Empire Battle Wizards - WIP

Just thought I'd give you all a small update on how my entries for the monthly Knights of the Brush painting competition are progressing. Starting to feel a bit of a time pressure rising; the deadline is the 29th of October, at 10 am, and I can't claim to be a swift painter. But at least both of the models are assembled and primed, and I've been fiddling around with some colours and settled on themes for each of them.

First out is this fella. His main colours will be black and white, to better fit in with my Slaaneshi warband. I've sketched down some freehand motiphs, which hopefully will be enough to mark him as part of my army, once it's all done. The staff-head was created by pinning the burning sword onto a staff - I do hope it won't disqualify this model from the competition; conversions are not really allowed, but as I have only used parts from the Battle Wizard-box, I hope it'll be okey. After all, the winner of last month's competition had removed the tree-spirit from the Wood Elf Highborn... But we'll see!
...come to think of it, I did cut, reposition and pin the hand with the book, and also removed the pharaoh-ish beard-compartment from the mask - which actually saddened me a bit as I found the thing itself rather cool, but I was forced to do it, as the head wouldn't fit onto the body, unless I cut off the beard-compartment. Awh well! At least I think he looks rather decent this way, so should he be disqualified, I'll still have a nice addition to my army!

Then there's the second mage.
I've not made any conversions to this guy, so no danger of him being disqualified! The idea is that he'll be using the Lore of Death, and I felt that it should be quite obvious to any observer that he is - apart from the scythe and hourglass... As the previous wizard, he's still at a very early stage, but the freehands are at a slowly, but nevertheless steady pace turning out the way I want them to.
Hope you like them so far, I'll do my best to slap some more paint on them in the following days, and update promptly!