From the sublime to the ridiculous

A recent and eagerly-awaited arrival, I was instantly taken with the Isabella miniature when I came across it on the Studio McVey site. In their design notes they've quoted Blade Runner & Phillip Pullman's 'His Dark Materials' as influences for the character, both of which are magnificently prominent in the final sculpt. I've kind of super-imposed a touch of Joss Whedon's 'Firefly' in there too though - she looks like the kind of lady that would never tire of giving Malcolm Reynolds a hard time! Though she'll be a challenge (she's TINY!) I can't wait to paint her and I'm still mulling over schemes at present. My first instinct would be to go typically cyber-punk with grimy leather browns and perhaps some muted reds but I'm leaning more towards an arctic colour scheme: White coat, blonde hair and some turquoisey blues and browns for variety. Watch this space!

....And to the ridiculous it seemed about time I posted a pic of something I'm working on at the moment. So - termegants! They may not be pretty, but what can I say? There's 20 of the lil buggers! If you use your models for gaming as I do there comes a point at which you realise that life's too short and you just need to get guys on the table to field a decent army. These ones I've just about got 'painted' to a sort of minimum satisfactory level for playing games. The Tyranid army I'm putting together for this year's Britcon event needs a minimum of 60 termegants so I've a few more to do before August - I'd better get painting!

Tiny Dancers

As I'm currently engaged in production-line painting Termegants for my ever-growing Tyranid swarm, I'm not doing much quality painting just now. I hope to get some of the better pics of Hive Fleet Askepios up soon but until then I hope you enjoyed the above 'archive' pictures of my Eldar Harlequins.

These guys (and girls) were a joy to paint, primarily down to the uncluttered and dynamic nature of the sculpts. It was also an opportunity for me to try my hand at the signature Harlequin diamond pattern - the turquoise and yellow diamonds that appear on every model. This was acheived by painting a grid with a watered down blue/black ink over a yellow basecoat, then filling in and highlighting (not as easy as it sounds - steady hand required!). I've also tried to use different complimentary and contrasting colours on each model to give them some individuality. The overall effect is perhaps a bit garish but fitting, I think, for a flamboyant dancing troupe that migrates around Eldar Craftworlds pretty much as they please, sitting somewhere between the role of the court jester and the Grim Reaper.

My Eldar army lies in a somewhat fragmented state at present - much like the Eldar civilsation itself! - a shadow of its former glory. The Harlequins were meant to kick start a return to regular game-play for my Eldar but it never quite happened! Long term I still fully intend to get the army back up and running, and as Games Workshop have some new releases planned for them later this year that could be a good opportunity.... the skeins of fate and probability are fickle masters!

Prepare to (be) Board...

Hello and welcome to the inaugural post on my new blog. The main purpose of this blog will be to share pictures of models I've painted. I'll also be briefly explaining the background of the models - most (if not all) of which are from Citadel Miniatures' Warhammer 40,000 range - to give an idea of what drew me to them; and letting you know about any special conversions or assembly/painting challenges I encountered along the way to finishing them. As I use many of these models for gaming, I'll also no doubt be doing a few posts letting you know of my exploits on that front.

So these first pics are of models from Games Workshop's surprise 2009 release, Space Hulk. Above is Sergeant Lorenzo, to the right is Brother Scipio, and below is Brother Zael: Terminators of the Blood Angels Space Marine Chapter. These guys have been tasked with cleansing the eponymous Space Hulk (a huge interstellar craft) of the xenos scourge known as the Genestealers; pitting mighty armour, ranged weaponry and righteous faith against the ferocity and numbers of an alien infestation. Games of Space Hulk are fast paced, tense affairs and represent desperate close-quarter combats within the claustrophobic confines of the Space Hulk's labyrinthine corridors.

For the paint job I took a lot of pointers from White Dwarf 357's 'Eavy Metal Masterclass by Anja Wettergren, as this was a first for me in that I'd never painted Space Marines and also in that I'd never actively sought to recreate an aspect of the Warhammer 40,000 universe verbatim before. With these guys I felt the sculpts were so evocative of the characters described in the game that I felt I'd be doing them an injustice in not trying to reinforce this with the paintjob. Points I'm particularly pleased with here are the deep red hue of the armour, the parchments and lettering on Zael & Scipio's armour. Feel free to let me know what you think!