Slann Starmaster

A good friend of mine casually mentioned she had a Slann Starmaster just sitting around (lame pun intended), had no interest in painting it, and would anyone like it. "Yes please" said I, as after seeing the Marc Masclans one from Golden Demon (https://www.instagram.com/p/DQT6YVQDYvC/?img_index=1), realising it was pretty darned fantastic sculpt. I don't want to keep the beautiful frog, because it doesn't have a place in any of my collections, but painting it and giving it back to its rightful owner? Yes please to that.

 I remembered to take a couple of progress shots of the base build for a change.While the model's straight forward, the base was a head scratcher. I tried foam tiles at jaunty angles, but that didn't look right, so in the end I settled on larger foam blocks covered in texture, then carved lines in with a knife and blunt pencil.

 

Zombicide: Black Plague more heroes

And so, more heroes it is, and this time it's Beauregard, Cul'nar, Gurbak, Dravog, Brickborn, and Hildir. One hour each ... yes, the witch and goat count as one.

Less of a plan specifically, but more of a play with picking out an item of interest on each model and spending time on that to sell the effect at tabletop. I think a few of those elements are clear, with Dravog and Brickborn on the front row being the most obvious, whereas the other sculpts it wasn't as easy to find that one detail to jump out. However, another six down and more options for us on the table over Christmas when the games come out.

 

A small lapse in posting over the last few weeks, as I've been head down on projects for secret santas and found myself with no pretty things to post and share. Hopefully normal service should resume again!

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!

Sir Gorgonz

Do you like mice? Do you like fantasy armour? Do you like non-metallic metal? Then you might be on the right blog post. This is the gloriously chubby Sir Gorgonz in the Dungeons & Mice range from Ennenne Studio (although their Instagram account is more useful) and was a model both a friend and I picked up as a little "paint off" for fun.

I wanted to work on improving my NMM. I've included three angles, as you can see how my interest waned on the project after puzzling out how I wanted the main two viewing angles to look. But the third view is a less interesting element anyway, and this isn't for competition, more to get back into the swing of things after not painting a lot in the past month.

 Very happy with the result, and it's probably my most convincing non-metallic effect to-date, albeit hasty in places. 

   

 Normally I forgot about work in progress shots, but for once I remembered! Happy days.

I started by trying to determine where I wanted the light to come from. Initially I was a little too high, and lost any interesting elements under the "beak" of the helmet. But it's a useful reference.

Blocking in with yellows and browns to see if it's about right. The helmet shape made it interesting to determine where brighter points would be. Puzzles are fun. Also, so is the word helmet.

Adding the light from the sword, and thinking about where it would glow on the yellow of the armour. Do I want the blade to be brighter at the top or bottom? I opted for the tip to make a point of interest to glow against the ground. Should blue glow make the yellow armour green, or would it just overpower the yellow?

Nearly there now, adding in a darker point between the glow and the armour. The separation between areas sells the effect much better.

Vashkor Drool

 Vashkor Drool. Yes, it's another ork but this sculpt had a name!

 Is it a good name? Certainly not, but it's fitting for that era of Ork where they just opted for daft names rather than overthinking the big angry name. Also, the sculptors were knocking these gems out every ten seconds, so you run out of the good names pretty quickly.

I'm trying to paint what matters on these sculpts, and so much is swallowed by shadow or recess that I've ignored those elements and tried to draw the eye to the elements that matter. Conversely, I made my life difficult by painting dark edges on the shoulder panels to add much needed depth ... why do I do this to myself?

The yellow's a little softer than the last Ork I painted, as I want some variety between them. It shouldn't feel uniform, more ragtag, and from my 2020 army project, they were definitely too consistent in colour. 

  

Overall I like this model, rough edges and all.

Ork Boss

I love orks. Imagine my surprise that I've not painted many in the last few years, or at least posted pictures of them! One in four years? I should hand in my Ork Appreciation Society membership card. Then again, after my Armies on Parade madness in 2020, it's probably not a surprise I subconsciously needed time away from them.

Anyway. It is now October, or Orktober to give it its rightful name, and that seems the right time to address that. This handsome fellow is firmly finished not perfect. The horns need something doing but I really like the aggressive contrast of pure black against the yellow so I will mull further before doing anything. We can agree the yellow is the star of the show and everything else is incidental.

  

Yes, I'm aware I've already started a number of posts on army projects this year and this was NOT in that list. It's okay! This is merely a temporary distraction while I procrastinate finishing pieces for Scale Model Challenge (https://www.scalemodelchallenge.com/) this coming weekend. Oh god, what have I done ...

Setting standards

Over the past year I've tied myself in knots overthinking painting of models, with my brain demanding that each one should be produced to the best of my ability but in reality that would see only a handful of models completed every year at most.

