After working on Plaguebearers for months, it was nice to sit down and start working on a Plaguebearer. Damnit. >.<
The upside is that although I’m using the same scheme as for the infantry, I can spend some more time on this guy because there’s just one of him. I’m trying two new things with him, in addition to just being more careful.
Cloak Front
It’s yellow. I want it to be an orange colour by the time I’m done, but it’s yellow right now. We’ll see where this goes.
Cloak Back
I didn’t take any photos of it, but I’m sure you all know the Skulltaker back. Lotta skulls! Inbetween each skull I painted some Blazing Orange, before doing Ushapti Bone on the skulls themselves. I was hoping to use a similar but different colour to give the cloak some more interest. Unfortunately, after washing in the shadows, it looks pretty much like I just used the Ushapti everywhere. When it comes time to work on the cloak detail, I’ll have to see what I can do with this.
I also noticed that I didn’t include him in my List of Adepticon Things. Whoops!
Here’s the promised post on the portal. I was once again inspired by Mr. Wappel and his Chaos Portal, but I wanted something a lot more colourful and out there. When you see Patrick’s and my display board (yet to be started…) you’ll understand this unit a bit more.
Sunburst Yellow. I did my best to make sure it’s all yellow, but decided it wasn’t critical.
Mixed that with Blazing Orange, such that there is 3 levels of colour between the orange and the yellow. I mixed this on my palette so I could use all 3 at once. I painted in semi-random circular patterns around the models, making sure not to completely cover a layer underneath. I want to cover a good chunk of the base yellow with these 3 colours.
I mixed Blood Red with the last Blazing Orange and started tightening the circles around the Plaguebearers a bit. Mixed more and more of the red in and making the circles tighter, occasionally going over a previous outer layer slightly. These are still big and casual paint strokes.
I mixed Alaitoc Blue with the Blood Red. This was much to dark, so I mixed some of the Sunburst Yellow back in to lighten it. Now I started to make the circles more deliberate and careful. Near the end of this part, I had very small strokes of the blue and red mix and painted these in smaller areas to “highlight” the more broad blue+red+yellow strokes.
Unfortunately, I had been careless while painting the Plaguebearers green many days ago, and inside the portal circles were shadows of the teal where it had spilled and I hadn’t been able to cover it well enough with the base yellow. I mixed some Sotek Green with the Blood Red and really watered it down, and made a glaze to lightly cover the inside of the circle. In spots this left little bubbles by accident, and I let those remain so they dried to create little dark spots – a happy accident! This layer also served to mask the darker green under layer.
Lastly, I re-did the Sunburst Yellow on the very top edge of the plasticard.
I haven’t painted a whole new unit in ages, and now I remember why. I always start with the idea that it will be perfect, that I’ll paint everything perfectly. As I start, I get bored…painting 16+unit filler of the same model over and over again is boring. I’m glad that I’m done with the infantry for my daemons now!
I’m also glad that they turned out at all good. These models were second hand, with primer and a base coat on them already when I bought them. They fell apart if I looked at them funny. It’s a miracle that they’re done!
Their Backs
The backs were slightly painful – they have a lot of little dots on their back. I did a messy wet brush of Ushapti Bone onto those dots. Then Lamenters Yellow over it, leaving it pretty yellow with yellow tint to the green skin surrounding. Then I did a drybrush of Ushapti again. Lastly, I mixed 2:1 Water and Secret Weapon Soft Body Black.
It’s not perfect, but it’s good enough.
Swords
I was trying to figure out how to do a glowing white sword. I thought I might do a pink/purple force weapon look similar to my Old Blood. Then I realized that this was not going to get finished…it took an evening to do a single sword, I wasn’t going to do 18 of them.
So I came up with a different scheme that I think looks pretty damn good. I did watered down Camo Green over the white primer. This dried with darker bits in the middle and lighter at the edges, which is a good start.
I painted edge highlights of Rotting Flesh, and did a light feathering of the same colour on the flat of the blade.
Lastly, Skull White on the tips of the spikes and tip of the sword.
The Photos, Already.
Here’s the unit, in all of it’s green glory.
Oh yeah, I painted the portal too. 😛 I’ll have a post devoted to that upcoming in a couple days.
