The Duc de Bordleaux

 I've not painted many things this week, but the main thing that I did paint took a while. Back in White Dwarf 138, there was a unit of Bretonnian knights. Most of them were quite simply painted, but their leader, the Duc de Bordleaux, was converted and had much more complex heraldry.

Being an idiot, I decided to make my own version.

Cutting the horse to rear up was more complex than it ought to have been. Keeping the legs the same length meant that one foot was higher than the other, and I had to raise the model's base with plasticard to keep the horse level (the original model is standing on a tactical rock for the same reason). I then pinned it for stability.

The original GW model has reins made from paper. I always find that paper starts to look tacky very quickly, so I used very thin plastic from a blister pack, twisted into shape.

The only other alteration was the addition of a plastic sword. Somewhere in time, the Duc's (rather small) mace had disappeared. I think that the new sword looks good.

And then I painted him. Ye gods, this was fiddly and slow. I used a brighter blue than GW, to match the rest of my knights, and simplified the paint scheme a little. Otherwise, I tried to stick to the original scheme as much as possible, and it was not easy. I've painted smaller details on the Escher and eldar harlequin models, but all this freehand was tiring, especially since I was trying to duplicate the same images on different parts of the model.

I reached a point where I was just unable to get it any better. I would correct a mistake and, in doing so, make a new one. So this is as good as he's going to get - which isn't bad, to my mind. At the end of the day, I'm pleased with this guy.

Back to Blognia - "Napoleonic" cavalry and randoms

 And now for something completely different.

It's been a while since I looked at the charming principality of Blognia and its wretched inhabitants. While there has been a Blognian army for time immemorial, its main function has been to fight itself in an endless cycle of banditry and civil war. Now that the Arch-Duchess has effectively declared war on the undead, the army is having to actually do something useful.

The cavalryman here is actually an English Civil War soldier, with a crest added from a Napoleonic helmet. I'm not sure where the sword arm came from, and I sculpted him some suitably grandiose epaulettes. The horse's head is from a medieval knight.

The Blognian Cavalry has a long history. Traditionally, many aristocrats have either gone into the cavalry or some kind of mental institution. Indeed, few people have the skill or patience to put up with the notoriously foul-tempered horses, and it is said that the heavy armour cavalrymen wear is largely to protect them from their noble steeds.

That said, the cavalry is not entirely useless. At the tenth battle of the River Plob, the Grand Imperial Lancers charged a unit of Swedish mercenaries, thus turning the course of the battle. Although the River Plob was in the way, the lancers drowned so spectacularly that the rest of the Blognian army was able to retreat in good order. 

Also joining this rider is an infantryman - well, an infantry person, really. Blognia operates a "don't ask, don't tell" policy as far as the gender of it soldiers goes: not out of equal opportunities but because it's desperate for absolutely anyone to sign up. This particular soldier is either unusually disciplined or hasn't had time to lose bits of her uniform and acquire more confortable kit yet.

Here is the entire army unit, so far. 

And here are some crazy pagans. The woman with the massive sword was inspired by a character from the cancelled computer game Fable Legends, which featured a Lady of the Lake armed with an enormous sword. The legs of this model were from a dark eldar mandrake. The arms and head are Frostgrave, and the body was sculpted by me. Overall, a really enjoyable little project.

The person with the antlers is an odd kitbash. The arms and head are from Frostgrave cultists. The body is a Perry Miniatures Afghan. I think he's some kind of deranged cultist, perhaps about to do magic with his raised hand. 

Well, that was fun!

I Have A Plan - And Some Classic Ork Firepower!

So I had this random idea, and I thought I'd run it past both of my readers.

What if a bunch of painters bought a box of - say - ten minis each, painted the models, sold them on ebay and gave the profits to charity? I think that could be a nice idea. You could sell the painted models for anything from £40 to £150, depending on how well they were painted and who painted them. They would be fun to paint and you could try out a new paint scheme or models from a game you don't usually play (personally, I'd do a Blood Bowl team).

Unfortunately, I have virtually no clout in the painting/gaming community - not that I've ever looked for it. But it someone with a "name" picked up on the idea, or enough people went for it, I think it could be really effective. Of course, you'd have to rely on people to honestly donate the profits and not just pocket them, and there would be some showoff who tried to paint an entire army for it, but by and large wargamers seem to be decent people who would be willing to turn their talents to a worthy cause.

Does anything like this already exist? Would you consider doing it? If anyone fancies doing something like this one-box charity challenge, or has any idea on how you'd go about organising it, drop me a line.

*

Right then. This week, it's space orks. I've been picking away at these for a long while, but I've got a batch done, and here they are.

