Daeothar's Home for Abandoned Paintjobs - a D&D Cleric

[The Voivod]

Watch out for the furries, Brother!

Nice little sideproject. Looks fun.

[Daeothar]

Another group of miniature that has been languishing in limbo for many years: prepped, based, undercoated but never actually painted. This time I took on a trio of original Necromunda Milliasaurs.

But what kicked them off was the grub-like monster I bought at Poldercon this Sunday. I saw it, and realized it would be a very good match with said Milliasaurs. I kind of liked the exaggerated features, and it being Reaper Bones, it was really cheap too, so I picked it up.

I had the day off on Monday, and no obligations, so I took them on immediately. This must be a new record for me; the Reaper grub was bought and then painted the very next day! In contrast; those Milliasaurs had been in my posession since uni, so well over 20 years...

This was another quick and easy paintjob, but I'm still pleased with the results. Well worth the afternoon. The only thing I didn't do in the one sitting was basing them, which I did yesterday evening. I also varnished hem, but overdid it a tad and some areas are now a bit satin. I will redo the matt spray later on though.

So, firstly, here are the original Milliasaurs:





Here's their big relative:



And finally, here they are in a nice familiy portait:



I imagine the Milliasaurs to be hatchlings, with parts of their rock hard egg-shell still clinging to their bodies, as extra protection in this early stage. The larger grub is an older sibling, which has shed the egg-shell remains and is growing to mature dimensions before possibly cocooning. Not many live to this stage, and one can only shiver at the thought of what it will eventually turn into...

[aircav]

Fantastic job on the wormy things  Love the stunty marine 

[The Voivod]

Gross.
Cute.
I dunno.
Anyway, keep them away from my Delaque.

Nice little project. You're leaving me in the dust with the mini's your finishing.

[Daeothar]

Cheers

On the table, after again not so long a time actually, is one I have been wanting to paint for a very long time: a Rogue Trader Ambull.

I did this one mostly with washes and glazes; only the claws, teeth and eyes were painted in layers. This was also my first time using Contrast paint. It served as the basic brown, and I glazed over that with different colours to get a colourful nineties impression, without being too garish. This is a subterranean beast after all.

Oh; first time using zenithal undercoating too. And I must admit this works really well with the contrast/wash/glaze techniques...

[OSHIROmodels]

Lovin’ the colours on these 

[Daeothar]

Cheers 

but it really is just the one. I spliced two different angles into the picture, and withouf faffing about, they were almost seemlessly integrated... 

[The Voivod]

Really cool.
Lovely weird old model with a fitting PJ.

[snitcythedog]

That is a good looking ambul.   

[majorsmith]

That ambulls great! Love the colors you’ve used

[Daeothar]

Cheers guys; much appreciated

Like previously mentioned; I used a medium brown as a base over a zenithal undercoat. I then glazed over this with purple, turquoise and a dark orange in specific areas; purple for the 'softer' areas on the inside of the arms, legs and belly, turquoise for the protrusions of the carapace and the dark orange for the scales on the back and lower legs (and apparently also on the 'cables' on the carapace).

It's a fun way of painting I must say, and I will be using it more in the future

[Daeothar]

OK, so I have actually been studying hard for a test required for the licence required to perform my job, which has to be renewed every five years. And each time it's a bit of a nerve wracking experience.

I had scheduled this afternoon to do a practice test and I actually finished early. So with about 1.5 hours to kill before having to collect my daughter from daycare, I decided that enough was enough and a bit of relaxation was in order.

Then my eyes fell on a set of four Urghuls (sp?) I had snatched off a local auction site for next to nothing and were sitting idly on my desk. They were already glued to their bases and undercoated grey, ready to be painted (so they're actually adopted abandoned paintjobs, these ). And I came up with a wacky challenge for myself. I would paint them all in one hour's time! The models are simple, lend themselves well to washing and drybrushing, and not many colours  are required.

Now, I'm not the most prolific or fast painter at all, so this was an interesting way to push myself a bit (without going over the top; this was supposed to be fun after all). So I set the clock and went to work. After the initial wash of olive green over the grey, I ran upstairs to fetch my wife's hairdryer, because washes take forever to dry without.

This helped a great deal and in no time (well; one hour's time ;P ) they were done, including basing, which took almost as long as the entire painting proces (PVA does not dry very fast, even with a blowdryer...)

