Inquisitional Coclave 2021 (week 3)

 Welcome back to the 2021 Inquisitional Conclave,  let's check on this week's progress: 

DAM finished his Inquisitor Eisenhorn and... wow, I LOVE it!  Here's Inquisitor Eisenhorn in all of his pre-rogue glory! Check the link for more pics! 

Eisenhorn, feeling a bit rogueish.

And he worked on a Cherubael miniature as well! Now Gregor has a playmate. 

  Cherubael.

Here's The Bob with an Inquisitor Greyfax with a headswap that he just started working on: 

The hooded Greyfax.

Da Masta Cheef started on a second Inquisitor, from the Ordo Mechanum it's Inquisitor MS-DO5. (Damn do I love that name!)

Inquisitor MS-DO5 (WIP).

He also made a Squat henchman called Captain Teague.  It's a sad tale indeed...

I made progress on my Inquisitor Draco. Actually I finished it a few hours after I posted the update but I am saving the finale for next week. 

Draco sans arms.

Meanwhile on Devos IV the Inquistion brings the ladies. Lots of them, and they mean business! Hopefully he'll answer our questions regarding how he came about acquiring these miniatures and how (maybe) we can too!  And those pics I couldn't see last week, well, he sent me a tsunami of them. For sake of brevity I am only included a fraction of the what he sent me.. Here's hoping I can match some of the pics to the words. 

Inquisitor Barlain Taochilai of the Ordos Helican - the same conclave that Eisenhorn and Ravenor belonged to, although that was a long time ago.  He is rarely seen without a recaf or Lho stick or both in his hands.  He is a Wyrd, rather than a full Inquisition trained psyker.  He is strongly clairvoyant, to the extent of being able to see past events play out overlaid over the present as a sort of watercolour quality image.  He has found over the years that this is extremely useful in deducing what has happened.

XF1 and H25S are former opponents, both hired muscle for heretical organisations, captured and sentenced.  They now do penance as combat servitors one with a chainsword and one with a heavy stubber.  Woe be to him who betrays the Emperor.

Aeirlain Rymastocker is an inquisition trained beta level psyker.  She is taciturn but has a very dry sense of humour which sometimes gets the better of her.  She like to put on an act as a witch; whenever she can she will adopt the witch costume of the culture Taochilai's team are working in and ham it up.  Perhaps some reflection of being a sanctioned psyker and not actually being considered as an interrogator. 

Marveh Neetow is what is generally view as a crusader.  Heavily protected by refractor field and body armour, he sports the skulls of the psykers he's slain with his Ekwesh semi sentient blade.  Inquisitor Taochilai invariably makes him responsible for Aerlain.  Which he has chosen to interpret as being her close protection until the point where she is possessed by the warp, at which his task is her final sanction.  He is altogether serious where she is having a laugh.  but they rub along well enough

Utar Gottleibb was a DKK soldier who worked with the Ordo Xenos on Radnar.  He proved himself useful and was inducted into inquisitorial service seven years ago with the rest of his platoon.  But way of the tasks assigned them since then, he is likely the only one left and now finds himself in Inquisitor Taochilai's service.  He has, in recent times, been trained both as a drop trooper and more lately as a Valkyrie pilot. 

Lashe Cardet is a Harakon born minor noble.  She was due to be married off to some awful cloud Namib when the Inquisition came for one of her intended's relatives.  In the fall out which followed, she managed to make off with a promising Interrogator named Barlain.  She is now resigned to the fact that one does not actually marry the inquisitor one works for.  There is no steady, settled married life for inquisitors.  But this is an exciting life doing important work.  She's loving it.

Watchmaster Nachtfalk was a member of an artillery unit here on Devos IV.  His discretion and potential were spotted by another inquisitor and he was requisitioned and inducted soon after.   Inquisitor Taochilai is finding it enormously beneficial having someone who can immediately access the 72 Army Group's command structure.   His armour has been glossed up, marked with the =I= and devotional aqilla applied to each side of his helmet. 

Hopefully I got that right, if not I'm sure Zzzzzz will let me know and I can move the pics around (or he'll throw the Brick Of Scrutiny through one of my windows.)

Ok, next week is the last weekend before the finale on September 4th (so technically there are two more weeks for us to take advantage of!) so let's see if anyone else wishes to join in the fray! 

Inquisitor Jaq Draco (Part 2)

Image from Inquisitor, by Ian Watson*.

Continuing on from Part 1 , I primed the model after I flocked and added lots of skulls to the base.  Sadly I don't have any Genestealer Cult bits to attempt to make the cover of Inquisitor (see first image), but during his trilogy he was on a lot of battlefields anyway. And it's 40k, so...skulls.

Skulls and grit.

Next came the Contrast Paint. Specifically Blood Angels Red for the armor and Gulliman Flesh foe the skin. 

I love you Contrast Paint...

Armor highlights are Wazdakka Red followed by Fire Dragon Orange. 

