the exhausts - what with them being so close to the engine. The exposed parts also got a good oiling with the Ammo Engine Oil enamels.

The dude in the back regrets choices he made...

This car comes complete with a servitor at the back and a servo skull at the front. I figured the skull was for seeing where they are going through that girt hench engine and the servitor is to tune the engine and take over for brief periods when those assault cannons need firing. Also, you gotta love the Adam West era rocket engine at the back there.

Then, we move on to what in my head was the Munstermobile. First, let me just say, I love the grill and lamps on this car. They worked just cracking. Obviously a rather large feature of this car are those massive eagles on the rear wings (badum tish). I agonised over those. Brass would have hauled it into the realms of ridiculous bling. Steel would have changed the tone of the car, rather more utilitarian. Black would have looked like I'd forgotten to paint them (nb there are some scrolls at the front underneath the =I= symbols. I deliberately left them black as they would have ruined the balance of the vehicle in anything else). Finally, I realised that a dark smokey red with a nice low gloss finish would look smashing and mercifully, I was right.

A word about the lamps, It always bugs me when I see lamps painted as always on or as gemstones. The bright colours offer a splash of interest, sure, but it just feels weird. Most lights on vehicles are off most of the time. Unless you are painting the thing to look like it is in the dark it is tough to square the "look". Instead, I like my lights to look "off". How you achieve that is by starting from damn near black. Highlight up to almost a pure colour (and a muted one at that) on the lower edges but make sure the overall tone is dark. Then put a couple of heavy glazes of the colour you want them to appear over the black and gloss varnish. You'll get the colour tone - those are clearly red and yellow - but they won't look like gems and you won't need OSL to feel "right". The Stay Back command on the back was inspired by pictures of military convoys in conflict zones and I thought the Reaper in conjunction with the message was adequate warning...

So yeah, fun project. It's made me want to arrange something similar - if a little more restrained - for my own Inq28 collection. Nifty models.

TTFN

Hasslefree Ratling Pilot

Greetings folks, it's been one of those quiet "hobby rut" type of phases for me, so I needed something to kick me out of my rut. Casting around for what I could do that would be fast and fun, I landed on my perennial distraction: Inq28 and a gorgeous, gorgeous sculpt from Hasslefree:

That is Kev White's HFP002 Sola, rather confusingly filed under "fantasy pirates" on the Hasslefree website. First time I saw her I knew I needed that model as it was one of those rare miniatures that seemed to "work" from every angle. Most have at least one angle where they look a bit clumsy, not this one. I'd already decided I wanted a second Inq28 warband and this wee lass was perfect as a gunslinging ratling pilot for the group.

 It's quite rare for me to emphasise just how tiny these things are but in this case it really needs emphasis to show just what an incredible job Kev did in getting all these tiny details to work on the model. Behind her is the extremely durable picture of Her Madge that all of us Brits carry in the form of a 2p piece (about the size of an American quarter dollar). So... very, verrrry small.

 I'd decided I wanted a former punk street kid vibe to the character. A little older and more restrained than the wild youth but with just that touch of tough, rebellious character. After all, this is a tiny ratling girl willing to leave the homeworld and adventure in a universe full of things at least twice as big as she is. The most obvious "punk-ey" element is the magenta streak in her hair (look way more subtle in the photos than in real life) which I'd toyed with a lot. I didn't want her to look frivolous - which I thought a complete dye job would have done - and the wrong colour would have leapt out from the hair too much. Waaay too much thought went in to that hair dye.

 Her gear I wanted very understated and pragmatic. Lots of blacks and brown leather with a splash of subdued colour in the dark turquoise top. The goggles I was chuffed with, I wanted that amber-brown aviator shades look and think I managed it. As usual I went with a couple of different browns for the leather to be able to differentiate the various "bits" of leather. I'd love to be able to give you the recipes but it was more of a "suck it and see" mixing session rather than thinking "tutorial". 

Basing for this warband will all be on some lovely paved resin bases I picked up from Firestorm made by "Model Display Products". A quick length of pinning wire and the models sit lovely on them. Once I've got them all painted I'll do my usual "story of the warband" article over on Beard Bunker but for now. I'll just concentrate on the pretties.

That's it for today folks, more shinies soon, I promise!

