The Vampire and more

So I got a  few things for my birthday, the parts to make my vampire and BSB mostly. The BSB would be left for a bit while I get the first 1000 points done so its time to do the vampire!

I wanted to do some thing that looked like an old school vampire from a lot of the old black and white films when Dracula appeared more as a skulking creature of the night and not a glitter covered teen of the current films. a black cloak was definitely needed along with a pose that fitted the look.




I looked at a lot of pictures of some of the old vampire films and decided to do some thing that was a mix of a few, the main inspiration for these was Nosferatu and Bela Lugosi both of whom where proper iconic vampires and had some very classic and well known traits to the look and posture of the characters.

I wanted the high collar from the Lugosi vampire but at the same time wanted the very creepy look of Nosferatu. using the right model as a base would be the key to this I would have to have a bit of a think about what I was going to do.



From being in Gamesworkshop one Saturday afternoon I had seen an empire wizard one of the kids had entered into a painting competition, this had a cloak and a hand position that would suit the look I was going for, the empire battle wizard kit was then added to my wish list.

There was a small amount of green stuff needed to get the pose how I wanted to get him more hunched up and I also had to make a pointing hand for his left arm. the bit that took some more thought and time was his head as this was going to be the main focus of the model i looked at a lot of different heads across all of Gamesworkshop's range of figures and decided to go for a head from one of the elven sets, Dark Elves or Dark Eldar seemed the best fit for this.

The head I used was actually from the Dark Eldar witches sprue and normally has a full head of hair but it had the right facial  expression so out comes my knife to slowly reshape the hair down to a bald head, this took way longer than I was expecting but worked out really well all he now needed was his fangs which ended up just being some green stuff.

Most of the model would be the black cape and from doing the necromancer model first I had learnt how to do this so it was a bit quicker this time around and in the end looked a lot cleaner but then that's what you want from the vampire!

I toyed around with doing big eyes like on Nosferatu but this just looked far to cartoony so in the end I went for normal sized eyes but with really dark shadows around them to make them appear to glow. I'm really happy with how this model has turned out and it has managed to keep the feel of the army.

When the vampire was done i went back and painted another 10 skeleton warriors bringing the unit up to 20 strong. just another 9 to go to complete the basic unit.

The Skeleton unit was there for one purpose and that was to get the banshee as close to the enemy as possible with out dying, this would be the next model I was to paint. For this no conversion work was needed as the current Banshee model is awesome. Choosing how to paint her was another matter I had been thinking about how to paint an ethereal look in grey scale for a while and it had been bugging me a bit. I knew this was going to be a very bright model and the highlighting would have to be very subtle.

I knew that I was going to have to do some thing to contrast all the white on the model and the easiest thing for me to do was jet black hair this would also help to frame her screaming face. I love the movement in this model and the final paint job I think sets this off well with a very washy set of white robes and then very dark metallics on her corset and hair to contrast. This was good to do now before i tried painting a Mortis engine which I have planned for later.

I also received a box of Grave Guard for my birthday this would be the unit that accompanied the vampire into battle, I knew that this unit was going to be quite dark so the metal work would have to stand out a bit more so the white bones didn't fully take over the models.

This unit was actually a lot quicker to paint than I was expecting far quicker than doing the standard skeletons! I love the shields in this unit there is a lot of character to them and painting torn cloth is always fun. making it look soft is a bit of a challenge in greys but I think I have pulled it off.

Like the skeleton unit I wanted a banner to set the unit off. I continued along the same theme using a large moon to back light a spooky scene. This time there was more detail on the moon as it was in a more prestige unit. I blocked the idea out roughly before I set to work painting a hanging tree on top of a cliff, I haven't done fine brush work like this for ages but I think with the amount of painting I have been doing recently I have got better at it and because of this I am really happy with he final look of the banner.

That's where I am now up too with the army, the next thing to be painted is the corpse cart which is sat ready to be undercoated on my painting table.