PaintSlam

Category: My Painting

  • Black Templars Character Showcase

    Black Templars Character Showcase

    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.

  • Watch out! It’s the Darkoath Savagers!

    Watch out! It’s the Darkoath Savagers!

    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!

  • Yet more Wood Elves for my Age of Orion army!

    Yet more Wood Elves for my Age of Orion army!

    So I’ve had a busy couple of weeks since the last update post. I’ve been hard at work both with working on my Wood Elves, a little bit of commission work and restarting my Twitch streams!

    Rather than waffle on and on and on, I thought it would be better to just share all the new models I’ve added to my 90s Wood Elf army as a nice little gallery post!

    So, without further delay, check em out!

    Wood Elf Lord on Elven Steed. I have since added a banner and a spike to the end of the spear.
    Wood Elf Mage on Elven Steed. I always really liked this model!
    Wood Elf Glade Riders. Imagine my face when I actually managed to get these ancient transfers to lift from the paper!
    Scarloc! Technically he’s 80s but he’s in the army book, so here he is.
    Aenur, Sword of Twilight. I don’t know how he snuck into the army but I’m not going to ask him to leave. I saw what happened to the last person who tried that.
    Battle Standard Bearer. I copied the banner from the army book as a vector illustration in Adobe Illustrator (download it for yourself here!) and got it printed out for me via an online service. Very happy with the results!
    Waywatchers! Absolutely classic models. The Contrast paints worked really nicely on these models I think, so I only did minimal highlights and stuff at the end.

  • With arrow and spear

    With arrow and spear

    I’ve been a busy bee since finishing Orion, cracking into the infantry side of my Classic Wood Elves project!

    Firstly, I painted up this block of 15 Glade Guard spearmen!

    I primed them with Zandri Dust, before going over the cloaks with Contrast Ork Flesh, then highlighted up with Skarnsik Green and Nurgling Green. Other colours used are Boltgun Metal, Blood Angels Red, Snakebite Leather and Steel Legion Drab. The shields are Averland Sunset, with transfers in the top left from the new Wood Elf Blood Bowl team transfer sheet.

    I didn’t actually have enough shields myself, but thankfully a few awesome people on Twitter came through with some donations which helped me cap this unit off.

    And then last night I put the finishing touches on these retro archers, which are (I believe) a mix of Skarloc’s archers and some of the 80s Lord of the Rings miniatures. I couldn’t tell you which were which though, they all seem to fit together as a cohesive unit very nicely. I was up way too late last night working on these! I definitely want to add more archers to this army, but I think next I will be adding some of the mid 90s sculpts from Aly Morrison to fit my army.

    I did also squeeze in a little bit of a palette cleaner during the weekend between these two units too, a bit of “now-hammer!” in this Necron Canoptek Doomstalker model:

    Will I be so productive this coming week? Stay tuned!
  • The King (In the Woods) Is Back

    The King (In the Woods) Is Back

    When I was a wee nipper (well, 13 years old actually) I bought my first White Dwarf with my own money (after having spent years reading my best friend’s issues) – issue 201. And inside that issue I was introduced to Orion, the King in the Woods. The living avatar of Kurnous and leader of the Wood Elves! Needless to say I’d already been super excited about Wood Elves by this point, but this model tipped me over the edge and made me decide to collect them.

    And so it was that Orion was my first big metal model kit (GW having only just started to roll out lead-free miniatures at the time). I didn’t really know about pinning, so he fell apart a lot and I’m sure he wasn’t painted all that well but dangit he was my king and I loved him.

    So, after the passing of many many years, I find myself at the end of 2020 with the plan to rebuild this old Wood Elf army. And lo, an Orion kindly lands in my lap thanks to a generous soul over on Twitter:

    Sure, he’s gone to pieces but he’s still my first love.

    Well, I knew I had to get this chap rebuilt and painted up! So I got him glued (and pinned that pesky spear hand!) but found myself a little uncertain how to proceed. On one hand, I’d love to stick with that original ‘Eavy Metal style, but on the other hand the artwork of the time shows Orion with this strong green skintone which I think sits better with the character.

    Mmm… green forest daddy. Wait, what? You didn’t hear that.

    So at first I tried just glazing the existing skintone with Waywatcher Green glaze paint (sadly now a discontinued colour from Citadel) thinking it would be a nice compromise. It didn’t really work out though, making him look quite unwell and it was not a smooth colour all over anyway. So I ended up repainting the skin entirely, as well as replacing any blue areas with red or gold to help bring the scheme together.

    In the end, here’s where I got with him:

    The skin is based in Death Guard Green, then shaded with Biel-Tan Green and glazed with Waywatcher Green. Then I used carroburg crimson to add a bit of red into the muscles and face. Many of the blue areas (such as the loincloth and spear gems) were painted red over the existing blue. Overall I think the colours balance quite nicely now.
    For his hair it’s Emerald Green, washed with Biel-Tan and drybrushed Moot Green and Phalanx Yellow. The cloak was Death Guard Green with 2 layers of Biel Tan, then I picked out a few leaves in Averland Sunset and Mephiston Red before using Agrax Earthshade to die it all back together. There’s also a very light drybrushing back with the original Death Guard Green to bring out some more of the detail.

    The base was already flocked but I did repaint the rim to match the rest of my army. The flock is actually pretty close to the colour of the sand on the other miniatures in the army, so I’m thinking for now I’ll leave that how it is. Perhaps as a leader I might just throw some tufts down later to bring that base up a notch.

    So that’s him, Orion. The King in the Woods is back to lead his army.

    I think I’m going to need some Wild Riders!

  • [Painted] Myari’s Purifiers

    [Painted] Myari’s Purifiers

    So my first finished project for #PaintSlam21 is done! Thanks to Stazzeous over on Twitch, I had a voucher for Element Games and could justify buying the new Warhammer Underworlds: Direchasm box set!

    So, over the last few days I’ve been working on Myari’s Purifiers, the warband based on the Lumineth Realmlords.

    Check ’em out!

    Bahannar, with his hammer, and Myari Lightcaller the leader of the Warband.
    Ailenn, The Minds Edge (my favourite!) and Senaela the archer.

    You’ll probably notice I went for a rather different colour scheme than the standard Lumineth colours. I wanted to go for something bright and bold, since I’m on my oldhammer kick and these sculpts felt like they deserved it.

    So my inspiration for these? The old 90s Dragon Princes of Caledor!

    How amazing are these!?

    So it was that I came up with this scheme for my Lumineth! And I think they came out really quite nicely. Colours, for those who might wish to copy them, are as follows:

    Prime: Grey Seer Spray

    Red Robes: Flesh Tearers Red (Contrast), Nuln Oil Wash, Highlights with Evil Sunz Scarlet and Wild Wider Red

    Metallics: Stormhost Silver, Nuln Oil Wash, Some areas washed with Contrast Space Wolves Grey, highlights back up with Stormhost Silver.

    Green: Base colour of Vallejo Deep Green, recess shade Space Wolves Grey, highlights Moot Green and Phalanx Yellow.

    Gold: Retributor Armour, Reikland Fleshshade Wash, Highlights with Retributor and Liberator Gold.

    Whites: Corax White base, washed with Space Wolves Grey contrast, highlighted back up to Corax White.

    Bases: Death Guard Green rim and vegetation, Mechanicus Standard Grey rocks, Mornfang Brown branches. Agrax it all, drybrush with Celestra Grey on the rocks. Apply orangey-brown pigment powder to add effect, seal with white spirits or equivalent.

    I hope that’s helpful to anyone who wants to do the same scheme. And watch out for more Wood Elves from myself very soon!