High King Thorgrim Grudgebearer has some grudges to grumble about

My holiday is still in full swing, giving me lots of time to splash paint on poor, neglected miniatures. Yesterday I finally finished a model that was actively adding my name to its Book of Grudges. Let's hope that by ending High King Thorgrim Grudgebearer's half-painted status, I get to have my name crossed out again...

'It says here you four are obligated to sing hi-ho while carrying me into battle, so best start singing my thanes!'

I acquired a metal version of good old Thorgrim slightly over a year ago and started out enthusiastically spraying gold paint over him (I suspect Dwarves don't have a word for gaudy). It looked okay until I added an oil wash. Then it looked ho-hum (and I want my dwarves to sing hi-ho). Over the course of months I tried fixing the king and his entourage trying regular washes, edge highlights, drybrushing and whatever tickled my fancy. I ended up with a half-glued mess of gold and sad looking blue. I almost gave up on the model and tried selling him to another collector. Our inability to agree on the definition of a fair price was a lucky escape for me. 

This model (and its predecessor) are a few awesome examples of the zany madness that is Old School Warhammer. 

I recently decided to just redo it all. I painted the throne in a fresh layer of gold and kept te amount of washing and highlighting sane this time. The gold method I mentioned in the Slayer blog helps too. I spent a lot of time painting the lazy king, finally getting the blue and gold right. Only the cloak gave me a bit of trouble. I wanted it to properly contrast with dwarf, his throne and his blue vest. I considered white (the other Karak-a-Karaz color) but that would not contrast with his grey beard. The 'Eavy Metal people went for a drab green, but I didn't like that look. Remembering the old name 'Imperial Purple' for purple paint (back in the day) I decided on purple in the end. I like the look of it (and I used the word purple a lot in the previous sentence #purple). 

I spotted no seatbelt while painting this model, and now I wonder how many High Kings fell to their doom because of clumsy thanes mishandling the throne. 

With the king and throne painted to a reasonable standard all that remained was the Dammaz Kron (Great Book of Grudges) and the gullible suckers proud thanes serving as wheels honored throne bearers. These models where hard to paint. A mess of beards, bits of metal and fringed leather vests all mixed together. In the end I started with the beards, got the vests blocked in blue and then added the silver metal parts (over the horrid looking gold I started out with). I have to admit the models only started to make sense when I got around to highlighting bits of blue (and I had to touch up stray bits of dwarven hair even then). I also pity anyone who glued this entire model together before painting it. But that's another story...

Sticking pre-colored paper to a model feels like cheating, but it was worth it just to be able to joke about this later. 

The Dammaz Kron was last, but most definitively not the least part of the model I had to paint. As I've played rather a lot of  Warhammer Total War 2 (and waiting for 3) I wanted to include a knowing wink to the computer game on my tabletop model. If you play Dwarves in the computer game you get missions in the form of grudges in the Dammaz Kron (for instance if an Orc general raids one of your provinces you get a grudge against his army). I lifted a screenshot of the grudge list in the computer game of Google. I then slightly lightened the dark yellow of the pages to a more Rakart Flesh color in Photoshop, scaled them down to the books size and printed them on a laser printer. I then cut out the print of the tiny pages and glued them to the book with PVA. I used a subtle sepia wash to blend paper and metal together. Using paper prints on a metal model may sound lazy, but I will get a chuckle out of it every time I play.

Going by this picture I have to say my approach to painting ORANGE works quite well. 

With that I've completed another model that was gathering dust in the window sill for way too long and added a fresh centerpiece to my slowly expanding Horde of Dwarves (Regiment of Dwarves? Company of Dwarves? Murder of Dwarves? Throng of Dwarves (oh yeah, that was it)). My next project may be even more Dwarves (as the Orcs say: Once you properly kick the Karak, the Stunties keep flooding out). I have a half-finished metal flame cannon (to my regret not the ancient one with the wooden barrel), a bunch of  metal Ironbreakers and some plastic Thunderers half done already. There's a plastic tray full of more ancient but primed Dwarves to work on. Then again I have some Pansies Lumineth, a few interesting Diehard sci-fi models, some Stormcast and the rest of Cursed City waiting for me. Oh yeah and Skaven, always more Skaven. Please don't tell the Dwarves about my Skaven ;) 

I need a longer holiday. :D