December is the month of the PaintSlam Festive Finale! Lets see this year’s PaintSlam off with a bang! Simply paint a model or models in the festive colours of White, Red and Green!
Please post your finished pieces in the Festive Finale channel in the PaintSlam discord, WIPs go in #wips as normal! And of course share as usual on your favourite social media!
Games Workshop was kind enough to send me a selection of the new Black Templars models free to paint up for the Warhammer Community website at the end of October, and I was delighted to see my work on the post! In this blog post, I want to show you folks a few more angles and pictures of what I painted and talk a little about them 🙂
THE EMPEROR’S CHAMPION
This was the first model I tackled, and the one which I probably spent the most amount of time on overall. I really tried to push myself with the black armour, as painting black power armour was something where I’d previously been quite disappointed in my results on earlier miniatures. In the end, the extra time spent trying to get it right was worth it and I’m very happy with the result. I used Dark Reaper and Thunderhawk Blue for the majority of the highlights, with some spots of Fenrisian Grey for the brightest dots.
I’m also pretty pleased with the result on the small tilting shield. Lacking a transfer sheet at the time, I wangled a rough approximation of the layout using decals from other transfer sheets including the black sword from the Dark Imperium space marines transfer sheet (I think it was a crusade symbol?) and then painted over the elements to try closely match the artwork on the box art.
The base was a chunk of slate, with assorted smaller stones and some battlefield scatter which I painted all with mechanicus standard grey, various washes and drybrushes of Celestra Grey.
GRIMALDUS (and Friends)
I very much enjoyed painting Grimaldus too. The various robes and parchment were a nice canvas to try add freehand and texture to, as well as the small shields across his armour. Eagle-eyed readers may be able to identify the book at his waist, although how he got hold of such a tome is anybody’s guess. His servitors were the last things I painted as the deadline for the article approached, but I was impressed by the detail sculpted onto these, especially the candle-covered battle standard.
HELBRECHT
Helbrecht was quite a different task altogether compared to the other models. His shining gold armour jumps out against the grim black armour of his subordinates, though the black cloak he wears ties him in with the rest of the force. The Ork was an optional piece for the base, but it didn’t feel right not to use such an element in the build, plus it was nice to paint one of our fungal friends again for a change. I painted each of the heads separately, and have kept those unglued so I can pop in whichever head I feel like displaying at any given time.
For the blood on his sword, I wanted it to look like it was mostly wiped away, so I used Flesh Tearers Red contrast paint and then dabbed at it with a clean, dry brush until it left only a light staining on the surface of the weapon. I painted the servitor’s rag to be a little dirty, as if it had seen a lot of use already during the battle. I can imagine that Helbrecht stands arrogantly waiting for his sword to be cleaned after each kill during a fight.
Games Workshop very kindly sent me a free preview copy of Warcry: Red Harvest, the new starter set that contains two warbands (the Darkoath Savagers and the Tanatulos Brood) as well as a whole heap of stunning ore-mining terrain! So my project over the last week has been to get the Darkoath Savager warband painted up!
I was impressed by how easy these models were to assemble compared to some of the other Warcry warbands. I don’t think there was anything too fiddly on these folks. Although perhaps that does befit a warband such as this where the models speak through muscle and blade rather than any particularly ornate decorations.
I love how these models all have a savage ferocity to them, you can imagine that anyone who saw them coming would be extremely intimidated despite lacking much… or indeed, any, armour aside from the occasional shield and shoulder guard.
I also liked that a good portion of the warband was female – as with many of the other Warcry warbands you’ve got a real breadth of body types and genders represented which is always good to see. And these are no damsels in distress, each is clearly a fighter the equal of their male peers.
I painted these models primiarly with Contrast paints to start with – using colours like Gore Grunta Fur and Guilliman Flesh for the base skin tones, Flesh Tearers Red and Wyldwood for clothing and accessories, and skeleton horde onto many of the straps and bone areas. I then went in and layered up with normal paints to smooth out the colour on some of the larger flat areas, before highlighting.
I also mixed a little thunderhawk blue in with the skin tones to create a stubble effect for shaved heads and jawlines. It’s an easy technique that adds a lot to the appearance of a model!
The final touch for each model was a little red-earth weathering pigment which I applied onto the bases and feet/tabards of the miniatures. This really grounds them into the setting and helps them feel like they really are there in the chaos wastes. I don’t use pigments a whole lot, but I think I’m going to have to get into the habit of it!
You’ll probably also notice my long-haired Conan-alike character has a flail rather than the sword you’ve seen him with in most/all of the promotional pictures. This is a weapon option in the set, in fact I believe that every model in here has at least one weapon or accessory option to differentiate it. I can imagine these models also being very easy to convert, if one was so inclined. I’d love to see what you guys do with these models if you pick them up!
And yeah, that’s my first Warcry warband from Red Harvest all painted up. Thanks again to the Warhammer Community team for sending me the box to preview and paint, do look out for more awesome stuff like this soon too – I very much would like to make blog posts like this more regular.
