Standard Bearer - Finished

Arrived safely in Norway this evening, but managed to shoot a couple of pictures of my take on the Chaos Exalted Hero, before dropping him off at Games Workshop and catching my plane.

After talking to some friends, I decided to go for a traditional banner instead of a flag, and added onto the plastic banner from the Chaos Marauder Horsemen set. Got a couple of spare parts from the old mounted Champion of Slaanesh and the Dark Elf Cold One Knight boxes. I didn't have time to paint any freehand on the banner, but after I return to Denmark I'll see it through.

I've used a rather limited palette on this piece: only Skull White, Chaos Black, Shadow Grey, Mithril Silver and Scorched Brown (except on the base, which got a few colours more - but I'll make a short tutorial of it later), which I think has worked quite well to tie the whole model together. Granted, not the typical colours of Slaanesh, but I really like the concept of using light and clean colours to represent darkness or evil. And while I have nothing against pink personally, I do find it slightly over-used, so I wanted to try something else to make it stand out more.

With all the armour on this model, I've had ample opportunities to practice shading of metal - or painting true metallic metal, if you like - and I really like the process and results. To top it off, it goes faster and faster for every part, and I hope to keep this level up on the rest of the unit. I have mentioned in an earlier post, I believe, that this miniature will be part of a regiment of Chaos Warriors with the Mark of Slaanesh, and when I get back to Denmark I hope to be able to complete the first rank sometime february. There is some rather extensive converting and sculpting involved, and I have to figure out how to make a couple of things in sculpting putty as I go, but having one model finished surely helps on the motivation!

But now time for some pictures: Hope you like him! As always, comments and criticism is welcome!
The voting for december's Knights of the Brush will take place tuesday the 27th, so if you live in or near Copenhagen, feel free to drop by GW's store there, as I'm sure there will be several really great entries this month as well!

Standard bearer WIP

Just a little WIP shot of the standard bearer.
For fun I thought I'd try something new with his helmet - the freehand need some cleaning, but I think I'll leave that for later - so much left to do! And I've got only tonight and tomorrow to finish him, if I want to participate in december's Knights of the Brush, as there's a plane waiting for me wednesday to take me back to my parents' place in Norway.

Don't know what you think? Part of me likes the freehand on the helmet, but on the other hand the lovely shape of the Chaos Warrior helmet gets a bit lost?

Hoist That Rag!

So, it turned out that my finecast model wasn't of as good quality as I first presumed, and I've spent the last couple of days filling bubble-holes and trying to correct a huge molding fault. It's as if the two parts of the mold hasn't been correctly fitted, so the rear part of the model is roughly 0.5 lower than the front. So his left arm and leg has recieved quite the bit of sculpting, to correct this. Luckily, the rest of the mold line is hidden by the fur of his cloak, or ran down a undetailed area on his right side, and was thus fairly easy to remove with my hobbyknife. Still frustrating.

Either way, I've decided to make him the standard bearer of my regiment, and have started converting a bit: I've replaced the original head with a regular Chaos Warrior helmet sans horns, replaced the axehead of his left-hand weapon with an axe from the Chaos Knight sprue, and filled most of the holes in his cloak. As the unit will bear the Mark of Slaanesh, I want to reduce the worn look typical to the Chaos Warrior regiments' cloaks and equipment, and make them look a bit more like they care how they look. Sure, they've been out raiding and seen many a battle, but they won't be seen dressed in rotting cloth and rusty armour!

So here's how he's standing at the moment - not pinned or glued to his base yet, I prefer to paint them separately.
As his right arm also suffered from the faulty moldline, and in addition had two bubbles ruining the chainmail, I thought I'd sculpt the whole arm from scratch, and I hope to finish it by the weekend, so I can start painting next week. Speaking of sculpting, I've giving brownstuff a go at this model, and I'm very happy with how this putty's working. It cures harder than regular greenstuff, making it easier to cut and file should one want to do that, but it also stays more in shape than greenstuff: making it easier to get those sharp and defined edges you want when sculpting armour. Greenstuff, by contrast, acts in a slightly more "liquid" way: if you don't return and work on a spot regularily until it cures, the putty tends to go soft and gives rounded edges - which can work out very well if you're trying to sculpt something organic or soft, like flesh or cloth. So both putties has their uses, and I'm still very much at a learning stage, but hopefully this project will get me a few more steps along the way.

