Stormy Teacups

Yet another figure that I’m painting for someone else. It’s a change from working on my Warriors of Chaos army at least. This one is for a friend who wanted a Belial figure but didn’t have the confidence in his own modelling skills to convert one. I had a bit of a cast around, realised it wouldn’t be too tricky and promptly volunteered to do it for him. There’s quite a nice version posted up on the Games Workshop website that I used as inspiration although mine ended up being quite different as you’ll see.

To begin with I started from Lysander, Captain of the Imperial Fists’ First Company. This is a popular choice for Belial conversions as it’s an ornately armoured Terminator in a fairly dynamic pose. The first thing to do was to remove all the Fists’ iconography which was pretty straightforwards – there’s a fist on his gorget and one on each tasset. These are simple to remove. I also cut out the hand part of the fist shape that makes up part of the head of his Thunderhammer. One of the requirements was that the figure should have interchangeable weapon loadouts. As he’s a Terminator this is a piece of cake – all you need to do is have the relevant weapon arms and magnetise them. In Belial’s case he can have either twin Lightning Claws, a Thunderhammer and Stormshield or a Power Sword and Stormbolter. As I don’t collect Space Marines myself I don’t have a stock of bits to scrounge in so I also bought the Dark Angel upgrade sprue which provided the Power Sword, Stormbolter, Storm Shield and some other small parts. I was also sent a pair of Lightning Claws and shoulder pads by the owner of this piece. Right away I had a problem; I had three left arms and only two left shoulderpads – these are the ones that have the Crux Terminatus sculpted on. One was integral to the Storm Shield arm and the other was the plastic one that I was sent along with the Lightning Claws. I solved this problem by cutting the left Lightning Claw and the Power Sword arm off just below the shoulder, magnetising them and then attaching the shoulderpad to one of the orphaned shoulders which then received two magnets (one to attach to the body and one to attach the rest of the arm).

Originally the plan was to give him a hood but I couldn’t make the hood work with the Terminator armour no matter how I tried. It didn’t look right coming from inside the armour and it didn’t flow well around the head if it was outside. Eventually I scraped off all the greenstuff and left him with just the half-cape that’s part of the Lysander figure. I added some Dark Angel iconography on one greave and the gorget by taking some of the small icons from the Dark Angel upgrade sprue, filing them flat on one side and then gluing them on to the armour. I also Dark Angelsed up the Thunderhammer by sandwiching some greenstuff between two of the helmet wings from the sprue and sticking that on where the fist used to be. The wings on his back are from the Warhammer Fantasy Empire General set, there’s a standard top which is a robed and winged skeleton carrying a scythe. All of that except for the wings were cut away and then the two separate wings were greenstuffed together and moulded somewhat to match the back of the armour. The Empire general also gave up his two handed sword which replaced the one from the Dark Angels sprue.

Once the figure was built, it was time to get on with painting it. To begin with I painted on a thin basecoat of Snakebite Leather all over the armour. I like to paint bone as yellowy, old bone rather than bleached white as it’s generally done so I start with quite a dark colour and work up from there. In this case I highlighted up with various mixtures of Snakebite Leather, Bleached Bone and Skull White. The final edge highlights are pure Skull White but the blending in between is mostly Bleached Bone. The green parts started with a base of Orkhide Shade and went through Goblin Green, Scorpion Green and Sunburst Yellow while the red was a base of Mechrite Red with blood red and Golden Yellow for highlights. I’ve warmed to the foundation paints recently, previously I never used them at all but I’m liking the depth of colour I can get with them even though I almost always start from a white undercoat.

The main problem I had with this figure was working out what colours to do the details. Particularly things like the purity seals, which are generally done with red seals and parchment tassels. In this case the red seals would have been lost against the red eagle on the cuirass while parchment tassels wouldn’t show up well against the bone armour. Eventually I decided to do them gold with greyish parchment. The cloak was another area that got redone once I realised my original plan wouldn’t work. I had planned to do it green and cream to match the Deathwing and the Dark Angels primary colours however this didn’t go well. Cream on the inside was too close to the armour colour and it didn’t frame well as a border colour. In the end I painted the inside green with a red border to tie in with Belial’s old company colours (argent a bend sinister gules). This heraldry is repeated on his back banner, his left kneepad and on two of the right shoulderpads.

These problems are why I like to ‘sketch in’ a figure before I start to work on highlighting and fancy work. Very often something that sounds sensible in your head doesn’t translate well to the actual miniature or you’ll realise that you’ve overlooked some detail that requires you to change your plans. You’ll see that the work in progress shots from the gallery are quite rough, there’s no highlighting to speak of, many of the lines are wobbly and there may even be blank bits. Once I’ve got a better idea of how the final figure will look and I’m happy with the scheme then I’ll tidy it up, work on the shading and add in the fiddly detail.