I thought of doing a fancy design on the banner, but in the end the simplicity of this weathered green really appealed to me. Camo Green, Soft Body Black and then I stipled Zamesi Desert with a piece of sponge. I think it looks fantastic.
What’s Next?
On the road to Adepticon, I still have to paint:
2-4 Beasts of Nurgle. 2 of them have a base coat and nothing else.
Skull Cannon. Patrick made me a fantastic conversion for this!
Some reinforcements for my Dreadball rats. Playing in the “league in a night”, so I have to figure out what that means.
Ever more Malifaux. I have a handful of toolbox models I want to add to my crew for the 2-day Malifaux tournament! December Acolyte, The Firestarter, maybe some of the Kaeris crew. Taelor…Oiran…Johan…
Found some photos in my upload folder…turns out these are a few steps back in my plaguebearer work.
You’ll have noticed last post that I own a Dremel. I originally bought it so that I could cut up plasticard and MDF board easily, and that’s how I used it on this project.
The portal is just two pieces of fairly thick plasticard.
To give the vertical piece some stability and strength, I pinned it three times across it’s length. I glued the base to 2 pieces of 50mm bases, which is how many plaguebearers it is supposed to represent.
This part was scary. I mean…I have a lot of bloodletter models kicking around my bitz box, but if this hadn’t worked I wasn’t certain what else I would do to get the effect properly! I used an old GW hand saw down the center of this model to split it into two.
Glue both sides of the model appropriately on either side of the portal, and you have one model entering and exiting from a portal!
I’ll have some more photos of these guys…finished…in a day or two!
Today I spent most of the afternoon applying layer after layer of paint to my plaguebearers.
I started with a Sotek Green base, then highlighted up3-4 layers up with Sotek+Ushapti Bone. This was really pastelly in the end.
I had a Secret Weapon gift certificate, so I picked up a few items, including 4 of their washes to try out. I mixed the Soft Body Black 1:1 with water and applied it liberally across the models. This stuff you have to be slightly more carefully with than the GW washes, as it will create tide marks more easily. It’s also slightly glossy at the end, which isn’t great.
On 3 of the models I mixed more water in, such that when you pulled your brush through it, it was transparent. This looked great on the model while it was wet, but didn’t look like anything after it dried. If I wasn’t doing a unit of 24, this probably would have been the right way to use this stuff – just with a lot more layers.
I wanted something else…so I mixed the Soft Body with some water and Fortress Grey and painted that into the crevasses of the models. This is just a slight tint of grey in some areas, which I like. Part of the inspiration for the colours of this unit is the bases that I’ve been painting – they are on completely different coloured bases – and I wanted to have that similar colour between units.
After that step, I went back and re-highlighted the tops of the muscles. Sotek Green, then Sotek+Fortress Grey, then Sotek+Fortress+Ushapti.
Right now, I’m feeling like there is just a single colour on these models…which there is. I’m thinking about bright orange swords…anything to make the unit more bright!
Painting these today, I’m going to be glad when they’re done. I remember now why I haven’t done a new army in years – painting model after model of the exact same thing is incredibly boring. I’m driven to finish it, and painting in a factory-line is the most efficient, but I just want it done, so I start getting sloppy at the end of the assembly line.
Funny, “Oh hell..”. I had finished the conversion of Skulltaker. Carefully filed off the Khorne symbols, created a little Nurgle crest on his chest, done my best putty work on the neck and making sure the head looked awesome. Everything was exactly how I wanted it.
Except that he was supposed to have a banner. Damnit.
If you look at the model, you can see that there isn’t really a great place for a banner to go. I had a little panic moment – what was I going to do? I took to the internet to see about solving my problem, when an idea came to me from my Ork Warboss in Mega Armour – attach the banner to his backpack (or something). I quickly found this stunning example of nurglings (scroll down 5 photos). I sculpted a similar work of art, stuck it on an Ork shoulderpad, glued a little Goblin banner in it’s little LEGO-like hand, and BAM, instant BSG.