TTFN

Servants of the Omnissiah: Part 2: Skitarii Vanguard

Last time we met the slinking, infiltrating Ruststalkers, today, we have a group that is a touch more "in your face":

The Skitarii Vanguards are the "stormtroopers" of the Adeptus Mechanicus. Straightforward, no-nonsense soldiers... with tons of augmentations. Again, I have to rave a little about just how nice these models are: their weight distribution; their weapon design; the crusted detail; the clever undercut-averting coat design. Gorgeous is what they are. I will say, they are not a fast paint job, nothing with this much detail ever is, but reaaaaally worth it.

I've decided that only those of Tech Priest rank will wear overall red robes so I needed another scheme for these lads. As I worked the metallic areas on to the models I kept looking at the black undercoated overcoats (heh, English for the win there) and realised that some black leather stormcoats would bring the badass quotient right up. It's my usual black leather of Val German Camo Black Brown (a paint I use so often I should just abbreviate it to "that one") with a dash of black added. Shaded with Nuln Oil, highlighted with the original mix. Then I hit the leather with satin varnish and begin the wear. Add some Val Deck Tan - or any vague bone colour, Deck Tan is just so wonderfully flat and desaturated - to the original mix and start scuffing and scratching the edges of the coat with fine lines. Use a couple of lighter tones of the same mix to add variety. The new painted areas will be matte and seem roughened and scuffed. Lovely.

It took ages to figure out how the special weapon "worked". There was a battery pack, a row of vials, a tube of some kind down the middle, a pump action (!), and what was clearly either a pilot light or an injector of some kind. Why did I care? Because it affects how you choose to paint it. In the end I decided that the battery was just to maintain a magnetic field, the pump action pressurises the system before firing, the vials combine to a highly volatile gaseous compound that is flashed to plasma and accelerated by the magnetics. At the last moment the injector fires a catalyst into the plasma stream and sends an incandescent spear of furious energy at the enemy... Or so I think anyway. This led me to decide that a nice glass containment tube as the barrel reinforced by the steel furniture. By the way, check out that lovely specialist backpack. So much little detail on these guys. I decided that the leather pouches would be the same Val German Cam... That One but shaded with Agrax Earthshade and highlighted with a little Off White added. Same colour palette, different shades. Keeps the whole thing subtle and cohesive while allowing differentiation and a tiny bit of contrast.

I went again with the dark glass blade for the power sword. I like the idea that the blades are disposable and replaced after every battle as there is almost nothing sharper than knapped glass. I also decided that a dark wine red lining to the coats would give a tiny pop of colour and thematically tie them as direct servants of the Priesthood.

I find the official backstory for the Vanguard silly in the extreme and frequently contradictory. So I'm ignoring it. Instead, these are simply professional volunteer soldiers. Limbs altered to bionic replacements to function perfectly regardless of temperature or stress. No hand shake, perfect eye-to-hand response for shooting. Enhanced nervous systems and hypnotic combat trances keep them cold and present in the moment, unconcerned by risk or intimidation of the enemy. Able to dispassionately proceed until the battle's end at which point they will have to deal with emotional aftermath. I imagine they communicate entirely in encrypted binaric cant. Short bursts of digital information, difficult to garble, impossible to understand if overheard. Their rifles are not the crude spray and pray lasguns of the guard but precision semi-automatic high-power rifles. Each trigger press sending an aimed round at their target. That their reaction speed makes this process indistinguishable from rapid fired automatics is irrelevant... precision is honour to the Omnissiah.

In short, these are not "characters" like the Ruststalkers seem to be. They are grunts. Front-line, aggressive, relentless... and replaceable.

That's all folks, more soon!

TTFN

Death Korps, now with mustard

Ahoy shipmates, guess what? There's some more Death Korps leaving their assembly areas on my workbench and boarding the cardboard transport to the front lines.

I believe these are some kind of specialist unit on secondment to the rest of the DKK already with the client. Brief was for grey with mustard details.

The yellow is based on the Averlander yellow I use, i.e. Val Tan Yellow with glazes. In this case two coats of Seraphim Sepia to create a more ochre-ey (totally a word) followed by matt varnish to kill the shiny wash effect.

It's tough to see on the images but the greys are different between the armour; coat; and canvas mask/puttees. If you were painting for a studio and online photos you'd want more contrast. Realistic doesn't always look good on "film".

Final pics for the day are two random Inq28 goons. Well, one goon and a monk. The monk is based on a real order which are beige with brown flecks. Meant breaking out the pointillism to make the little flecks. The goon needed to look "classy-threatening" so pin stripe suit and a nice black leather trench-coat was the order of the day to go with a shotgun straight out of the ministry of emphasis.

