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.