I finally got around to painting again (and actually writing about it)

I can't believe I managed to fall of the edge of a globe! Luckily I dropped back onto the surface and painted some miniatures along the way. What is that you say? No edges on globes? Okay, in all honesty: work managed to eat up most of my time and I had to overcome a raging addiction to Satisfactory along the way too. But over the holidays I managed to get some hobby done. As I turned the space underneath my paint station into a GW store facsimile I'll be forced to paint even more in the foreseeable future if I want my legspace back. In other words: more updates will follow soon. But for now, and without further ado, lets pretend I never fell of the globe and show what I painted over the past few weeks. 

Painting skin with purple glazes is a lot of fun and produces nice results (I think). It also makes me hum  the tune of Purple Haze, but that's just me being annoying. 

First off I finished the 3D-printed Ogre Ogor Tyrant sculpt by Avatars of War, completing the set of  Ogre characters I bought from them and printed when the temperature was still printer friendly. Currently my printing area is far below the temperature needed to print resin. I'll have to wait until spring before I can print more models. As to the Ogre Khan: he's one hell of a nice miniature and one of the few instances where I don't mind an axe that looks like it has enough steel in it to make an American sized pick-up truck.

I declare 2023 either the year of the striped pants or The Year Of The Striped Pants (I haven't figured out the capitalization quite yet). 

I spent most of my time playing around with flesh tones, as I did with the previous group of Ogre Ogor characters from this set. As the flesh and steel got a bit boring, and the bone color did nothing to break from that, I decided to go for a GW classic: striped pants. I decided on blue on white as an homage to Obelix. I painted the pants (a highlighted and shaded) white first and then added blue stripes, taking care to actually highlight these as well. I think the end effect looks quite nice. I've also decided to make 2023 'the year of striped pants' (not quite sure if I should capatalize that or not). Expect more striped pants from me for the next twelve months (not quite sure how I'll do that on the notoriously pantsless Witch Elves I got over the holidays). 

By the Power of Grayskull! Bring us more food!!!

Another set I finished this past period is this unit of Mournfang Cavalry. At first I planned to use GW's Mournfang Brown paint to actually paint Mournfangs for a change, then (for a reason I absolutely cannot explain) I decided it would be hilarious to mimic the colors on He-Man's Battlecat for these monsters. I managed to refrain from giving one of the Ogres Ogors a He-Man like 'Prince Valiant'-style haircut. I have another four Mournfang cavalry on sprue, so that may just happen somewhere in the future. I also have a Thundertusk in rudimentary purples to join in this Masters of the Universe theme. And to think I never really got into that nonsense as a kid...

Dinner is served, don't forget to wash your hands.

Last in the Ogresphere Ogorsphere is the big kettle filled with bloody bits they all eat from: <Let me look up the name> the Great Mawpot. It does something in the game. One day I'll read the rules and find out. In the meantime it just feels so right to have a big cookpot to go along with these hungry monsters. I had quite some fun painting it up too. Going for a mean looking bronze with purple heat haze accents and utterly ruining the effect with successive layers of drybrushing and washing. 

Many Bothans died to give us this pan of soup (also some random animals with interesting looking pelts).

The top of the tarp consists of animal skins (I hope). I had a some fun painting them in different shades of brown, but in the end decided it looked rather boring. So instead I used all the (sort off) skill I gained painting Stormcast Cloaks and added interesting looking patters to the skins. I splashed a bit of a white tone on the sides of some and added lazy drops of glaze in their centers to make it all look sort of okay. Well I have to be honest, I'm extremely chuffed with how well this looks when compared to the amount of effort it took. As an aside, I deliberately went for a green grass and growing things on the bases of my Ogres Ogors. I like the snowy theme GW has picked, but I'm also a bit bored by it. With that said: let's move on to my favorite rascals in the Warhammer universe.

Slightly sloppy painting to make a sloppy slop thrower look like its dangerously sloppy. Sloppy task accomplished I say #slop.

I can't quite remember when I glued my second Plague Claw together. I have been working on and off on the warmachine itself: going for the aged wood look and playing around with weathering powders to make the metal parts look rusted on. The one thing I could not get myself around to doing was painting the crew. Then I looked at the rather washed out appearance of the model and decided to go for a Blanchitsu-adjacent approach: less thinking about individual details and more about relaxing, mixing paints together and keeping everything within the realm of browns and ochres ochors (sorry couldn't resist). All I omitted was the dash of red to draw attention. It's quite a fun way to paint. I think I'm going to experiment a bit more with that as well this year.  