And here they are. I reposed some of the arms with the help of the hot setting on the hairdryer halfway painting, but other than that, I did nothing special. They're not prize-winners, but they're perfectly serviceable and I learned I can actually paint really fast

Which is nice.

[Grumpy Gnome]

Looking good mate and at impressive speed! 👍

[Codsticker]

They came out very, especially when you consider they only took an hour!

[Daeothar]

About two months ago, I needed to paint a small unit of named character miniatures (5) for a small event I was going to participate in. And of course I then chose to start an entirely different project instead, because apparently, that's how I work.

So instead of 5 The Drowned Earth miniatures (which even included a minigun toting gorilla FFS!), I found myself really needing to paint a 'simpler' project; an entire regiment of Bloodletters. Yeah, I know...

I bought these about 10 years or so ago; as usual it was a second hand bargain, and they actually came with an MDF movement tray!

They were, however, not complete. Several arms and weapons were missing, and I had previously started on them, fitting the bodies that were lacking their weapons and hands with GW orc choppas, plastic rod and even a huge beastman axe that fit the bill. I had also based them, and that's where these bois stalled and were relegated to box-duty for the better part of a decade.

And now obviously was the perfect time for them to come out and play.
Do they fit into any army I currently have? No.
Do I have any purpose for them at all at this time? No.

Which I think is why I felt the urge to paint them all of a sudden; avoidance tactics at their finest for sure 

I decided I did not want to spend long on them and with all the Youtube crazes and funny techniques doing the rounds I decided to give those a go. Kind of.

I did a black primer and a white zenithal spray, and then did the skintones with a red from the Armypainter Speedpaint range. That was not very pretty, but I did manage to plow on. Turns out I burnt out on them really quickly, and that's why it took a long time to finish them. I forced myself to keep going and this weekend, they were finally finished.

It's a combination of the speedpaint basecoat and regular washing and layering, all at a very brisk pace. I call this technique the Smack Twat, and if there's enough interest I suppose I will start my own Youtube channel and you can all become my patreons! 

Joking aside though: these minis fought me every step of the way. I happen to have a smattering of each of the four Bloodletter iterations that GW has produced over the years, and these are by far the most fiddly and painter unfriendly and I'm glad they're finally done, even when the results are nothing to write home about..

Took me long enough for a quick distraction/side project...

So; on to the pics:


All of them on the movement tray


All of them without the tray. This is actually quite handy; I can now use them for both WHFB (or equivalent) and 40K (or equivalent). I even took this into account when basing them.

I base all of my scifi minis in the same style: a barren wasteland type of base, with some dead vegetation, and I do the same for my fantasy miniatures: a more verdant type of base, with both green static grass and mixed coloured flocking.

So I did their individual bases in the scifi theme, and the tray in the fantasy theme. Works really well together too



And what's that black and red stuff on the tray you ask? In a nod to the White Dwarf battlereports of yesteryear, I paint every movement tray of my fantasy units with their banner, so they can be easily identified on the field of battle, even when most of the unit has died already.

Truth be told; most of the times the tray will be removed long before it will be completely visible, but I like the idea, even when I'm the only one who knows (and now you lot too, obviously ).



This one got a Khorne symbol, which was complicated a bit by the circular openings of the tray (and the very thick paintjobglob underneath which I could not remove); all my other movement trays simply have a full square to paint unit symbols on, like this Night Goblin one:



But I digress...

The more astute (or obsessed) amongst you might have noticed that the unit is 15 daemons strong, but the tray has 16 slots!

When I started out, I did not care about the one missing individual, but the more the unit neared completion, the more I realized I did not want to do this again, not even with just one miniature and the missing slot was kind of bugging me at this point.

So, instead of going onto the web and sourcing one additional Bloodletter and painting it exactly like its colleagues, as any responsible general would do, I did not. Instead I decided, after they were done, to create a simple unit filler of a single base: a pile of skulls with a Khorne symbol above it.

And this is what I came up with in about 30 frantic minutes: a framework of sprue cut-offs, a banner pole consisting of some 40K bits and plastic rod, a layer of greenstuff over the sprue bits and a few dozen skulls pressed into it.

It still needs paint, obviously, but this should be a really simple affair, and I'm actually quite chuffed with how it came out. And it can double as an objective counter too!