Holga Clovenhorn

 

I was gifted this model by a friend last year and went back and forth over how to paint it. In the end I picked the same colours on the palette that I was using for my Eldar but tried to make it a little moodier. The face is a joy to paint, and a real challenge to give expression to.

Killer, Chaos Spawn

To accompany the other spawn, Hunter, who specialised in sniffing out his prey, this one was built and painted as a pure predator.

I've tried to do better at following the Craftworld Style of overlapping tones and not getting too fussy with smooth transitions - and I'm really happy with the result. It's a vibrant and fun colour scheme.

Building the Chaos Spawn kit was an interesting experience. This was just the standard sprues, but I think the result is somethign with character and purpose, not just the "oh it's a random ball of yuck with some tentacles hanging out". So if you do want to make one, I'd heartily recommend the kit!

Hunter, Chaos Spawn

 An experiment in moving faster to finish tabletop, but keep my learnings from Craftworld Studio coaching. Loading with colours and having fun, fun, fun.

Also, having now picked up the Chaos Spawn kit, I feel it's badly represented by many builds online. So many options to drive a narrative with the parts available. You can take your time to think what you want from the build, don't just add everything immediately!

 Again, narrative is something I'm still working on. Here, it's a creepy monster looking through the ruins of a research facility. Looking for people, a specific object? Who knows.

 

 

Roman Lappat Beginner Course

Two and a half days in a sweaty scout hut with 29 other painters doesn't sound like a brilliant way to spend a weekend, but it was. Under the watchful eye of Zen master Roman Lappat (https://massivevoodoo.blogspot.com) on his Beginner's Course, I came away with a better understanding of scene composition, application of my colour theory knowledge.

If you attend the course, you paint a demonette of Slaanesh. No ifs, no buts. However it's up to you where you take the figure, and I took mine on a rampage through a military facility. It's a limited palette with, for me, really high contrast and a sneaky dimmed light source giving a little yellow glow back onto the top.

I could wax lyrical about this course, and the people on the course with me, for hours. It may be the best painting experience I've had, and my soul feels all the better for it.

Pink Horrors of Tzeentch (and their Yellow cousin)

Fun start to the month. My plans were thrown aside when my eldest daughter declared she'd like to learn how to paint. At the tender age of five, I thought it best to start simple, so pulled some very old figures out of storage and cleaned them up. Behold a few original Pink Horrors of Tzeentch.

They're having a bath of nail polish remover to rid them of their old skins, as this is how they came when buying them on eBay many moons ago. Three layers of paint on the poor things, so I'm sure the Changer of Ways would approve of this transformative soup. But then a spanner in the works ...

"Daddy, what are these called?"

"These are Pink Horrors, sweetie."

"Okay ... I want to paint mine yellow."

*sound of my left eye twitching*

... and lo, the Great Conspirator messes with my head once again. But not the end of the world! We kept the painting simple, literally just main colours then a thin red wash to complement the beak.

One of my brood sitting still for nearly two hours in itself would be an achievement, but having something to show for it is remarkable. She wants to come back and add pink bracelets in the future, but it's now matt varnished so she can handle it without fear of rubbing off any of the paint she's applied so far.

While the daughter was cracking on with hers, I painted up its companions in a similar style but with the right colours, damnit. So it was application of base colour (Squid Pink) then literally just thin washes of purple, red and blue over various areas. This is also the first time I've used cork for basing and it's great stuff! My first go isn't too grand, but with a little more practice it'll make a solid and quick basing technique for ad-hoc projects.

Sadly my trusty daylight lamp is irretrievably broken and I had to use the camera flash for lighting, which isn't too great. The bottom right fellow, who I've nicknamed Gumby is probably my favourite, but they're lovely sculpts. While it's not the best output I've produced, it's not often you get the kids wanting to join in on hobbies and high on the fun scale. I hope she does want to give it another go, as it was a real blast.

There'll probably be a small pause in painting in the next couple of weeks as I've got a new job (hooray!) and want to throw myself into that when it starts later this week.