Tank Girl and Friends

Here's one of those slightly irritating "How it started/how it's going" posts you see on social media. This week, I have been repainting one of my last Escher gangers. This model is a juve with a stub gun and a pick. I've mentioned before that the Eschers seem to have been influenced by Tank Girl, and this one really looks as much like her as GW could manage. She's even got the slightly pigeon-toed stance that Jamie Hewlett often used to depict her.

This model is particularly interesting to me, as I first painted it about 15 years ago, and thought at the time that I had done a really good job. It was always one of my best-painted models and I was somewhat reluctant to strip it and start again. So, here is the old paint job:

And here is the new one:

I definitely think I've improved, and I'm surprised at how much better the second one looks to me. Sometimes it's quite hard to tell that your painting - or maybe any artistic work? - has got better until you stop to actually make the comparison.

Here are a couple of other Eschers, both of whom use the same not-Tank-Girl colour scheme (and unusual boob armour). There's less room to personalise these models than there is on the Eldar harlequins, as a lot of the Eschers is either leggings or bare skin. I've tried to vary skin colours to provide some extra variety, which I think has worked quite well. We've got a heavy with a massive heavy stubber that looks as if it was first used at the Siege of Stalingrad, and a ganger with a shotgun and pistol who is definitely showing off. As ever, the sculpting and details are superb.

Also, I made a few more horrid little lowlifes for the Scavvy horde. The advantage with making inbred, filthy lunatics who live in a rubbish tip is that you can mix and match pretty much anything to construct them. The guy with the musket has a zombie body, and medieval arms. His friend has a WW2 body, and arms and an axe from the Frostgrave cultist sprue. Both have cultist heads. Weirdly, the musketeer's shirt ends just above nipple-height. Perhaps he ate the rest of it.

Back in the day, scavvy gangs could take mutants, who had pretty daft, cartoony miniatures. One of the options was to have a big claw. I found an old Mantic zombie body and added a claw from a plastic daemonette and a Stargrave head. The whole thing was a good opportunity to try some shading with glazes, which I enjoyed. I like the results and might use this technique more often. Here is the nasty little creature:

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I've also decided to keep a tally of how my efforts to paint the Bretonnian footsoldiers is going. I'm not going to post my progress until I've finished a load, but I'll provide a weekly update (hopefully). The plan is to do three guys every week. So far, I'm ahead of the curve!

Peasant Progress:

Archers: 10

Foot knights: 6

Men at arms: 6

Bretonnia Redux: The Army Starts Here

 I mentioned a while ago that I wanted to repaint my very old Bretonnian army. These date back to 1991, and were some of the first miniatures that I ever saw. I was somewhat intimidated by the prospect of redoing these models, but I stripped them and started to give them a new lease of life this week.

We've got three main units of infantry, painted in colours roughly following the original army featured in White Dwarf 137: knights, men at arms and archers. I've done five models for each unit - not exactly a mighty army, but probably a legal one under the rules of 5th Edition Warhammer Fantasy Battle. 

Here are the men at arms, painted in the colours of Les Hommes de Renault.

Here are some knights, in slightly simplified colours of the Baron D'Angon:

And here are five bowmen in the livery of the Archers du Brest:

I've done with a slightly grimy but still quite bright look for all of them. The knights have cleaner weapons and armour (I left off the brown undercoat), since their gear is newer and better. 

I also tidied up an old model from a game called Dungeonquest, about which I know nothing. She's an elf wizard called Serelia of Zimmendell, but I think she'd work well as a Bretonnian wizard. I painted her scrying orb to look a bit like the palantir from the Lord of the Rings films.

And that's where we are for the moment. I'll slow down a little on the painting, but I'll keep chipping away at these guys. And then we can do the knights on horseback!

Even More Orks

 More orks! I find that projects blur into each other these days, which probably means that I get distracted too easily. (There are still a few Eschers to go...) Still, orks are fun to paint, and I will put the remaining ones to the side for a little while now. Maybe.

First up, we've got another mek from the 2nd Edition, as seen in the blue Citadel catalogue. This guy has a kustom weapon in his right hand, which is superbly sculpted and has loads of cool details. I wanted to give him another big gun - he's the unit's inevitable crazed shooter - held up in a fairly similar manner but in a slightly less "flat" posture. I cut and repositioned an old plastic arm, which was much harder than I'd expected it to be. I ended up adding a damaged marine shoulderpad to hold the whole thing together.