I played around a little with some non-metallic metal effects on this model. The sword on the back banner as well as the Power Sword and the bayonet on the Storm bolter are all done with slightly different nmm techniques. The back banner is done as shading with a chrome effect – very dark areas next to very light areas to suggest sharp contrasts of light. The Power Sword and bayonet on the other hand use a hatching effect to suggest a shimmering reflection on the blade.

Finally the base is from the 40k basing kit. The large pieces are a shade over 40mm across so I had to trim it down to size, the feet are pinned into it and then it was glued onto the standard 40mm round base.  It was painted black then drybrushed with Graveyard Earth, Terracotta and Fortress Grey before small clumps of static grass were added to break it up a little.

It’s getting posted off to England on Monday, let’s hope the new owner likes it!

You can see all the in-progress and final pictures of this figure in the gallery.

Shortly before Christmas, my local game store received one of the new plastic Tyranid Trygon kits for display purposes. As it happened, I was in there at the time and casually mentioned that I’d like to paint one but wasn’t going to buy one just to paint. The manager told me that I was welcome to paint the display copy once he’d magnetised it and so I ended up painting a modular Trygon/Mawloc.

Jakob spent some time magnetising each of the different options to make them interchangeable and this is mostly pretty straightforward. Each arm has a magnet in the ball joint and there is a corresponding magnet in the sockets. It’s worth spending some time here to make sure that the magnets in the arms are at a good angle. Each arm overlaps the one above it to a degree and thus needs to be splayed out a little to clear it. If you put the magnet in the same position for each arm then they won’t fit properly. The tail has a pin as well as a magnet and each tail tip has a magnet and a hole drilled in it to accept the pin to ensure that it lines up properly and doesn’t twist. The complicated area is the head as there are a lot of optional parts in a relatively small area and these need magnets in different places. The mandibles can be attached just like the arms as they have a simple ball and socket joint on each side but the two jaws present problems. The contact area for each jaw is quite small and the Mawloc mouth part is pretty large so needs a solid connection to hold it in place. Jakob was able to make the regular Trygon jaw fit by putting a magnet in the cavity within it which connects with one inside the head. These are some distance apart but with sufficiently powerful magnets, the attraction is enough to hold the jaw in place. The Mawloc mouth parts however don’t have a convenient space to hide a magnet in as they are spread open with no solid sections. My suggestion was to not magnetise it at all and have two pins running backwards from the back of the jaw into holes drilled in the head section to hold it in place. Jakob however used flat magnets greenstuffed to the back of the jaw and the front of the  head. I still think my solution was better but Jakob’s works although it needs a bit of cutting and greenstuffing to make everything fit. There are also different carapace sections for the top of the head but there wasn’t enough room to fit yet more magnets in the head so Jakob picked one and glued it in.

Once Jakob had assembled and magnetised the kit, it was handed over to me for painting. I sprayed it white and then deliberated on a colour scheme. Jakob wasn’t a fan of the standard Leviathan colours of purple and white and I think the Behemoth red and blue scheme looks too busy so I compromised on a purplish-brown with pale green scheme as a good contrast using non-standard colours. Tyranids are composed of two main textures: chitinous armour and ribbed flesh, I chose to make the armour dark and the flesh pale. To start with I painted all of the flesh areas with Rotting Flesh. This was then washed with Thraka Green and then highlighted with Rotting Flesh again. Once that was dry I glazed it with Enchanted Blue before applying final highlights of a Rotting Flesh/Bleached Bone mix. As this is quite a large model and there are lots of extra bits, this took some time.

The chitin was painted Scorched Earth initially and then washed with Asurmen Blue. This gave a very dark and warm purple that was almost black. I highlighted this with Leviathan Purple in small amounts of Skull White before glazing it with Lich Purple. Final highlights were in Warlock Purple mixed with Tentacle Pink. Highlighting chitin is relatively simple although it’s time consuming when dealing with the number of separate plates on the Trygon (plus all the different claws, mandibles and so forth). To start with the highlight was pretty subtle and was applied towards the trailing edge of each individual plate. Then the lighter highlights were painted on very quickly in thin lines down from the middle of the plate to the trailing edge. As the highlights get lighter these lines become shorter and more closely spaced, this provides a smooth highlight while keeping the chitinous feel. Finally edge highlights were painted around the vertices. The flesh inside the jaws was painted Tentacle Pink and washed with Leviathan Purple before highlighting with Bleached Bone, this provided a sufficient contrast with the rest of the model without making it look unnatural. The eyes were done in blue and painted as gems instead of irises and pupils.

The whole thing took me a while due mostly the sheer size of the beast. Highlighting that much flesh and that many plates is fiddly and time consuming even with a big brush and thin paint. Still once it’s together it looks pretty impressive.

