Blood Angels Assault Intercessor Sergeant

The last couple of weeks have been mostly taken up by work, but I’ve been chipping away at a Blood Angel when I’ve had the time and energy. He’s done now!

The model was originally built last fall or so, out of a monopose Assault Intercessor and Blood Angel upgrade bits. I made the mistake of stuffing too much bling on his waist, which made the model look a bit off from some angles. Before I primed him this spring, I decided I’d re-do the accessories, and think the model’s way better for it. I also spent a lot of time deciding between a bare head and the helmet. On one hand, I like painting faces a lot, on the other I’d like to have a few helmeted warriors in my Primaris collection and I quite like the yellow helmets on Blood Angels. The helmet won in the end. The base is scratch-made, and might be my favorite infantry base I’ve done so far. I imagine he’s charging down a space ship corridor, as a nod to the Blood Angel Terminators in Space Hulk.

I wanted some variety on the normally all-red armor, so for the paint scheme I settled on an Assault Intercessor to get the yellow helmet, and a sergeant for the black shoulder pads. Although, if I’m being honest, I really enjoy painting red so I would’ve happily painted everything in it. But alas, I think I did well with the yellow and black bits as well. After I had decided on the color scheme, I considered a few different styles of painting. I really like the ‘Eavy Metal style, but painting the Ultramarine was plenty of that for a while. Richard Gray’s and Trovarion’s takes were also considered, but I didn’t think this was the right model. I ended up going with something similar to the way I painted my Dark Angel, using volumetric highlighting. I didn’t push the edge highlights as much, but paid more attention to the weathering. There are a couple of places where I’m not totally happy with the light placement or the chipping work, but nonetheless I thoroughly enjoyed painting the armor.

As for the detail work, I of course saw the opportunity for some hazard striping and went for it. I actually even painted the red cable on the floor in hazard stripes, but thought that was a bit too much and changed it. All of the gems, lenses and the purity seal were lots of fun to paint and among my favorite details on the model. I also continued with the script practice, writing “Baal” (Blood Angels’ homeworld) on his right tasset plate. The “curly bits” didn’t end up quite as nice as I would’ve wanted, but nice enough, and it’s legible at least. Trying to do a fancy font myself really makes me admire the ‘Eavy Metal paintjobs. I mean, the lines on that “blood” text are so razor thin! I’ll keep on practicing…

Anyways, this Blood Angel is the fifth of nine in my Primaris first-founding chapters project, which takes me over the half-way point. That’s a good excuse for a group photo, I reckon, so here you go!

A handsome bunch, no? And to finish this post off I’ll claim another square on the bingo card. Again, there were multiple possibilities here, but I’ll go with the “model from a faction you don’t own painted models for”.

Silverlions Knight-Questor

I’m trying to get back to the habit of painting, and what better way is there than a quick, simple project. And this time, I actually managed to keep it so! This Knight-Questor was painted almost completely in a single weekend.

I don’t have too much “me-time” these days: an hour or two after the boy goes to sleep, and during weekend maybe two hours extra each day while he’s napping. And that’s if I don’t have work to do… But, in the week after finishing the Axes, I painted the metallic bits on this Questor and the “Getting Started with AoS” Knight-Incantor (to be continued later…) . The rest of the model was painted on the weekend, bar a couple finishing touches. And yeah, I know that “rest of the model” is basically just the cape, but still…

I’ve always loved this model, and think it’s one of the coolest SCE models available, even with all the new designs around. The pose is just so perfect: a knight imposingly scanning the scene, ready to take on whatever’s coming up, cape flapping in the wind. Rather than paint him exactly like the rest of my Silverlions, I treated him like a one-off project. The gold bits are the biggest departure, they are much simpler here and less saturated. More fun to paint and I guess it makes this guy a bit more silver! The reds got more love than usual – I took a more volumetric approach, blended the colors a bit more and added some extra highlights to improve contrast. I also continued practicing simple TMM on the sword blade. I actually had to paint it twice as the first attempt was awful. I’m not entirely happy with the scratching, but didn’t want to start over for the third time, so I called it good.