I bought some metal guns off ebay, which originally came with 1990s Deathskull Lootas. They must have been some of the last old-style ork models. The guns are comically large and (of course) fit really badly with the ork models, metal or plastic. I used ancient shoulder pads to mount the guns and added handles made of a green stuff/milliput mixture.

I actually used an old metal madboy as the wielder of this weapon. For one thing, he's got a great expression and for another, you'd have to be mad to be carting this thing around. I think it's an autocannon.

He got a little plastic friend to act as a spotter. By turning the left hand the other way up (it's meant to be supporting his bolter) I've got him shielding his eyes. Shame his mate is looking in the wrong direction.

The next pair are both plastic models. Again, the gun took a lot of fitting. I've gone for the usual jolly freebooter/Bad Moon colours. 

And now onto the really fun stuff!

 The old plastic ork warbuggy gets a lot of stick for being a bad model but, once you factor in the odd design of the crew, I think it's perfectly decent. The detail is reasonable for a kit from 2000 or so, and you can add as much detail as you like to the big hubcaps and the front. It's also pretty easy to convert and customise.

The main problem is that the crew don't really look like GW orks. They resemble hefty humans (like House Goliath Necromunda models) with no necks. In sculpting terms they're not bad, although they don't resemble either the Oldhammer Paul Bonner-type orks, or the ape-like monsters from 3rd Ed onwards. If another company had made this model, it would be fine.

I particularly like the driver, with his deranged grin, and the guy operating the gun, who looks like an unusually green fat biker.

This model is pretty much as it came from the box, slightly repaired rather than deliberately converted. It was missing its banner pole, but I've got no great love for banners, and that won't be much missed. 

Broom!

I've got a Bretonnian leader to paint, but I'm trying to put him off, as it's a really daunting bit of conversion and painting work. Got to do it sometime, though!

More Knights From 1990

I've been painting more knights this week. As with last week, I've been using the models from WD 137 and 138 as a guide. 

The green stripey guy uses a pattern taken straight from WD 137. The chap with the blue, yellow and checkered heraldry is based on a knight in WD 138, although I've simplified the heraldry a bit because it was incongrously complex compared to the rest of the unit. As I said in the previous post, painting and building these models is a slightly awkward process, because it's easier to paint the inside of the barding and the horse's legs before sticking it together and smoothing down the joins with milliput. But it is nice when they're finished.

This last chap is wearing heraldry taken from WD 138, simplified to stop me going mad. The woven pattern is straight from the original, but I used a white cross on the red quarters instead of the complicated freehand lion heads in the GW version. I just can't paint that well. Anyhow, he was complicated enough without that, and I really like the final version.

That brings this unit up to nine knights. Pretty good! However, I want to make a leader, and I've got a model that will do the job. I just need a break from painting heraldry. Maybe the space orks can help...

Knights from the 90s

More progress on the first edition Bretonnian knights. These models date back to 1990 - I've got friends younger than them.

I've found that the best way to paint knights is in pieces. This isn't something I tend to do - I like to have the whole model made before the painting stage - but it does help as there are bits that you can't reach easily once you've stuck the model together.

There are four main pieces to each knight: horse's head, left horse side, right horse side and rider. I spray the inside of each horse side black. I also spray the rider black. I spray/paint the outside of each horse side and both sides of the head white.

First, I paint the inside of the horse's legs. They have a black undercoat on one side and a white undercoat on the other. This shouldn't really matter, since the barding would throw shadow over the legs  anyhow. I do a very small amount of highlighting on the inside of the barding but it's almost invisible. It's definitely not something that the viewer needs to see. 

Then I stick the horse bits together (head, sides and tail) and if necessary use milliput to smooth the joins. Once this is done, I do the most fun part and paint the heraldry on the outside of the caparison. 

After that, well, it's the remaining bits of horse, then the rider. I do the messier metal parts before the rider's tunic, just because it's neater. Then I do the shields.

I've used pieces of plasticard for all the shields in this unit. I traced around an old plastic shield, drilled a hole in the middle so the peg on the knight's left arm would go in, and smoothed the join down with more milliput. 

When painting the horses, I've tended to stick to two or three strong colours, to make the heraldry stand out more. I like the idea of the unit looking like a blaze of bright colour. I've also found that (to my eyes at least), the "main" colour on each knight is a mixture of what's on the rider's surcoat and what's on the shoulders and back of the neck of the horse. I try to vary these. 

I've followed the very old GW paint schemes from WD 136-138, but I've found that the two GW units look too yellow and too white respectively, so I've kept the heraldic shapes but varied the colours used. I particularly like red/blue, green/white and yellow/blue, but lots of contrasts work well.

