Children of Chaos

Been working on a lot of stuff simultaneously (a great method of wasting time faffing about and getting little accomplished!), however I did recently complete the finishing touches on these 10 beastmen.

Through dark rituals and psychic signals I hoped to draw them from the wilderness to serve my Genestealer Cult as expendable troops. Of course being children of chaos, they may very well find themselves distracted by the enticement of slaughter, glory, and tasty manflesh offered by a Realm of Chaos Warband, or getting in the way of adventurers and their loot in dungeons under the old world.

This is one of Chaz Elliott's infamous Snakemen. I was trying to paint it's scales in a pattern similar to an Australian Death Adder snake. Don't think it ended up resembling the real deal much but its acceptable enough to me as evil-fantasy-serpent-man scales. This is the only Snakeman I own, but I can see why they are sought after by collectors. Softly sculpted and somewhat impressionistic, similar to the style of Nick Lund, but packed with lots of cool details. I like how they are dressed in furs to insulate their cold blood!

Bob Olley Beastman. As usual, a weird sculpt that left me a bit uncertain what to do with it. Nevertheless I found the goat-like features, outrageous head-dress, and overall outlandishness appealing.

The fur of this beastman was inspired by a picture of some kind of primate I saw once, I think it was a Golden Lion Tamarin.

Beefman.

And the fur pattern of this bloke was inspired by an african antelope.


Finally I will leave this post with a picture of what's currently in my painting queue.

A Couple of Monstrous Dungeon Dwellers

This weekend I searched the stacks of uncompleted projects on my work bench for something interesting yet easy to knock out quickly. A Citadel AD&D Umber Hulk and Troll called out to me!

One project I am working on is painting up some iconic monster manual wackiness to use in old school style dungeon crawls. I plan to have a bestiary of beholders, flail snails, rust monsters, displacer beasts, hook horrors, and owl bears to fill this subterranean ecological niche.

Umber Hulk

This guy was obviously sculpted using the original monster manual illustration as a reference. I always imagined Umber Hulks as giant beetle-like burrowers. Though the detail of this model is quite soft, I tried to emphasize this by painting areas like an iridescent beetle carapace. This fellow might double up as a species of Ambull for 40k games too!

Troll

There is something I find unsettling about the way Trolls are represented in early D&D, their vacant black eyes, carrot noses, weird tufts of hair, and gangly limbs reminds me of a really creepy boogey-man. It's a lot more interesting than "generic muscle-bound yet over-sized orc" which seems to have become the default modern depiction.

CRUSH ELVISH IMPERIALISM!

I've been on a bit of a fantasy kick lately, and I have had piles of orcs prepped and ready for painting on my bench for months. With the holidays I finally found the opportunity to knock some of them over.

Slowly but surely, and clandestinely under the noses of those pesky lawful-gooders (like any mad, corrupt, power hungry sorceror) I have been mustering an army of black clad vicious hunchbacks with bad teeth- no not teenage metal heads!

While this lot has hardly made a dent in the pile, at least I'm getting somewhere.

Not just any old orc will do for this army. I have been carefully selecting the models from ranges that exude the desired ambience.

The command group is from the Citadel Regiment of Renown- Throgg's Despoiling Hobgoblins of the Dark Lands. This is how orcs oughtta be- brutal, savage, and mean. These guys clearly mean business, while they seem to be wearing furs and equipped with a variety of scavenged armour and weapons, they exude an air of militarism.

Citadel ME44 Uruk Hai from the Lord of the Rings range.

 Another superb range that fit my vision is Aly Morrison's C36 Hobgoblins.

I live in Australia alongside all kinds of fascinating animals as I'm sure you are aware. I have found the exotic fur of many of these creatures to be quite inspirational. I attempted to paint this fur cloak like the hide of a Thylacine, or Tasmanian Tiger, a remarkable carnivorous marsupial which was tragically hunted to extinction within living memory (though some believe otherwise!).

The guy on the left has a Numbat fur hat, though unfortunately the picture isn't the best to show it off. The guy on the right is one of my favourite orc (or hobgoblin) figures, the arms and armour of the figures in this range combine a wide range of different "oriental" influences imparting a great "lost civilisation" feel.

These final two are from the Monster Starter Set- the Manic Hobgoblin Hero, and Vile Goblin. I think these are also sculpted by Aly Morrison.