Check out more pictures including work in progress shots on this gallery page.

Woo! I got everything finished last night finally. This was despite feeling distinctly crap when I got home from work and taking a nap till 9:30. The Heralds aren’t finished properly but they are complete and will be more than ok for the tournament tomorrow. I’ll be flying to Manchester this evening straight after work and heading over to Warrington. Expect a tournament report on Monday.

Overall, I’m pretty happy with how the army came out. The painting standard is on the low side of acceptable but it’s all complete and mostly pretty neat. It’s going to get tidied up and completed between now and August but I don’t feel too bad about putting it on the table this weekend.

The complete army

Almost at the end now. I took some time last night and sat down to paint without rushing as I want these last two figures to be of a much higher standard. I doubt I’m going to have time to really go to town on them but they will be neater and closer to my regular standard than the others. I’m also highlighting and shading rather than simply inking everything.

Slaaneshi BSB in progress

Front view

Tzeentchian Herald in progress

There is still some work to do on them and I’ll not be going too crazy on highlighting and detailing but they’ll stand out nicely I think and shouldn’t be too hard to finish to a basic standard tonight. And with that. I’ll be done!

Read the final update here.

I’m almost to the end of this paint frenzy now, last night I finished the last 7 Horrors and the final 9 Daemonettes making the army complete apart from the two Heralds. I even found time to stipple a pale blue over the Screamers which has improved them dramatically as you can see in the picture below.

Still pretty horrible but definitely better

Last of the Horrors and Daemonettes

Converted Masque

As you can see the Masque of Slaanesh is pretty easy to convert into an Battle Standard Bearer, I cut the double-ended mask off, drilled a hole through the hand and then passed a short length of brass rod through it. The banner itself is from a mounted Chaos Marauder sprue. She’ll be painted up tonight and tomorrow. In progress pictures to follow.

Finally here are the scores.

Points Painted Today : 252 points

Points Target Daily: 200 Difference: +52

Points Target Overall: 1200 Points Painted Overall: 1032 Difference: -168

Figures Painted Today: 16

Figure Target Daily: 10 Difference: +6

Figure Target Overall: 60 Difference: -2
Read the next update here.

Yesterday was another evening mostly spent preparing things. I stuck together the last of the Daemonettes and the Horrors including the converted command group, converted my Masque of Dlaanesh into a battle standard bearer and assembled the Skarlock. I was going to convert him to be more Tzeentchy and less Cryxy but he’s not easy to cut about due to the flowing ribbon thing that goes from his hand all the way around – replacing his hand with something else woudl require finding some way of either removing that ribbon entirely or working it into the conversion which I’m not really up for trying at the moment.

I did get some painting done however, I mostly finished the Horrors, they just need some detailing and basing and I put the main shade on the Daemonettes. Both of those units should be finished tonight leaving me with two days to do the two Heralds which should be enough time to do a better job and maybe even tidy up the Screamers too.

Here are some pictures:

Musician and Standard Bearer for the Horrors

Mostly complete Daemonettes and Horrors

Painting with inks

Some people have asked me about painting with inks and how to avoid common problems. Firstly I think it woud be useful to talk a little bit about what inks are and what they are not. Firstly, they are not simply thinned down paint as a lot of people seem to believe, they are a very dense pigment concentrated in a thin medium. Those of you who use Citadel colours should note that there is a marked difference between the old citadel inks and the newer range. The old range were true inks while the newer ones are designed to be used as washes and tints rather than as inks. This means that the newer ones aren’t as pigmented and have different covering properties – mostly they have a much higher surface tension meaning that they cover more evenly and don’t flow off the raised areas as much as inks tend to.

Painting with inks can save you a lot of time as the colours will tend to shade themselves meaning you can save a couple of steps with a single coat. On the other hand, you’ll be dealing with a much reduced palette and inks don’t mix together very well – a darker colour will completely overwhelm a lighter one.

One of the common issues that people have is that the heavily shaded effect you get when you paint the inks on doesn’t always remain once they are dry. There are two separate points here that contribute to this.

Firstly don’t paint inks onto primer. Undercoat sprays leave a very porous primer coat on a figure and this will soak up the ink really well leaving you with a flat pastel effect rather than the shading that you wanted.  Paint the inked areas white (or whatever other base colour you’re using) first and apply inks onto paint instead.

Secondly, inks take a long time to dry – especially if you’re slapping them on as a wash. In that time they’ll do what gravity compels them to do and the excess (which is what you’re using for your shading) will run off. You need a secret weapon to make them dry before this happens. I use one of these:

Additionally note that for very strong shading effects or for particularly deep colours, you may need to apply several washes to an area to get the right depth of colour.

Hopefully that helps.

Anyway, here are the latest scores, as I said above though I should be back on track by tonight.

