Everchosen - Archaon - WIP#3

More work on Archaon this week, with my focus being on the Tzeetch head. Unfortunately it is taking me an age to paint. So many feathers.

The process itself is actually very straight forward, it is simply the care and attention to the fine edge highlights that make this a time consuming process. It is also one of the reasons I have been working one each head a piece at a time, I think I would go stir crazy focusing on just this one before moving onto the others. Breaking down the model and working on it in small chunks helps to keep me motivated and focused.

The feathers have been painted by basecoating with Stegadon Scale Green, then washed with Coelia Greenshade. Each feather was then picked out with Stegadon green again. I did some thick edge highlights with Sotek Green, followed by thinner highlights of Temple Guard Blue. A final thin edge highlight of Baharroth Blue finished off the initial highlights

At this stage I glazed the feathers with Coelia Greenshade, but I worked from the middle of each feather back into each recess, and not out towards the tips. The other half of each feather was glazed with Sotek Green thinned with Lahmian medium several times. Baharroth Blue was reapplied to the edges to make each feather stand out.

At the moment, due to glazes, the feathers are quite gloss, and have an interesting glassy type effect. This is something easy to 'fix' with matt varnish, but I am tempted to leave them glossy and maintain the glassy effect. Something to ponder.

Everchosen - Archaon - WIP #2

Work has been slowly continuing on Dorghar, my focus being on laying on more of the base colours to each area to get a feel for how the finished model will look. Having already changed how I was going to do one of the larger areas of the model as a whole I didn't want to focus on each individual area to find that it just did not work when put together as a whole.

That being said I am not currently 100% certain that the Nurgle head will tie into the rest of the model, but I suspect a tweak to the tone with a few glazes will solve that issue so I'm not massively concerned at this stage.

The Khorne head has been based with Khorne Red then washed with Agrax. Mephiston Red was layered over this in thin glazes before an edge highlight of Evil Sunz was added. There will be further highlights to come, but again this will depend on how I do the rest of the model. My thinking at the moment is to add in either Cadian Fleshtone or Kislev flesh as the highlight tone.

The bone areas have been blocked in for now. These may change, again depending on how the model colour scheme comes together.

I also spent several evenings playing with different colours for the wings. I tried something similar to the GW scheme but this didn't work for me. In the end I have gone with a blend of Rakarth Flesh to Bugmans Glow. This was wet blended in part on the palette as well as on the model.

As mentioned in my previous post, when revisiting the skin tone I felt a grey shade had the best look when put next to the wing scheme. I can incorporate the grey into the shading for the lighter parts of the wings.

Everchosen - Archaon - WIP #1

I've wanted to do a centerpiece for my Khorne army for a while now, and I also really wanted to paint Archaon because it is a beautiful model with a lot of different detail and areas to work on. Having also picked up a copy of the new Warhammer Quest and being gifted some old Skaven by Maelstrom my Chaos horde has clearly grown to include most of the pantheon, so it seemed fitting that I should have the Everchosen at the heart of this expanded force.

I've been slowly building the model over the last few months, although at this stage I have only built Dorghar into some sub-assemblies for painting. Archaon is still on sprues, but I anticipate building him as I paint anyway.

As is my way I have naturally started with the heads for Dorghar.

So far I have been experimenting with the tone used for Dorghars lighter flesh areas. I tried a brown shade over a Rakarth Flesh base initially but this ultimately didn't gel with the direction I chose for the wings. In the end i settled for a shade of Mechanicus Standard Grey thinned with Lahmian medium as this produced a colour that will carry over to parts of the wings and tie the model together.

The Nurgle head so far is Deathworld Forest highlighted up with Nurgle Green, with Athonian Camoshade shading.

All the other areas are just blocked in colours so far, with shade washes applied.

Display - Ulrik the Slayer - Complete

So the last few weeks have been rather busy, which meant I missed posting further work in progress shots of Ulrik. In the end I did get him finished in time for the competition, so goal achieved.

At the moment he is sat in the Warhammer Store cabinet so I haven't got any of my own completed shots of the model, so I have shamelessly lifted them from their Facebook page.

I sort of rushed to finish him, so there are a few things unfinished and some improvements I would like to make, the cape especially feels like it needs more work, along with a few of the smaller details like the gems.

