Procrastination and Q&A

For the first time this year, I don't have an update ready to go on a Monday, as real life painting of ceilings* has dominated my life in the last week.

Happily, there's still something to share as the excellent St Anderw's wargaming blog has a short Q&A with me as part of their Better Know A Blogger series, and you can read my contribution over here.

Read the older submissions as you'll find a few blogs from his previous Q&As that will definitely be to your taste. Worth mentioning his own blog is also pretty good for hobby progress and fantastic for 40k new unit breakdowns. It's a regular read for me since discovering it.

In addition, here's a WIP of an oldschool favourite that I picked up in the recent GW made-to-order offering - the wonderful Inquisitor in Terminator Armour.

I've been painting this during the occasional lunchbreak in my local GW for their next miniature challenge. Close-ups from my phone always make it look a little harsher than it is in person, but it'll come good before the end - promise!

* I was using something a little larger than a size 2 on this occasion.

Miniature Factory: Uncle Meat

Sculpted by the wonderfully talented Jacques-Alexandre Gillois, this has been sat in my WIP pile for quite some time. In fact since April last year when picking it up at Salute. It's so ridiculously detailed that I wasn't sure it would be done justice by my skills at the time - but now felt like the right time.

I wanted an unhealthy feel to him, but quite practical with it. His only real concession to colour is the chainsaw and a little use of green and blue on the visor and boots. Obviously the visor should be transparent, so I just tried to echo the sky.

Very pleased this one's finally done, and if you want to see how it's done properly then visit the Miniature Factory website to see their studio versions - which are so beautifully done it's a little depressing.

Heresy Miniatures: Colossus Elemental

Now my Colony 87 project is done and dusted, it's time to hit the next projects in the WIP pile from Salute 2016, starting with this beauty - Heresy's Colossus Elemental.

I looked at the official paint job on the Heresy website for this guy, and felt it was a little too monotone and wanted to do something different to play with the elemental side of the figure more than the stone/rock aspect. This was an exercise in OSL and playing with colours I wouldn't normally use on a figure together.

He's painted up to feel like he's grown from a crystalline formation on the ground, and powered by something in the chest. All the blues, greys and purples were airbrushed to try and achieve a smoother gradient then highlights added by brush.

The scenery is a bit of a cheat as it's an old piece I found in my bitz box and wanted to use up and happily it illustrates the scale of the model towering above. Few tufts of different grasses on there, and we're done!

Very happy it's a resin figure, because this would be far too heavy as a metal model to handle comfortably. This was a timely reminder that Andy at Heresy cranks out such a wide variety of great figures. More power to him.

Colony 87: Conclusion

So that's it - the whole set of figures painted during January. Phew.

Personal highlights would be the Recordist, Junker and Botanist - but generally I'm happy with how everything turned out. Here's all 12 characters from the two projects to highlight the wonderful variety in the sculpts.

That's 12 characters and 3 pets over the past 18 months, and they're so rich in character it was a real pleasure spending time on them. As a side project for this year, I'd love to work out a diorama to feature all of them - but so many other things to finish before that thinking starts!

If you like the look of these figures, I'd recommend following the project creator on Kickstarter as there was talk of a third wave later this year. He's delivered both projects on time, with zero delays and no drama - and I can't speak highly enough of how well the projects were managed.