That's all for today folks, not much to natter about so just enjoy the pretty pictures :)

If pretty pics are your thing by the way, head over to the Beard Bunker, I just finished my series of shots of our trip to the new warhammer world (from quite a while ago), there's some good stuff there.

Warhammer World - Part One; Part Two; Part Three.

TTFN

Servants of the Omnissiah: Part 1: Sicarian Ruststalkers

"We are the iron fist of the Imperium,

what possible use is there for the velvet glove?"

- Magos Explorator Cynia Breazeal, Cetus Cluster 4.160.834.M41.

Yes folks, today starts a new project just for me. A somewhat shiny, metallic project: A large Skitarii warband designed with Inq28 in mind. All glory to the Omnissiah!

Today's offerings are two Sicarian Ruststalkers. Let me tell ya folks, some of the Adeptus Mechanicus models are the best things GW has made since the Dark Eldar. Much like the Dark Eldar there are some slightly "ho hum" examples among the range (the electro priests having the most Warmachine/Warcraft ugliness for example) but the bits that I like? They are lovely. These Sicarians are delicate, elegant, have gorgeous pierced components giving lots of easy to paint visual interest. In short: Fantastic.

Ruststalker 985.Rho.14

Now, I shall level with you guys, I find some of the fluff for the Skitarii forces a little... silly. Very overblown and emphasising the ultra fanatical end of the Mechanicus spectrum. Thus I am choosing to ignore certain elements. The Ruststalkers though? They make sense, assassin cyborgs, what's not to like huh? I see these two as being infiltrating killers. Thin and agile, able to crawl through tight spaces and leap about. Anyone who has seen the Clone Wars cartoon series: I'm imagining the way the commando droids move in that. The kits have more variety than they first appear to have. The the extent that I could represent one Ruststalker favouring an Okinawan-style two sword technique (985.Rho.14) and the other (656.Rho.14) preferring a blade and main gauche dagger duelling style.

Ruststalker 656.Rho.14

Finally, lets actually talk painting! These two chaps were very much test models for the rest of the Skitarii warband so I was paying more attention to the overall impact than I was to what exact colours I was using, but, what I remember is: All of the Mechanicus models will almost certainly start with sequential drybrushes of steel colours all the way up to silver. In this case I also used a dark brown and german grey before I washed the whole thing in black ink to get nice black fatigues and dark brown leather. I wanted a very different vibe to the studio scheme, so no bright reds - only Tech priests are getting red robes - and no shining lights because, well, assassins right? I used bronze as the contrast for the armour and decided that I quite liked the dark glass-like blades the studio did. Dark Reaper shaded with black and highlighted through Thunderhawk Blue to almost white then glazed blue-green did the job. I finished it off by greasing and oiling the joints with Ammo Oil enamel paint. Exposed oily joints don't make a lot of sense in this context as it would just pick up sand and dirt but it looks cool and we'll assume the Mechanicus has solutions to that issue... totes.

I really like how these turned out. The basing was an experiment too, I wanted a scheme that would work in both urban and rural settings so went for "long collapsed overgrown rubble" with Baneblade Brown edging as the pale brown looks like the thin, sick soil you see in urban waste-grounds. I've got the next five - Skitarii Vanguard - on the workbench for evening and weekend sessions so there'll be more very soon. Until then

TTFN

Rocketgirl and friends

Hi folks, I'm back and I brought shinies!

These are a quartet of Inq28 operatives - probably not related in the client's own backstory but mashed together to prevent endless one-model-painted-posts (if people would prefer more regular but limited or sometimes repetitive posts let me know in the comments). The gang is a pair of - I think - Toughest Girls in the Galaxy, a kitbashed crusader from GW components and a nautical chap the origin of which I have no idea! an Aether Pirate from Miniatures of the North. As usual assembly all client, only colours are mine.

still struggling with colour fidelity, imagine this more crimson.

First up - as she looks most "in charge" of these four is the model I was thinking of as The Exorcist all through painting. The brief was for crimson robes, OSL staff and some sort of banishment scroll. So that is what we went with! I decided that I would pair the crimson with deep gold and mid brown leather. The colours worked nicely but needed some black lining to push the boundaries as there wasn't enough contrast in the scheme. Black lining is something we need to bring back more, especially those of us who like naturalistic schemes. The internet's obsession with "pushing contrast" makes great photographs but leaves us with that very cartoony, unrealistic look. I understand why studios do it. Trouble is, as photo sharing online is the way our community primarily interacts on painting it has become an unwelcome truism that high contrast is the only way as we're not judging the painting, we're judging the photos of the painting. A thin black-brown line is enough to break up the areas of detail and give us clean delineation of detail without that high contrast push. It may be old school, but it ain't useless.

