Space Marines and Harlequins!

Does everyone have models that sit half-painted on their desk for months? I've had three space marines sitting there since November, and I thought it was time that I got the damn things finished.

First up is a very old (and small!) metal marine, probably dating back to the 90s. He doesn't have any skulls on him at all (What?!) and he has a large gem in his chestplate, which strikes me as surprisingly eldar-esque. I decided to capitalise on this and give him open arms. He's holding a very old boltgun which was, for some reason, lacking its magazine. I found a newer magazine lying around and added it to the old gun. A simple model, but a nice one.

Then there's a couple of marines with heavy bolters. They're entirely plastic: I think the arms and bolters are newer than the bodies. I used helmets from Grey Knights and Space Wolves for an archaic look. I cut the big skulls off their bolters and gave them little heraldic shields cut out of plasticard instead. I don't especially like the design of their enormous lumpy guns, but they'll do the job.

 And this is the point where I got "ideas". After the comparative success of the purple inquisitor a few posts back, I thought I'd try some other fiddly painting. So I stripped some very old metal harlequins, and had a try at painting them. Probably a terrible plan...

There have been three sets of models for harlequins: the recent plastics, a set of metal models released about ten years ago (I really like those ones) and these tiny models, which date back to the days of the blue catalogue. They're very nice sculpts (hats off to Jes Goodwin) but wow, they're little. Painting checks and diamonds on these things is enough to drive anyone half-crazy. I may have bitten off more than I can chew!