Something I’ve wanted to do for Painthammer for a while is feature some of the community members and go into a little more detail about them and their hobby progress. With #Painthammer2019 now in full swing, it seemed appropriate to start now. So, I am proud to present our first Community Spotlight: Xavier St-Amand!
Firstly, Xavier, can you please tell us a little about yourself, your collection and your hobby progress?
“In terms of collection there isn’t much to say, haha. I usually paint an army and sell it halfway through the project when something else catches my eye. I’ve currently got an Ultramarine first company and a lot of random miniatures I’ve painted on a whim.
“I am currently at 170 models painted since the beginning of the year. Most of these aren’t mine, I’ve been painting commissions since I’ve got the time, so now most of what I do isn’t mine which does get a little boring but the extra money is very nice when new stuff I want does comes out.
“I started the hobby less than 2 years ago, but I knew about the lore and universe before hand. This interest was my way in as well as my motivation today. I’ve played 2 games of 40k and a bit of Shadespire, that’s it. Most of the time I’ll just read or listen to some black library stories and get very inspired to do something based on that while discarding my current project. Right now I am doing some Black Legion while listening to the ADB story of the same name. Before that I was reading Buried Dagger and it really made me want to get the forgeworld Garro model and start doing some knights Errant, haha!”
That’s awesome, thanks! Could you show us some of the models you’re proud of from #Painthammer2019 and tell us a little about them?
“There’s these 3 eliminators I recently finished. They are going to be part of the Silver Templars which are my new Space Marine army. I just really love how they turned out, I wasn’t sure what camo pattern to use as id never done any but I love the finished results with the snow added on to tie them with the base.”
“Marneus and his two Vitrix Guards arrived at my place while I was in Japan for almost a month. I knew they were there and couldn’t do anything about it 
so after being starved of hobby for so long I finished them quickly and I was quite proud of the results considering how fast I went.”
“More Ultramarines, I really love these because there was a lot of freehand on the banners which is something I am practicing more and more now, and it shows how much you can do with the same models. Both of the sword guys are the primaris lieutenants from dark imperium, but I think I managed to make them look very different with very minimal cutting and gluing.”
“A bit of heresy now. I just love these models honestly. I don’t think the paint job I did is especially amazing but I still think they look awesome because of how great the new Chaos sculpts are, haha”
“It’s hard to photograph this guy, especially with the set up I have. He always comes out very bright but I think this is one of the models I had the most fun painting this year, weirdly enough. The amount of gems on him is crazy and I’ve recently found out that painting gems and lenses are probably my favourite part to paint. So I often look at this guy very fondly because of that”
“These guys might not be my best work paint wise, but they mark a very big step for me. My first time using green stuff. The scale pelt I did on the loincloth and the backpack of the flamer were the first two I ever did and even if they aren’t perfect, I am still astounded I managed to make em. Plus I am quite happy with the flame freehands and thunder hammer effect I did”