Cadian flesh was applied over the Gulliman Flesh with a subtle highlight of an old Delta Ceramcoat color called Pink Frosting. And, well, it worked out good I think! And in case you're wondering, yeah, I decided that attempting the scorpion tattoo on the side of his face would be an exercise in folly. 

I will add a final highlight of Sunburst Yellow to the armor soon. So far I think I got the armor looking close to how the artist got it on  the cover illustration. One notable deviation will be the scabbard for his blade. On the cover it looks similar to the skull covered sheath on the original Terminator Captain miniature, but no such adornment exists here. I guess I can just do what I want with that item, but I got a bit more time to figure it out...

Not sure about that sheath...

Next, and this is going to be the big challenge of this project, I am going to attempt to paint the icon on the right side pauldron. I don't think it will be easy, but we'll see...

The arms await final embellishments.

*Image (c) Games-Workshop, used here without permission but used for the purpose of review and not as a challenge to the copyright holder. 

Inquisitional Conclave 2021 (Week 2)

 With the completion of the second week of our August challenge, let's see what's new and what's updated: 

I'll start off by saying that I myself didn't get as far as I would like but I did make progress on Jaq. I wasn't able to hammer out a blog post but this is where he's at. 

Base coated Inquisitor Jaq Draco. 

On the Ordo Xenos side of things I did manage to finish a Deathwatch Librarian. You can read more about that here. 

"Shhhh, quiet in the Librarium."

Da Masta Cheef on the other hand managed to finish his Inquisitor Hubris McClellan. 

Celestial Lions or Lions of Harlech? 

Floyd Lawton over at 1st Legion Chronicles sent me an update on his Inquisitor. He hopes to have him done by month's end. 

Base coated by Floyd.

Zzzzzz sent me some pics on with some tasty write-ups for them but I have been unable to properly retrieve the photos. 

I can show you the thumbnails...

I will save the write ups until I can marry them to some pics. But there has still been some Inquisitorial activity on Devos IV that you really must go check out. 

DAM has decided to bring Inquisitor Eisenhorn to the Conclave this year. In his words: "I'm painting up the GW Gregor Eisenhorn model which otherwise would have likely continued to rot on the shelf waiting for my time.  SO thanks for running a community painting challenge for Inquisitors"

You're welcome DAM! Just try to keep Cherubael away from the chips and dip, the guy has no will power for that stuff. 

Eisenhorn! Click the link about to see his progress.

Ok, I think I got everyone's updates. Keep up the good work everyone! Remember you can send pics and links to: neverness92@gmail.com. Also, if you don't have a project you want/can do this month, but you already have a painted Inquisitor who wasn't part of last year's Conclave, just in a pic and we can include him or her this year. Why not? -The more the merrier! 

Deathwatch: Kill Team Neverness (Part 3)

Deathwatch Epistolary.

 In spite of the strain on my free time these past few weeks I have managed to paint up another member of this Deathwatch Kill Team. I started this guy way back when the Deathwatch were featured in an early 4th edition Chapter Approved article in White Dwarf 306. Back then this guy was going to be the squad's leader but now he's an Independent Character again. Which, ultimately, makes a lot more sense to me.

Seems like forever since he saw any more paint.

I tightened up and darkened up some of the armored areas.  But the main thing I want to talk about here is the energy effect on the force sword. I base coated this using Game Color Livery Green. Honestly, I was tempted to leave it like this as it worked really well at this step.

Livery Green base coat on force sword.

But I wanted to stick with my plan so down of center of this effect I painted on Apple Barrel Colors Kiwi. Down the middle of that I added a line of Nurgling Green. This was turning out well but definitely a bright departure from the Livery Green. So I topped it off with a strategic application of Tesseract Glow. I defined the blade edge afterwards using Mithereal Silver. A thinned layer of Tesseract Glow over that gave the blade an interesting sheen.

Tesseract Glow on the force sword.

I had always intended this Librarian to be from the Ultramarines chapter. And now it's official. At least my crude attempt at freehand painting on the Ultramarines icon on the backplate of his backpack says so. 

Ultramarines icon.

Throughout the painting of this model I would find a detail I was unsure of and I would find the solution by referring to the picture of this miniature from the 2nd Ed Ultramarines Codex. The lack of a "random red thing" throughout my painting of this guy really makes him seem gritty and serious compared to the example found in that codex! 

Side view of the blade.

After some grass tufts, and a few lines of brown Micron added to his scroll work,  he was finished off with some protective dull coat. 

Finished!

And I am happy to report he is finally finished and ready to join in with the rest of his Ordo Xenos brethren as they accompany Inquisitor Draco to this year's Inquisitional Conclave. 

Inquisitional Conclave 2021 (Week 1)

 It's paint an Inquisitor month! Hopefully some of you folks out there are fiendishly busy on figuring out who your Inquisitor is for this year's Inquisituonal Conclave or you are already making progress on your model. Remember you can send updates to me at neverness92@gmail.com. 

