I Put My Hand Up On Your Hip...

 ...and when I dip you dip we dip!

My first attempts at using Army Builder "dip" for speed-shading models. (Above image is the "before" shot!) It seems to go on awfully thick, which may be the result of my using a year-old can. But for a control freak like me, I can easily see the "pools" of shade that have formed on some models becoming a problem. Just look at the tip of the mace/flail of the guy in front. I did actually try to dab it to get some off, but apparently it had already settled a few minutes later. Maybe I can paint it bright red to look like blood. Hmm...

Here's another view. We'll see how these guys look with a coat of matt varnish, but I may end up painting the dip on with a brush rather than the traditional method.

WarpLoque's Sir Ragnar/Bedevere Reunited with HeroQuest!

When I first saw this guy on Warploque's site, I knew I had to use him as Sir Bedevere from Monty Python and the Holy Grail. He's just about done, barring some metal details and finishing up the base.

I tried to make the bottom of his robe a little dirty with a wash of devlan mud to gribbly him up a bit.

I also finally managed to finish HeroQuest's wizard character, which was a lot of fun to do. Pretty slavish devotion to the original card art, but I think he fits in with his formerly completed compatriots well enough.

And here's Sir Ragnar, as he'll be used in games of HeroQuest, with the four warriors.

Terrorgheist! And Nurgle Chaos Warrior Grave Guard

I wanted to post some in-progress pics of my Terrorgheist, which Caitlin got me for my birthday last May (!) and finally chastized me about not having STARTED recently. I told her I was waiting until I could do it justice.

I followed Rob Hawkin's tutorial on magnetizing the wings to make him much smaller to transport, and now I'm working on magnetizing his head, rider, and rider's weapons as well. (If you can't tell, I'm really liking this whole magnetizing thing.) I plan on super-gluing the chains around his neck to give the whole thing some support when the wings are detached. They'll be glued in a dynamic, swooping angle to reinforce the sense of movement in the model, which I think is pretty sleek already.

I also had to do some single shots of my Nurgle Chaos Warrior grave guard, so here they are for your perusal!

Themed Chaos Grave Guard, Malus Darkblade

I was stuck on the idea of doing paintjobs for my warriors themed after the four chaos gods. A day of painting later here they are! From left to right, they are: Slaanesh, pink and purple (the most FABULOUSLY frightening!); Nurgle, green and yellow and particularly rusty and corroded; "undivided," with the least alteration, just some rust and brighter silver armor; Khorne, all bronze and red and looking particularly happy about it; and finally Tzeentch, with his particularly bright blue and yellow highlights. I had a lot fun doing these, not least because it let me get out of the "undead drought" of bone and black I find myself doing so much of.

 Click for bigger pics!

I really wanted to try and expand my horizons as far as rust was concerned with these guys so it would stand up to the scrutiny of Carpe Noctem's painting challenge. To that end I tried to layer lots of different colors in the rust including green, purple, white, bone, and finally some blazing orange to top it all off and unify the rust. It was a lot of fun!

I also managed to get some pics of Malus Darkblade, headed for the girlfriend's Dark Elf army. He was originally going to be a Christmas present, but he got pushed back a bit with the trip to Virgina to see my sister. I tried to emulate the color scheme Caitlin is going for with bright red and yellow armor, but the Cold One he's riding was a scheme of my own invention.

 Since he's got such bright armor, I decided to make his sword plain ol' silver to balance him out a bit.

First time painting scales, and more detail than I think I've ever put into a face before. Hopefully the time spent shows! Truly a labor of love. Caitlin says she liked the "lava" bases, so that's the plan for now..

Finally, I cheated on a couple of "army shots" since I didn't feel like digging all my magnetized models out of the storage bin, but wanted to give readers a quick update since the last ones are so out of date at this point.

Krell's Children: Grave Guard Chaos Warriors!

