Ever opened a copy of one of the realm of chaos books when you were ten? Ever tried to own each and everyone of the Jes Goodwin chaos champion? Ever spent days lurking on ebay for a complete Kaleb Dark or chaos toilets?
You're at home here.
Welcome
I don't and can't consider myself an artist. I'm deeply far too pragmatic and though I have some imagination, it's always tuned down by my scientific side.
Why do I say that ? Well, because I realise I always tend to stick to "realistic" treatment in my painting style (if I have such a thing). My artictic side though is visible through the trends I have and right now I'm in a red era. Since painting a chaos warrior in red In June, I've been putting red everywhere and I'm liking it a lot.
I've even been given the opportunity to work on this by a fellow oldhammerer on the forum who proposed me to paint something for him (whose blog can be found here).
I have to say that seeing a Bob Olley Techmarine was quite a surprise. I've had mixed feelings about his models for a long time and I've lately come to realise that these models have to be painted to be appreciated. I really believe you only truly know a model once you've painted.
Bob Olley's oldschool models always tend to have one of these points :
- they have weird textures you never truly know how to paint
- they lack flat areas
- Clothes always have an infinite amount of waves
- eyes are often hollowed
- you get organic shapes everywhere you never truly understand
- they are insanely detailed
So getting started with them is always kind of weird for me.
I started knowing these could be a tough job.
The only thing asked by the owner was to make it bright so I decided to give the armour a bright red to start with and to see for the rest afterwards. (Oh and did I mention how awesome the grey priming proved to be? I'll develop that later)
WIP with base coulours
The magic happend when I decided not to care about the textures and just apply the base colours where I wanted them. Once I did that, I realised the way to paint them came as an evidence, the texture on the legs just needed some drybrush, the stripes on the higher part of the legs just needed to be painted in different colours and so on...
You know people, being oldschool may not entirely be a matter of taste or even a choice sometimes. If I consider my own humble example, I do have a strong link and empathy towards old stuff but I have to tell you the reason why I'm into all this retro/old/vintage thing
I am an idiot.
I don't mean to say people with similar taste are idiots, most of them have willingly decided to keep some old stuff around for nostalgia or lots of good reasons but mine is just that I'm not adapted to this world.
- I don't have a FB account (yet)
- I don't even have a cell phone (apart from the one my boss gave me by force for professionnal reasons)
- When I go on my blogger page from my whife' smartphone in front of the telly because my painting table is still not operationnal, I only end up screwing my blog outfit.
Now you have the reason why this place looks different. The idea to change it had crossed my mind but my inadequacy with modern technology forced me to do it in a hurry...
I'm only 32 and already too old for this sh*t...
I'm just showing the above picture of an oldschool Nurgle beast because Nurgle is the opposite power to change and therefore should be my patron god. It also makes me feel less guilty since this post is not entirely about whining...
Oh and it reminds me that it was offered unpainted to me by a schoolmate for painting him a whole lot of models for our DnD campaign.
I'm just at the end of moving home right now with the dust from boxes and furniture settling down and my evenings becoming a little more quiet.
I hate moving home, I mean I really hate it and the fact this time is the 4rth in 3 years time (11 in 10 years) doesn't help even though this new home might be the one and it's a pretty good one.
Anyway, what you're reading is still meant to be a modelling/wargaming blog so what is all this moaning and grumping about?
It is said some beautiful flowers can bloom on horrible soils and that wonder can emerge form horror.
One such thing happened yesterday while I was tidying the garage. I happened to come across a strange blue box that I'd seen from time to time without paying much attention to it. This time, I had decided to tidy things properly and not just put boxes in places where I would forget them forever, I gave a quick glance inside it...
Some of the content is clearly obvious and is the main reason why I didn't look too closely at this one before. We have a lot of scenery pieces made by me. I remember these clearly because they were made just at the time of the release of WH40K 2nd edition. I had found a big blue isolation foam board and I used it to make a lot of scenery like :
A chaos altar
A paper toilet dungeon (at least I know where my chaos toilets will go...)
WH40K ruins and buildings
Barbwire fences
Some of you might as well have noticed something odd from the first picture... come one, take a good look, I 'm adding a little hint ...
it looks like some plastic package with a card back...
Let's have a closer look at it...
Oh, I remember getting this one from an old hobby shop in Nantes in 95 or something. Let's put this aside for a while and see what else we have here...
An Iron maiden patch with the Derek Riggs drawing for the song "seventh son of a seventh son" coming form the album bearing the same name (Maiden's best album of all time to me)
I had this attached to my jean jacket by my grandmother (god, I was wearing a jean jacket...) and later on it was attached to my wallet before getting worn out and me shying away from such fanboyism (I didn't want to frighten the few girls I managed to get close too at the time).
If you don't already know this brilliant song :
I also found a huge Union Jack offered to me for a birthday. Playing british wargames, and learning english by deciphering Iron maiden lyrics at 11 (not to mention reading pat mills comics, Tolkien and Moorcock books to name a few) must have had quite a influence on the young french teenager I was... (it still is to be honest).