And of course, if you do paint up any of the new Warcry stuff yourself please share it with the community either in our Discord, using the hashtag #PaintSlam21 or feel free to tag me on Twitter or Instagram to check your stuff out!
If you’re not already in with PaintSlam, feel free to check here for the details – PaintSlam ’22 will be starting in just over a month’s time so what better than to get in and join us now!
The time has come once again to check out the wonderful work done by the PaintSlam community! This time we’re looking at highlights from October 2021, via posts in the Community Showcase channel on our Discord server! Remember you can join in too by being a member of the community!
So let’s get cracking and check out the hobby goodness!
BigGeordieGeek
Another great mix of stuff this month from BGG! I particularly love the Nurgle chappy!
Ceda_Kuru_Qan
A nice collection of brightly coloured Stormcast Eternals, including a rather electrifying green sorceress type!
Commissar Lewdfang
Khagra’s Ravagers stand out this month in purple from Lewdfang, as well as a friend from the 41st Millenium!
CritonyEntertainment
More monsters from CritonyEntertainment this month! The eyeball monster is giving me the willies! I think it’s watching me!
DarkHanon
More halloween horrors here, this time in a distinctly Nurgle flavour! Trick or treat!
fin37
Fin brings us these very fetching Dragon Princes! The blue is lovely.
Haze
From Haze, we have this massive armoured Ork, complete with bonus grot gunner on top! Great fun!
Heavy Metal Wars
Xenos goodness from HMW this month! Look at that lovely freehand on the Eldar walker!
HouseFireHawk
It’s time for the Skaven to take to the pitch in this awesome team from HouseFireHawk!
JewelKnightJess
This month I was lucky enough to paint up some bits that GW sent me over for free, so here’s a selection of those. I was particularly happy with the Emperor’s Champion model.
Momma Negan
Momma Negan, who also helped collate this blog post, brings us more amazing grots this month! Fantastic work as always!
Pandaemonium_Miniatures
A couple of characters and a lovely display board here, I think for Conquest? Really gorgeous work!
SHeroQueer
More incredible old school Tyranid goodness here from SHeroQueer. You’ve got to love those bright 90s paint schemes! Wonderful!
TheElusiveShaun
Some gritty realism here from TES! I love the autumnal basing too!
Thokamous
A great mix of stuff here from Thokamous including a fetching Imperial Guard Commissar!
And that’s it for another month! I’ll see you in December with the showcase of what gets posted in the Discord this month, and then in the new year for the 2021 Round Up!
Apologies, once again, for the very late community showcase post this month, showing off the very coolest hobby from the month of September! I’ve been absolutely wallopped by my brain this month resulting in extremely low productivity (and self-worth, I guess, but hey ho) so I have to give a huge thanks to Momma Negan for helping me collate the images for this article. I’d struggle to do this without their amazing help this month. So let’s get in and look at the absolutely stonkingly wonderful hobby the folks in the PaintSlam discord have been up to over the month of September!
ALMIGHTY_GIR
A couple of awesome characters here!
CEDA_KURU_QAN
This Stormcast Eternal means business. Great colours on the wings!
CRITONYENTERTAINMENT
Some more wicked Power Rangers type stuff here!
GARDENGOTH
Fantastic Eldar, and a Dark Angels repulsor tank looking nice!
HAZE
Don’t mess with this fantastic Ork boss!
HEAVY METAL WARS
A nice mix of characters here, I love the bright colours!
KING_KABU
Some military types sneak across a muddy battlefield!
MOMMA NEGAN
I’m in love with the gorgeous Dwarf cannon and crew!
SEAMUS
Gorgeous salamanders here from Seamus. The basing is top, too!
SHEROQUEER
Sheroqueer brings us more fantastic Orky goodness in a fabulous purple scheme!
THEELUSIVESHAUN
I see Dark Angels, I likey. 🙂
THOKAMOUS
More military types here, these ones traversing a somewhat grassier looking field! Keep your heads down, lads!
“Now Yellow is a notoriously hard color to paint, but I’ve found a scheme with which it’s quite easy to paint, and I’m using it for a Horde Army like night goblins, so trust me it’s not too hard.
It’s an easy three step process (if basing step is ignored) that only require a bit of skill in layering.”
“First step is rather easy, just give it all a nice and even base coat of Balor Brown, it works over light and dark basecoats, so choose the one that fits best for the rest of the mini.”
“Second step is by far the trickiest, you gotta layer with Averland sunset, make sure to leave out the recesses so it’ll look sort of like shade, if you wanna do it extra good, try to blend from Balor Brown to Averland sunset.”
“Last step is a simply edge highlight over the raised folds and edges of the robes with Phalanx yellow, make sure to keep the highlight thin and dilute the paint properly with a bit of water or medium.
And with that you have it done, an easy yellow robe.”
Thanks for the guest article, Momma Negan! I’d love to feature more guest articles in future so do get in touch if you’d like to share a technique or show your army project off!