#Painthammer2019 Featured Artist: Scykhe!

If you’ve been following along with #Painthammer2019 on Social Media, there’s a good chance you’ve come across the works of Scykhe. His mechanicus army is full of unique flourishes and you can really see every model gets a personal touch. With quite a lot under his belt thus far for #Painthammer2019 I thought it was time to get in touch and ask him about his project!

Can you please tell us a little about yourself, your collection and your hobby progress?

I am a 34 year old French Engineer who started the hobby 23 years ago. I have grown up in a gaming house. My parents were big gamers and brought me into their world very early.

But neither of them jumped into the world of wargaming with miniatures, my father because of his poor artistic skills even he was a wargaming enthusiast and my mother because while being a good artist had little interest in fantasy, science fiction or classic history.

But as their proud son, I inherited both and the rest is history!

So 23 years later, if you come visit me, you’ll find a dedicated room for wargaming (it was mandatory when I got my place) filled with more than 2200 models.

That’s an impressive number! So what is in your collection?

Most of them are for Warhammer 40k but there are also Blood Bowl teams, Warmaster armies, a Warmachine Army, Battlefleet Gothic Fleets, Walking Dead gangs and Necromunda gangs.
And they are at 85% painted!

My new “main” project for 2019 is an Adeptus Mechanicus army which i had in mind for some time. I have also lots of side project which depends mostly on which games I have planned in the near future.

And when I am not hobbying, I am also a big tabletop RPG and boardgame player, an avid reader

What are the theme and inspirations for your army, and how has Painthammer helped you?

My main project for 2019 and so for #Painthammer2019 is an Adeptus Mechanicus army.

I have quite a special link with this army even more since the new skitarii’s model. As soon as I saw these models I knew I had to do an army of Mechanicus, and how!

As mentioned earlier, I am an engineer and I went to a school called “Ecole Nationale Supérieur des Arts et Métiers” often shortened to “Arts et Métiers” which is often even simplified to “AM”.

And this AM has become the official logo of the school which can be seen everywhere taking many forms.

Then, in this school, we have a lot of centuries old tradition passing from one generation to the next, often not understood by people who don’t know the school. We even have our own language (not as strange as binary but enough to confuse a lot of person!)

And finally, during our scholarship, we all wore long grey coat often heavily customised.

So let’s sum up, AM are our initials, we are engineers with odd and obscure traditions wearing long coats all the time… I think you get my point, let us move to Mars and we will found the Cult of the Machine!

So you used this to inspire your new army?

I decided to build my army around this idea of representing my whole promotion as Skitarii (we are 164 so I have still a lot of work ahead!) while trying to justify and add more exotic units.

I asked all my old friends from school to send me pictures of their long coat to try to paint them the more faithfully possible. And I got some enthusiastic responses! They all loved being painted as “Cyber-engineers”.

You will also notice that besides the grey coat, blue and gold/yellow are often used. It is simply because blue and yellow are the classic color symbolising the school of Cluny where I studied.

In parallel of this, I also started to write the background of my army. I tried to mix the real story of my school with the grim dark setting of Warhammer 40,000 and so far I am pretty happy with the result.

That’s how Forge World Cluniacus has been created!

You can check more about it on my own blog http://www.bregines.blogspot.com/

That’s brilliant! Tell me about what inspired you to take part in #Painthammer2019 for this project!

Painthammer really helped to kickstart and keep going in this project. I always need motivation to paint, I almost never paint just to paint.

Usually, I motivate myself by planning a game with yet unpainted models, and as I never play with unpainted model I have to paint them!

But recently, I have started to play less and less and so I had to find a new source of motivation. And that’s when I found Painthammer on Twitter and all the wonderful community around it!

My army is just at its beginning (1000 pts so far) and you can be sure to see more and more as it grows!

Could you show us some of the models you’re proud of from #Painthammer2019 and tell us a little about them?

I am proud of all my models! Always! But I am going to make a little selection of those I have the most to tell 🙂

Let’s start with these 5 Skitariis who all represent one person from my own promotion. The bases are the same for all of them, silver metal, gold armor, blue clothes, brown and gold gun, and grey robe.

I chose brown for the gun because one of our speciality in our school is wood tooling and engineering so it seemed quite logical to have weapon with wood elements!

Then there are all the freehands and customisation of the robes, I’ll try to explain them one by one :

  • The lower part of the robe called “Rallonge” is used as a way to identify subgroup and so squads. Here you can see two different “Rallonge” because later this will be two squads.
  • The yellow band with a letter and a number is the “Mustard” it is the individual identification of each squad member.
  • The black and white square with logo often represent the Adeptus Mechanicus (with a stylized AM)
  • The two bands of color on the hood or helmet represent the place of birth of the Skitarii

Now let’s talk of these big robots and their nanny. As they are not Skitariis they won’t be grey. In my school, the eldest students (the ones who are about to finish) wear white coat instead of grey and these coat are often filled with writings from other students.

That’s why I decided to paint them white with a lot of “handwritting” freehand. In my lore (which will be fully written soon), they are decorated by young skitariis to pay respect to their instructors.

Painting model this big in white has been quite a challenge and I am pretty happy with the result.

I wanted to paint “funny happy” faces on them to contrast with the utter death and destruction they can bring on the battlefield (search Meet the Pyro on youtube to see the idea 🙂 )

This Dunecrawler is one of my latest additions to my army and my first Mechanicus vehicle. Blue and yellow are the main colors while the legs and weapons are in brown for a woody feeling.

There is no freehand on it because of the classic respect the Adeptus Mechanicus have for machines (with the exception of robots).

Yet, you can spot a new reference which will be recurring in my army: 133. This number is my lucky number and has its own place in the lore of Forge World Cluniacus.

Next model and certainly my most personal so far, please welcome a Sydonian Dragoon. Basically, this skitarii represents myself and so every details on this model has its meaning.

I have painted small free hands on it representing a lot of my best friends (still waiting for someone to send me an image to fill the last spot :P)!

There is also for the first time a visible servitor, who are called Toadies on Cluniacus, which are painted in green.

On the back of it, I also painted two small flags (Sedona and Arizona) because I brought back this model from a trip in Arizona which was my first and so far only time in USA.

This trip was amazing and I wanted to keep in memory my time there on this model.

I think i’ll try to buy more Dragoons in other country in the future to keep the theme going on!

And to conclude, I want to show off what has been a long time dream since I started Warhammer 40,000: a primarch!

I plan to one day have all the primarchs and I started this year with Alpharius as I already have quite a huge Alpha Legion 30k force.

This model was a pure pleasure to paint and is fantastic. If the victim on the base is a Blood Angel, it’s because I also have a huge collection of Blood Angels and by traditionI only paint victim and trophies of armies I play!

Wow! What else can I say here? Scykhe, this whole project is just amazing. I love how you’ve made the army so personal to you and your friends. Truly inspiring work, I really appreciate the depth of thought that’s gone into this project.

And I think anyone would be impressed by the sheer amount of freehand detail you have included in your army. Thank you for being a part of #Painthammer2019 and I can’t wait to see what else you’ve got in store for the project! Perhaps we can catch up towards the end of the year for another showcase?

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