Spiny Back Poxwalker

I’ve been at it hammer and tongs continuing work on my poxwalkers.  I completed another one a few days ago, so I now have only five left to finish off the Dark Imperium mob of twenty.  If I pull it off, then I can put the stamp of completion on them for the complete-a-squad portion of Azazel’s March painting challenge.

We continue the tradition of orange pants/green skin.

I decided this time to go with a weapon that is fairly “fresh” in that it was freshly yanked out of some hapless rhino or perhaps an unfortunate daemon engine’s pulsing maw.  (“Open wide and say, ‘Arrraghh!'”)

I finished off the spikes with a little bright silver because I envisioned that they were freshly driven through the flamer as an afterthought, right before the random plague-marine-in-charge-of-the-group-of-poxwalkers-in-the-yellow-and/or-orange-pants sent them wandering off in search of trouble.*

I originally went for black boils because I wanted this poxwalker to be a bit muted, not quite as polychromatic as some of the others.  But I found this didn’t show up very well (or at all) so I tried gradually lighter shades of gray until I was more or less satisfied with the results.

Tried a little subtle heat shading on the flamer.

Shiny Back sort of reminds me a bit of a tyranid with its chitinous right arm, and the spines makes me think of a kroot’s spiny crest.  I hope to get the yellow-and-red twin done this weekend.  I’ve made a good start so my chances of success are pretty high.  I’ve also done a little batch work on the remaining four poxwalkers with the idea of at least vaguely threatening success at completing the squad by the end of March.

I have also gotten a little more paint on one of the Blood Bowl rotters, and I dug out an old, metal miniature that I have had sitting around for a pretty long time now.  It was a bit box find at my local Santa Cruz game store, and originally came in the same Fantasy Lords box as this guy.

Apparently my unpainted white-primed worthy below left is/was Mxomycetes, Duke of the Mire, according to the good people at Grenadier Models.  Shouldn’t be too hard to knock out and if I am able to do so, then I’ll submit our royal friend for Azazel’s genderless/gender ambiguous portion of his March painting challenge.  It’ll mostly come down to when my game store gets a pot of Dechala Lilac into my hot little hands, so we’ll see.

Still on the bench but all saying, “Put me in coach!”

I wanted to put Dave’s Blood Bowl dwarf pictures in this time and talk about the game we played, but when I downloaded the pictures from my camera and messed about with them, I found they had too many shadows and in general I didn’t like them.  We agreed to take some more the next time we got together.  So I’m not sure what the next post will bring, but with what I’m working on there is a good possibility it’ll involve more Death Guard fodder.  As for the dwarves they are currently on neglected-but-not-forgotten status. **

On a personal/non-Death Guard note, I started school this week and am working on a master’s degree in creative writing.  It is proving fun so far and I hope to learn a lot over the next couple of years.

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*  I sent the pictures of Spiny Back to my friend, Dave, who said, “OK, so basically he has the vertical exhaust pipe from a Peterbuilt truck with spikes stuck through it.”  I like the way he thinks!  That is way more fun than saying it is “a flamer.”

** I also have a number of nature pictures, that I’ve taken in my travels, I’d like to post.  I’ve been saving them for when I’m busy with school and work and don’t have anything to post of my painting or games.

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Not Pied but a (Nurgle) Piper Nonetheless!

Here we have a flutist, along with his omnipresent entourage, which is the seventh addition to my plaguebearer mob so far.  This is good because Urnafortunus needs painted minions now that he’s a properly painted herald himself.

My troubadour’s right leg seemed appropriate for a case of Black Bloat, though it came out more like a variant Purple Bloat this time around.  A good thing I started noting how I do things in my posts because otherwise there would be a tendency to ask myself a few months after doing something, “How on earth did I do that?”  I’m sure some of you reading this know what I mean.

Nurglings are pretty acrobatic as a group, in addition to the whole irrepressibly happy thing.  I dislike happiness in my daemons by and large for some reason.  I guess I have more in common with Mortarion than the Great Grandfather regarding things Chaos, but the nurglings get a pass.  If someone has to be happy in my fetid companies then I find it begrudgingly acceptable that it be these mites.

Finally and not too surprisingly, one of my omnipresent duo of Oppressors of the Dust Bunnies and Drinkers of the Paint Water …

Bloat Drone Work-in-Progress Update

I’ve been working pretty diligently on Becky the Bloat Drone for Azazel’s Painting Challenge, which is due at the end of the month.  Here are a couple more quick paint table, work-in-progress shots of where things stand now.