His new gun was made from a damaged old ork bolta, with a new bigger magazine and a barrel built from - of all things - an ork axe. It has big bolts and a spiky bit. 

Painting him was easy and enjoyable. There were loads of interesting bits and bobs on the model, but it wasn't excessive and there was enough space to add stripes and other marks, including some bluing on the kustom gun's barrel. His eyes are a bit crazy, but then he's probably seen some things. I'm really pleased with this guy.

Then we've got two models that almost nobody seems to have any nostalgia for. They're plastic boys (or perhaps "yoofs") from the old game Gorkamorka, which was a sort of Necromunda with orks in a Mad Max-type setting. It was very short-lived and marks the point where the ork models moved from the goofiness of 2nd Edition 40k and Paul Bonner's pictures to the over-muscled, mantrap-faced creatures we have today. 

These definitely aren't the best ork models in either variety (in fact, they seem to sit uncomfortably between the two styles). They've got very small heads and, despite their high shoulders, fairly human proportions. You could mistake them for Goliath gangers. Anyhow, they're not the greatest miniatures, but they'd do as a couple of minor hangers-on for a warband. I don't really enjoy painting fur very much, but otherwise they were alright to paint.

Out of interest, I've painted ork skin in two different ways. One is to work from a fairly bright mid-tone green, washing it with dark green and (very thin) purple, and then highlighting with yellow (and pink for lips). The other is to start with a drab military green, and then proceed as before. I suppose that the lighter orks might be younger, but I don't mind having a variety of different skin tones in the ork horde: for one thing, you get a variety of tones in human skin, and for another, the repeated colours and styles in the clothing ties them all together. I doubt the orks care very much, so I won't.

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And now for something completely different. I have a Bretonnian army to paint! I have stripped all of my old metal and plastic foot-soldiers, which comes to about 40 models. I plan to paint three main units, in roughly the same colours as the GW studio army featured in White Dwarfs 136 and 137. 

There will be three main units: foor knights (yellow tunics), archers (blue and white) and men at arms (green and white). I don't want this to end up as a chore, and I'd prefer to avoid painting in bulk. So, I thought I'd try painting one of each type, then a different model, and then more Bretonnians. I don't know if this will work, but I think it could make it a more entertaining process.

The Obligatory Orktober Post

 October is a funny month. Here in the UK, it's when the clocks go back (or forward? I can't remember) and it marks the start of five or six months of cold, snowless slush. It's also Orange Plastic Tat Month, or Halloween as it is also known, and model-makers everywhere are plundering the shops for useful terrain. And it contains several Oldhammer events, the greatest of which is surely Orktober, where everyone paints some kind of orc. There's also the less-snappily-named Zomtober, when people paint zombies, but I did that a couple of posts ago. And apparently there's Dreadtober, where you paint a dreadnought, although I think that would sound better as Dreadcember.

Anyhow, not wishing to miss out, I painted two orks.

 The guy on the left is a medic that I've had lying around for a while. He's very obviously an alternative sculpt on another body (basically, an alternative head) and while he's not a terribly exciting model, he was quite pleasant to paint. I reckon these metal ork specialists must have been quite popular models, as there always seem to be a lot of them knocking around on ebay.

The model on the right is slightly odder. He's actually a looter from the Deathskull clan, and was released after Rogue Trader and the blue Citadel Catalogue, but before the major change in style in the orks that happened around 1998 or so. Nonetheless, he's slightly different: his face is longer and slightly less cartoony, and his proportions are more humanoid (I actually wondered if he was a converted Delaque ganger from Necromunda). He originally came with a massive heavy weapon, but I got him without arms and so added some classic ork ones.

He was actually quite a pain to paint. Sometimes a model just won't look right, no matter what you do. Eventually, I got him to look fairly piratical. I'm starting to wonder if I'm collecting an Oldhammer ork army. After all, I've got about 20 men, a dreadnought and a vehicle, which is about enough for 2nd edition!

Even more Scavvies, and an alligator with a blunderbuss

 When I was younger, I used to hate preparing miniatures - which is why a lot of my earlier models have huge mold lines, odd little spikes where I snipped them off the frame and very dodgy basing. These days, I'm the opposite. I find something quite satisfying in doing the boring preparatory work, making the models look ready and smoothing the bases down with clay so that you can't see the slots.

