howling at the moon

I have really got back into the swing of painting the army now some thing clicked and I really got inspired to carry on with it, it was probably the painting of the limited addition skin wolf  and wanting to finish that unit off, I set the goal of doing the ghouls before I touched the skin wolves, I had been putting this unit off for a while as of the amount of grey scale blood I would have to do, but now with the inclusion of the red blood on some models the unit would be a lot easier to do!

I did the unit champion as a test to see how light I would take the skin i highlighted it all the way up to white then brought it back down a bit using a few glazes of a very light grey the same grey I used as the base for the skin, I find that this technique works really well on lighter skin tones as it pulls the whole together more.

This was also the first model I went a bit mad on with the blood effect and I think next to the very pale flesh it stands out even more. I didn't want to over do it in the unit though a couple of models have been picked out a little more like the one pulling the corpse but other than that its just applied t where they have stuck bones through themselves.

As a unit I think it works really well I got a few different shades of skin across the unit so it gave more of a rabble look rather than a regimented unit of men of the empire.

Now that unit was out of the way I got to play with some bigger models, I had recently finished watching the second season of Hemlock Grove so I had a lot of ideas how I wanted these guys to look.

The change scenes in that series where awesome  and the skin wolf models reminded me a lot of the mid change.

Having the skin peeling back to reveal the wolf beneath with the skin folded over slightly dark than the rest.

I got 2 sets of the skin wolves so I could convert a few into different poses to give more life to the unit!

The models already have a load of character to them and doing some body and leg swaps allowed me to add a load more to the unit.

I think my favourite one is the one the front right of the unit as you look at it this one took the most amount of green stuff work nearly having to build the whole neck 

I decided that I wanted a shape to the whole unit all gathered around the unit champion so I had the front rank a a lot lower then him to make the champion stand out more, I also painted the rest of the unit darker than the champion so it stands out a bit more. Not all of the unit has blood on it either but they all have a splash of red on them with glowing red eyes in very dark eye sockets I think that this has given the unit a really good feel to it and has made them work well as one of the main units of the army.

The army isn't to far away from being finished now just a few more units to go then all the rank fillers to bulk out the units that will be raised.

First 1000 points done!

This weeks aim was to finish the first 1000 points of the army (apart from the models that will be raised) this would mean painting another 10 skeletons and 10 more grave guard plus making their movement trays. Now that I know how to paint these models I have got a bit quicker, managing to do the skeletons in one day and taking 2 days to do the grave guard due to the time it takes to put them together. Seeing the models all properly ranked up adds to the effect I think. Will have to get a few more dire wolves done along with some skeletons to be raised.

I had a bit of a play about with the army list to get it to 1000 points and so i could get all the characters in i had painted the final list is as follows.

I am really happy with how the army is progressing and have some very cool ideas to get it to where I want it to be. Going to continue on the core units next with 2 boxes of ghouls being brought today that should keep me going for a couple of days right?...

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.