Another thing I found was totally not related with all these early 90's goods but comes from a trip in Martinique in 2005. It's jet black volcanic sand. Just how cool is that. There's no way my chaotic-to-the-chore heart won't find a way to use this the best way possible...
I hope you all agree this was quite a fluke to find such things while moving boxes of women shoes, children bicycles ans things like that...
What? You're waiting for something else? Oh you mean that old blister ? you want to know if it contained something or not and if yes, did had the balls to open it?
Well, it DID contain something... however, the blister was already broken and the content could flee from the blister without any help... The ogre was at the bottom of the box...
So Yes this was a VERY happy find and I didn't have to consider endlessly "do I have the right to open a sealed blister? because time (and moving home 10 times at least) had answered that question for me.
The only remaining question is : which one did I get from it ? It's obviously not the one I showed you last week but let's say if lats week's ogre was a captain, that would make him his higher officer...
My painting desk and hobby place are still not available at the moment (working actively on this though) but when everything's in place, I expect to come back at full speed !
For now...
PS : By the way if some of you are fanatics to the point to want this blister, I can give it to you, I also found the same blister which contained the only slanns I ever bought so that makes 2 John Blanche blisters in pretty good shape (if you don't consider they're damage enough to let the minis go.
Somehow, throwing away such blisters even though empty doesn't seem right to my oldschool heart...
This weekend I've been painting a lot. I mean something like 3 liters of paint must have gone of my brushes... to the wall of the bedroom...
OK, that's silly I know. Anyway, I also managed to take the time to actually finish some models too. One of which was started 3 years ago and whose paintjob was mostly done 10 months ago. The fact that it only took 10 minutes to actually finish it felt both good and ridiculous.
Hrothyogg is one model every one has painted or wishes to paint and one which nearly always comes out the same way :
You all know him because he's part of the picture of the monsters in both WHFRP and WHFB 3rd ed. He nearly always come out painted with a red ogryn face and trousers with blue and white stripes.
He's also very famous thanks to this brilliant drawing from John Blanche.
As you will have noticed, no white and blue stripes here. After completing mostly everything but the trousers, I felt some mixed feelings between going the oldschool way or my own. I ended up taking none and giving him simply the best trousers ever. I'm sure you know what I'm talking about :
The guy doesn't often wear trousers, I'll give you that, but when he does, he wears some bad-ass yellow tartan device. And this is exactly what all my Jes Goodwin ogres are going to wear too.
I'm apologising in advance for anyone who think it's ridiculous and that I'm mixing all sorts of things meaninglessly. I am.
I've not completely mastered the tartan skill though and I hope it will turn out better on the others...
Well, to make things clear I'm neither a level 15 Bretonnian wizard nor an "enchanteur" (which would be the proper term to describe a magician in french). I'm just using this little pun from warhammer armies (3rd ed) to describe myself since "en chantier" means something very close to "in progress"
I do paint a lot these days and I've even had the time to complete some things but a lot is at a "near completion" state. It's why I'v decided to complete everything I could to empty the painting range a bit.
The following will just be a quick glance at my latest projects to show how far they've gone. I have to say though I tend to dislike filler blog posts of poeple jus saying "I didn't do anything but I'm telling you anyway" I actually do paint a lot and feel like sharing it and it also give sme the extra motivation to finish things since I don't like to show unfinished models for too long.
Anyway here we are :
Kaleb Daark (2013 version)
This one is moving slowly, I've begun metallics and will only add mithril highlights here and there when the rest is more advanced. I'm actually very motivated for this one since I finished a lot of red models lately and I'm getting the hang of it.
I'm painting the trousers red because I want my new Kaleb to wear red tartan. Don't ask me why, I have no idea why, it's just the way it is (apologies in advance for any tartan fan if I shamelessly copy a cool device).
We have 3 bestial champions now, all of which having bestial attributes.
First one has a warhound face and what appears to be a vampire blade. I really love how the sword ends broadly to make it good for chopping and not for piercing.
This model proved to be one of the most enjoyable to paint in the series because of its very good sculpt and very crisp casting.
I had to change the colour of the fur during he painting process becuse brown fur didn't suit him at all. I opted for an albinos fur which gives him individuality and colour-wise works far much better.
If you need some music with this post, may I suggest either :
or Vivaldi's Autumn but it feels far more wood elvish to me...
Anyway, here's my entry for October's painting challenge at the oldhammer forum. It was built with no true purpose at first but just to use some bits I had here and there and as I was building it, I realised it could fit in many slots.
In can be a vargulf in my undead army if I play it in 8th ed but it can also be a minotaur lord in any chaos army. What interests me the most with this guy though is the opportunity to play it as a Malal Demon Prince.
When Malal got in the way, I reconsidered the whole model and made a few changes :
I added the chaos star stone at his feet to show he's sort of desecrating some sort of chaos altar or temple.
I changed its head for a bestial head with as many teeth as I could to fit the description of Malal's greater demons.
I chose the head of a chaos hound with half his face ripped to make a reflection on Malal's device being a black and white skull. (the background behind this guy is that he has ripped his own flesh in a self destructive manner befitting Malla very well I think).
