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I painted this guy many years ago when I first did a “Warriors of Chaos” Tzeentch army. That’s in “air quotes” because it had a several units of Horrors, Flamers, a Gor Herd, as well as two units of Tzeentch Warriors…and a lot of other stuff. You can tell it was a long time ago because this mishmash of units was a legal army…
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This guy has been sitting on my “best of” army shelf for a while, because I’m generally really pleased with how he turned out, especially at the time. That shelf is now in cases because I don’t have space at my apartment anymore, but I pulled him out to maybe use him as a back-up Herald in cases where I roll “turn your wizard into a Herald” on the Winds of Magic table.
I fixed up his plumage a bit, as it was definitely a bit ratty and showing it’s age. I put him on a new base to go with the rest of the army, and left everything else as-is. He won’t see a lot of use, but I’m happy that he has a place in the army regardless.
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As I said last time, I was in a painting frenzy and just wanted to get some things done. These guys had been basecoated last I wrote about them, and now they’re done.
The manes are pretty simple – Ushapti Bone, Gryponne Sepia and then drybrush up Ushapti Bone and Skull White. I haven’t drybrushed for a while, but I think it works out really well for this sort of thing.
The skin is blue, similar to the horrors from a while back. (Actually, it seems I didn’t post a final photo of the horrors…oops). But I didn’t want just plain blue daemon cat things, so I painted some faint lines of Warpstone Green in the middle. Not really strong, but strong enough to be a little green tinge.
Last, I used Bloodletter GW glaze along the edges where the metal and skin meets…because that doesn’t look comfortable at all, and red is the colour of uncomfortable skin? Sure. Here’s some photos.
Final?! I was to involved in painting to take photos, just wanted to get ‘er dun, so I skipped all the middle posts. The skin and sword was identical to the plaguebearer unit, but with more care taken and more layers.
Unfortunately, I’m still a little disappointed with the paint job. I was hoping to enter this model into Crystal Brush in April, but he missed the mark by a bit. The freehand isn’t good enough, the cape is supposed to be “fire lighting”, but it doesn’t work at all and the base is really plain. The paint job is competent and looks great, but it isn’t my best work.
That’s ok though, as I have a back-up entry for Crystal Brush…you’ve seen it here already, and you can guess if you like, but I’m going to keep it to myself until I get back.
I had a hard time figuring out what I wanted to paint for the back of the cloak. I knew I wanted something to “obscure” the fire-lit part of it, but nothing else. I pulled out my tablet and Sensu brush/stylus (totally a product placement, because it’s fun) and doodled a bit until something came together.
When I translated it to the cape though, it still wasn’t what I wanted. It doesn’t cover enough, and it isn’t “intricate” enough to cover enough.
Lastly, some basic OSL. 🙂 This is pretty easy – paint the fire, paint the skull and hand and then apply a layer or two of that Lamenter’s Yellow. Done!
Derrick asked recently if I would post some photos of a single plaguebearer from the unit I painted. I told him I’d do it that weekend…it is no longer “that weekend”, but it isa weekend, so that counts, right?
I did this part on my own – getting together can be difficult, and there wasn’t much that needed doing aside from filling in all of the cracks in the pink foam.
I picked up a product called Model Lite from Magic Box Hobbies. It’s an interesting product with a texture a little like grainy CoolWhip. I tried to apply it using some sort of tool, but in the end just used my fingers. It dries and hardens in less than 10 minutes, creating a plaster layer on my fingers, but it washed off with soap and water no problem.
Patrick is planning to put a sloped cobblestone road on his section, so I carefully carved a piece of foam out so it would fit.
On Patrick’s and mine drive back from AdeptiCon last year, we had the most amazing conversation, planning and scheming about what we would do next year. That’s…this year. April 3rd-6th, specifically. I’m a planner. I love to plan things, it gives me a little thrill to have my little schedule in mind and to check items off of it. The biggest and riskiest item still on that list is the display board we had planned out. I called him up, and we got together to get some work done on this thing!
Our original plan was that he would be playing Tomb Kings, partnered with my new Daemons and the TK would be sacrificing things to Chaos, and we’d have this 300-like pit in the middle of the board, with men being thrown into it and come out the other side and have both sides of the board be reflections of each other.
He changed his mind a few times, and is now working on a Chaos-themed Empire army. Like Traitor Guard. Or maybe he’ll revert back to Warriors of Chaos. But he’s still thumbing through the TK book…either way, I’m bringing Daemons and we’re building this thing!
He’s been keeping a mini sketch book, which is pretty awesome to flip through, and has done a dozen drawings of what this board would look like. I wanted to put some foam on the table, put some models on the foam and really set down what we would do.
Measuring is good. You can see The Notebook (not related to the movie) just above the foam.
We’ve got a 3/4 inch piece of pink foam and a bunch of models. Took a sharpie to the foam and marked a bunch of things down.
I drew a slope up and some parts to cut out. Patrick drew unit placements, a side slope and a little ruin.
Many many many years ago, a good friend of mine and I built a ton of Necromunda terrain. We built a bunch of tall boards and a few short boards, and I ended up keeping the foam mountains we’d built for one of the short boards. It’s crap terrain, in hindsight, so I was super glad to be able to re-use it for this project. We cut it up and glued it down.
One of the things we learned from last year was that tall terrain catches more eyes. We’re flying down, so we can’t build a 6 foot tall Chaos Dwarf cave with an idyllic fishing village on top of it…but we can build some stuff that lies flat, or can be packed into a suitcase or similar and get the height through modularity.
We’ve got some height to build.
Stay tuned, I’ll be posting on this incredible project regularly, and this hobby duo is going to produce something absolutely amazing!
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!
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