 Anyhow, here are the first six.

More Escher Gangers

 Hi again! I've been squinting very hard this week and painting some more of Jes Goodwin's amazingly detailed House Escher models from the mid-1990s. 

Ages back, I bought two miniatures on ebay. I then lost them in my house. Annoyed, I bought the same models again from a different ebay seller, although the second ones I got were broken. One was missing its pistol hand, and the other lacked the barrel of its autogun. I then found the originals again. Oh well, more models to paint!

These are the repaired miniatures. I used a pistol from a Tempestus Scion for the missing pistol, and a leftover Genestealer Cult autogun for the other. As usual, I went for a pretty riotous colour "scheme", vaguely inspired by the old Tank Girl comics (very 90s!). Here are Daisy Chainsword and Helen Highwater.

Then I painted the other two. For variety, I used darker skin tones and tried not to repeat any of the colours on the parts of the first two miniatures. These are Bella Donna and Lou Scannon.

I've actually got quite a few Eschers now. I don't have the full range, as some of them must be rare and go for a lot on ebay (well, more than I'm prepared to pay). But I do have a fair few, some of them repaired. Here they are in batches of four.

So that's the Eschers for now! I have a couple more to go, but I think I'll have a break from all the crazy detail for now. Maybe I ought to go back to the Bretonnians. We shall see!

A Weird Robot Chicken Digression

 Again, a bit of an odd one this week. I've been dipping into the box(es) of unpainted models over the last couple of months and trying to finish some random miniatures that I've picked up over the years. I found a number of steampunk-style models from a variety of manufacturers, and thought that I'd paint them up as a little warband.

First up is a Privateer Press model. Some years ago, they released a faction called "Grymkin", which were Halloween-style monsters with pun names, and was very much not my cup of tea. However, one of them was a bizarre clockwork chicken robot (called the clockatrice), which looked quite cool. Here it is, painted up.

Weird, eh? I really like the model, just because it looks so crazy. I also added a few minions to the group.

The semi-ghostly lady on the left is a Privateer Press body and arm with Frostgrave bits. I imagine that she hovers slightly above the ground, wielding a combination of pistols and magic. I'm not sure where the robed mystic is from. I think he was part of a set of space crew, perhaps by the people who make the Dunkeldorf miniatures.

And here are two henchmen for this weird band of oddballs. On the right, we've got a Reaper miniature who seems to be some kind of mad scientist in a mechanical suit. Fair enough. On the left is a strange metal model from a range that I assume to be defunct. He's Bill Sykes, the thuggish baddie from Oliver Twist, except that he's got bionic legs because why not. He's actually a really nice model, but I've no idea who made him. I think I found him in a bargain bin.

So that's all pretty weird. I've plans to make more of these weirdos, but for the moment that's the sum total of Robot Chicken Brigade. For now...

Pizza Dragon

 Again this week, I've been painting something a bit different. A while ago, I was bought a model dragon (thanks Ruth!). He's a metal Reaper model, and he's wearing a chef's hat and apron, and is holding up a pizza. I'm not quite sure why, but he's a nice and jolly sculpt.

I've never painted a model like this before, and doing so was an interesting challenge. As fits a cartoony sculpt, he's not covered in detail, which meant that I needed to do a lot of shading up and down. I didn't want to paint him red, as his pizza would be red and orange, so I went for shades of purple, a bit like Spyro the Dragon from the old computer game. I wasn't quite sure how to do his eyes, since they've got sculpted pupils, but I'm quite pleased with the result.

I also painted a couple more old metal Trollblood models. They were quite easy to do and enjoyable, and I think they've come out quite nicely. A small force of these guys would look cool. I've no intention to use them for anything, but then I rarely use miniatures for anything!

A Bit Of A Change - Privateer Press Trollblood Test Models

 So, let's talk about Privateer Press - or, more accurately, please read on while I ramble about them. Or it. Lucky you. 

Ten years ago, Privateer Press was a serious rival to Games Workshop. GW was in a bad way, and PP had some clever business practises and an interesting range of models. It also had an extremely complicated game and a weird obsession with win-at-all-costs tournament play which made its writers sound like jerks, but hey-ho. PP's two main games were Warmachine, which involved chunky dreadnought-style robots bashing each other, and Hordes, in which big monsters bashed each other. And you could play one against the other, which was a really nice touch.

Anyhow, brighter minds than mine have considered the downfall of Privateer Press. From my point of view, the upshot is that they made some nice models, a few awful ones, and some that I really liked. Some of their character miniatures are really cool. Back in the day, I bought a load of models from their "trollblood" faction.