The standard itself will also be scratchbuilt from a 2mm iron pole and some putty, and I made my first attempt yesterday:
I got some nice tips from Mati over at Massive Voodoo on how to sculpt cloaks and the like, and used the techniques he suggested when I made the flag (as you can see from my setup below, I opted for paintpots instead of wire, as the flag was so large).
The technique seems to be working fine, but I'll have to remake the whole thing and make some minor adjustments before it gets where I want it, I think. For one thing, I managed to make it way out of proportions, it's too large! Secondly, a combination of too thin layer of putty and the wrong ratio of putty-parts made the flag slightly softer than I'd like. But I'll give it a new go and hopefully improve the outcome.

I have been debating with myself whether a flag or regular banner will look best on the tabletop; any thoughts from you guys?

Here they come!

After tallying the votes saturday, it turns out I once more have the honour of picking the miniature for GW Copenhagen's monthly Knights of the Brush painting competition - and hence forth we are allowed to do a bit of converting, which suits me just fine. I'm sticking to the army of my heart, Warriors of Chaos, having chosen the Chaos Exalted Hero - and I do hope this doesn't bother too many; I was slightly dissapointed to see only three entries, including my own, last saturday. Anyways, fingers crossed that more will join in on the fun this month!

I picked up the last box in the store, and while the curse of finecast-bubbles still seem to linger, it doesn't bother me that much, as I'll play around with some greenstuff either way. Without revealing too much at this point (my initial plans for any model are always prone to change as the project progresses..), I have planned to make him fit into a Chaos Warrior regiment, which has been collecting dust in an unfinished state since the early months of 2010. The concept of this regiment was, well first of all, it will have the Mark of Slaanesh, but that's not so groundbreaking. But what I really wanted to do with this unit, was to break up the very rigid and boring poses the otherwise greatly sculpted Chaos Warriors suffer from, and to make it look as if the whole group was charging headlong towards the enemy. And it went fairly well with the first miniature, until I started to resculpt the cloak. I couldn't get the putty thin enough, or it didn't look natural, and attempts to use paperclips or plasticard didn't get me anywhere. So I lost motivation and shelved the project - until now!

I'll use the Exhalted Hero as part of the regiment; granted, he does not run, but the pose is rather nice and unique, so it will break up the rather monotonous look of most Chaos Warrior regiments. Furthermore, after I am done converting him, he'll serve as a nice model to test the paint scheme and has given me much needed motivation to dust off the box of unfinished Warriors and other bits and pieces I thought I could use for the project. I got to spend a couple of hours among plastic, glue and greenstuff, and this is a snapshot of my workspace and the state of my regiment.
I've still not figured out how I'm to make the cloaks (any tips or links to good tutorials would be greatly appreciated!), but I did experiment a bit with a grey putty, called ProCreate the other day. I was unable to make a cloak out of it, but it felt really nice to work with, so I'll probably give it a shot. Also have a batch of brownstuff lying about somewhere, which I have yet to test, but I have heard it's best suited for armour plates and other bits with sharp and defined edges.

Either way, will be nice to work on a regiment again; single characters are all very nice, and I do love the Knights of the Brush concept, as it not only lets me paint wonderfully sculpted miniatures, which I probably wouldn't buy normally (e.g. the Wood Elf Highborn), but also the deadline ensures that I finish them! But to complete a new regiment, that's something I honestly haven't done in a long time, but it also looks so much grander, doesn't it?
Strength in numbers!

Chaos Sorcerer Lord

So slooooow!
I think I have to enter some regular "painting time" into my weekly schedule, 'cos a single model painted in a month, that's hardly progress at all. Won't get my army finished this century, that's for sure!

Either way, the Sorcerer Lord for tomorrow's Knights of the Brush painting competition is finished, and I do hope you like him! Very happy with how he turned out myself, although I caught a glimpse of another contestant's mini at the store today, and he's also gone for the magma-armour, which I had hoped would score me some easy "uniqueness points"...
C&C welcome.