Anyhow, this week I've been doing some more on the Eschers - they are turning into a horde, rather than a gang - but that's for later. I also did some more filthy maniacs for the scavvies.

The guy on the far left is an old official scavvy leader. Like the beastmaster on the far right, his left arm feels a bit wrong and overlong, although in fairness it's easy for arms to look too short or too long when they're clothed and flailing about. I wasn't sure that I liked the model until I got going on it, and now it's come out alright. There's lots of interesting detail, but it's not too excessive.

The two in the middle are based on Civil War models. The standing guy is an English Civil War soldier, with a medieval musket and Frost/Stargrave bits and bobs. The kneeling guy is an American Civil War model with a Frostgrave head and arms. Really, the historical bodies are just there to provide a basis on which to hang the crazy scavvy stuff. 

The next chap is an old Necromunda wyrd beastmaster, a psychic dude who can control the various horrible animals that dwell in the city. He's technically a hireling rather than a gang member, but he looks like the sort of villainous nutjob who would at home in the scavvy ranks. I didn't actually like this model all this much, but once I got going it worked out okay.

And I also made another Scaly. This one has the much-feared scatter cannon, a sort of huge blunderbuss that functioned much like a grenade launcher.

This model was made from the body of a Privateer Press trollblood soldier (the head went missing many years ago) with the head of a GW lizardman. I rather like him.

To an extent, the scaly is a bit of a test model. I've got a few really old trollblood models, and it occurs to me that they might make a nice unit. I think they could be quite good. But that's for another time...

The Scavvy Horde Grows, and Acquires an Alligator

 Hello again! I've been making some more scavvies for the horde. Here are four more scumbags, made out of all sorts of stuff.

By and large, they're Frostgrave Cultists 2 and Stargrave Scavenger bits. The two on the left have WW2 bodies - I've forgotten where they come from. I've also added a few Games Workshop odds and ends. 

Back in the day, scavvy gangs could use some of the underhive's other nasty inhabitants - which was lucky, as scavvies are pretty weak on their own. They had the option of taking one or two "scalies", which were lizard-like mutants who were very tough and strong, and carried heavy weapons. 

I'm not sure if this was GW riffing on the old urban myths about alligators living in sewers, but I decided that my chaps would have a literal alligator to help them out. I used the "Bloody Barnabas" model from Privateer Press' Hordes game (which currently seems to be somewhat defunct). Here he is.

I'm quite pleased with his coat.

And here is the whole gang together. They'll be getting some more reinforcements soon - they need it!

More Fun With Zombies and Scavvies

 Now that normal service has been restored, I have more pictures for both of you who read this blog. This week, I've been working on some of Necromunda's less flamboyant inhabitants: the rancid, low-living scavvies and their plague zombie friends.

The second batch of plague zombies included some damaged models. It seems that, many years ago, I converted them to introduce some variety, with mixed results. I took the opportunity to do some repairs before painting them.

I ordered a sprue of Frostgrave female cultists (sold under the name Frostgrave Cultists 2). These are really good models, with a ragged, crazy look. The cultists wear masks and bandages, and carry nasty-looking weapons. Some of the arms have a groping pose that works well for zombies.

And here is the second bunch, painted up. As with the first lot, I used a limited range of colours for the clothing, all of them drab and grubby. I kept with three shades of skin: bloodless blue, rotting green and recently-dead yellow. They work as individuals but there's enough overlap to make them seem like a unified mob.

Not too shabby! Actually, very shabby. But still.

I also started work on a batch of scavvies. Scavvies are filthy and inbred, but they are still live humans, so these guys would be looking more lively. There are official GW scavvy models from the 90s, but I'm not too keen on them: they've got that unexciting, slightly cartoony quality that was common in GW at the time, and they're nowhere near as well-sculpted as the Escher ganger. 

I wanted them to look crazed and feral, and the Frostgrave cultists worked perfectly for this. Some of them were given left-over Stargrave arms, using the most basic-looking rifles. It's easy to make nice, dynamic poses with the plastics.

In painting them, I used fairly drab, earthy colours to suggest dirt, rust and worn-out gear. I also gave them bits of red clothing, to suggest danger. They're at least partly inspired by the Reavers from the film Serenity.

They look charming. I do enjoy making these weird models out of bits and bobs: there will be more scavvy soldiers to follow. After the neatness and bright colours of the Eschers, it's interesting to paint these filthy maniacs.