It’s the start of a new year, January is well underway and the official PaintSlam21 End of Year Showcase is done and dusted… but we’re not finished with ’21 until we’ve done the official December showcase. So here we are, the final month of 2021 in blog post form! Submissions as always taken from the PaintSlam Discord’s Community Showcase Channel – get in there if you want to join in ready for the first showcase of ’22!
I love all of these! The sisters in particular look amazing, and I’m naturally very much in favour of the trans-tastic standard!
CritonyEntertainment
CritonyEntertainment brings us the usual amazing assortment of Power Rangers themed miniatures! Plus a few heroes from the multiverse!
DarkHanon
Black Templars from DarkHanon. The strong red contrasts really well against the black and white.
fin37
I love these admech robots. They’re so chunky and retro looking!
gardengoth
Gorgeous work from gardengoth. The dreadnought looks so GOOD!
Heavy Metal Wars
Retro nids! I love these so much!
JewelKnightJess
From myself this month comes a Genestealer Cult biophagus, the Bristol Crew inspired by The Young Ones TV show and an awesome werewolf miniature from Anvil Industry.
Mommy Negan
A star wars bounty hunter and snake charmer from the always fantastic Momma Negan.
Pandaemonium_Miniatures
Some wildlife here from Paul, I love the realistic fur tones.
R35T
Check out this awesome Death Guard leader, out to reap some fresh fertiliser for Nurgle’s gardens.
Theelusiveshaun
Some awesome Necromunda beasties here including the adorable Esher “kitty cats”.
Thokamous
Great work from Thokamous as always here, including a couple of nice marine boys.
Torrentstride
What can I say about this awesome Ghost Rider? It’s too cool!
And so we come to the final day of 2021, and what better time to look back at the year as a whole with one huge Community Showcase, where members of the PaintSlam discord picked two pictures/models/units from their year and tell us a little about it? This is the written version of the showcase, but you can actually watch the full 3 and a half hour live streamed version right here:
If you want to take your time to admire the images up close though, this article is the perfect companion to the stream! Why not listen to the stream and zoom into the beautiful photos below for a closer look?
So without further ado, let’s take a jump into your favourite works from 2021! And remember to get involved with PaintSlam22 starting TOMORROW!
ALEXANDER
There two are the models I am most happy with this year. Finishing my 2k marine army has been my main project. Both of these let me try different colour schemes within the same army. Was also fun making a custom head for the techmarine by cutting two in half :3
BELZÉBÉE
It’s so hard to choose…
I think first it will be the Skeletor color themed sorcerer from HeroQuest. It’s one of my fav minis, my fav game (look at my username). This mini is a big improvement for me, managing the light, practicing a more cartoonish effect.
The second is also a sorceress, kitbashed from AoS Slaanesh minis, for my King of War army. Same thing, I did a very good job with cartoonish effect (and managed to freehand an easter egg).
CALLIE
First choice was easy: Galadriel, Lady of Light! A really understated model and a really simple paint scheme but a character I utterly love, and over all despite the lack of technique or detail I’m really proud of her.
Second I’ve gone for Leia Organa. This FFG sculpt isn’t the best, and neither is my painting, but none of that matters. It’s Leia, it’s Carrie Fisher, and both the character and actress are amazing.
CEE THE DORK PHOENIX
Two group photos – my Blood Bowl team inspired by old black and white Hammer Horror movies (apologies for the photo, I had to cobble together a set-up from what I had to hand with most of my life in cardboard boxes!). It was weird, having a pallet with only black and white paints on it, mixing them to make many shades of grey. And the neon green colour as a spot colour on the eyes.
Also, my Escher gang, with various Pride hair colours! These two teams are my first and last fully finished models of the year (Edit: Escher first, Blood Bowl last – just seen the pictures are reversed!).
CHAOSFORM
Jumped on New year, new army a little early but that’s alright
COMMISSAR LEWDFANG
My favorites from this year are:
The Chaos space marine Exalted champion kitbash Anja the Hound that i planned for a long time.
The Spire tyrants for Warcry was great for skin tone testing and training and it all turned out pretty good.
CRAFTYBANANA
My PaintSlamming feel off a cliff in the second half of the year (life happened), but I still got through some minis I was pleased with. In particular, the Custodes Command Bros here came out surprisingly well for a glorified coat of Leadbelcher and generous use of metallic sharpie, and the Cold One/Drakespawn Knights were great fun to paint, even if they were too pointy to properly photograph in my tiny flat.