Ignoring the fact that perfection is unobtainable in painting, it seems unrealistic to set a standard for myself where I fail before even beginning! So I'm working harder to call a piece done, even if just for the time being, such as my Flower Queen (https://www.nerodine.com/2025/07/flower-queen-ii.html) which still needs further work.

Rather I'd prefer to have a lot tabletop projects done to a reasonable standard and finished not perfect. Reaching this realisation has not been an easy road, because my brain is wired to be stupid on matters like this. But I'll endeavour to be better at working around it, rather than being blocked by it.

Gundam: Tallgeese

The second and final robot from my 28mm Gundam experiment. Apparently it's called Tallgeese, which is upsetting to the grammar pedant in me, as I desperately want to capitalise Geese, but alas I cannot.

Quite a different approach on this one, as I tried to think of it like any other model I'd want to paint. I've tried to be loose at the edges, and make clear edging and recess shading toward the head and shoulders to draw in focus. There's a lot of magenta, blue, off-whites and a bit of ochre and yellow to create an interesting triangle of different shades between head, gun and shield.

 

 Fun to do, but happy to finish the second one and get back to other models now. Definitely a game to watch out for when they release the ruleset.

Gundam: Zaku

A friend turned up on Saturday bearing several boxes of intrigue. 

Bandai have decided to go after the 28mm market with a range of smaller sculpts of their larger models with the Gundam Assemble range. They're not modular and clip together in a straightforward fashion, which is welcome, and the mold lines are straightforward to remove.

Have I mentioned I'm not a big Gundam fan? But the Zaku is a fun looking robot, I just think they're absurdly large as a painting project, so having them in smaller forms is quite welcome.

This is a very quick and simple paintjob. That's Slimer Green as a base with Ice Yellow highlight, and think it's a Dark Sea Blue equivalent for the shading. Then a Payne's Grey pin wash for panel lining and bit of extra shading here and there.

The metallic areas were done as NMM with a base of Tenebrous Grey, then Greenish White for mixing and final highlights. That's it really. I think in total this was under two hours, and more really me playing with using the airbrush in my painting workflow rather than a serious attempt to make something super pretty.

 

 

If you made it all the way down here ... I'm painting a second one too, but won't be sticking with the traditional clean scheme for that robot. That'll be next week's fun reveal!

Zombicide: Black Plague heroes ride again

 Oh yes, we're back with more. Sorry. From left to right it's Redcap Rodney, Antha, Lady Grimm, Ariane and Persephone.

Antha, Rodney and Grimm are from the Marc Simonetti range, and Ariane is just a generic character from the Wolfsburg expansion. Persephone is from the Carl Critchlow range. 

Everything here is a one hour speedpaint, apart from the axe on Redcap Rodney which was me trying to create an effective NMM that can be used quickly. You can see the lessons learned from that on Persephone on the right hand side as I've tried to be high contrast without any technique.

 

Are they well painted? No, I'd say it's a reasonable tabletop quality which is fine when working through a large set of models that just need to look fine on the table. I have tried to focus on features that will make them interesting to look at. So weapons and armour on the front three, and upper clothing on the back two. Everything else is very, very quickly painted. Making these decisions at the beginning helps to speed up the process, and I'm being more effective.

A footnote. I forget on a regular basis which platforms I've posted pictures to. These models were finished a fortnight ago, and I posted them on Bluesky and didn't do it here or Instagram, or other platforms. I'm not a daft chap, but it's the pleasure of the painting that has me in the hobby, not the need to post online for clicks. I just enjoy sharing my work ... when I remember! 

Chaos Basing

Holiday season has been a pleasant slowdown from painting in the last few weeks. As a small filler post while I'm finishing up a few things, I thought documenting what I'd done on the basing for my Warriors of Chaos.

In the past I've had a tendency to overcomplicate life and come up with weird and wonderful schemes, so on the current armies I'm keeping it simple (stupid) to not get in my own way. In the previous post I mentioned that it's a few pieces of cork as rocks, some gravel and tiny stones, then sand atop everything. 

Here's what the basing materials and early stages look like. Cork and slate are superglued in place first and usually a tactical position to cover basing holes, or create resting points for feet and weaponry. Then liberal application of PVA across the rest of the base, a sprinkle of the heavy gravel, then the lighter gravel, tapping back out into the box each time so any loose material is saved for later, and finally the sand over everything.

The ballast fixer is great, but I can't stress enough how awful it smells. It's fine on one model, but when you're basing 80+ models at the same time, it's a powerful odour and I was happy to leave these out in the garden for a day to avoid the worst of the smell.

 Google have added a potentially interesting feature to Blogger, where it will auto-generate search links for useful terms. I tried it on my previous post, but the decision making, and therefore quality of links is poor. I don't think anyone wants to search for blue, for example, but the link to NMM is excellent. It could have utility in the future, just not yet for me.