Sepulchral

Things have been a little quiet lately as I hit a bit of a snag - I couldn't see to paint! It turns out that old age has snuck up on me and I need reading glasses. 

Still a quick trip to the opticians and then the pound shop and I'm back in the groove. 

These are the Shadespire Sepulchral Guard, a lovely set of miniatures which my two lads clubbed together their pocket money to buy me for fathers day. So obviously these were the first things I cracked on with when I had my new eyes. 

The red and brown here are the new Contrast paints over my usual zentihal prime. They're very interesting and a useful tool in the armoury for my usual style. The black and the white are particularly good.

You can see here the new load of the ModelMates rust effect - still as good as the old one. On the bases theres some of the Moss effect which is equally interesting. 

As usual with the Shadespire warbands, lovely little miniatures and a fun project. 

Back to Napoleonics after this!

The Codewraith

I am in the signals. I am the hiss of static from an untuned radio. I am the flicker of snow on your screen. I am the blocky glitch in the video, the hitch in the music. I am the frequency on the edge of hearing, the colour you can't quite see, the ghost in the machine. 

And I am here for you. 

This was a simple little noodling about with a ghost. It wasn't started with any sort of a plan, just one of those nice evenings sat in front of the bits box and seeing where the muse takes you. In this case, it led me here. I took the opportunity to play with my new greenstuff cable maker which allows me to produce something a little more flexible than guitar strings.

Overall very happy with the final outcome and it's given me a couple more ideas to so with some ghosty chaps.

Boo!

In the endless flat of the Grimnir Fens, travellers must be wary of the Deadlights. Ever keen to draw people off into the endless shadows of the depths, the Shades of those who drowned in the service of the Harrowed King glow with an unearthly light. 

This was another one painted for my son; the easy to build banshees are great little miniatures and he saw something I'd done with the glow in the dark pigment which led him to ask if I could make him a ghost that glowed. 

I could. 

It's relatively simple to use; you mix the pigment with a little bit of water and then add some matt medium to make your actual glow in the dark paint. I'm still experimenting with getting the consistency right; hence why the finish here is slightly gritty. To be fair, that grittiness works quite well when you're looking at the model in the dark. The nice thing is that the paint is pretty much unnoticeable in normal light, leaving the glow as a nice little surprise.

Courtiers of the Harrowed King

These are the undead followers of the Harrowed King.

My idea here to ensure that the palette didn't become too monotonous was that the Dead of different realms would look different; so the dead of the Realm of Fire would be fire wraiths, the Realm of Life would a vibrant green and the realm of Shadows would be a murky mist. I couldn't think of anything from the other realms that wouldn't require gross physical reconstruction which I will do for any of my own undead that I end up getting.

The Headsman of the Harrowed King

If you wake at midnight, and hear the blade do scrape,
Don't go drawing back the blind, or looking past the drape,
Them that sees no secrets they isn't going to die.
Watch the wall, friend, while the Headsman goes by.

The right hand man of the Harrowed King in life, the Headsman followed him into the shadows. Now he reaps those who cross the Harrowed King, bringing their spirits into the service of His Silent Majesty. 

This is the second warband leader made the from the Soul Wars Box. No conversion and a very simple paint job making a lot of use of the new Nighthaunt gloom technical paint. I'll explain a bit more about this paint another time as it's proving to be very useful.

The Court of the Harrowed King

"His Kingdom lay vast around
Dust and ash and bone;
Shadows curled and drifted 
Where the High King Fell."

Some say he sold his soul for power; others that he sold his people into eternal bondage to save himself. Some say that his fate was a punishment for cowardice, others that it was the cost of vainglory. Whatever the truth, his name is lost to the mists of the Realm of Shadow and now he haunts the ruins of the Sorrowfells with his court in tow. 

The school games club goes from strength to strength: next year we will be running Battle Companies, Kill Team and Age of Sigmar campaigns concurrently. I managed to scab a bit of funding together and bought the Soul Wars box for the school to create a few Skirmish Warbands.

This is the leader of the first, built straight from the box.

Fabulous figure. Really enjoyed painting him. 

Barak-Eik Expects

Our GW Store is having a painting competition  - as are all the others - and this is the first of my two entries. The full title is, of course, "Barak-Eik expects that every dwarf shall do his duty."

To be honest the main value of it was in helping me lock down the colour scheme for my Kharadron Overlords. 

The deck was made from coffee stirrers:

The dwarf was built more or less from stock, no conversions. 

The zombie pirate, on the other hand, required some fairly serious work. He started as the bog standard zombie from the sprues that are nearly 15 years old. 

The coat started as some tails from a Skitarii, with the upper section, torn sleeves and lapels sculpted from greenstuff:

And the hat was actually made from a disk of greenstuff in pretty much the exact way a real bicorn hat is made. 

Painting wise the KO was painted in a colonial british, East India Company scheme befitting their background as merchant venturers. 

The Barak Eik symbol was based on the EIC symbol.... 

...and then repeated on the deck of the ship

The whole thing was finally stuck to the base using a bit of sprue to get the tilt right.

Overall, another little project that came out exactly how I wanted it.