Chaos Sorcerer Lord - WIP

Progress has been slow this past week, or rather nonexistent.. But this morning/afternoon I managed to get some painting done - it's not much, but at least it's a start.
It's my first try on magma-armour, heavily inspired by Vincent Hudon's Magmatrax and redmanphill's Warriors of Slaanesh, and I think it fits a magican attuned to the Lore of Fire quite well.

I did the plates on his back first, and might redo them, as I personally find the smaller grid on the frontal plates more to my preferances. The remaining armour will be painted as dark steel, although I haven't decided on whether I'll try some lighting-effects from the magma (or if that will be too much?), or simply giving it a ever so slightly bronze-tint. Any suggestions?

To the Top!

Just thought I'd drop by with a quick update, as I just was notified that my Amethyst Wizard won october month's Knights of the Brush competition!

This means that I get to choose the miniature we'll be painting this month, and I've choosen this chap:
The (relativly) new plastic Chaos Sorcerer Lord.
As you can see, I've started on a dark-red colour scheme, which in the end will mark him off as a sorcerer devoted to the Lore of Fire.

Sorcerer of Slaanesh and new pictures of Wood Elf Highborn

Here's the Sorcerer of Slaanesh I built out of the Empire Battle Wizards box, and he's now awaiting judgement in Copenhagen's Games Workshop, along with my Amethyst Wizard. Saw some very nice entries when I dropped my miniatures off this morning, I think it will be tough!

Managed to take some pictures of him before I left him at the store; in a way it is wrong to say he is finished, because I had initially planned to paint a large Slaaneshi freehand design on his back, but at 2:30 am this morning, I simply couldn't keep my brushstrokes straight, and had to leave him as he is - but maybe I'll finish him properly when I get him back. Might rebase him as well, come to think of it; just couldn't be bothered with building something nicer last night.

Also had some trouble with the undercoating of this model; for some reason, the white spray left rather large pellets of paint on the right side of his cloak, which made an uneven and rugged surface - hopeless to try any smooth blending or shading in that area, sadly. Awh well, really happy with the flames and his book. The OSL could maybe have been more smooth, but I think it's OK.

Hope you like him!
My Wood Elf Highborn was returned to me when I left my pair of wizards, and I've taken some new pictures of him, which does the miniature some more justice than the poorly lit and unfocused pictures GWCopenhagen took for their facebook site...

I've already introduced him in a previous post, but with these pictures I can't but repeat my satisfaction with the blade and the base of the model.
Hope you like him as well!

Inspired...

As the work on my Sorcerer neared the end, I began thinking of what to do next. I came to a point with my Sorcerer, where I had to wait some hours for certain parts of putty to cure a bit, before I could move on. I suddenly had a timepocket to fill, and while I could have started painting my Dragon Ogres, I thought that the space of time would be better suited continueing sculpting - after all, both putty and tools were already in my hands, so no need to dig out paint and brushes.

But what to do? I do have quite a few regiments waiting in their sprues, and while looking through the boxes, I came over my Chaos Warriors, and it hit me how static they look, all lined up, weapons and shields at same angle and looking quite boring (at least the third time one assembles a regiment of them...), despite the rather great sculpts. Lots of good detail, no doubt about that, just lack "motion".
Then my mind wandered to an image from the armybook, of a charging warrior, and I thought to myself, that's what I want to make! So I cut off a leg, half the cloak and one shoulder, then found an arm and some greenstuff, and started putting it together. A few hours later, and this is what I got:
It's by no means finished, I'm currently working on making the cloak sort of flutter behind him, and I need to find him a helmet. And even if the shield's finished, the arm might need some extra sculpting as I've cut away a large portion of the cloak which'd normally hide the upper arm... His left foot is there somewhere, but it's bet so high you can't see it from this angle.
Owh and here's the picture from the armybook, just for reference:Mine will get a classic Chaos Warrior shield, though, as I think they simply look gorgeous - and besides: carrying half-torn bodies stuck to the shield ain't only unpractical, but slightly un-Slaaneshi, don't you think?
I don't know how you think, but personally I felt so happy with the result, that I decided to make the rest of the regiment in a similar matter, i.e. less static, and all with unique poses, but so far I've only gotten the second one to about the same stage as the one on the picture above, although with quite a different pose. Unfortunately I didn't take no pictures of him yet, and I'll try not to make you wait long.