Once I have the model back I may well look to revisit him in the future, but for now I feel like moving back into some fantasy, and I do have a large Chaos army in need of some further work.

Display - Ulrik the Slayer - WIP #2

As you can see from the pictures below Ulrik is moving along nicely now. I've layed out the core of the colours now, managing to use three of my four competition colours across the main part of the body. The cape will be the final (deathworld forest) colour.

I've had a play with light source based highlights on the armour, and whilst the effect is alright, it's nothing special in my eyes, but an interesting experiment none the less.

The wolf pelts have been basecoated with Rakarth Flesh, then washed with various mixes of Seraphim Sepia and Agrax Earthshade, working in smaller areas to darken up from the pale tone to a dark brown. This is most evident on the lower leg pelt. Palid Wych Flesh has been used to add highlights.

The gold is at a basic stage and will need to get some shading into the recesses to darken it down and provide a good contrast.

Once concern is that due to the enforced colour scheme the model is going to end up looking a bit busy colour wise (normally I'd look to limit the palette more than I have here), but hopefully it will not be too bad once completed.

Display - Ulrik the Slayer - WIP #1

Continuing on with my consistent inconsistency, I've finally managed to sit down and write a new post. Work is continuing to bust my balls so painting time has been at a bit of a premium still.

However I have been focusing on a display level piece (well my display level at any rate), which is due to be entered into my local Warhammer Stores Birthday painting challenge competition at the start of June.

The competition itself is to paint a model at random (pulled from a sack of clam packs) using four randomly chosen colours (again pulled from a sack). The four colours have to be clearly visible on the bulk of the model, but otherwise you are free to use other paints to finish the model off.

In a nice twist of fate I pulled out the new Ulrik the Slayer model. Cool. I then picked up the following paints:

• Mechanicus Standard Grey
• Kalabite Green
• Deathworld Forest
• Wild Rider Red

Needless to say I decided to go with grey armour as it'll fit in with my current army if I ever decide I need two wolf priests. It'll also be easier to shade it down into black once the competition is over.

As reputation amongst friends dictates I started with the head. Whilst I used flesh tones for the base colours and highlights I did make some effort to incorporate the four colours above, mixing the Deathworld Forest and Wild Rider red to use as part of the shading.

The hair was basecoated with Mechanicus and highlighted up to a light grey.

I've also started work on the Crozius, which I decided would be a good place to use two of the main colours. The main part was painted with Kalabite Green, going for a vaguely glassy or polished stone effect. The haft/handle will be red, with Wild Rider red making up the top layer of highlights. The second picture shows this.

The skull was painted with Rakarth Flesh and shaded with Mechanicus Standard Grey before being highlighted up to Palid Witch Flesh.

I'm hoping to get another update in again this week to try and get things back on a regular schedule, to that end I've already started work on the leg assembly.

Heresy Era - Space Wolves - Stormwolf - Paint #3

Well my time off of work proved to be productive and fruitful, just not with any miniature painting. Most of my time was spent decorating a large chunk of my house (a surprise for the other half that went down rather well thankfully). I did manage to build the Deathwatch game contents and start work on Archaon for my AoS army so it wasn't a total hobby whitewash.

I did however get in a small game of 40k down at my local Warhammer store and, although I was soundly thrashed (Grav in small armies is nasty) the Stormwolf did get a run out and proved to be quite the star for me.

It also meant that I could take some semi-decent pictures to show of it at the current stage of build/painting.

I've still got some jags to add to the yellow area but aside from then adding battle damage, transfers and other more detailed painting I think this will do nicely as a gaming piece for the time being.

Heresy Era - Space Wolves - Grey Hunter Pack 2 - Paint #1

So work and real life have been kicking my arse this last month or so, leaving me rather short on hobby time in general. Thankfully things have eased off and I'm now a week or so away from having a week off work with which I can hopefully get up to speed again with my painting.

I've managed to get the Stormwolf nearly completed, and I'm just lacking a backdrop large enough to photograph it against now. Once I remember to sort one I'll be updating the blog with the finished kit.

In the meantime I've managed to get a second Grey Hunter Pack knocked out to the same basic gaming standard as the first pack. I've mixed in a few bits from the Space Wolf kits as well as the standard 40k marine kit for the Pack Leader.

Nothing fancy I know, but it adds a bit more to the army and brings me up to a 750pt force (including the Stormwolf).