Vampires Chapter 5: Happy Skeleton Day!

If you've been following my recent posts you'll know I've been painting up a bunch of skeletons for my Vampire Covenant army. (If you haven't been following then now's a good time to get in on the ground floor of my readership, and tell your friends you knew the blog before it got big.)

Well, it took a while but here's the finished unit!

And a shot of just the command rank:

I'm very pleased with how they turned out.

As it takes me so long to paint stuff, I often find that my painting style and quality have changed by the time I paint a new unit for an army (or, in this case, the second half of a unit). I think with these skeletons I managed to stay very close to the original while still exploring some new things in my painting. Here I wanted to be a bit bolder with my colours, and I think the new batch of skeletons look more vivid, but not so much that they look out of place next to the older ones. Here's all 50 on a movement tray I promise to replace one day.

Together the whole unit looks cohesive, if a little hard to get all in frame.

I also spent a little extra time on the banner, on which I've painted a freehand design of a vampiric skull with a ribbon of yellowed parchment. The motto on the parchment reads MORS IN VICTORIA (Latin for "Victory in Death", or so the internet tells me), although it is hard to make out as the banner is old and tattered and also I need more practise writing on models. (The skeleton banner is also way too narrow for my liking, and the curve in it made it very awkward to freehand.)

Now I need to replenish my grass tufts so I can finish basing my barrow guard and put them on the "finished" vampire shelf.

Until next time, happy Samhain!

A Quick WIP

I feel like celebrating - my last post showing off some Space Wolf characters got 11 views! It's had more people clicking on it than any other post since I restarted this blog, and while I'm pretty sure one of them was me accidentally hitting the link on my phone, I'm still chuffed. Gotta make the most of little victories, guys.

The last couple of weeks have been hectic with various family members injuring themselves. I've been running around trying to make sure they don't fall over so I haven't had time to take photos of my now finished skeletons, but I do have a little WIP to share to tide you over:

I've had this model for ages and finally settled on some colours for him. It will also be the first display-quality model I've painted in a while - not counting my Blood Angel whose main claim to display-level was the freehand. I'm going to try to stretch my painting muscles and push myself beyond my comfort zone. Let's hope that works out.

Anyway, I'm off to celebrate with a bottle of warm milk (or however normal people celebrate). Until next time, happy painting!

Vlka Fenryka - Characters

Not too long ago I shared a test model for a new colour scheme for my brother's 40k army. Well the Rout grows with the addition of two characters, also in this new colour scheme!

First up, my brother's conversion of Lukas the Trickster:

This follows the style of the test model very closely but with a little extra effort on the details, especially the face.

Next, Geigor Fell-Hand from the Burning of Prospero:

This model was supposed to be an Xmas present that I got the year the box set came out, so needless to say it was very, very late. He's also pretty different from the other two models as I was trying to keep it cleaner to make the character stand out.

Until next time, happy painting!

Dem Bones Dem Bones - Possibly the Slowest Way to Paint Skeletons

Have you ever wanted to spend more time painting bone? Have you ever thought, "Jeez, drybrushing is too quick and easy - I wish I could spend even more time painting rank after rank of skeletons"? Well you're in luck. This is my recipe for painting my Vampire Covenant (also known as Ye Olde Vampire Counts) and it is one of if not the slowest way to painting such a basic model.

Just to be clear, I am not saying you should paint your skeletons this way. It is very, very time consuming, and skeletons usually come in units of forty or more, so you'll lose a lot of hours if you follow this recipe. You can achieve results just as nice in a fraction of the time by drybrushing. I just like the effect I can achieve by layering and don't mind putting in weeks of work for a core unit with no frills. I also really hate drybrushing.

I know - I'm mad. I've made my peace with it.

Anyway, this is how I do it.

(Step 0: Undercoat white. I discovered I prefer GW's white spray to airbrushing a white undercoat. For whatever reason airbrushed white undercoat wouldn't stick very well to the model.)

Step 1: Basecoat the bone in Vallejo Model Air Sand. This is the most painless step thanks to the airbrush - honestly I would get one just for basecoating models, it's such a time saver.

Step 2: Wash the whole model in Seraphim Sepia (GW), but don't let it pool to much. We're just looking to darken the crevices and give the bone some colour.

Step 3: Accentuate the deeper shadows with a wash of Agrax Earthshade (GW). Don't wash the whole model this time, just pick out the areas that need to be darker, like the eye sockets, mouth, ribcage, between the long bones of the arms and legs, and the hands and feet. Be careful not to eliminate the sepia colour from the raised parts of the bone.

Step 4: Layer Vallejo Model Dark Sand onto the raised portions. You want to avoid the deep recesses (obviously) but also leave some of the sepia around the recesses to get a gradient from dark brown through sepia to the yellow. It'll take a couple of coats, but I'm not looking for perfect coverage as I want to let some of the sepia show through the Dark Sand - especially towards the edges of where I apply this paint. I think this makes the colour more complex and pleasing to the eye.