Despite the accidental nature of this conversion, I think it’s fantastic. A touch of whimsy in an otherwise Very Serious Army. 🙂
It’s been a few weeks since I wrote. I haven’t felt the muse tug at me to write, but have instead been working on actually getting some damn progress on these damn models. I felt as though the plaguebearers would never be started, let alone finished, so I hunkered down and I now have some middling progress to report on.
Considering that these same models inspired me to write a 3-partseries on glue, I’m pretty stoked at where they’re at. Just some Rhinox Hide on the back bases, a black base border and some Sotek Green, really, but it’s more than that. They look harmonized. They look like the heads belong on the bodies, where that wasn’t the case before priming. They look like they might be Plaguebearers, and that’s all the difference. I played a game of Triumph and Treachery last week, and one of my many opponents said after deployment “Oh, those are plaguebearers? Oh, no.” even though I had mentioned their religious choices earlier in the evening. Muskie told me in the comments, months ago, that my worshippers of Nurgle looked a little Khorny. Now, in a slightly more greenish hue than mostly red and some metal, these could be plaguebearers.
I’m overjoyed at making progress.
In the meantime, Adepticon moved my cheese. I had a perfect 1200 point list written. When it was done, the Chaos Gods themselves would join hands and circle round it in song and praise. Then Adepticon threw a wrench in my plans by making my tournaments a mere 1000 points. The same perfection is no longer possible. I will have to make do. But know this – the Gods will have their due.
Part of my plaguebearer project (which…not only haven’t I written about for a while, but I also haven’t worked on for a while) is to have half of the unit in the daemon/rocky bases that my horrors are on, and the other half is in the mortal world. The mortal world is cobbled, so I set about making my own cobblestone!
Milliput, the same stuff I’ve been making my stegadon and Old Blood bases with, because for a few bucks you get a ton of putty. It works similarly to the GW green stuff, in that it’s a two part epoxy that you knead together, but it’s a lot more grainy and flaky.
I started by taking a ball of it and spreading it evenly across the base, ensuring that I got it into the corners and edges fully. I had to be careful to avoid pulling it up from the base once it was on there.
I used the knife edge of my GW putty tool, along with a healthy amount of water to smooth down any fingerprints in the putty. I also cut away and pushed up the edges so that they didn’t extend over the edge of the base. It should also be relatively flat, but it doesn’t have to be exactly flat for my purposes. This is “the old world”, so uneven stones are to be expected.
Again, making sure the putty knife edge is wet I pressed it into the putty in lines. Make sure they are straight across and relatively even. After I had cut a line, I twisted the tool slightly to both sides to widen the cut a bit. This is important, because otherwise as you cut, my cut lines will push closed again.
Take the tip of the knife and cut perpendicular lines into each segment.
After you’ve done all of this, you’re mostly done, but you have a few clean-up tasks to do.
When you cut, you’ll have shifted your lines around, and with my knife in particular some of my bricks ended up with pinched corners. I pulled the knife lightly back through some of the lines, and used the flat to smooth down places where I had accidentally cut to much.
The edges of the putty are probably also pushed out over the edge of the base a bit. They look a little pillowy. I took my knife flat and pushed it all back, and then re-cut the very edge of some of the cut lines to ensure that the cut lines extend all the way across the base.
I wanted to do this, because I have a big unit filler planned and I’ll need to do some custom base work on it to meld the rocky bases and cobblestone bases together!
A small preview of the conversion I’m planning for my plaguebearers. I had hoped to find a ton of the ymargl heads from the Genestealer box, but they are very difficult to come by – only two heads per box and I don’t know enough Tyranid players! Instead I went to ChapterHouse Studios and bought a ton of their metal knock-off heads. I don’t think they are as nice as the GW ones, but…they exist, and didn’t cost $5+ per head, so…I’m in.
The guy in the back is lying down because he’s to top-heavy to stand. Something I’ll have to correct for when I put them on square bases.
Tall Paul made fun of my Escalation League army at CHOP Sunday August, questioning whether I owed everyone in the league a beer since I hadn’t finished my models. I replied that each of my models had 3 colours, to which he said “what, blue, blue, and blue?” I was irritated, but he was right. My horrors and flamers only barely got more than blue on them recently (I was counting the base as a colour!)
My 1000pt models now have 5 colours on them (and the daemon prince could almost count as “finished”, if I could find his blasted arm!).