My only slight regret with this model is not doing any freehand lining on the inside of the cape, like they have on the box art. I decided to leave it out, obviously, to get the model finished sooner. As the cape is so flowy and especially with the “magical toilet paper” on the way, I knew there would be a lot of back-and-forth fixing mistakes. Oh well, there’s no reason I couldn’t come back to this some day 🙂

I was struggling a bit with the bingo card on this model (can you believe that this model hasn’t been in my backlog for even a year?). In the end I decided to claim the “finish a unit for your army before gaming with it”. This being just a single model, it feels a bit cheap. But I suppose characters are considered units too and I don’t see myself painting too many full squads anytime soon, especially for “armies”. So I guess this is as good a time as any to claim the square.

Elf Cleric

This little model was painted almost a month ago, but didn’t get photographed before now due to work starting again and me wanting to finish another model (coming up soonish…) before setting up the camera gear. When I dropped off my Dark Angel to the painting competition, I also decided to buy a small mini from the game store. I thought I’d have a chance to complete another square on the hobby bingo by finishing a mini in 48 hours after acquiring it. And while it took me a while to take the photos, I managed the painting in time!

Now, I knew that of the 48 hours, I’d only have maybe 4-5 hours to work on the mini, so I didn’t want to get a GW model that I’d obsess over, taking a couple of hours just to clean, build, base and prime. Good thing that the store had some cheap Wizkids D&D models. I picked up a “Nolzur’s Marvelous Miniatures: Female Elf Cleric”, a blister with two models. They’re made out of some bendy plastic and the details on them aren’t great, but not terrible either. Perfect low-stakes models then, and they even came primed! I tried to clean the mold lines a bit, but the bendy plastic didn’t want to cooperate so I didn’t bother. Out of the box and straight to painting – I felt a bit like a kid again!

The model was finished in two sessions of around two hours each. In addition to finishing the model quickly, I wanted to try out some new paints and practice new techniques. During the summer I bought a bunch of new paints (some of the new Contrast pots and some Vallejo Model Color bottles). Among them were VMC Dark Sea Blue and Pale Sand. They seem to be all the rage among YouTubers, and I decided to try and use the blue for all the shading and the sand for all the highlights. I think it mostly worked, though I still need to practice some more with this idea of universal shadow and highlight colors.

On the technique side, I tried to paint a worn leather texture on the coat. I remember seeing Vince Venturella doing this by painting small scratches and dots on the basecoat with quite a bright color and then glazing over them with the basecoat color. This was then repeated multiple times, which resulted in a very interesting(/realistic?) layered effect. Again, I think I got the right idea and a pretty nice result for a first try, but some repetition is required on future models!

I also tried to do some simple OSL on the model. She’s got some kind of a spell going on, which was cast from transparent plastic. I wanted to color it, and thought that a Contrast paint could work well. I first painted the transparent bit with matte varnish, in the hopes that it would help the paint stick. I then used very thinned down Siegvald Burgundy to paint the spell and the surrounding areas. I then used VMC Pink and Off-White for some quick highlights, both on the spell and the model. The spell was then given a coat of gloss varnish. I think the final effect is pretty cool, retaining some of the transparency.

And here’s the bingo card with the cleric added. The square says “paint and base”, and I’m aware that my base is probably pushing it a bit. But hey, it’s my card and I say it counts! 😀

Zarbag’s Gitz

And here’s the whole gang! (more about the squigs in the previous post) When I initially started painting the gobbos I thought they’d be pretty quick to finish. Once again, I was wrong 😀

The main inspiration for the paint scheme came from a classic Adrian Smith painting of Night Goblins. The main take-aways were the blue, black and red robes, as well as the freehand patterns on the hoods. My colors are obviously quite a bit more vibrant and cartoony than the artwork, but I’ve noticed I like my miniatures like that!

Prog da Netter, Dibbz, Stikkit and Redkap

The robes were finished pretty quickly, and painting a rough fabric texture by hashing is always fun. To contrast the robes I tried painting the skin smoother. While the light green paints have pretty bad coverage, I’m once again really happy with how they came out.