Step 5: Highlight with a mix of Dark Sand and Ivory (both Vallejo Model colours) somewhere between 2:1 and 1:1 - I'm not too fussy about the exact ratio and I play around with it until I get an off-white colour that is clearly lighter than the Dark Sand but isn't so light that the transition looks wrong. Focus the highlights on the more raised areas. I usually do this in two coats, but as in step 4 I'm not looking for perfect coverage. The centre of the highlights should be the brightest but even here your highlight shouldn't be completely opaque - i.e. if you applied another coat of this highlight it would appear brighter, but stop before this.

The skull is the exception here - as it's the largest flat surface of bone, it needs thinner paint for highlighting and an extra coat or two to achieve a nice transition.

Step 6: Another highlight using the same paints, but this time with more Ivory - a mix somewhere around 2:1 Ivory:Dark Sand. Again, I don't worry about the exact ratio, I just pick something that's light enough but doesn't create too jarring a transition to the eye. Pick out the raised areas focusing on upper edges and the top of the skull. (Use thinner paints and a couple of extra layers for the skull.) This takes a couple of coats and, again, I'm not looking for perfect opacity. I want the previous layers to show through a little bit, especially towards the edges my highlight.

Optional step 6A: Add a few extra highlights to the face portion of the skull with an Ivory/Dark Sand mix that is close to pure Ivory just to give more emphasis. I don't have a separate photo of this as it's something I do as I go along during step 6.

And that's how I paint my skeletons, or, at least, the bone. There's still the weapons, cloth, etc. to do. I did say it was a slow process. The main reason I've stuck with this recipe (because half way through I really started to consider drybrushing) is because I have 25 skeletons already painted and wanted these guys to match. If I start another army with a lot of skeletons I probably will resort to drybrushing because this takes ages. However, it's still a really good recipe if you just have some nice bone details you want to give a bright, bleached look. My advice would be to just take a little more time and maybe add a final highlight on the very brightest points that is very close to white.

Until next time, happy painting!

Blood Angel Praetor - Winner of the Irish Golden Demon!

Last Saturday the 500th Warhammer store opened in Hong Kong and I can't wait to see what shiny things are promised later this month to celebrate that - I'm a sucker for limited edition minis, provided they aren't Primaris Space Marines*. Last Saturday was also the 22nd birthday of the Games Workshop Dublin store, where I bought my first models over a decade ago**. As is tradition, there was a big party to celebrate and - having missed the last few - I was eager to attend. I was especially interested in entering the painting competition, which was ambitiously titled the Irish Golden Demon.

Irish Golden Demon is a grandiose description for a single mini painting competition featuring circa 20 entrants from among the store's regulars; nevertheless it was a lot of fun and a good opportunity for me to get back into the habit of painting well. The standard was remarkably high and chatting with the other painters I learned a few new tricks and got a fresh perspective on my painting. There's no substitute for studying well-painted models in the flesh to teach you more about what you're trying to achieve and how you can develop your own style. I just wish I'd brought a camera and had some photos of the other entrants to show you (d'oh!).

Next time I'll bring a camera. But I do have pictures of one entry - mine!

I started this guy a few weeks ago when I found Ferrari Red, a Vallejo Model Air paint that is just the best shade of red for Blood Angels. I was trying to develop a Blood Angel colour scheme and at the same time get my eye back into painting more than just rank and file, tabletop-ready units. He was pretty much finished two weeks before GW's birthday, but was a little more basic than I'd hoped and was sitting on my shelf staring at me as I tried to decide whether I'd call him finished or go back and add something. In the end, as I could only enter one model into the store's painting competition I decided I'd put the effort in and go for a complex freehand on the back.

I'm so damn pleased at how this came out. It's about the best freehand I've done so far and I'm really excited to do loads more. It didn't even take as long as I thought it would. I expected to spend the two days before the competition madly trying to finish it, but it was completed in one afternoon giving me Friday to work on some other projects. I must be getting faster.

I also touched up the black cloak and added some mud to the boots because they felt a little flat and dull, but that's not as cool as a big Blood Angel symbol.

On the day of the competition the judges seemed to agree that adding the freehand was a good move, because my Blood Angel Praetor won first in the adult category! It was a very close call with a beautiful Gabriel Seth coming second (the IX legion was well-represented!) and a very well blended Slambo coming in third. We even got trophies - Primaris Dreadnoughts sprayed silver, gold, and platinum (apparently there was some difficulty achieving a bronze effect so silver became third and the silvery-looking bronze was called platinum and became first, but I'm not going to complain).

He would have to pop out of his base for the photo...

This is actually the second time I've won the store's birthday painting competition, the last time being several years ago with my Tzeentch sorcerer. Both models are now living happily on my display shelf, although I will have to look into upgrading to a proper cabinet.

As this post has already been very long I'm not going to go into any detail as to how I painted anything, but next time I paint some Blood Angels (I have a few characters waiting for attention) I'll post WIP and step-by-step shots.

Until then, happy painting!

*I actually really like the Primaris Marines, I just don't want to buy any because they'll make all my regular marine characters look small.
**Some metal Ushabti and Liche Priests, way back when metal blisters were a thing.