There are bonus points available for anyone who recognises the banishment sigil on the scroll ;)

The crusader had an even simpler brief, red and white with lots of leather. I decided on a darker, more threatening red on this one with the white used very sparingly on the sleeve slashes. Initially, thinking of the lots of leather brief, I had the trousers in leather, but they were so clearly sculpted as fabric that it just looked wrong. I wound up deciding that the red was a uniform and the balance of the whole piece was improved. Speaking of which, the little spot colours of brass also help the balance. Before the helmet was brass with steel details it looked a bit plain and there was a weird stripe of brass across the midriff of the model with the sword hilt, belt and pouch aquillae all brass. Picking out the inner helmet in brass shifted the contrast colour back to the head and also had the side effect of making the helmet look much, much fancier.

For the Rocketgirl and her ageing retainer the brief was French Napoleonic voltigeurs. This means a rich blue with black leather, white trousers and white piping along with a yellow collar detail and red cuffs if available. Given that I was basically painting the Rocketeer I couldn't resist copper and brass as the mask and wing details. The blue flashes on the wings were another of those balancing considerations. It's hard to explain sometimes what I mean when I talk balance as I rarely photograph the times where it doesn't work. Might work up something tutorial flavoured at some point.

I'll level with you, I found this model to be quite crudely sculpted, the piping is massive and the epaulettes are chunky and irregular in size. I've clearly been spoiled rotten by the quality of modern miniatures. The ageing retainer was handled in the same way as the rocketgirl. The exception is the coat which I chose to paint the same grey as the voltigeurs of old. Initially I had it blue as well, but it just looked wrong. The grey works much nicer and also gave me the "industrial" colour of the middle of the wing on rocketgirl. My usual "add light grey instead of bone" method for the final highlights on the skin gave the aged look to the ageing retainer and all was good.

That's all for today folks, I know it's been a while between posts but these things happen right? Should have more shinies very soon.

TTFN

Combat Servitors Multipass

Hi folks, more shinies! Well... rusty and oilies today:

Yup, today's offerings are a pair of crude combat servitors, the one on the left is a conversion of a Mantic ghoul (one of the few Mantic sculpts I like) and the one on the right is a resin figure from I know not where. I just did the painting so can't say too much about assembly so we'll skip straight over that and into painting!

First up we have zombie-cyborg-Leeloo (yes, I saw what you did there sculptor, I got the reference with the "thermal bandages"). By the way, if you've no idea what the hell I am going on about or what the title references then you need to see the Fifth Element at your earliest convenience. Now would do, go watch it, I'll wait...

...Fun wasn't it? Anyway, the brief for these included that the skin should be not the usual death-pale servitor pallor but instead ill and waxy. Now this is a tricky thing to hit as it is mostly a quality of how the light reflects from it but colour wise it is usually yellowish, jaundiced, so I went with that. Now it is pretty much impossible for me to give you a recipe as I was fiddling with colour mixes back and forth but I know that Ungor Flesh and Rakarth Flesh were involved and mixes of washes and glazes made of blends of Flesh, Sepia and Yellow washes. It's more yellow in the flesh (badum-tish) but I'm still trying to get colour fidelity right. Miiiight need a greycard (photo nerding on your own time Jeff).

The one I was thinking of as the Arco-flagellant was simpler, less straps and things. I'd decided that the chainsword needed some classic 40k bling so broke out the hazard stripes. Both lenses were my usual Thunderhawk Blue shaded with black. Not a huge amount to talk about with him. Oh, the clothing is a very handy colour, Vallejo Stone Grey. A decent "shabby rags" colour.

That's all folks, more shinies inbound soon.

TTFN

It's Not That Easy Being Green

Hi folks, today, we have a bit of a departure from our normal faire with a rather nice frogman. No, not that sort, a Colony 87 Frogman (well "Amphiron") apparently called Barcoon Krobosh:

Yep, let the Frog Chorus play (those of a certain age hate me for that earworm, those who don't know it, google it and then remember it was released by a profit seeking entity and former Beatle to boot...). I have spent the past week working on a big batch of Praetorian infantry and while they are lovely, they are a bit involved. While they are looking good (cue sneak peek)...