Then it was on to the details, of which there were many. Each model also seemed to have their own special things, which made batch painting difficult. But that’s not to say I didn’t enjoy it! Even painting all the rope textures on the net was quite enjoyable, relaxing even. There were a few details which were a bit more intimidating (those involving blending), but once I started doing them they all came out great! It was funny actually, at first Drizgit da Squig Herder was my least favorite of the bunch (the mushroom on his mouth doesn’t really work for me), but after painting the fire effects he’s one of my favorites.

Drizgit da Squig Herder, Zarbag and Snirk Sourtongue

I quite like the bases on this warband, they have various small details that add to the narrative of the group. I actually started this painting project with the bases, something I don’t often do. As painting the bases was mostly drybrushing, I thought I’d have to repaint a lot less if I started with them (looking at Zarbag and those mushrooms!). Of course, I then had to lightly drybrush the bottoms of the robes after finishing the models, but thankfully that went without issues.

I’ve got one regret with this warband, and that’s not doing gap-filling properly. Thankfully it’s not (very) visible on the photos, but especially on Zarbag’s cowl it’s raining on my parade a bit, after painting him up so nicely. Painting-wise, there’s one or two things that I could’ve improved or added, but as fun as they’ve been to paint, it’s time to start working on something new.

I also get to cross off another square on the bingo card, this time it’s the “warband for a skirmish game”.

Zarbag’s Squigs

After building and priming all those models shown in the last post, I promptly went on to paint something different. So now, more than a year after building and priming them, I’ve finished painting Zarbag’s Gitz. In this post I’ll show you the two squigs, which I painted before the rest of the warband, and in a couple of days I’ll show the actual Gitz.

These two angry red balls were fun to paint, and quite quick as well, with so few elements to them. I tried some new recipes on these, mainly on the red skin and the teeth/bones. I shaded the red with Contrast paints, Blood Angels Red on one and Flesh Tearers (FT) on the other. Not much difference in the final product, FT provides a bit more contrast. Otherwise the process was the same. I used a flesh tone for highlighting, which was a first for me.

I wanted to try something different with the teeth as well, especially to provide contrast between the giant bone and the teeth on Bonerakka. I took inspiration from the studio models and tried Rakarth Flesh (RF) as a basecoat, shaded very carefully with thinned Nuln Oil. Highlighting with Pallid Wych Flesh (PWF) finished off the teeth. The bone was likewise RF, but shaded with Seraphim Sepia. I then layered with Flayed One Flesh and highlighted with PWF. Finally, I glazed on some color with a mix of Reikland Fleshshade and Carroburg Crimson. Very happy with the result!

One final note about painting the details: the brands on the squigs’ sides had me scratching my head for a bit, but happily one of my go-to sources, Tale of Painters, had me covered. Stahly has painted this warband very nicely and provides recipes for most of the colors, including the scarred flesh. Also helped with the mouths! I didn’t get mine to look quite as nice as the reference, but that’s fine.

I’m also sneaking in my hobby bingo card, as a week ago I built two new magnetic storage cases. The construction was exactly the same as the previous ones, so didn’t feel the need to post a picture of them. But with those, I should be set with storage for quite some time!

Blood Warriors

Whoops! February went by without a single post. I haven’t been completely idle on the hobby front however, as I’ve managed to finish a project that’s sat on the to-do pile for years. Here are my Khorne Blood Warriors from the AoS starter set!

These guys have been built since 2018, and I laid down some basecoats in 2020, but only now mustered up the courage to properly start and finish painting them. That Chaos trim is notorious for discouraging painters and not without reason! I wouldn’t say it was difficult to paint, just very time-consuming. All together, these five models took around 20 hours of painting time.

The Warriors continue my Khorne army project which started out as a “speedpainting” exercise, though I don’t know if that was ever the right word. “Not-to-the-best-of-my-ability” would probably be more apt. Basically I painted the Reavers to GW’s “battle-ready” standard and the rest of the models more or less “parade-ready”. Heh, I don’t even know if it would be possible to speedpaint the Warriors with all that trim!