Anyways, hope you like the idea and how the first one's turned out so far.
Last in this post, I thought I'd include a picture I took this morning, which managed to capture some of the details better.

Sorcerer of Chaos - Finished!

That's more like it!
Name and a short story will come later, I promise to have it ready by the time he's painted, if not earlier.

Here's some pictures of him - terribly sorry about the mediocre quality of them, but I hope you all like how he's turned out.
I do know that the left arm is slightly too long, but the hand has turned out so much better than my first try, so I don't think I'll attempt to cut the 1mm or so off his wrist, out of fear that the hand might get damaged...

Oh, and I did try to take some pictures as I worked, although I doubt they're good enough for a step-by-step guide.. I'll look the pictures through some other day, and make that list of tools and write down tips and stuff I learned while working on him, as I promised.

Sorcerer of Chaos - WIP4

A small update on the Sorcerer.
First of all, thank you all for the encouraging comments so far. Means a lot.

I have gone through with my plan, giving myself a new chance to sculpt the hand and arm better. I have unfortunatly had very little time to do any sculpting, however, so I havn't gotten very far yet, but I think my skeleton for the hand is of a better size this time - like last time, I've used thin staples to create the core of the hand, and then I add greenstuff-"flesh" on top of the "bones". I'll get some pictures at another time.
It turned out surprisingly easy to remove the old head and lower arm without damaging them, so as you can see on the picture above, they're still with me, serving as a reference for "too big", hehe.

I hope to have some more updates in the not so distant future, but february has turned out to be quite the busy month for me, so I can't promise nothing. And I'll try to get a post up about tools, tips and the like, for any who'd like to give sculpting a try themself - it is very fun and rewarding, once you get the hang of it.

Sorcerer of Chaos - WIP3

I'm kind of at a stand-still here, and a bit at a loss as to what I'm to do next. I have finished sculpting my first head (milestone!) and also given him a left hand.
Now, it's not very hard to spot that his hand is way out of proportions, and his head is also slightly too large. On top of that I think the face is expressionless and boring, the cheekbones are too prominent, his nose is too beaky and he's even looking in the wrong direction - at least I think he'd look much better if his head had followed his arm. That was after all the plan when I started sculpting the head, but as I was trying to figure out how to make ears and shape the face, I sort of lost sight of the bigger picture, and I was unable to spot my mistake, until too late.

So, uhm, what now?
In a way, I have done what I set out to do, namely sculpt a head and a whole arm for the first time. And I have learned a lot, no doubt about that, and that's always nice.
I am however not happy with the result, so my Sorcerer won't see any paint in the near future, that's for sure. In fact, I'm quite tempted to scrap both head and arm, and redo them from scratch.
Right now I think I'll take a short break from him, however - I seldom get anything constructive done, if I'm frustrated over my own mistakes. It's the wrong kind of motivation for me, but that being said, I won't abandon my Sorcerer either, his time will come!

I have recieved a request for some hints and tips regarding how to sculpt, and although I'm far from an expert, I promise I'll start working on a list of tools, including a short description of how I use each, and if I've started redoing the face and arm, I'll try to include some step-by-step pictures as well. Hopefully something to look forward to!

Sorcerer of Chaos - WIP2

Thank you for the feedback so far on my Sorcerer.
I've gotten a bit more sculpted today, his left arm and his back are now roughly fleshed out, although I see I'll need to cut and file away a couple of thing, when it has finished curing. I settled for the "open hand, palm face forward"-pose, although I fear the fingers will be a challenge... I'll suffer and weep tomorrow, I guess, heh.
The observant might have spotted that I've started on the head as well, uhm, not gotten any further than marking out the major muscles at the throat and neck. Will just have to see how doing the rest goes tomorrow as well.
Thanks for watching, and any comments or criticism is welcome.

