Dances with Ur-Ghuls

 

A pair of Ur-Ghuls. 

Every good Archon (ur, well evil technically) has to have a retinue and one of the weirdest options they can have are some Ur-Ghuls. When their first miniatures were released on the scene GW had just transitioned to Finecast (shudder) and even though the Archon linked above is in fact a Finecast model, I just couldn't find it in me to pay the price for the Ur-Ghul miniature. And I am glad I did because many years later they would appear in plastic in the Blackstone Fortress game  and thanks to those online bitz brokers out there, I was able to score two Ur-Ghuls in plastic for less than the retail cost of the inferior Finecast model. Excited, I based them up, primed them, and... forgot about them for over a year. 

Granite Grey over Chaos Black Primer

Until the other day when I was scouring YouTube for interesting podcasts I stumbled upon this painting tutorial.  They made it look stupid easy to paint these things, and well I am becoming a sucker for fast and easy miniature painting techniques. I compared this to the Dark Eldar Painting Guide: Raiders Of Commorragh which has a single page Ur-Ghul tutorial and decided to something a bit between these two versions. However, both of these examples required that the models be primed White and I had already primed these guys using Black. I didn't have the Citadel color that GW recommended as the basecoat in both tutorials so had to find an analog. Apple Barrel Granite Grey turned out to be perfect for this and it coats over the Black Primer very well. 

Next came the liberal wash of Coeliac Greenshade. This stuff rocks! I like the vibe this color creates. If these guys were ghosts I would mostly be done at this stage! 

Coelia Greenshade wash stage.

Coelia Greenshade was drybrushed over using Ulthuan Grey. It was amusing to me just how close Ulthuan Grey was to the Granite Grey, it was only a tad brighter.

Ulthuan Grey drybrush layer.

Druchii Violet was washed over the hands following the technique from the Warhammer TV video. Carosburg Crimson was applied to the face as per The Dark Eldar Painting Guide. The final step was to hit the highlights with a solid application of Ulthuan Grey. This was conservatively applied on the raised areas where the skin is tight and on the tips like their knuckles and ribcage.

Ulthuan Grey highlights. 

After this step, I finished off the skull on the one model's base,  added some tufts and finished off the rims on both miniatures' bases. And, presto, I had both of these miniatures knocked out in (for me anyway) record time.  And I even had time to introduce them to their boss, the still unnamed* Archon for my Dark Eldar force. 

The court assembles.

I hope to expand this court of painted miniatures sooner than later, but I doubt I can expand it with the expediency to which I was able to execute these Ur-Ghuls. But, believe it or not,  that's two miniatures from my painting queue completed! 

*I am thinking about naming him Skot, after an old friend. Yeah, Skot the Despot. Catchy name, although some might think he's a bit of dick,..

Grots (Part 4)

 

Continuing on from Part 3 I added the old Citadel Color called Sunburst Yellow (my favorite yellow paint) to the yellow areas on these models. I then painted the noses, and a few knuckles, "red" using the method that Warhammer TV presented in a video called Tip of the day: Goblin Noses. The results were pretty satisfying. I next painted the guns and metal things using an old craft painted called Metallic Pewter by Delta Ceramcoat for their Gleams line. It's a bit thick but is easily thinned but I prefer it over Citadel's Leadbelcher, although it's an OK analog. 

Metallics on the guns.

Next, I used Bloodletter to darken the recesses on the yellow areas but I found that this was a bit overwhelming so I added another layer of Bad Moon Yellow and I then highlighted it with Folk Art Lemmonade. 

After the Lemmonade highlight.

When I first applied it I thought that the Lemmonade might be too intense, but when it dried I decided I liked it. I dunno, going to think about it a bit more, and if I ultimately decided it's washed out then I will kick it back with a yellow ink. I decided not to add any black patterns on them mainly because of their size. The simple solid yellow does the trick well enough I think, and with their stature in the ork organization (as it is) I doubt they'd get anything more ornate anyway. 

Close up on the Lemmonade highlights.

And after a few touch-ups these guys are done! Time for their glamor shots. And with the snow and mud that I have outside currently we are going to stick with the red top of my toolbox. 

And there they are! I do think I will do one more pass of the Terracotta Brown that I use on the rims of their bases, as they currently look rough. But other than that, once the weather gets a bit warmer I will spray a protective coat on them to help reduce chips. 

Fanatics! (Part 2)

 

A Work In Progress Fanatic. 

It's been over a year now since I last made a post about these guys, and I decided it was definitely time to revist them. Back in part 1 however I was focusing on the three metal miniatures I was adding to my Night Goblin horde. But prior to that, and having made their first appearance in Equis Tyranus where they made a rather smashing impression on The Bob's High Elves, I had started on three plastic Fanatics. I want to finish all six at the same time, so I needed to get these buggers caught up.

Primed. Just primed.

