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!

Plasmancer & Cryptothralls

I picked up the Necron half of the Indomitus box for a decent price, and plan to use them for trying out different approaches. The models are fantastic and a firm favourite with my kids - Necrons have a real unpleasant, sinister character emerging with these sculpts.

These three were started as a paint-along with Craftworld Studio on how to paint metallics better, and a little quicker. I've hardly painted anything with true metallic metals (TMM) this calendar year, so this was a nice change of pace.

The most time was taken on creating a satisfactory effect for the blades to stand out, but not adding too many colours. All I was focused on was not doing the standard blue or green often seen on Necrons.

The bases are just thrown together, and very matt with heavy pigment dusting to offset the shine across the Necrons. They're lost under the models and I

My advice for anyone painting the Plasmancer would be to paint as much as you're comfortable painting BEFORE final assembly. It was super tricky to reach some of the areas with everything glued together. Even without putting it on the base.

Scratch built base

I did two bases for my Chaos Spawn project, and both were scratch built, and thought it would be fun to share the process.

Start with an idea of what you want to do before anything is glued down! Here, my thinking was a destroyed science facility. Interestingly, it was only after completing these that I realised I'd used a similar theme with similar monsters last year (https://nerodine.blogspot.com/2019/07/roman-lappat-beginner-course.html) and pretty confident I was subconsciously influenced by this.

Blue cylinders are pieces of plastic straw, with some old cables from discarded PC parts glued inside. After that, it's a combination of leftover items from my bits box. So there's pop-out pieces from MDF terrain kits, some cork tiles I ripped up, Necromunda belt kits, basing paste, little cut offs of balsa wood. Anything to add to the feeling of a building that's been utterly destroyed.

 When the larger items were firmly in position, I generously applied superglue over the empty areas, and sprinkled large gravel in, and then very fine gravel to fill the inbetween spaces.

 The last step was ensuring it was all properly dried, then applying a dilution of PVA and water over everything to lock it in position. Leave for a few hours, then it's rock hard and you won't risk the gravel falling off.

There are large, flat surfaces here, despite the appearance. That's deliberate to ensure the monster feet have somewhere to securely place.I went back and forth checking it was still a good fit.

Black primer, then a harsh zenithal. I was pleased how coherent it looks at this point. There's something very pleasing to a well primed item.

Riffing on the colours used on my Chaos Spawn, I've tried not to focus on picking out elements of the base - rather just the feeling of a lot of rubble.

Highlights, such as they are, are just from the bluer end of the colours used on the Chaos Spawn. A little red and pink is added to the lettering to give an area of interest, but you won't see most of it when the monster's glued on top - so there isn't any point spending too long here.

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.

 

 

Primaris Repulsor

I haven't done much with my Space Wolves since our group stopped playing 8th edition. But this model was too nice to pass up. It's not the best example of my painting, but I'm happy with it for practice on colours, and completing a chunky vehicle in a few hours.

Things I would improve:

Spending more time on the OSL effect. I tried a couple of times before settling on this. It's not very accurate, but it conveys the effect. My attempts to make the light brighter just washed out on the surface, with lack of contrast and I couldn't find a satisfactory way of doing it. Something to practice.

Freehanding the runes. These are transfers, carefully applied, but I wasn't brave enough to try it on a gradiented surface. If I got it wrong, I'd pull my (metaphorical) hair out trying to correct the mistake.

More careful assembly. Couple of wonky donkey edges on this tank if you're looking hard enough. Definitely not a fault of the kit, but of the assembler.

Kong

Wonderful monkey sculpt from Big Child Creative. Enormous fun to paint and trying to learn more on texture, and narrative.

I wanted to create a story for the figure, rather than just putting it on a boring base. So here's a very excited pirate monkey with his treasure, escaping the bounty on his head by taking over a ship. But little does he know what lurks beneath decks.

There's WIP shots below and a little background for how I created it, so read through for more detail.

So that's the finished model, but there's more to tell! Here's a few WIP shots to explain my thinking.

Testing, testing, testing. After the initial colours are on the base and star of the scene, does it still make sense to the eye? Are two treasure chests too much? Should there be one? Or something else? What does the story need?

There isn't really NMM, or TMM here, but the idea of this being treasure, and a little glow underneath onto the fabric of the lid. True metallics would have overpowered it, the monkey is the star and where you need to look from the beginning, before the eye wanders.