Maybe I overinvested in bile-themed paints. I'm feely slightly sick just looking at that load of glop. Come to think of it...is it the time of year to start painting Nurgle yet? 

In the end I skipped on the red (and let the rust do the talking). Instead I decided to make the glob of disgusting and diseased goo the focal point. I recently invested in disgusting goo colored paints. One I got is called Vallejo Slime Grime Dark Environment Effect (it turned out to be too dark for my purposes here and I had to blend it in the mix of regular paints to tone it down). The other is called Bile Effect (made by Green Stuff World). It is a more snotty looking (and lighter) variant of Nurgle's Rot (also used in tiny amounts on the glob of goo). As a cover for a basic slap on mix of Averland sunset and white, combined with strategic drops of Bloodletter Glaze the Bile Effect works wonders. I'm glad Skaven don't really exist. I wouldn't want too unleash this plague thing on the real world. 

It may look like a random pile of rocks, but it'll hit like a random pile of mountains. Come to think of it: they should've used this model for the 'spirit of the mountain' thing the Lumineth have. It looks way more impressive than the glorified Milka cow model in stores right now. 

Speaking of things I'm glad don't exist in real life: here's a Rogue Idol. It is a Forge World model that looks like anyone can make it with a bit of airdry clay and a few inspiring rocks. But in truth (after a few tries) I have to admit it's actually a more complicated than that and quite a lot of fun to paint.  It's also a lot bigger than it looks on the pages of Forge World. Joining this monster is a 3D-print of a running innkeeper (with striped pants of course). The print itself looked a lot of fun, but turned out to have way too little detail to make it look good painted. I did my best (just don't look to close). It brings my collection of running peasants and townsfolk up to four (five if you count the tied up Troll Slayer). 

Will the poor civilian reach his house in time? Will it help? I think we can all guess the answer to both questions...

For those of you ordering air dry clay and wondering what is so special about this lump of rocks I say 'go for it!'. Also: look at the interesting mushrooms on its back and the inlaid runes on it's body. It is a fun model that has more detail than you spot at first glance. I also used it in a battle and it clobbered Malekith from his black dragon in a nice flurry of blows. I may have lost that battle, but it was worth it because I got to pounce the posh git of his big dragon (hur, hur).

Posh Gitz with Pointy Sticks or as they are also known: Lumineth Vanari Somethingorothers.

Speaking of posh gits...a few months back I decided to glue fifteen High Elf Lumineth Spearmen Vanari Somethingorothers together. The plan was to speed paint them over a weekend. As I was implementing the painting part of that plan I got to the gold trim on their armor and shields and decided I didn't feel like painting them anymore. The Elves Aelves Gitz sat in a box with big sad Lumineth eyes (not painted on). Luckily there was a group painting day over the holiday. Those are quite fun (and sociable) in themselves and as an added bonus if you only bring a select group of models along, there's that can distract you from them. I spent a wonderful afternoon grumbling about armor trim while painting it. After that I only had to sit down for another day to finish the rest of the details. Then I ignored the internet's advice and washed everything with Agrax (you can take my brown wash from my cold undead fingers (if you dare)). I then spend yet another day restoring the white and gold and adding details. Not quite a full-on speed paint, but it finished the job.

Adding 3" spears on models with 3" range is a funny idea and it looks impressive, but its hell when you try to transport or paint your models. 

Long story short: I now have two full units of Pointy Eared Gitz with Pointy Sticks ready to go (and the only regimental color I really got wrong was the plumes on their helmets (I'll just blame the apprentices over at Boult & Locke)). Aside from looking quite nice (if I say so myself), it brings the total number of painted elven infantry for my High Elves/Lumineth army up to 70 models. One day I may just take them out onto the tabletop (and I will get clobbered off it by some random person mumbling about the 'Meta being monsters and heroes' or something*). 

*I still don't understand what Facebook has to do with wargaming, but considering GW has a Metawatch these days, it must be important ;). 

Pictured: Rogue Idol, no longer pictured: Malekith (as the Posh Git was a red streak of blood at this point).

With that I've reached the end of this comeback post. Hopefully I'll be painting a lot more: Misterc over at the Periodic Painting Table sent me some lovely undead dwarves and an undead troll (thanks!) that will get painted soon. I also have a humongous (in my opinion) pile of new metal mini's by Diehard Miniatures (so much awesome,so little time) and then there's the private GW taking up all the legspace underneath my painting station (not to mention my first foray into Hasslefree Miniatures as soon as their Kickstarter ships). I love this hobby, hopefully I'll find more time to paint and blog about it in the coming months.