A Story of Two Nevilles

 Or "How It Started vs How It's Going".

This is a fantastic sculpt from the Turnip28 range (https://www.patreon.com/posts/turnip28-core-81080090). It's 3D printed, but to a high standard and is a wonderfully crisp. I had two, and thought it would be fun to two a clean version, a "before the war" if you will, and then a second in much worse condition.

I think the clean one is self-explanatory, it's a riff on the classic British Napoleonic infantry uniform, which is when Turnip28 is set in an alternative universe, but I've painted the bobbly headddress as a grapevine. The disheveled version is the same palette, but I've used browns, greens and greys to make it a little sadder. 

     

For the most part it's only a handful of paints; violet, vermillion, greenish white, Sahara yellow, coal black, goblin green and only a little black and white. I did a good amount of mixing to keep the palette harmonious.

A friend suggested building a small scene for them, and I can see 

Rökthane Toothcutter Schiltron

No, it's not a Norwegian prog metal band, it's a space dwarf. Specifically the Highlander special edition version from Ontos Games (https://ontosgames.co.uk/). I picked this up at Salute 2025 which had a Scottish theme, from bagpipes on the door, to a Highlander with sword as the show model. When I saw this on the Ontos stand, I knew it would be a fun project.

But how to paint it? My memory of old Warhammer Squats was red and yellow, so that would suffice. These aren't Squats though, so I took a few liberaties with a scheme, went with yellow power armour, red fabrics and the tartan hat and kilt. Ah, tartan ...

 ... tartan is Not Fun to paint in this scale. Sure, I made my life difficult by choosing a tartan with intricacy instead of maybe a simpler check pattern, but what's the fun otherwise? The final version is the third attempt, and very much "it'll do" at this point. Trying to recreate the intricacy of the pattern is HARD, and freehand of any variety isn't my cup of tea, but it's worthwhile to try these things and improve my brush control.

I have a few quibbles with the model. The first is the print quality. It's okay, and I know it was a show special, but I would have been much happier with a model without the whorls and striations. Second issue is the pose itself, specifically the weapons being tilted forward, whereas tilted slightly backward would have been better. Third is accessibility; as while the detail is great, getting the brush in places was a pain - a common challenge on digital sculpts. But it's not the end of the world and turned out fine anyway. I'd definitely consider other models in the range, as they're fun sculpts and I'd imagine the standard range doesn't suffer the same challenges.

 

Revisiting Old(ish) Friends

This is a piece from earlier in the year, and I took it to Fen Model Show (FMS) where I received a Silver in Standard. The consistent feedback from the judges was "fix the face". They used nicer, gentler and more useful words, but that was the upshot of the comments.

I very rarely return to a model, but this model was coming to Scale Model Challenge (SMC) in October, and I wanted to push a little further instead of throwing my hands up and saying "oh well, nothing I can do about it now" which has been my usual response over the years. Glad I did, as here's the before and after shots ...

 

It's now finished, and completed to a point where I'm happy for it to go into my display unit and remain there forever more. With hindsight, there's a lot more that could be done; higher value contrast on the robes, tidy up the headddress, add more detail into the flowers, improve the freehand, correct the lazy NMM on the jewellery etc. but it's better to take these learnings and goals across to other pieces.

 

I received a commended in Standard at SMC for it, which made me a little sad for four minutes until I saw the work that received medals and have resolved to improve my painting rather than assume an air of entitlement. There's so many fantastic painters out there, that if I want to have my work recognised then it simply needs to be better. Onward to 2026 and being a better painter!