The shape of the scene gives a lot of natural shadow below deck, so picking the right colours at the front to play against the spooky glow is important. You won't see most of the below deck unless you pick the scene up and turn it upside down - so don't worry too much about painting what isn't seen.

What does a spooky, concealed chest look like? I think it would have a glow at the edges, and leaking out the lock.

Don't judge my greenstuff bananas and coins too harshly. They were all rolled from a sausage, with the bananas cut to approximate lengths, then just rounded a little. Coins were left as a sausage to cure for a day, then cut to approximate shape. Paint was applied to sell the effect and just add more to the monkey feeling.

Adjusting colours. Trying to keep the brighter tones in the middle of the upper scene, so the edges draw you in.

Before the poster's glued, is it in the right place? Will it be obscured by the monkey's foot when in place? And should it be?

Bringing it together and final checks.

Looking at the texture is more detail. On the legs and arms I've painted it softer and thicker strokes (ooh, matron) to give a fur feel, but across the chest and stomach, it's thinner to sell the more leathery feeling.

I'm not great at taking in-progress photos, but if you enjoyed a peek at my process, do let me know and I'll try to take more in the future.

Boudi

 Little diorama to try and make more interesting environments and ambiance. Boudi sculpts from Hasslefree (https://hfminis.co.uk/) are good fun, and the base is from the Wamp Fusion bases line (https://www.wampstore.com/store/index.php?route=product/category&path=183).

 I've created texture on the flat surface of the stone water feature, which was great. I've avoided trying things like this for too long.

Originally I hand painted a few posters to stick on the wall, but ... yeah, let's not talk about those any time soon. Fair to say that printing out posters, weathering and sticking on is a better option. You simply can't achieve the granularity of detail to sell the effect, if drawing by hand.

 

Draxx Vatar

Another Scale 75 bust, and another experiment in lighting. This is another of the Heroes of the Fallen Frontier Kickstarter I backed, and so it's me trying more cyberpunk colours. Bright lights, and then I tried to knit the colours together for a chromed effect on the back of the jacket.

One thing you learn from doing workshops with top painters teaching is to be clear when answering the question "what is the narrative?" and I had a clear idea in my head for what Draxx would be doing. He's stood in a doorway at a club. The bright lights from inside, streaming out, and contrasting with the lurid colours from the streets across him.

Is he hired help, watching out for trouble and discouraging it? Is he the heavy support while someone inside is shaking the owners down for a payment? Which way round are those colours for the club and the street? Does it matter? I don't think it does, let your own interpretation of the narrative do the lifting for you on this.

 

Jynz the Goblin

Another bust, another education. This time trying to balance warmth of colour without heat, against a cooler environment, and keep the feeling of textures in the mix.

If I compare this to where I was a year ago, I'm a lot happier with pushing the contrast in brightness for areas of interest. Compared to where a professional, top-level painter would push this, I know there's still a way to go. The next step is moving from here is getting a closer to that, through learning rather than luck.

This was a Kickstarter bust from Scale 75, although they now make a version of it with waist and torso.

 

 

Guru Meditation

 "You should paint one of your space marines like an A500" said my friend, jokingly.

 "Alright" said I, non-jokingly. 

So here we are. I hope you like all the references to a much loved computer.

 

Definitely not a project to overthink, but it's nice to have lighter moments in the painting day than being super serious all the time.

Tiny Soldiers

I picked these up as a random find at Salute a year or two ago, and they've sat in my WIP box for a while. They're pretty darned small, and a nice exercise in painting accurately. I didn't make a note of who makes them - but if you recognise them, please let me know so I can update this post.

Size comparison with a Primaris

While I wouldn't make an army of these any time soon, it was a fun exercise to try and apply better colour usage at a tiny scale, and also to test out my new brushes!

Stormcast

This was painted a little before my other, recent models, but is a favourite of mine. I started it by watching Craftworld Studio's tutorial for Imperial Fist Space Marines (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BLXzdAke86Y) but wanted to push the yellow to a gold NMM effect.

Following a bit of advice from the excellent Craftworld duo, I've ended up with an effect I was really happy with and a lot more colour than I've traditionally been comfortable with.

On the base, I tried to create an effect where the ground is coming back to life as the Stormcast walks across it. The edges are the same colours, but very desaturated and bleak to emphasise this.