Anyone who owns these miniatures can attest to how unstable they are. No, not their minds, their mental instability is a defining aspect of their whole character, but no I ment physically. They fall over a lot! I decided to glue down some rocks to their bases to give them a bit more weight. It's not a perfect solution but it helps. 

Rocks added.

And then I added some grit to their bases. And that's all I did on these guys for about a year! 

Grit added.

But my recent focus on 40k grots got me thinking about these guys and getting them out of my painting queue. I decided to use the technique I figured out in Grots! Part 2 for their flesh. This started out with a basecoat of Gretchin Green Foundation paint.  

Gretchin Green Foundation Paint flesh. 

Now over to the metal guys, I used one of my oldest Citadel Paints called Bilious Green on them before washing their flesh with Tesseract Glow. At this time I washed the plastic guys with Tesseract glow also. As you can see they still look different from each other but they're getting closer. 

Tesseract Glow on their fleshy bits.

 Next I added Applebarrel Kiwi to their green skins. This got them a lot closer to a unified look. It was at this time that I washed the metal bits with a thinned brown paint to create a rusted, old, metal look. I got all their bases up to the same level also.

Kiwi layer on the skins.

Next I used Leadbelcher liberally over the brown metal areas, and I think this turned out great as it creates the illusion that those big weight balls really are metal (and to be fair three of them really are...).

Balls of metal.

The ropes were fun to do. They were painted with a layer of Mourning Brown followed by a layer of Averland Sunset. 

 

Averland Sunrise on the ropes.

Next I washed Agrax Earthshade over the ropes to tone it all down a bit, and I think this worked well.

Ink washed ropes.

With hope, and a bit of focus, I should be able to get these guys finished soon, but I think that's what I said last time too...we'll see!

2020 Year In Review

 What a long grueling year this has been! Without dwelling on the real-world suck-feast that has been 2020, I'm just going to use this space to simply showcase the miniatures and models that I actually managed to get finish. It's an annual tradition here at the hobby chronicle, so why break from it? 

This is likely to be a fairly small list due to the fact that I simply had less hobby time this year, but in spite of those challenges I managed to get a few things done. So let's check them out: 

Wolfpriest Jorvik Blacktooth

Assassin Knosso Prond

Inquisitor Lord Hiser the Hisarion.

Death Guard #1

Death Guard #2

Black Legion Hellbrute

Bad Moon Nob

I had given myself the undeclared goal of 12 finished minis or models for the year. Yeah, I so I only have seven completed miniatures. I had hoped to have finished the ten grots (and two snots) by year's end but they are taking me

Progress continues

slightly longer to paint than I had anticipated. Plus my art assignments picked up, and well, money (for art!) will always push ahead of hobbies on most days and grots just had to wait a bit. But I have found more time around the holidays to poke at those grots so I expect they will be my first finished miniatures of the new year. 

Which brings me to my dilemma: what should I focus on in the New Year? A part of me wants to focus on just one army or faction but the last time I tried that (Slaanesh Daemons) I got distracted and worked on different things (Dark Eldar). So instead of making a ridiculous doomed to fail resolution I have decided to make myself finish some, if not most, of the things in my never-diminishing painting queue. 

Don't stare too long at it...

What we see in that pile of miniatures is a mix of finished and unfinished projects and it's the unfinished models that I hope to eliminate from this queue. 

The oldest project in here are probably the Deathwatch guys. I just can't seem to figure out what I want to with them just yet, so they are likely to be the hardest challenge for me to overcome.  Next to them are the  

Black Legion Chaos Terminators that I have dabbled on, off and on, over the past few years since that last post. I have painted many Black Legion miniatures in the interim but for some reason I just never managed to finished these guys.

Over to the left you might spot a bunch of Harlequins, all of which are part of my Clowning Around series. Apparently I haven't had the inclination, or more likely time, to "clown around". Which is a shame because I was having fun with these guys. I definitely want to do a few more sooner than later.

Next to the Harlies are the Dark Eldar Wyches of The Slicing Noose. I had a whole series of posts planned for these murder elves but I kind of soured on the current version of Kill Team, and just haven't gotten back to these models yet. 

The Blood Axe Boyz that I started a few summers ago have been begging me to get back to them and I intend to get to them soon. The newest ork to join the queue is the Runtherd that I posted about recently. 

There are more models in the pic above that I hope to get to as well. There is a Nurgle Biker Champ, a Slaanesh Biker Champ, a Chaos Sorcerer, Space Wolf Scouts and Primaris Marines, a pair of Death Cult Assassins, a bunch of Goblin Fanatics for WHFB, the original Asmodi miniature, and a Zoat. The ones with with the links are the ones I am most eager to deal with,  

There are other projects that are not in that drawer that may also earn my attention such as the previously mentioned daemonette, but also the 3rd edition era Khorne Berserker models, Wolfguard Terminators and a few other things that are kept in cases. Another drawer of my massive hobby toolbox has this Venom in it and I need to build up the rest of this Reavers unit as well.

So bare with me became there's a lot to choose from there, and we'll see what I can do in 2021!