Sorcerer of Chaos - WIP

Just a few pictures of my WIP Sorcerer.
His torso's from an Ungor, while the right arm's a Marauder Horseman banner-arm, with a Daemonette-claw to crown the staff. I'm torn between having his left hand point, or to be open with palm pointing forward, as if he's channeling some spell out of his hand. And as I don't have any suitable heads in my bits-box, and I don't think I want to put a helmet on his head, I think I'll end up sculpting his head in the end.. As I envision him in my mind, he'll get shoulder-long hair, maybe a braid or some charms in it, but the left half of his scalp will be shaved to the skin - might give him a tattoo there when I get to painting.

He's not glued to the base yet, and I'm not sure if it's good enough, or if I should build it up a bit more, him being a character and all..?

Tell me what you think, and help me decide what to do with his left arm!

Tutorial - Assembling Dragon Ogres

After all the positive feedback I've gotten on my Dragon Ogres, I decided to make a tutorial of how I've made them. So, I've taken pictures from start to finish as I made one, and I hope this tutorial can be of inspiration, if nothing else, to other war-gaming enthusiasts!

First of all, a list of bits used:
O&G Black Orc torso + arms (right arm holding banner, left had a spiked club - removed)
DE Cold One Knight lizard except the heads (still wondering what I'll use them for..)
40k Kroot heads
WoC Marauder Horsemen chains, with skulls and other goodies
BoC Beast Herd horns (on this particular Dragon Ogre, I also used a sabre from same package for its Great Weapon.. On the picture below are some other weapon-options I was considering; just use your imagination when you make your own!)
Also, a fresh suply of Green Stuff is needed (I'm sure other modelling putties will work just as fine), along with glue and regular tools for cutting, filing, sculpting and drilling (remember the paper-clips!) - and don't forget the 40mm square base, for gaming purposes.

Step one - cleaning, filing, cutting and glueing:
File or cut away mold lines. I found the Cold One to be particularily tricky - sure it's a lovely sculpt, but I think the mold lines were placed unstrategically; hard to get at, and in a careless moment, it's easy to cut off some otherwise nice details...
In addition to the mold lines, parts of the saddle had to go, and also most of the Black Orc's armour.
After that it's just to glue the Cold One together, and place the torso on top.
I've also placed the Dragon Ogre to be on a temporary base, mostly to give me something to hold on to, while I add and sculpt the Green Stuff. A hole's been made in the neck region, and the Kroot head's pinned in place. Time to bring out the Green Stuff!

Stage two - Green Stuff:
Yellow+Blue=Green : Place a small ball on his lower stomach, and another ball at his chest. Then it's just a matter of taking one's time, and sculpt out m. rectus abdominis and a pair of mm. pectorales majores and his front is more or less done. I added some more at a later point for his neck and also built out the pauldrons a bit..
The tricky thing with Green Stuff is, as I'm sure most of us know, that it takes time to harden. And unless it has hardened, whatever you've sculpted is prone to being mashed to goo (or one big fingerprint). So, to avoid mistakes/accidents, I left the main part of the model for now, and proceeded to making those arms and the weapon.

For this Dragon Ogre, I decided to make something a bit more original than just using the Black Orcs' axes, as I had given my two other Dragon Ogres said axes. So, I started out with the banner pole, and tried to fit various blades to it - in the end I went for a Beastman sabre. I found a left hand that I thought would make a decent fit to the lower part of the pole, and got something looking like this (after pinning and glueing it together):
I've also added some chains from the Marauder Horsemen-kit, makes a nice "chainmail", heh. No, really, I think it helps to hide the true nature of the nearby saddle, and makes it look a bit more like armour plates. Also, they're nice accessories, and I wanted to include them in some way on one of my units. Be warned though, they're quite fragile and easily break off during sculpting if you're not careful. Then again, after the arms come on, the chains are very hard to get glued on correctly, so it is kind of a sacrifice to wait with them 'til after the sculpting.

With the first layer of Green Stuff hardened, the arms were glued/pinned in place, with a 3 mm gap to the torso. I've found the Black Orcs to have too short arms, so without lengthening, it looks all out of proportions. This gap is then filled with next batch of Green Stuff, making the Dragon Ogre's overarms mostly built out of putty and the pin as "skeleton".
The armour plates have been enlarged some places (other parts have been cut away to balance it), so that the arm looks like it fits underneath, and then the back gets a coat of greenstuff in the same manner as the front. Later I added a spine of scales running down the back, as it'd look kind of empty without it.

