Plague Elemental

One of the first Oldhammer blogs that inspired my own blogging, is the work of Don Hans, not just his incredible glowing and layered colours but also his distinctive basing technique. For this Plague Elemental I wanted to create something similar, in that I imagined the Plague Elemental leaving a trail of organic detritus in his wake and surrounding environs. I combined this with my regular basing technique and threw in some swamp too for good measure! (More on the base further down).

The miniature is not a great sculpt, it seems quite "flat" and looks particularly bad when viewed from straight on, but better from these angles it does have some charm:

Hopefully you can see from the images that I have re-mastered the crackle medium skin technique that I tried (unsuccessfully) to share with you here. I realised that you need to lay it on pretty thick for the effect to work. Partly scared that I would lose the detail on the model and also for a desire to show the plague-ridden skin falling off in patches revealing the pinker flesh underneath; I applied the crackle medium (mixed with some Nurgling Green) in small, thick clumps on more prominent areas of the skin. Hopefully you can see the effect in more detail here:

For the base itself you can see below how I used some cork board to build up a raised area and then smoothed out the plastic base where the swamp would go. A layer of milliput was added and whilst still wet a load of organic looking plastic bitz were added, including some beads and bits of rice to look like boils/bubbles etc. A two headed rat was added as a little follower too:

I then attached the model and used some artist's modelling impasto to join/fill/smooth everything up and add some texture too: 

You can see from the completed model that lots of gloss was also added to the swamp area and the organic plague area too. It was painted with a multitude of thinned washes over white, ranging from yellow, pink, green and some brown:

This model was also painted for the Warhammer Forum's Painting Challenge and you can see the results of  which here.

Thanks for looking!

A Plague Marine (on a square base)

I'm slowly being seduced by Rogue Trader and 40k, having been a fantasy lad ever since I first walked into GW York on a school trip in the 80's. But I can't quite go all round based yet, so I kept with the square 25mm base and even added a shield to keep the fantasy vibe on the model. Of course the Lost and the Damned blends Fantasy and 40k somewhat with the options of technological weapons etc, so for now I'm comfortable in this Plague Marine posing as a Chaos Warrior of Nurgle with a bolter and shield:

So this model was also painted for a painting challenge over at The Warhammer Forum entitled "Dirty and Grimy" and I was the joint winner, woop! Very happy.

The difficulty with the painting for me was to choose a good base colour to show up the dirt and grime that I wanted to add on top, hence the off-white armour. To add some contrast I decided to go for bright pink hands to give a focus and likewise with the choice of the strong blue coloured goggles. 

To create the dirt/grime aspect I applied a range of very thin and pale washes over the fully highlighted armour. This also included small splatters of ink in localised areas. I carefully applied dry red oxide pigment to the areas of rust using a very small detail brush - the trick is to make the dirt/grime look real and not make the model too messy.

The image on the shield is a direct copy of an illustration from a Fighting Fantasy book (can't recall now which one) and I deliberately chose some bright colours again to make it stand out.

The only thing I would have changed in hindsight are all the cables exiting from his chest (which I painted to look like intestines) which I think would have looked better with a greater contrast to the model's armour colour.

Overall I'm really happy with how the Plague Marine turned out and it's given me a few ideas for some round based, Rogue Trader fun....

A Chaos Dwarf Mortar

I painted this up for a small challenge on the Warhammer Forum, entitled "Rise of the Machines". Originally I was going to finish converting and then painting a Nurgle Chariot, but it became too lengthy and so as to meet the deadline I switched to this model, thinking it would be easier.... 

However the detail is not as crisp as it could be, making painting detail a challenge and I also really struggled with a colour scheme. After a few aborted attempts I went for this (I am at least pleased with my perseverance if not the outcome itself):

I went for a Mario Bros feel for the faces on the mortar-balls and used some etched brass for the first time on the fern leaf you can see here. I've thrown in a couple of old-school checks too.

They were also a nightmare to photograph!

So there's always a plan. For these guys they will be part of an in progress 3rd Edition Chaos Allies list which will ally with my, in progress, Nurgle Army. Everything is "in progress", One day I'd really like to tick off one of my many projects...

So where next, Jes Goodwin Ogres, Family Heroquest, LotD retinue table or the Orc Bloodbowl team? I'll see how I feel next time I sit at my painting table.