Astute readers might recognize some of the half-finished an totally-not-game-legal conversions I attempted several years back with the 5th edition (?) hunchbacked plastic chaos warriors. Carpe Noctem happens to be doing a "Krell's Children" challenge this month, where the goal is to convert some chaos warriors (presumably the CURRENT ones!) into the undead. I thought it'd be the perfect time to revisit my old abortions I MEAN VALIANT ATTEMPTS AT CONVERSION

The originals were quite honestly a bit of a mess... I tried just mixing up the 5th edition skeleton and chaos warrior sprues to varying effect, but didn't get much in the way of working models. The parts seemed too disparate to blend together well. I also didn't do a particularly good job of figuring out how the parts were supposed to work together, as evinced by the bevor (neck protection) being used as a crotch guard on one of 'em... thank goodness for googling these days. I wanted to make sure the new guys fit onto the game-legal 20mm bases and also roughly matched proportions with the current skeletons, so I've got my 10 most recently finished sword-and-board skellies here to help with sizing. Here's the pile in progress. You can see I sanded the torsos down significantly, which helps to narrow the frame. Hopefully this will also make it possible for them to carry shields and still rank up.

I went even further with the mix-and-match approach this time, making sure I broke off legs and arms and attaching skeleton bones between, so that it actually looks like there's a skeleton inside the armor. Hopefully the results seem a bit more like skellies in chaos warrior garb, and less like a mix-n-match.

 I wanted to get in a few shots with some of the other varied undead models than I plan to put in the grave guard unit. I really want it to have a mix-n-match look, so you'll see a couple reaper models and one very cool undead dwarf with twin hammers from Stonehaven Miniature's kickstarter hiding in the background.

I may or may not decide to do a bit more with the colors and give them a "4 gods and 1 undivided" color scheme... the silver drybrushing over black was simple and fast but I feel like it's a bit much for an entire unit.

In completely unrelated news, I finally finished those Forge World Skaven Wolf Rats that have been on my painting table for about a year... I went for a quick-n-dirty grey palette that will let 'em join my units of Battle Masters wolves as dire wolves. Now I've got about twenty for the glory of the undead! I'm particularly fond of the dirty, bloody bandage look that I think came out pretty well.

Since I was going for quick 'n dirty, I basically drybrushed the entire model in progressively lightening shades of gray. I picked out the leather with a light coat of brown, and since it was already shaded from the gray drybrushing, the highlighting was already there. I picked out the bandages with some off-white and then did some gooey reddish black splotches all over 'em. (I figured anyone willing to bandage up a bunch of ravenous wolf rats only wanted 'em to live long enough to fight a battle and wouldn't do a great job of it!) The whole thing was pretty fun, but then, I'm a drybrushing addict. The level of detail on the forgeworld stuff is amazing.

Fimir! ...and a couple WIP Orcs

Edit: Better pics!

Finally managed to complete a few HQ models. I'm trying to speedpaint my way through these guys but my perfectionist streak keeps surfacing. The fimir were some of my favorite models as a kid and with their resurgence in Storm of Magic and the Warhammer Forge models, I wanted to do the little guys justice. (Apologies for the dark pics!)

I may have gone a little overboard with the bluish "verdigris" on the bronze areas, but it was my first attempt at the technique. Basically just a light bluish-green wash over gold. 

I also tried doing something a little different with the bases and painting on some "stone block" patterns of varying size.

 Gotta love the "birthmark/brands" on their backs! We'll say someone stuck hot irons into them to keep 'em in their place. What a great sculpt.

I'm still working on those Warhammer Quest orcs as well as a few other projects. The plain-looking HeroQuest orc in the background is going to be my first attempt at "dipping"... I'm anxious to see how he's gonna turn out.

In the background you can just make out Malus Darkblade's cold one that I'm painting for my girlfriend's Dark Elf army, and another blood dragon vampire on foot in progress.

Thanks for looking! Comments and criticism are always appreciated.