So yeah, painting these guys was a bit of a slog. I’m happy enough with the end result, but getting there was a paint-by-numbers affair which got a bit dull at times. Painting the red was probably the most fun, as I tried some very simple volumetric highlighting and subtle gradients. The models would really benefit from from one final highlight on the red (and on black, too), and it wouldn’t have taken much time either. I think I’ll try that with the Lord of Khorne model first and, who knows, maybe I’ll update these models and the rest of the army too.

Speaking of the Lord, it’s the last model from the starter army, which means my Khornates are in the same state as my Stormcasts – only missing the Big Boss. Maybe by the time AoS 4.0 rolls out I’ll be done with the first starter set 😀

Silverlions Prosecutors

So far in 2021 I’ve only been working on the 40k side of the hobby, so it’s high time that I got some AoS in the mix. I have a few half-done/started models in my to-do pile and thought that I’d try to finish some of them during the summer. Amongst them were the three Stormcast Prosecutors from the AoS starter box who are now done!

These guys took surprisingly long to finish. The largest part, the armor, was of course quick and easy, but the wings, gold and the “magical toilet paper” took hours to do.. That’s probably down to inefficient workflow, but it’s the way I’ve painted this army and I’ll stick to it. I think the reason these were not too enjoyable to paint for me was that this was a “paint by numbers” affair, there’s no freehand designs, battle damage, bare faces or any other more freeform stuff, just neat painting. I tried to speed up the process by not going back to fix mistakes, instead using the next paint to cover any slips. There’s still some around, but I tried to remind myself about “tabletop standard”. The good things are that the end-result is still pretty nice and I’ve only got the Lord-Celestant to do and then this army is probably finished!

So yeah, I’m happy that they’re done and I’m just one model shy of completing this army. For the hobby bingo I’ll use the Prosecutors to claim the “to-do-pile”-square. They’ve been built and primed since 2018 and I started painting them more than half a year ago, so I think they’re well qualified. I think I have a small chance of scoring one complete bingo this year, so I try to set myself up for success. For the monster, I have two candidates: Ghazghkull Thraka and the Lord-Celestant. Hmm.. If I really get a move on I might be able to finish at least one of them before the end of the year.

Astra Rodentia Standard Bearer

The first model of the year is finished and we’re not even halfway through February! Sigh.. But here he is, a standard bearer (/fanatic) for my Astra Rodentia!

He’s been a long time coming, as I built the model nearly a year ago! I guess a big part of why he took so long to get painted was the banner. I had to come up with some kind of a color scheme, something to write on the parchments and then figure out how to do something like NMM on the symbols. The original idea was to also put on a graffiti-style text on top of the design (“Gutter Runners”) to show that these rats have taken some other regiment’s standard and made it their own, but I kinda shot myself in the foot with my chosen color scheme. I couldn’t use yellow, white or red for the lettering, as it would’ve gotten lost and I didn’t want to introduce any further colors like blue, green or pink to the model. Oh well, maybe I’ll get to realize this idea on some other model.

On the whole I’m pretty happy with how the flag came out. The left side of the flag seems to be a bit lighter, I went a bit overboard with the dirt splattering on left side, and I clearly need a lot more practice with NMM, but as a whole I think the banner looks nice.

As for the rest of the model, there wasn’t much that was different from the other Astra Rodentia I painted before. I painted on some wood grain to the banner pole, which was more successful on the left side, and glazed Skrag Brown on the yellow hazard stripes, which looks really nice. One new trick I tried with this model was to use a brush and a toothpick for the splatter effects, rather than a toothbrush and my thumb. Much more accurate! I also used AK’s Ultra Matte Varnish on all the non-metallic areas. It can be used with a brush straight from the bottle and works really well. Maybe a little too well for my liking.. 🙂

Okay, so new year and a new bingo card! Maybe this is the year to complete at least one bingo? We’ll see. I count this model for the “technique you haven’t mastered”.