So far we have only a few updates. We have Da Masta Cheef with his rather fierce looking Inquisitor Hubris McClellan (until I saw Cheef's blog post, I had been calling him Inquisitor Dom; It doesn't seem inaccurate does it?).

Power maul time!

He doesn't do the fur-lined ones. 

Floyd Lawton at 1st Legion Chronicles is set to paint up this guy that he ordered from eBay. Last year he did a very cool Inquisitor for the Conclave and I look forward to seeing what he does with this chap.

What's he going to do with that left hand?

And here is my guy, a take on old Inquisitor Jaq Draco. 

"Oh, 'es 'armless!"

Hopefully we get a few more Inquisitors to show up this year or it's going to be a more subdued event this time around.  Jaq is threatening to dispatch his Calidus Dancers for our entertainment otherwise, which could be fun actually! 

Catch you all next week! 

Inquisitor Jaq Draco (Part 1)

 

Hello. Welcome to my Inquisitor project for this year's Inquisitional Conclave. To sum up, the goal is to paint an Inquisitor, or any model that is part of an Inquisitor's force, by the end of the month of August. 

Close-up of Draco from the Chaos Child cover. 

I intend to base mine off of Inquisitor Jaq Draco from the old Ian Watson Inquisition War series.  I was tempted to paint him black in a faux Death Watch scheme and call him an Ordo Hereticus Inquisitor, but the temptation to paint him like old Jaq was too great. 

I found this model a few weeks ago while assessing my old Cadians, and he was in with a box of unopened blister packs I forgot I had. As you can see, he's easy to forget about since he was packaged backwards! When I opened him up from the blister I was surprised to find that the foam backing was disintegrating in a crumbly dusty mush. This is something I have never seen happen to a blister pack before and it made me glad to free him from that. 

The disintegrating foam.

A weird side effect of that foam disintegration is that it seems to have somehow stained the Inquisitor's face a darker color. A weird curiosity that will no longer matter by month's end. 

Draco's new base.

The two best color references (and the word 'best' is truly strained here) of Inquisitor Draco is the original cover of the Inquisitor novel (also used on the cover of White Dwarf 129 -and the better reference, thanks to the larger size) and the original cover to Chaos Child. Both show Draco in red Terminator armor, but each painting shows that these are both different suits. You can compare and contrast them below:

White Dwarf 129

Chaos Child 1st edition.

The Chaos Child cover is a strange one but it does give you a better look at Draco's scorpion facial tattoo. I am not sure yet how, and if, I am gonna tackle that particular detail. And a back banner... well, I'm not 100% opposed to it, I am more concerned about long-term storage. We'll see how things shake down. Also, the miniature was clearly an inspiration for these pieces as Draco doesn't have a bionic leg. I am not committed enough to this project to convert a leg back on him. Besides, I think I prefer that bionic leg anyway. 

That's it for this week, we'll see how far I get by next week.  Also, feel free to send me a WIP shot of your project, as I would like to share other folk's progress on their Inquisitors in a post this weekend,  Thanks again! 

Inquisitional Conclave 2021

Greetings, and welcome to the 2021 Inquisitional Coclave. 

The rules are simple: you have until the end of the month to paint an Inquisitor model. Throughout this month, August 2021, paint it up and send me your progress updates. You're not just limited to an Inquisitor specifically, you can paint members of their retinue to accompany the one you might have painted last year or any Imperial Agents your Inquisitor may requisition. There are more options than one might initially expect (que). 

You can message me directly at neverness92@gmail.com to send me either pics or a link to your own blog or a link to whatever media account that you publicly post your miniature pics. Whatever you want to do. Of course, I'll post my own updates here as well. We will kick this off now, with the updates every weekend with a Saturday target. The Conclave itself is to happen on September 4th. That should be plenty of time for most of us -I hope!

Inquisitor Draxus by Waaarghpug, conclave 2020.

There are no winners or loser, we're just here to paint the Inquistion. 

Inquisitor Greyfax by Siph_Horridus, 2020.

There are plenty of things out there if you need some inspiration. The old Role Playing game by Fantasy Flight is one example, and some of the best Black Library novels feature them as well. GW has also been muttering things about Inquisitors asking questions  like "Are these four Inquisitors Evil?" and I can't help but wonder if they're going to release more Inquisitors in plastic soon...?

We had a good turn out last year, just a few random samples appear in this post to give you an idea. I am hoping we have just as many this year if not more. Personally, I would love to see someone paint up a Throne Of Judgment!  

Inquisitor Hiser the Hisarion, Conclave 2020.

Alright, let's get to it! There are lot of aliens, traitors and daemons to burn and we need more Inquisitors to make it happen. Please spread the word on this, as I would I like to see a big and diverse selection of participants this year.  

I look forward to seeing this year's submissions! 

Oblivi'anna, Da Masta Cheef's 2020 Conclave Inquisitor.