...I was starting to get fatigued and needed a bit of a palette cleanse, something very, very different. Fortunately another client had some sci-fi civilians that needed doing, among which was ol' Barcoon the Froggy up there. Couldn't resist.

The colour scheme was determined by the frog skin I went for. On a split complimentary scheme, lime green works with a yellow-orange and red-purple. The purple is actually a lot more red than this photo shows. The camera decided to ignore the glazes and cut down to the darker bits. Grrr. Anyway... The skin started from a clean coat of Vallejo Stone Grey, this was going to be the basis for the underbelly so it made sense to use it for the bright green undercoat too. The green started with Moot Green, again just getting a clean coat, which was then shaded with two glazes of green ink mixed with glaze medium. That's it. It needed nothing else; anyone else thinking "Lizardman army in a weekend"? To keep the colour scheme balanced a tan leather bodysuit (XV-88 shaded and highlighted by adding Skrag Brown and Deck Tan respectively with a Seraphim Sepia wash) and a purple-ish magenta cape were married up with bronze, brass and gold decorations. A splash of extra contrast colour with the eyes and a mysterious steel flask (?) in his hand and job done.

I quite like the Colony 87 stuff, it's nice to see civilians getting some love in miniature form although some of the detail is a little soft. Might need to go around the foot claws again as the softness there really needs some sharper paint than it got on this pass (sometimes you only spot this stuff with the camera). But yeah, I think they're a useful addition to the canon. That's all for this time folks, predictably, it should be Praetorians next!

TTFN

An Imperial Guard Smorgasboard

Greetings one and all, today we have a collection of Imperial agents and soldiers. All part of the increasing Inq28 forces I'm painting for the same client as Project Leviathan:

These three elements are - from left to right - an Inquisitorial acolyte raised from the ranks, an Imperial officer with something of a Goth complex and three members of the Mordian 7th:

Wait, the Mordian 7th... that name seems familiar... well, if you are in the same blogging circles as me you might well have run across the Mordian 7th in the blog of the same name. My client asked me to replicate the paint scheme so as to represent some of the 7th among his command staff on this side of the Atlantic (I believe they natter online).

Obviously, taking cues from another painter's scheme is often a cornerstone of a commission painters world. We're often matching from photos or other reference material. In this case I had to interpret a few details but for the most part there was plenty of source material on the blog. I wound up using the same yellow as my Averlanders for the weapons, "The Fang" and associated layer colours for the armour and some Vallejo chocolate brown for the leather. The beret colour could have been either the blue-grey or the red. I decided on the red mainly for colour balance reasons. It picks out the red from the piping and the grey is already nicely spread across the model. No need to add any more.

From a model with quite a specific brief to one where my brief was "Goth Officer". A Gofficer if you will. Being a man with Cruxshadows, Opeth and Sisters of Mercy (neatly pigeon-holing my age) well represented among a lot of similar music in my collection this was a brief I could handle. Sadly... the camera just can't. It's one of those models with subtle transitions of colour and texture that studios never ever use for this exact reason. It doesn't photograph well. There is purple brocade in his coat lining, as well as on the uniform piping and sash. Everything else is silver, either faux NMM silver or just straight up metallics. If it isn't either of those choices then as Ford once said "any colour so long as it's black". There's black leather (starting from a brown base), black cloth (starting from a grey), gloss black armour, black hat, black... oh you get the picture. For a bit less rambly musing on painting black, go check out the 54mm (and thus more photogenic) ninja post.

Finally we have the Inquisitional Acolyte, another fond user of black and red with lots of chipped gloss black armour plates and brass bits... what's that? You swear he had a scenic base? Well you were right!

The client wanted a vox caster included on the base and in discussions we realised that a planetary scale unit might be more cool for an Inquisitor's henchman. Sadly this would make him a bit unwieldy so using the same magnets and flex steel technology from project Thunderbolt I gave him a swappable base.

The base itself features an old battered ammo case as a table, an Apocalypse vox caster nicked from a tank and the acolyte's lasrifle with underslung grenade launcher. Worked out nice I think!

That's it for today, nothing too deep, just shallow dives into some progress tracking. Have a nice weekend folks.