As a bonus, I though I’d show you the finished bases that I’ve made for upcoming Astra Rodentia reinforcements. There’s the six bases I showed unpainted in the last post and a seventh one (with the T-pipeline and chain) that I built and painted ages ago for my last couple of rats. I’m pretty happy with most of these – the only one giving me pause is the one with the knife. The floor ended up looking too messy – not an unlikely scenario in the real world, but I’d like a little more definition. I might end up repainting it before using it.

Mollog’s Mob

Praise Gork (or maybe Mork?)! New finished models, at long last!

I painted Mollog quite a while back in June, but didn’t have time to paint his minions. They ended up sitting primed until October, when I decided that it was time for them to get painted. I guess Bat Squig counts as my Orktober project?

As with Mollog, I pretty much followed the studio scheme, just altering the colors to be less purple. Because each of the minions has a different color scheme I painted them individually to completion before moving onto the next. This was great fun, and I once again tried wetblending and other more “freeform” techniques. This group was also a great exercise in how to tie the different color schemes together: even with the box art as reference I had to really think about the color choices. I actually ended up repainting the white on Spiteshroom, as the first iteration was too white! In the end I think I managed a cohesive unit, so I’m very happy with the result.

One minor thing that I kind of messed up was the bases, which ended up a bit lighter compared to Mollog’s due to too aggressive drybrushing. And speaking of bases, my word all those mushrooms took a long time to paint!

Silverlions Lord-Relictor

A couple of months ago I painted the Bloodsecrator from the AoS 1.0 starter set. Now it’s time for his Stormcast counterpart – the Lord-Relictor. This guy also counts for another entry in Azazel’s Jewel of July-August!

If you’re familiar with the original model, you’ll notice that I’ve swapped his head. I hate the stock helmet with a burning passion – what were they thinking with that ridiculous nose? As Space Wolves heads have been shown to fit very well on SC bodies (not least by the OG Silverlions by Banzai1000 / Thilo Engels), I promptly copied the trick.

For the most part, he was surprisingly enjoyable to paint. Before this model I’ve basecoated the armor on the Silverlions with GW’s Ironbreaker, which is a bit rubbish and requires a lot of layers. This time I used Vallejo Metal Color Duraluminium, which is a pretty close color match but covers better (two layers, tops!). After an Agrax Earthshade wash and a drybrush of Runefang Steel (VMC is too thin for drybrushing, I imagine), the result is indistinquishable from Ironbreaker. Well, there might be some difference, but not due to the different basecoat! Comparing the Relictor to my older models, there’s a bit more Agrax showing through, which is an effect I like. More definition and a bit more weathered look. I think it’s down to me getting on the “make-up-brushes-as-drybrushes-train” a little while ago. They really are great (and cheap!), and can produce a really smooth result. With the Citadel’s small drybrush I tended to go a bit too heavy. It’s still a good brush for small details though.

Speaking of details, they were the most fun part of the model. Once again I tried adding a bit of color on to the face, and while it’s not my best work it’s one of the better ones. I think I got the black beard relatively nice as well. For the hourglass I took some pointers from an ‘Eavy Metal tutorial in an old White Dwarf (#362). Went a bit overboard with the reflections, but I guess it’s fine for a first attempt. Also, I’m not sure if the blue-gray color is the best choice here, as it’s not repeated in other areas of the model. It certainly stands out, but maybe too much. Finally, after finishing the gold in my usual way, I thought I’d try enhancing the contrast a bit with some Guilliman Flesh. I think this worked out great, although it might’ve been beneficial to re-highlight some edges with VMC White Aluminium / Runefang Steel.

The only part that was a bit tedious to paint was his cape. Those SC parchments are pretty annoying to paint, at least the way I do it.. And as if that wouldn’t have been enough, I also had an Agrax mishap which left the whole cape glossy after the wash. Thankfully after some coats of matte varnish and Lahmian Medium I was able to fix it. Hopefully now that I’ve painted the Relictor, who surely has the most flappy bits, the rest of my SC models will be easier to paint!