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?...

"Bring out your dead!"

It was time I painted the first of the bigger models for the army! The first of these was to go into my 1000 points force was the corpse cart its a very cool model just wish the instructions gave you an order to put it together... after a little bit of faffing about and a small amount of green stuff the cart was ready to paint.

There were a few new challenges on this model first of these was the fire! looking at old films the way fire appeared in black and white was just a bright white glow this is down to how the film pick up the light in dark streets it was normally shot in.

This look wouldn't suit a model just having a large area of bright white looks really odd on a model. I decided to go for something a bit different and took a photograph of a some flames and grey scaled it to see what sort of shades and tones there were.
This looked a lot better on the model and is what I have done.

The next challenge was to do some sort of blood. I really like the look of the new "Blood for the Blood God" paint from Games Workshop and wanted to get an effect that looked a lot like this.

Dave in the Reading store is also working on a Vampire army and had used this paint on his ghouls (see picture) I wanted this high gloss but transparent look so from looking at his work and converting this photograph to grey scale I played around with a few mixes to get the look right. the final mix is quite complex but works.

3 parts Mechanicus standard grey, 1 part Abaddon Black, 2 Parts Lahmian Medium, 3 parts Gloss Varnish.

It still allows the highlights to show through from the model underneath but also has a very deep tone to it with a gloss finish. It can be seen in the stomach cavity  below.

I really love the look of this models and have really enjoyed painting it! Its the first model in the army on a larger base so allowed me to see what my basing would look like across a bigger surface I have added a few larger rocks to it but haven't gone made with it to keep it looking like it is part of the army.

I didn't stay with the black robes found on the characters in the army I wanted some thing a bit different so have done a very light grey based on the robes lepers are depicted wearing in a few films this I think suits the model a bit better and draws the eye to him rather than getting lost if it had been painted a bit darker.

What's next?

I am going to finish off the units of skeletons and grave guard to complete the 1000 point list then I will move onto some of my more interesting ideas for the army.