It looks like I posted the words for this photo already…
This is the horrors after I was “happy” about how they looked. Next up is to get in there with some glazes and such to bring it all down a bit. Then to add some colours to the details – there aren’t a lot, mostly some fire and some teeth and tongues – but on an all-blue model, any additional colour helps!
Because I tend to keep a backlog, sometimes the timing gets a little weird. I want to post about painting the horror models, but I’ll be playing with them on Sunday well before you read about it. 🙂 So I’m adjusting my schedule a bit.
Just put a first highlight layer on the models. Mixed some Sotek Green with some Acrylic Medium, Ushapti Bone and some water and went to town. The idea is that I’ll highlight up, and then shade down, so I’m not worried about the recesses right now.
I’ve got 2 of the new models mixed in with 20 of the older ones, and it strikes me how much I like the older ones better. They are twisted and contorted, mouths stretched painfully wide to let another horror out of their gaping maw. They have 2 limbs or 4 or 6, some flailing and some kept close. These are fun models, and it’s more fun than I remember to put this layer of paint on them. I painted these models once a few years ago – well before I started giving a shit about improving my painting techniques.
(Oh, I’m also painting the Flamers at the same time with the same paint scheme. Might give them something to change it up, or might not. In the meantime, it’s “the horrors” painting series. :))
I’ve join a builder/escalation league. Now I have a ton of models to paint. But it’s ok, because the plan is to use this army at Adepticon next year, for the team tournament and possibly more, depending on how I feel about it when I’m done.
However, the 500 points/month scale doesn’t work for either my schedule, or the quality of the paint scheme I’d like to put out. My plan has been to put 3 colours on each 500 point chunk each month so that I’m tournament legal, and then create buffers for myself along the way.
For the first 500, I’ve got 20 horrors, 3 flamers and a Herald of Tzeentch. My next 500 points has a Daemon Prince that just needs to be glued back together, put on a new base and then raised in quality (he doesn’t go in the final army) and 2 Beasts of Nurgle. Which means that I can spend the next month focusing on getting this bigger chunk of the army up to the standard I like.
Which means I spent the last month painting bases. (and all the other hobby shit I get up to.)
A bunch of bases get a basecoat.
I didn’t like the final yellow of the test model, so I changed the rocks to red. I really like how this turned out – it’s a really strong contrast to the (currently) barely visible difference between the green and blue on the model itself. I tried to keep to the slate look for the top, but it was harder this time to get it to look slate, and not just like green rocks.
Here are some of the worst photos I’ve ever taken, of the current final product. The top photo is a little browner than the bases actually are, but the bottom photo is pretty representative. (I figured out how to make my phone-camera do white balance better…these were wicked orange at one point).
Unit of 10 horrors.
Herald of Tzeentch on the left and 3 flamers on the right.
Another unit of 10 horrors.
When I say something like “glazing watered” or “watered” for any of this, I mean that I took a small brush of that colour, mixed in 2 brushes of Acrylic Medium and then doused it with enough water that it ran around on my palette if I wasn’t careful. The idea is that when you put it on the model, there are spots of black, but that it’s mostly a darker transparent.
The red rocks went something like this…
At this point, the rocks are pretty dark.
The Lamenters dried shiny, I hate that. After I finished that, I did a really light and dusty drybrush of Codex Grey over it. Again, this is to try to create some similarity between the top slate and the bottom rocks. It also hid some of the shininess and lightened the red up a bit.
The slate started with Sotek Green and followed the same procedure as the test model. I think I may have just highlighted with Ushapti Bone though, which may be why these guys were more green and less grey…
When I ran out of patience, I did a light dusting drybrush of the Codex Grey. I think this made a really awesome difference, but I’m slightly worried that all of my previous work has been hidden by it (really light dusting!)
Now I have some models to figure out. Also, Patrick will probably have some comments on the bases about something I should change. This Sunday is go time! We’re playing a ton of 500 point games, and we’ll be taking photos for the paint voting!
After that…we begin the next 500 points. 🙂
I assembled a piece of unit filler as a test model for the proposed colour scheme of my daemons.
For the model, I basecoated…
After that, I…
This process has to be quick. I’m painting an army, not a masterpiece. I think that once I get my basecoat lighter, I’ll be able to do this much faster.
After the basecoat on the model and the base.
The completed model.
My palette, partway through. The left is the bottom rock colour and the right is some of the progressions of the slate.
The base was tricky – I was experimenting, and I’m not certain I’d be able to do it again. Hopefully I can repeat the look, but maybe simplify the process.
