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