Life is quite an exhausting undertaking, and when it comes to the hobby I'm overloaded....with enthusiasm and joy! I've been working on and off on about six projects at the same time and all of them are glorious. As a lot of them are either nearing completion or showing wonderful progress, I should update this blog more often (otherwise I'll end up typing one of those monster posts). Aside from that I'm still in my Rossian (Bob) 'Joy of Painting'-trip: “No pressure. Just relax and watch it happen.” For me that means slapping paint on random monsters from the queue around my station. This week I picked up an Omni Toad, relaxed and just started blasting paint on it.
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| Leap for your life! |
The Omni Toad (part of the Stargrave Menagerie by Digital Taxidermy) is a serious monster that covers an 80mm round base (and as usual it features my trademark 'I still have to paint the rim'-style on the picture ;). As I was adding a running peasant for scale, I realized I painted a
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| I'm desperately trying to come up with a semi-funny caption, but I can't stop laughing at how disgusting this thing looks. |
Painting disgusting, wart covered frogs is a bit like painting anything Nurgle, you just can't go wrong with a base of green (any green will do). I started blasting Vallejo Model Air Nato Green on the model with my airbrush, adding light grey and later even white to the cup to get contrast and to make sure the belly was a lighter than the back. I ended up with a nicely contrasting skin tone that was way to grey. Luckily I had a rare (out of print, mint in box, pro-painted*) Lamenters Yellow Glaze at hand. A light glaze of yellow gave the green a bit of sheen. Next I glazed in a lot of red around the warts (paint thinned down with thinner, I'm not wasting my Bloodletter Glaze on warts!). I followed up with yellow, building up to a nice (disgusting) white head, once again I took the white down a notch with Lamenters Yellow glaze (sorry I guess I'm not very consistent in my protectiveness towards glazes).
* Sorry, couldn't resist.
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| As a funny aside: I haven't actually been able to find any rules for the Omi Toad in Stargrave. |
The pink webbing on the feet and hands, as well as on the slobbering lips, was the result of a 'happy little accident'. I picked up a rather rosy skin color and it turned very pink as I added white for the highlights. The yellow tongue was given a bit of shadow by wet blending blue around the bottom edges (yes I can sort off wet blend, I'm just too lazy to actually do it most of the time). I had a blast painting in the eyes and adding enough veins to give the impression of severe alcohol abuse. As a last step I took a bit of Agrax Earthshade and a bit of Athonian Camoshade to exaggerate shadows and add a bit of 'semi-blacklining' where appropriate. I also spent way too much time with water and bile effects on the base. Those are hardly visible as a) the frog covers most of the base and b) I was (as usual) way too impatient to actually wait for the water effects to dry.
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| And the grand prize winner....the Hypnotoad! All glory to the Hypnotoad.... |
Hypnotoad nee Mezmo Toad by Diehard is a fun little metal toad that neatly fits on a 25mm base. It remimds me of the old metal toad you got with the Talisman miniatures (way back in the eighties). I painted this model quite a while ago, but never got around to sticking him on my blog. I love these small models (my current Kickstarter has a couple of Familiars in the classic RoC-style and there's also a couple of fun little droids standing around my paint station). Long story short: painting amphibians is fun.
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| Two Death Guard armies versus a strange alliance of Orcs and 'Nids. We decided the Orcs thought the 'Nids were strangely accurate Orcs and the 'Nids thought 'We'll add you to the biosoup later.' |
In completely unrelated news, I've actually played a game of Warhammer 40K this month, marking the first time in years I've actually played 40K (I stopped enjoying myself during the 8th edition and completely skipped the 9th). The current batch of free rules are actually fun and reminded me of the joyful early days of Age of Sigmar (before all the General's Handbook shennanigans). The biggest difference I found is that 10th skips the Vuvuzela-like drone of whining wargamers that accompanied the launch of AoS. I managed to quickly slap together a functional Tyranid army list using the New Recruit tool. The entire (1000 point) list took up two A4-sheets that contained all the rules I needed to play. My Hormagaunts were quick, fierce (and not very effective against a Nurgle tank), my Tyrannofex managed to keep its 10 year old track record of hitting with no damage intact and my Tervigon was tough, mean and deadlier than the opponent expected.
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| I couldn't stop giggling when I saw Death Guard Plague Marines advancing towards a pharmacy marked 'Big Pharma'. Then the shooting started. |
All in all, quite a fun update to the rules, although the cynical wargamer in me expects all that joy will be surgically removed to please the tournament crowd and feed its all-consuming, deluded need for 'balance'. On the plus side: I have a nice group of casual, narrative gamers that will be ignoring most of the updates, and - staring at my old 'Nids - I realized red on beige is a wonderful color scheme to play around with. Having said that, let's close off with another Bob Ross quote: “Isn’t it fantastic that you can change your mind and create all these happy things?” I'm quite sure he didn't have Tyranids in mind when he said that, but if there ever was a species with an overabundance of extra 'happy' little friends, its the 'Nids, so I declare it appropriate :D
Both toads look spectacular - I've got the Hypnotoad in a box here somewhere awaiting paint. Glad to see I'm not the only one cherishing those out of production glazes!
ReplyDeleteCheers! It is a shame the glazes are out of production, let's hope GW decides dot reboot the production some day.
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