Points Painted Today : 0 points

Points Target Daily: 200 Difference: -200

Points Target Overall: 1000 Points Painted Overall: 780 Difference: -220

Figures Painted Today: 0

Figure Target Daily: 10 Difference: -10

Figure Target Overall: 50 Difference: -8
Read the next update here.

Well I’m still pretty sick but not bad enough to stay at home instead of going to work – besides I need to skip out early on Friday to catch my flight to the UK so I have to be a Good Employee for the rest of the week.

I got the Horrors done last night. Like the Daemonettes they’re pretty basic. I gave them a basecoat of Tentacle Pink thinned with Magenta Ink then washed them with Leviathan Purple before picking out some details (teeth and tongues mostly). I’ll add a picture later as the batteries in my camera gave out before I could photograph them.

Tonight will be the last of the Daemonettes – 9 of them including a command group – and I’ll also stick the rest of the Horrors together ready for painting tomorrow. That will leave me Wednesday and Thursday to do the two Heralds, which hopefully will be enough time to do them to an acceptable standard.

So the running scores then are as follows:

Points Painted Today : 120 points

Points Target Daily: 200 Difference: -80

Points Target Overall: 800 Points Painted Overall: 780 Difference: -20

Figures Painted Today: 10

Figure Target Daily: 10 Difference: on target

Figure Target Overall: 40 Difference: +2
Read the next update here.

Yesterday was a pretty bad day, I’ve been sick with some kind of flu so I’m low on energy and finding it hard to concentrate. I spent most of yesterday and this morning curled up in blankets on the sofa which has put a serious dent in my productivity for the weekend (it’s also why this update is later than normal).

Despite that I got the Screamers and Flamers done by mid afternoon today and I put together half of the Horrors – I would have done them all but sticking Horrors together is pretty much the opposite of fun and the battery on my dremel needs to be recharged again.

This latest batch of daemons are pretty horrible and they are definitely on the list for repainting before the ETC proper in August, they will however do for the 4 Nations.

I liek kullurz

I expect I’ll be able to blitz the Horrors tonight as they’ll be a lot easier to paint than to assemble.

Points Painted Today : 390 points

Points Target Daily: 200 Difference: +190

Points Target Overall: 600 Points Painted Overall: 660 Difference: +60

Figures Painted Today: 12

Figure Target Daily: 10 Difference: +2

Figure Target Overall: 30 Difference: +2

This looks pretty good so far but I need to finish the Horrors tonight to stay on schedule.

Read the next update here.

When I stopped work on Thursday night I had 20 Daemonettes in various stages of completion. Yesterday I managed to finish them all off to a standard that isn’t too embarrassing which puts me neatly back on target.

They certainly aren’t going to win any prizes and I’ll definitely be tidying them up between the 4 Nations event and the ETC proper but:

1. They’re painted
2. The paint is very thinly applied so I can easily overpaint them later if needed or even just respray them

Girly daemons

Here’s a close-up, as you can see it’s predominately inks with some very basic highlighting.

Today I’m going to tackle the Flamers and the Screamers with the big paintbrush and stick the Horrors together. My plan is to try and get the units out of the way this weekend so that I can spend some time on the Heralds during the week.

Scores on the doors:

Points Painted Today : 270 points

Points Target Daily: 200 Difference: +70

Points Target Overall: 400 Difference: -130

Figures Painted Today: 20

Figure Target Daily: 10 Difference: +10

Figure Target Overall: 20 Difference: On Target!

Read the next update here.

Yesterday was spent mostly sticking stuff together and throwing inks at things to experiment. As a result I didn’t actually finish any figures yesterday so the stats for today will look quite bleak. Despite this I’m actually still on target as I got stuck into a block of 20 Daemonettes which should get finished tonight. If I can pull that off then I’ll be on target for the figure count even if the points target will be low still.

After spending most of the evening with my Dremel I’m seriously beginning to dislike the Tzeentchian daemons. I wasn’t overjoyed at the cost (25€ for three Screamers was bad enough, Horrors are likewise wallet-crunching given that you need 3-4 boxes for a useful unit) but the figures themselves are a right pain to stick together. Lots of very small contact areas on fragile pieces makes pinning an absolute requirement and much harder than it needs to be. I didn’t even get started on the Horrors as my Dremel needed recharging after tackling the Flamers and the Screamers.

Still I got a fair bit done on the girls. I had 8 Daemonettes that I’d used as a colour test that were about three quarters done so I sprayed up the rest of the two boxes, painted them white again (inks don’t like being painted directly onto primer) and slapped some watered down Leviathan Purple ink over them. I’ll detail them up tonight and then they’re done.

So to recap then, the current score is as follows:

Points Target: 200 pts

Points Painted: 0

Difference: -200

Figure target: 10

Figures Painted: 0

Difference: -10
Read the next update here.