When done this, I had a really bright pastel-green piece of stone. To bring the colour down I…
The brown rocks were:
That’s my plan. Looking at it again the next day, the Ice Blue needs some fixing, but it doesn’t need a dullcoat like I thought it did last night. I think this might be going somewhere!
If you have any comments or suggestions, feel free to write!
Just noticed this draft sitting here…
Used masking tape on all of my bases. I airbrushed blue and green on the models, and wanted to maintain the nice white base that I was starting with on my bases.
I’m taking part in the WCP Escalation League for the next few months. I usually avoid these sorts of things like the plague (har), since I prefer to paint on my own schedule. But I figured it would be good motivation for a bit, and after I saw the scoring scheme that Dan had cooked up, I was inspired. I <3 games, and he’s just made painting and converting into a new one!
Here’s the unit. Two pieces of unit filler, the one on the right is the same base as the last one, but with 3 horrors on it instead of tentacles. The Herald is in the front of it.
I had a unit of horrors in my Warriors of Chaos army many years ago, and despite painting them in a (bare adequate) rainbow of colours, they still looked like a uniform, ranked, Warhammer unit. I’m hoping that the staggered 50mm bases will break up the uniformity a bit.
The unit.
I really like the older horror models, but had to use a new one for the musician. Downside of the older metal is that they have tabs, and I was making my own bases. I was holding the two pieces in my hands when I had a brilliant idea – sculpey can be cut and sculpted! So I made my own slotta-bases!
After gluing the sculpey to the cork, I glued two different sizes of hobby rocks to the bases first with super glue and then a layer of watered down white glue. When that dried, I painted the oxid paste over the bases to get rid of any flat areas, except for places on top of the sculpey.
Custom slotta-base, old metal horror and a bare base.
Next steps:
My plan is to airbrush 3 colours onto the models so I can start playing some games, and then get working on the details.
I was going to assemble some horrors tonight from the models I stripped the other week, unfortunately my bitz box had other plans. Today I learned that while I have a large number of bases, I have only a single spare 25mm one, seen in the photo below.
My only spare 25mm base. A few chunks of baked sculpey for horror bases. Oh, and what I did tonight instead of assembling horrors.
I took two of the tentacle bits from the Tzeentch Burning Chariot and glued them onto a base such that they became tentacle unit fillers, instead of tentacle chariot bits.
The base is a re-formulation of the one I did for the Herald. I thought he was standing to high up on the base, so I made the sculpey thinner this time. When I mentioned my problem with the sculpey bending, Wappel said I probably didn’t have the temperature right, so I tried it at 250F instead of the recommended 275F. Still bendy, but I don’t have an oven thermometer, so who knows what is really going on there.
I also left some room on the base itself to glue some bits of rock down, to create some interest that wasn’t cork+scupley. The problem with unit filler, is that it’s lazy. The glorious thing about unit filler is that it’s lazy. But you have to put some effort in anyway. 🙂
My hope for my big unit of plaguebearers is to convert them in such a way that they don’t look like plaguebearers, or bloodletters, but could be used as either if the mood struck me. My colour scheme will not be god specific and will be similar across the army, and similarly I imagine that this 50mm square could be put into any daemon unit I put on the table.
After the glue dries, my plan is to re-oxid paste the area a bit, to create more cohesion between some of the rocks. And go buy 25mm bases so I can actually put some horrors together. I think I have like 40 horrors in my house…and only half that planned for the army.
I’ve wanted to do a daemon army for many years, and with the new daemon book out and (…previously…) no hobby projects on the go, I decided to convert a Herald.
Trying out some of the Wappel basing techniques, with the cork on the bottom and the baked sculpey on top and the oxid paste. It seems as though to get the “snap” look on the edges of the sculpey, you have to get exactly the right temperature, and so this stuff just bent and twisted when I tried to get it to look right. A little hobby knife and some paste later, and it’s all good.
With the lizard release upcoming, I feel like this guy and his troops might take the back seat again…
I haven’t stripped models in years. I think I remember why. These are the last generation metal horrors and flamers. I usually don’t like “older” models, but in this case I feel like these models are still just as awesome looking as the current plastic ones.
Empty bottle of Pine Sol, the only water-tight container I could find that I didn’t care about, a new toothbrush bought just for stripping and my hobby knife.
It’s a painful process.
I’ve heard people using brake fluid as well, but I’ve never used that before.
I put on Avengers, and the next day, Avengers with Joss Wedon’s commentary (still an awesome movie, even after I’ve watched it 6-7 times). I’ve scrubbed so hard that my fingers look like utter crap several days later.
Most of the paint is now gone from the models, but there is still some paint, in some recesses. Ugh. I’m hoping that I can catch the rest of it while I re-assemble the models, because any paint left over after priming will have that section of primer falling off.
