Oldhammer Minotaur by Nick Bibby

Scratch one from the leadpile. Serious old-school excellence from arguably (discuss alternatives below), the best metal-mini-monster-maker in the 80's, Nick Bibby.  

~J~

Painting 2021

Before the year ticks over, this is everything painted as I un-lapsed for a while. In reverse chronological order then, most recent first...

Taban Miniatures (limited edition) - an experiment with 'en grisaille', an approach learned from Marco Frissoni's channel that I like very much. Black prime, not zenithal but grey scale tones built up with brush then tinted with glazes. Continues the anti-colour trend started with the Chaos Warrior below. 

Gideon Lorr - already primed white, nuln wash. Then lots of fiddly fun making him look weathered. 

Grace is Gone - Brown Bunny Miniatures (limited ed.) - already primed white, then applied a nuln oil wash. I have never painted black skin before, so experimented with a pink base tone with choc brown/burnt sienna homemade contrast wash, which went a bit funny. Happy accident, it dried in a blotchy way that suits the post-apocalyptic vibe of a struggling post-human with no access to creature comforts.

Chaos Warrior - terrific old-school Jes Goodwin sculpt, had loads of fun doing this one. It was already primed white so first added a nuln wash and got going. I wanted something filmic from this, the antithesis of the day-glo colour most mini painting presents. The base requires some modification, since it is tonally indestinguishable from the figure, but then I wanted it standing in dark, chaos landscape. 

Caelia Dicqor from Rackham's plastic line before they went bust first time round. Nice character mini, if only the eyes weren't so HUGE. I painted this without much of a plan, white primer with a wash of nuln to edge the detail, then applied colour. I half like it. Like everything else in this post, left unvarnised so I can always make adjustments. 

Clawed Fiend - half painted when I last lapsed, forgot what colours I used and had to improvise when finishing off. Frustrated with the hair, but a fairly decent result in the end, adequate tabletop standard. 

Stormcast Sequitors - My impatience to use my only contrast paint at the time massively prejudiced the paint scheme from the get-go, but I'm moderately pleased with the outcome after such a long lapse. First time trying zenithal highlight over black primer. 

Other cr@p... Twilight Knight by Kingdom Death. This is the very first iteration of the character that was never released for sale and was bundled in with the first Gift of Death set (about 2010). I slapped on some colour years ago, and never felt any enthusiasm when I resumed because the sculpt is so inadequate. The sword was a banana when I first got it, replaced it with a metal spare from a Confrontation mini, but now replaced again with a spare from a plastic TK. 

I hope my followers and causal visitors enjoy this break from my temporarily dormant anti-plastic waste crusading. Next year there be will something very different from my long-gestating lockdown project.

~J~

Skaven Heroes & Chaos Champion

Two more recently completed PJ's. Thanquol gets a second airing as it was lurking in the early history of my blog, largely unseen, and I wanted to see how it looked alongside Deathmaster Snikch.

Thanquol is destined for a diorama, facing off with Boneripper against Felix and Gotrek. Boneripper is fairly advanced in its painting. White Dwarf readers with long memories might remember a story (by William King I think) about F & G and their venture into a sewer, wherein Boneripper's career as a living monster came to an end.

Chaos Champion, 'Bartok'... umm, had been mostly but not quite unfinished since 1994 (how badly I lapsed) Seen here with a stand-in, slightly overlarge Marauder shield.


~J~

The Hordes of Khorne...

 ...sort of. A very small horde (of six models). Or it was small until I dug out my painted foot-soldiers of chaos and added another Bloodthirster. Now I have quite a nice little warband I guess. I had never thought of them in that way.

So, some lovely, classic, true Realm of Chaos miniatures. These old Bloodletters still hold their own. Spindly but utterly lethal. I was seriously considering putting them up for sale, along with the two Juggers and the 'thirster on the left. But now I have changed my mind. And I can treble the numbers by including this little lot - dug out for the hell of it - and making a real army:

I stopped buying rulebooks decades ago, but I would always look at White Dwarf whenever possible. I kind of kept track at how Chaos has been developed and I dislike what has been done with the chaos powers. The original rulebooks were a great vision, backed up with unsettling art (Ian Miller in particular) and story (haunting bleak fatalism). It made - still makes - sense for each god to have antipathies and allies. Khorne versus Slaanesh, Nurgle versus Tzeentch. Now anything goes in a chaos army these days.