DAD_MECH
My T’au Riptide is the biggest single model I’ve painted so far, and had a lot of fun with it. a real centrepiece for my cadre! also recently painted the Ironstrider that I had on my pile for about a year, with a sneaky lil pathfinder on the base. purple is the stealthiest of all the colours after all!
DARKHANON
Diffcult to choose – highlight was to finish the Conquest Magazine Collection but that aside – I really love my new painted Knight and the two Sisters here 👀
FIN37
Dragon Princes as they were a unit i thought i would never finish due to how fiddly the models are and they turned out better than i expected, also marking the first time ive freehanded anything and it wasnt a disaster.
White lions as they were the first unit i finished this year after id decided on my original goal to fully paint 2.5k of High Elves, so they showed me finishing units is actually possible. plus they’re awesome.
GIRATON
Tau and Owls!
The Tau Kill Team was my final project of the year and was so satisfying to do as I felt it was the peak of my efforts this year. My best highlights and colour balancing IMO.
For image 2 its the models that featured Owls I did this year, which was a fun mini theme I happened to do. I wanna fit in more on my models.
GUILTY
Excuse my terribly messy desk and terrible photo quality. I’m so proud of how the insert for this came out! Also it was super fun to paint over the clear plastic!
GURT
The only two I’ve actually finished this year are my Christmas minis so I guess I’ll pick them haha I only really started getting my mojo back towards the end of the year so I’m hoping to get more done next year and be more involved with the community too.
HEAVY METAL WARS
Easy choices for me this year… the Rogue Trader Space Marine with shuriken catapult that I painted for the Paintslam Golden Oldies month seemed to be appreciated by a lot of people. I enjoyed the whole process of building and painting and it features one of the first banners I ever did by hand. Eldrad Ulthran, on the other hand, is probably the best miniature I’ve ever painted and I hope I can kick on from here and improve further.
HOUSEFIREHAWK
I painted this guy up as a display piece, because i wanted to see how far i had come as a painter. i still have the original model i painted 15 years ago and suffice to say, there is a distinct difference 🙂
Painted this guy up very recently and very happy with it, i loved the model, the sculpt and once i got past how violently bright the orange was i loved that too! definitely my favourite model ive done in this hobby 🙂
JACK
These two are probably my favourites of this year, although gluing the ~300 skulls to Nagash’s base was a lot of effort
JAMIE
I entered my first ever painting competition this past weekend, and I couldn’t think of a better demonstration of my overall hobby progress in this past year. I’ve gone from painting a few times a month, to a few times a week, now to a few hours a day and I’m quite literally living my dream. I’m so proud of these models, and I’m even more proud to say that I actually won in the Arcadian Brush comp at PAX U with this Rasputina model. The robot was entered at the advanced level, and while it didn’t place, I’m really happy with how it turned out! Between the contest and my minis being used for the Castle Panic kickstarter, I have so many awesome benchmarks of growth for me to measure this year personally and artistically. I’m trying to grow my following on Instagram, so if you like what you see, I’d be flattered if you’d follow :mischaLove: (www.instagram.com/jamiedaggers)
JB
Seems my hobby peaked at the first model of the year with Venom.
JIM1810
I think these are two of my favourite this year, the ‘Commissar’ was a gift for a friend while the wizard is obviously planting a flag
JUNIPER
My two coolest projects from the last year: my Knight Repentia and Sisters unrepentant!
The knight was a big centre piece for my sisters army, the idea is that its a colossal version of a normal anchorite. It was kinda the end point of messing about with the SoB range after getting started with the Unrepentant sisters way back in summer. That lil gang aint nessisarily my best painted minis, but i love the freehand graffiti on the statue. Hoping to fine tune those skills in the coming year 😤
LEGAL-E-TEA
Figured I’d introduce myself with an early-, mid-, and late-2021 sample of my work. I’m not great, but I’m quick.