Abobo

I'm still alive, just been quite busy with work lately. But as the year draws to a close I found some time during the last couple days to paint this guy.

I can't be the only one who is reminded of Abobo from the Double Dragon Nintendo games? 

As with many who paint this ugly brute I took inspiration from the cover of the 1st edition of Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, as he does bare a striking resemblance.

I based him in a neutral way which will allow him to be appropriate in a variety of settings, from the astro-granite of the Blood Bowl pitch, to dank mossy stone dungeons, or chaos wastes. Another A+ Jes Goodwin sculpt, I'm looking forward to painting more of this range.

Icon Bearer and More Hybrids

 

Cult Icon Bearer

Well after quite some consideration I finished this Icon Bearer. I really wanted this guy to be cool, and it took me some time and a couple aborted attempts until I settled on some imagery and a paint job I was happy with. It seemed almost sacrilegious to snip off this fellow's weapon in order to convert it to a banner pole, being one of the classic Jes Goodwin Realm of Chaos Champions but in the end I think it was worth it. I suffer from great pangs of guilt cutting up old models. These days I don't generally do much converting (although I have massacred my fair share of precious figures that would be worth a mint on ebay these days), apart from the value and rarity of certain models, I have come to see them as small works of art and I enjoy letting the sculptor's vision speak for itself.

I wasn't sure at first if this guy was going to represent a mutant or a Genestealer Hybrid, and I suppose it doesn't really matter he could be either, but I think he fits in well with the hybrids with his bulbous, ugly, hairless head, hunched over posture, and clawed toes poking out from beneath his robes. Though four legs is an unusual mutation for a hybrid. I only realised when painting him that after removing his halberd I had left him with only a sex-toy in his left hand for defence! All the chaos champions from this release are very deserving of their well loved status, and this Slaanesh Champion is no exception, practically painting itself and amusingly covered in bizarre, surreal details such as the ornate armour, S&M accessories, mutations, and little bell on his halberd. I reckon he'd also make a suitable standard bearer for a Warhammer Fantasy chaos warband, and may use him as such.

The image from the banner (with a few embellishments) came from this picture by French comic-book artist Phillipe Druillet:

If you are unfamiliar with Druillet and are an "Oldhammer" fan you owe it to yourself to check out some of his art. It really is astounding and obviously (as well as the other Heavy Metal artists of the 1970s) a significant influence on the design aesthetic of Rogue Trader and Warhammer. Below are a couple other images that didn't quite make the cut for the icon, but are very evocative of a rogue trader-alien-genestealer-chaos cult vibe, and I will try to use them on something else.

Hybrids

I also painted up a few more hybrids since my last post. The ribbed Hybrid armour is the element that really makes these figures for me, reminding me of the Harkonnen costumes from David Lynch's Dune.

Plastic Hybrids

These guys are a lot chunkier than the metal hybrids making them good 'heavies', so this lot are equipped with a conversion beamer, missile launcher, and autocannon. While the plastic hybrids from the Space Hulk Genestealer expansion are crude and get a bit of flack, I quite like them and they are fun to paint. Amusingly they really look like 28mm models of cheesy 'men in suit' movie monster costumes. However the plastic weapons they came with are fantastic! Some of my favourite weapon designs. Known as the 'Chaos Weapons Sprue', these creatively styled heavy weapons are covered in gothic details. The few I have I jealously horde.

Group Shot

Scavvy Crusties

Been having fun over the last week painting up an assortment of odd figures for the Cult.

Scavvies: Degenerate, underprivileged mutants who deserve our help to rehabilitate into Imperial society? Or antisocial, voluntary homeless who choose to adopt chaos worship as a lifestyle and have to be purged?

The Hive Gangers, Titan Crew, and Imperial Guard of this era are such great sculpts, they are a delight to paint, I can't get enough of them. But I am so sick of these bloody plastic arms!

This guy will eventually be part of a mutant band.


Orcs

This is a little taste of the Orc army I've been putting together for some time now. I've been drawn to work on them a bit more again I think due to the arrival of a package of Crooked Claw goblin wolf-riders (which are fantastic by the way). It's made up for the most part of Citadel Hobgoblins, Urak Hai, and hordes of Asgard goblins. Lots more Orcs to come, as well as hopefully some photography quality improvements.