~J~

Something Gribbly This Way Comes...

Chaos Champion on Palanquin of Nurgle (1994)

Another old favourite. I still find it interesting to look at, despite the fact it is really so horrible in its subject matter: worm ridden, half rotten.... bleugh.

It was experimental at the time and has many imperfections, mostly parts that look half finished. It presages the way I am painting lately, which is to build up depth and contrast and colour variation through multiple washes, in a wet-on-wet fashion. Nurgles' subjects present opportunities to be less than careful about how the colour is applied, messy and mixed up. The Champion is painted fairly conventionally, but for the other parts, I wanted them to feel like background, in a way influenced by an artist featured in White Dwarf #96, Ian McCaig.

I did something similar with an Ral Partha Imperial Dragon, a basic base coat on the treasure pile, then lots of mono-colour washes, getting deeper in tone away from the dragon.

I'll be adding some detail views here when get around to editing them.

Finished & Based 2 - Liche Knight

Double post today. Decided to call this a Liche Knight. I imagined this character being a former Chaos Champion raised from the dead by some Necromancer. Simple enough narrative fix to combine the bone armour with the chaos symbol on his pouch. I hope it looks suitably dark, ancient and up to no good.

Rather enjoyed modelling the sand around the skulls. I used very fine silver sand mixed with PVA. Its not really suitable in scale but the final result is pleasing enough. Required some green stuff to unify the figure and base, added some extra folds underneath where the cloak lifts up, which would otherwise be flat. An important small detail now that the figure is elevated and that area can be clearly viewed in the round.

Like the Chaos Lord, will be displaying this soon at my local GW store (Bluewater if you want to know).

~J~

Finished & Based 1 - Chaos Marine Lord

It took several years for me to start bothering to base my figures. Mainly because I always jumped from item to item. Item finished (painting), put it on a nice clean base, savour the new paint job, move on. Basing never got to be a habit. But now that I am painting again, basing is a must. First step is to base a figure *before* major painting begins. That way you can match base and figure with a colour palette and ensure tonal cohesion. I found that out on this Chaos Marine Lord. I got carried away with the painting, enjoying the novelty of a resin base, and didn't really appreciate the mismatch until I put the two close together.

 

I included this image because I really like the effect that depth of field has had. Kinda turns it into a comic style painting.

Anyway, I can now truly say that this figure is *finished* (he was more or less in an older post), and will be taken to my local GW store shortly.

~J~

Chaos Champions, Old & New-ish

Been in semi-lapsed mode since the last entry, spending bare minutes at a time actually painting. A couple of days ago gave myself a mental boot up the backside and finished the last details on these guys.

The One With No Name. I have given names to all the Chaos Champions I have painted to date, except for this one. This is one of the few unfinished jobs from the mid-90's that didn't get a Dettol bath. Quite pleased with the final result. Should now give Skull Man a proper character name.

Now this one does have a name - Sapir Redwolf. Come to think of it, I've no idea where the name came from, but its in my old written logbook, maybe picked out of a Realm of Chaos tome. I don't recall the Champions series getting individual names like Citadel used to do before all the big changes in 1988. Mostly painted sometime in 1994, sort of finished in 2011 (can't be arsed with the sword, looks fine as is.)

Gurni Ironarm. Another mostly painted in 1994. Just needed small details filled in, extra washes. I made an attempt at zenithal highlighting on the sword, but I knew early on that it would not look right, even if executed well. 

And to finish, some genuinely old (and genuinely dusty) stuff. From left to right: Aggrius Heartspiker, Velutus the Perverse, and Caramon the Rabid. All painted in 1992. Nearly 20 years later they still have something going for them. Just like many a painter, I am a disciple of the great man himself, John Blanche, and I'll be blogging more of my minis bearing his influence.