LENALEVELSUP
Let’s try this again without accidentally posting something appropriate to my work but definitely not appropriate to here XD
While I didn’t get much painting done, I did finish this metal Harlequin troupe and I’m very proud of them
LIL MEK
MOMMY NEGAN
NEDPATRICK
My favorites: The first is a goblin alchemist that I found on Etsy. I tried to push myself and used a lot of techniques that I learns this year, such as layering. The unit are some naiads for Kings of War. This was the first time I used my airbrush to lay down a base coat for a bunch of models.
PANDAEMONIUM_MINIATURES
Hard to choose as I managed to paint a lot this year, but the satisfaction of stripping my awful paint jobs from age 13, and restoring and repainting my HeroQuest set is a definite hobby highlight (project still ongoing!)
PETE (SIPPSTER) SIPPITT
My 2 offerings. Finally finished my Stardrake to lead my SCE army, was really pleased with the final colour choices. My ork Kill Team was a big progression for me, new skin recipe was a success & these models were a good representation of my #Orkaday project of 31 orks in 31 days
PYRO
Okay, so, sitting at a grand total of 6 painted minis this year, i didn’t have a lot of choice for what to show off but… These Deathwing Terminators are just some of the best things i’ve ever painted. And given that while i only painted two this year (The sergeant in the middle and the in the back left) I didn’t base any of the squad until 2021 so Jess said it counts. Also, i’ve included some picture in picture of the blood remains of their enemies I put on the bases, just because i’m particularly fond of those two (and blood effects are fun). The CSM is supposed to be a Fallen (and he can’t get up) and the colours for the head is based on a Baron of Hell from doom.
The Librarian (which, like the terminators, is also from Dark Vengeance) is just, in my opinion, my best paint job ever. I’m so happy with how the blue armour turned out, and that robe is also looking amazing, (also, while you can’t see it, because the hood makes it hard to take pictures of it, It’s also the best face i’ve ever painted.). I’m really looking forward to the day I get to push him around a tabletop casting spells at people.
STARCOBRA123
Here are my favourite painted minis of the year (bit mixed on the Judge Dredds basing because I wasn’t too sure how to I wanted to do it maybe I should of done it desert but I can always change it)
THEELUSIVESHAUN
The single model I’m most proud of that I painted this year is the Ravenwing Master on his trusty destrier, B’aikh I kitbashed. It was an idea I’d had for a while and was extremely fulfilling to see come to life. I was also happy to finish a little painting project I started a few years ago but never got around to finishing until this year, my Metal Gear inspired Assassins.
THEPOSHGOBLIN
Really pleased with how the Runelord ended up, one of my first minis back after 20yrs our of the hobby
Really pleased with Morathi; the first time I worked on a mini on this scale
TIM CHOPPER KELLY
TORRENTSRIDE
Alarielle was a model I’ve wanted to paint since I joined the hobby, but always felt extremely intimidated by. But, having bit the bullet, she is easily one of my favorite models I’ve ever painted, no contest.
Since I only showed off one mini I’ll pop ghost rider in here 😂
VOODOO
I’ve done a fair few units and pieces of scenery etc
However looking back I love my recently completed Khorne team and while Throgg hasn’t seen any use so far I’ve adored the mini for years so it was nice to be able to get him painted
Throgg was just a lovely model to paint and a chance to mess with flesh tones and red contrast paints
The UniKhornes scheme was a replication of the Corpse Grinder Cult I’d painted with the Necromunda Uprising release
Aaaaaaand…. breathe! That’s it! PaintSlam21 is officially capped off and finished, with a nice ribbon and bow around the package. How did you get on with your hobby log? Did you impress yourself with how much you got painted? Let’s do it all over again in 2022 with PaintSlam22 – I look forward to enjoying another awesome year of hobby with you all!
As the year winds down, now is the perfect time to look at what the PaintSlam community painted up for the Festive Finale event! This was a simple challenge to end the year on, to paint models that are predominantly in the festive colours of red, green and white. Let’s take a look at what you folks came up with!!
Anvil242
From Anvil we have these wonderful redshirts, plus a small starcraft to give us that little bit of green!
BigGeordieGeek
Some fab decorations here from BGG, including a Starfleet logo, dizzy egg, a mimic gift, the ghostbusters logo and even the crest of Hyrule!
CritonyEntertainment
CritonyEntertainment has been as productive as ever with these festive Power Rangers types!
Gurt
If we had judges, this would surely be in for a Judges Favourite award, as it’s a festive Orc chariot complete with grotty little helpers and all sorts of festive details! Lovely work!