TTFN

Moody Hammers (both called Boris)

Greetings one and all, yes, still here, just took a couple of weeks off. Back and rocking now! Today we have a couple of inadequately clad gentlemen with a serious workout habit:

they're sexy and they know it

These chaps are Heresy miniatures Big Boris's - long term readers will know these are the second and third Big Boris's I've painted after my dynamic Big Boris Barbarian - including the Job's A Good Un Boris from the kickstarter (I've got one of these coming once Andy sculpts the new Ogre with Table, sculpt man sculpt! /cheeky). The client's concept for these was something plucked from the awesome depths of the Daniverse (that part of the 40k background authored by Dan Abnett, otherwise known as the bits with actual character, soul and real human lives rather than dakka dakka dakka). Moody Hammers is the term that low-life types use to refer to hired muscle. These two are cloned moody hammers with plenty of vat grown muscle grafted on for extra threat. By the way, these models are huge, those bases are not 25mm, they're the 40mm...

too sexy for boxer shorts that's for sure, dat thong...

Frankly, there isn't a lot to say about these except skin, lots and lots of skin. So as it's been a while since I talked about it... lets talk skin, Caucasian in this case: there are, it is true, lots of problems with Citadel's paints, but the stuff that is good is very, very good. The skin paints are one of these very, very good ones. I like to start not with Bugman's Glow but with Cadian Fleshtone. I only break out the Bugman's for ruddy toned people. Once a clean coat of Cadian Fleshtone is on, a shading wash of Reikland Fleshshade gives a nice warm tone. From here, start building up the highlight levels. The highlight steps are Cadian Fleshtone, a mix of Cadian Fleshtone and Kislev Flesh, pure kislev flesh and then a little bit of Kislev Flesh mixed with Flayed One Flesh (doesn't seem to be available at the moment, substitute a little bone instead). Now. Those mixes are where the differences between a rank and file dude and something like these moody hammer characters come in. Normally there is at most six stages to skin on my figures (base, wash, base, highlight one, highlight two, edge highlight). I often skip the edge highlight. These had at lease eleven layers blended in, each step in highlighting had a 2:1, a 1:1, and then a 1:2 ratio mix rather than just a 50:50 mix. There was also another shade layer as I thinned Agrax Earthshade and darkened the deepest recesses and the face.

"They said I could be anything, so I became a meat balloon."

Of course, with all that skin area it was just crying out to be used as a canvas for some mad tattooist. Not having one available, I had a bash at it with some online reference to help. With tattoos, the main mistake people make is using a pure colour, that will always look like warpaint and will visually sit on the surface of the skin. Instead, mix some skin tone in with the tattoo colour and that knocks the colour "under" the skin surface. I can recommend starting with mid 2000's "tribal" style tattoos as you can't really get them "wrong". More complex tattoos like the ones on my sumo D&D monk are a bit more involved and need a bit more practice.

Loved these chaps, lots of fun. Can't wait to get my own one of the JAGU Boris's... sculpt man!

TTFN

A strangely familiar Inquisitor...

Whoa, so then three weeks went by without a blog post. I ain'nt ded honest! There was just a week long LRP event followed by a week helping my in laws move/prep sister-in-laws wedding (yes, at the same time) and so on and time rather slips away... But here we are again! Today we have, the very last commission model PVP is doing *sniff* and of course, it's an Inquisitor.

To readers with long memories this chap might seem a little familiar. This is because I have already made and painted one just like him. The client liked Inquisitor Vandemar and asked me to make another just like him. Obviously I couldn't paint him exactly alike, my brain would have rebelled, so I went with a different scheme. Still muted and subtle though, someone this baroque doesn't need bright colours and in fact the grandeur of some of his kit contrasts nicely with the matter-of-fact colouring and style. As though this is normal, everyday wear for him.

As his retinue includes the mechanicum servitors and the urban troopers, he needed a practical edge with a splash or two of red to bind him to his various aides. The dark brown leather coat (Val Chocolate Brown shaded with Agrax and highlighted with added Val Deck Tan) forms the main body of the colour. The red trousers would stand out too much if I hadn't thrown some more in as spot colours on the hat, purity seal etc. Had a musing about the coat lining, eventually went with black to balance the black hat (mark of all of the Inquisitors in the Inq28 commission) and to draw out the black slashes in the red fabric. Val Liquid Metal Copper with Runelord Brass detailing gave a nice warm metal for the staff and fastenings.

And with that he was done. Along with the commercial arm of PVP. Really, it's been closed for some time, just needed to finish off the stuff I'd been pre-paid for. Doubtless the blog will go through some experimental fiddling to find it's way as a "just my stuff" site. Keeping content varied is one of the challenges. Hopefully it'll keep growing and getting better but who can say? I'll have the other two parts of "What I learned as a commission painter" soon too. Think I've got what I want to say sorted out. Until then.

TTFN