Stage three - gap filling, base switch, head details and horns:
When the putty of the former stage has dried, and the model's safe to touch again, I went over the model, weapon in particular, and filled in any gaps I found with Green Stuff. Then I glued the double pair of horns onto the head, and while it dried, I got my 40mm base (bits of barch already glued onto it) and drilled a hole in it where I wanted the front leg of the Dragon Ogre to go. Why the front leg? It's simply easiest to drill, to be honest I'm not sure if it's doable to drill the other leg, as the joint between foot and leg is sort of curved, while the front leg goes more in a straight line and on top of that looks slightly thicker.
The Dragon Ogre was then moved to its new base, and then the horns were expanded using Green Stuff, merging head and horns.

And that's basically it.
Do these steps three times, and voilà! Three fearsome beasts ready to wreck havoc upon any foe!
Hope this rather brief tutorial can be of help to some and give others inspiration.

Dragon Ogres - WIP (2)

First of all, sorry for the lack of updates and progress with my various projects. Short story is I've been busy: visitors, trip to Norway, concerts, schoolwork and work. As I've barely touched a brush, I'll have to "joker" this month of the Tale of Fantasy Painters, which means I use one out of two "free months", as in I don't paint anything. I'm slightly worried that I will have to pull out of the Tale, as I doubt I'll have less to do at the university in the coming months, and then there's my brother's christmas gift which will demand quite the bit of time. If I can get him to promise me he won't drop by this blog of mine to look, I'll make WIP shots as I go, but if not I'm afraid a lot of my painting results will go unpulished 'til after christmas... I'll do my best to convince him, 'cos feedback would be lovely!
Either way, I think I'll have to put my Space Hulk models on hold for the moment, and rather return to them as soon as the new year's in. Brother Claudio did place among the top 11 in Jawaballs' Painting Contest, which I am fairly happy with (picture number three from the top). Feel like I'm at the right track with my Terminators, was up against a lot of great minis!

Anyways, although I havn't gotten much done, I've at least finished the green stuff work on my first Dragon Ogre - the back is all done, added some more armour plates on his back, and I think I've solved the issue with his head being slightly too small, by adding that extra set of horns; you'll be the judges of that! Hope you like him - I certainly do, and I look forward to giving him some paint to wear!
Also found some nice trees near a hospital I frequently work at, which I could scavenge for barch-bits for my bases. I have yet to try adding dead or burned grass to them, but got a tip from one of the regular gamers down at the local GW, who said my bases and models would pop a lot more, if I painted the rims black instead of grey. I'll do some testing when I find the time!

Dragon Ogres - WIP

A few pictures of my WIP Dragon Ogre.
Finnished lengthening the arms with some green stuff today so he's almost done. Only have to figure out what to do with his back, and then get him atop a proper base.

Greatly inspired by Elazar's Dragon Ogres, I've merged Cold Ones and Black Orcs to make the basis of the model, but as you can see I carved away most of the front of the Black Orc torso and sculpted a new one. The arms needed a bit of lengthening as mentioned, so they were pinned onto the torso with a 3-4 mm gap, which I then filled with greenstuff and sculpted to muscles. I'm fairly pleased with the result, it was easier than I initially feared, both the pinning and the green stuff work.
The head's from some Warhammer 40 000 Kroots - got three of them off a regular gamer at the local GW - and I think they makes for a nice reptilian feel. Glued on some horns to make it more draconic, and to create the illusion of them being bigger than they are.
Lastly I've given them a "chain mail" from the chains off the Marauder Horsemen sprue - on the next one, I'll glue these on before I do the arms...

Think that should list all I've done to create this monster, hope you like them!
I plan on fielding a unit of three, and I've got a second one which is a step or two behind this one when it comes to green stuff (arms are just pinned on, plus a few other things lacking).
Any suggestions to how I'm to paint them is welcome; armour will be black like all the rest, but I'm not sure how to do the skin and scales. A blueish grey maybe..?