JewelKnightJess
Anvil Industry’s female commissar was my pick for the Festive Finale, so I focussed on her rich red coat and green trousers, with a nice application of snow on the base and bottom of her coat!
Jim1810
Jim brings us the first Red Gobbo of the showcase, but it certainly isn’t the last! This is the first of the festive Red Gobbo models GW released, and looks fantastic with his gift list as he stands atop a few “presents”, which may or may not be hugely explosive!
MattyAsherIsaac
I adore this festive badger model! It’s really cute and captures the cold winter vibe nicely!
Mommy Negan
Mommy Negan really leans into the mean green with a classic Nurgle model. Perhaps he’s the Nurgle Grinch?
PSippitt
Pete brings us his rendition of the 2021 Red Gobbo mini, with Bounder. I really like the shiny wine-coloured bauble nose and the stripes on the candy cane dynamite stick look great!
Pyro
Pyro brings us this awesome Barbarian Santa! The white fur looks fantastic and the splashes of gold give the model a real warmth alongside the rich reds.
ThePoshGoblin
And to cap it off we have another rendition of the Red Gobbo and his trusty squiggy steed! Again wonderful work on the candy cane stripes and I love the orangey shade of the squig which helps the gobbo’s red coat jump out at you!
Thanks everyone who took part in the Festive Finale event! And look out soon for the exciting End of Year showcase where our keen PaintSlammers pick out 2 favourite pics from the whole year and share them with us – we’ll even be doing a showcase live stream over on my Twitch channel soon!
It’s not too late to get involved, simply join the Discord* and check out the End of Year Showcase channel!
*This link will expire in 7 days from posting this blog update!
Alright our hobby folks! Hows things in groovetown, then? It’s December, which means it’s time for the November community showcase, sharing the lovely hobby that was submitted into the official PaintSlam Discord during the month of November 2021. Thanks again to Momma Negan for helping me with this article by collating the pics for me! Let’s get in and take a look at what you’ve been painting!
Affiliate links are included for some of the models featured in this article, if you want to help support PaintSlam when buying models.
BRIN
Lovely Orks here from Brin. I love the skin tones and the yellow armour looks fab too.
CALLIE
A mighty spaceship here from Callie! Showing my low nerd rank by not being able to identify it.
CEDA_KURU_QAN
Absolutely stonking rendition of the new Stormcast boss chap, Bastian Carthalos. The white armour is stunning.
COMMISSAR LEWDFANG
Gorgeous chaotic friends from Lewdfang, ready to knock on your door and tell you the good news about Archaon and the chaos gods.
CRITONYENTERTAINMENT
Aiaiaiaiaiai! More awesome models here from Power Rangers to Wolverine!
DARKHANON
Awesome deep red hues on these Blood Angels from DarkHanon!
FIN37
More wonderful dragon princes here frim Fin37. I love the bright blue so much.
GARDENGOTH
Gorgeous Dark Angels here, with some great freehand checks and details!
HEAVY METAL WARS
Some vintage models here from HMW, gotta love that classic Dark Angels captain.
HOUSEFIREHAWK
Water guilders and a couple of gobbos from HouseFireHawk, the orange armour really pops against the blues.
JEWELKNIGHTJESS
A mix of things from myself here, from Black Templars to Necromunda Underhive Outcasts 🙂 You may have seen some of these on the Warhammer Community website.
MOMMA NEGAN
Delaque gangers looking very sinister here amongst other models from Momma Negan. I love the old school blue gradient backgrounds too.
PANDAEMONIUM_MINIATURES
Pandaemonium is shining a light for us this month with this lovely model!
PSIPPITT
A huge pile of Orks here from Psippitt, as well as a mean looking Admech character!
SHEROQUEER
SHeroQueer brings us an eclectic mix of characters, plus the cover of her Pit-Kombat rules. Check out her Twitter to grab the PDF ruleset!
THEELUSIVESHAUN
I love this industrial terrain from TES, plus more lovely Dark Angels!
THOKAMOUS
Thokamous brings us a bright blue flyer this month, and a handful of guardsmen!
TORRENTSTRIDE
Last but definitely not least, Torrenstride brings us a fantastic branchwraith and Alarielle the Everqueen, in stunning red and grey schemes.
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!
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