The trollbloods were hefty chaps who lived a rugged life, wearing tartan, tossing cabers and drinking to excess. They were basically comedy Scotsmen meets Lord of the Rings trolls, and were as close to the good guys as the setting allowed.

I decided to repaint some of them, because they were lying in a box at home and doing so would distract me from buying even more miniatures for a while. I remembered them being amusingly goofy, like Warhammer trolls: actually, they're uglier and less lovable than I recall. Anyhow, I painted a couple of them up as test models. I'm damned if I'm going to be painting tartan on these guys, so I went for simple red sashes, which contrast nicely with their blue skin. These were metal, and quite pleasant to paint.

So, I'll keep on with these models. I don't like them as much as the old space orks, and there's not a lot of variety in the sculpts or options to do interesting things with them, but they make a nice change and would look good in a small group. I'm not in a rush to make a unit of trollbloods, but they're now on the long list of things for painting.

Even More Random Space People

 In the wider world, sadly, John Blanche died this week. There isn't much for me to say about this that hasn't been said elsewhere: Blanche's influence on Games Workshop and miniature painting on the whole was immense. His grimy, low-fantasy style has inspired and been imitated by thousands of painters, 

Personally, a lot of "Blanchitsu" isn't for me - and Blanche himself made some nuanced comments on it. But he was undoubtedly an artist with a distinct style and, importantly, he was one of the first people to turn painting model soldiers into an art. His influence lives on, but he will be missed by the community.

*

I've ended up with quite a lot of plastic historical miniatures, mainly because I've wanted to use them for conversions. I wanted some US soldiers to put on the bases of my Tau, as well as some Men In Black type operatives, and so on. The upshot is that I've had quite a few sets of leftover arms and bodies.

I've assembled more weird space people from these, using the historical bodies as the starting point for odd conversions. I've found that historical models are often slighter than SFF miniatures, and they work well with female heads and arms. Of course, this moves them away from their historical roots, and painting them in bright, usual colours further hides the fact that they were originally supposed to be peasants, GIs or whatever. 

I make these models as a sort of palate-clearer, between more serious projects. I've got about 50 of them now - I have no idea what I'd do with them, but then I don't know what I'd do with a lot of my models. Here are some recent ones.

These models were made with the bodies of medieval pikemen. The left-hand model has Stargrave arms and head, and a WW2 backpack. The steampunky guy has arms and a head from Wargames Atlantic Grognard models, and a cloak that I made out of milliput.

The lady on the left has Stargrave arms, a cultist head and a GW Kroot bag to balance her outline out. The guy on the right has a Stargrave head and Wargames Atlantic Agent arms. 

These guys were made with various historical bodies. From left to right: US marine, Boxer rebellion, WW2 Russian. Heads and arms are Stargrave, apart from the middle guy, who has a Pig Iron head and Frostgrave Cultist arms.

Next time, it's either scavvies from Necromunda or old Privateer Press miniatures. Watch this space...

An Oldhammer marine and some weird little red guys

 Hello again! I've gone back to my space marines this week, touching up some old models and painting a couple of new ones. 

I've had this captain model for a long time. He's from the early 2000s, and was missing his right hand (and gun), as well as his left arm from the elbow down. I gave him a power fist that I'd had knocking around for a while, and a plasma pistol that was at the bottom of the bits box. 

The lead was slightly rough and had lost a bit of detail. I'm not sure if he is a slightly dodgy recast, or this is the start of some kind of "lead rot", but he painted up okay. I went for the usual jolly medieval-style colours, with a bright yellow cloak. For some insane reason I painted a woven pattern on his fist.

I love these old marines with their heavy ornamentation and complex armour. I think they're some of the best marine models ever.

I also went back to some little red chaps that I built about 10 years ago. They're based on Bretonnian peasant bodies, with Tempestus Scion heads and weapons left over from a box of plastic marine scouts. I think that you could use them as scouts - perhaps they're servitors assigned to protect a techmarine. The arms had to be lengthened a bit with wire, which was slightly awkward, but I think they have an odd charm.

I also had a plastic miniature from the Elucidan Starstriders Kill Team set, which I bought on ebay. It's an odd model - all the miniatures from that set look much weirder and steampunky than "normal" 40k miniatures. I converted it to have a new arm and head. He's miles taller than the other red helpers, but I think he's their boss and is telling them where to go.

Here is the little group of red helpers together. They're strange, but sort of cool!

So, what next? I've got some more scavvies for Necromunda, and a batch of odd Stargrave militia types made out of medieval and WW2 plastics. And I've also got a bunch of Privateer Press Trollkin to paint. I'm trying to summon up the bravery to start them: they're nice models, but I'm slightly daunted. And then again I might just paint something entirely different!