I have the base colors pretty much done and have made a good start with washes as well.  I’m pleased so far, too, with the drool coming out of the mouth of one of the plaguespitters: a little experiment using Mod Podge.

Once my bloater is done I will want to put up a list of colors I used and perhaps a few notes on how I did things.  This will definitely help the future me, if I decide I want to paint another one of these monstrosities.  So I’ll start my list here of what I’ve done up to this point.

• Bone: Zandri Dust, wash with Agrax Earthshade.
• Cables: Vallejo Black (70.861) but any black will do (I used what I had on hand at the time); Averland Sunset for yellow cable. Wash all cables with Agrax Earthshade.
• Drool on Plaguespitter Mouth: Typhus Corrosion
• Flesh: Ceramite White for the white areas, Naggaroth Night for the purple.
• Gold: Balthasar Gold, wash with Agrax Earthshade, drybrush Retributor Armor.  Wash patches, especially where it is overly bright, with Athonian Camoshade.
• Green Armor: Caliban Green, then stipple Loren Forest.
• Red Fly on Plaguespitter: Khorne Red, wash with Agrax Earthshade
• Steel: Leadbelcher, then wash with Agrax Earthshade, drybrush Runefang Steel, wash in patches (not whole thing) with Athonian Camoshade.
• Tri-Skull Symbol: Skull White, Khorne Red, wash with Agrax Earthshade, then brighten skulls back up with Skull White.

Three More Plaguebearers

So I’ve made some more progress on my plaguebearers.  These are four through six of the ten daemon mob I’m working on.

I originally was trying an experiment out with Nuln Oil Gloss with Rhinoceros Guy here, but it went awry so I ended up slathering a bunch of blood on his torso and calling it a day.  Perhaps one too many bolter rounds in the heart?

In any case it doesn’t seem to be slowing him down too much. Same bleeding plaguebearer from the back. Scout snipers won’t have too much trouble tracking him!

This was my first go at one of the mob, who has a nurgling companion, though I think ‘tormentor’ might be a better word.  The intestine the sprite is pulling on didn’t quite match up to the daemon so I made another overlapping intestine out of green stuff.  Seemed like it worked out ok.

Not too much to say about this guy other than when I thought of the children’s book Horton Hears a Who when I first started painting him.  (Probably the trunk.)  I gave him the Orange Pox, which is just an orange dry brush on the warts and some rust washes.  I favor his yellow toenails though I’m not sure why yet.

Views from the back of Horton and the guy getting his intestines played with.  Rhino Guy seems like what he is seeing, which is kind of nice.  For next time perhaps a couple more pox walkers and either the plaguebearer with the fly head, or an old metal model I found in a store bits box.

I’m also working one of the worthy pink horrors, who has been soldiering along for quite a long time now with its fellows in an shameless unpainted state.  I imagine it has quite tired of the jibes and taunts from the fully painted brimstone and blue horrors.  It ain’t easy being a daemon.

Two Poxwalkers and a Plaguebearer

I decided to add some Nurgle to my painting queue, after spending a fair amount of time completing first the brimstone and then the blue horrors. Once I am done with these, only Slaanesh will remain to complete my goal of having a troop choice for each of the four gods.

I have never painted anything like this before, though I found it pretty simple for the most part. The black blotch on the base is the result of an experiment, which somehow went wrong. I’m not even sure what I was trying to achieve, but one fortunate thing about plaguebearers is that a mysterious pile of Black Whatever doesn’t really diminish them at all. As the painter Bob Ross used to like to say, “A happy little accident!” At least I tell myself that.

I put together all of the Death Guard guys from the Dark Vengeance box set, so I thought I should paint some of them as well.  All grist for the Plague God’s mill after all.

Here we have two poxwalkers, which are essentially zombies. Two identical sets of ten come in the boxed set, so I decided to paint them a bit differently for variety and in the unlikely event I ever want to use them as two squads of ten.

I like the miniatures, though my preference is for a darker theme. Their “rictus death grins” look more like manic evil clown grins. A small point though. Perhaps I’ve been binge watching too much Fear the Walking Dead lately?

I might put the poxwalker with the yellow pants back in the paint queue to take care of one small detail.  There is a maggot coming out of his mouth, which I painted like all the rest, but it is close enough to the color of the zombie’s teeth where it doesn’t look quite right to me.  So perhaps I’ll adjust the maggot some to fix that.

I’m finishing up another plaguebearer and two more poxwalkers.  I’m also in the middle of an experiment with a pink horror.  Not sure how that is going to turn out.  Perhaps it’ll have the Honour of being the template for a whole unit though just as likely it could suffer the ignominy of the Simple Green tub.  The gods are fickle!