More messing about

I was sifting through my bits, looking for some bits to add to the plaguebearers, when I came across the old metal fat chaos sorceror. I don't think he was ever strictly a Nurgle character as he has the generalised chaos star symbol hanging round his neck. I filed that off and then had a play around with various heads - plaguebearer, fly, etc. I finally went with the strange dome head from the chaos spawn sprue - the spikey bits are reminiscent of a wizardy beard. The hand is from a bloodletter (I think), it needs a little carving and refining. One chaos sorceror added to the painting pile.

I also found this massive old metal thing, I was given it years ago by one of my clients, I have absolutely no idea what it is. I blu-tacced on a few bits just to get some ideas rolling. It could be a chaos spawn or a beast of Nurgle or even a plaguebearer unit filler. It's pretty big across the base, it would fit on a 60mm but slightly overhangs a 50mm. One other idea would be to make a little unclean one, by trying to sculpt a smiley head on the top and maybe a couple of arms, fill in the holes with pustules, mouths, etc. Just messing about at the moment, I would be happy to get more ideas if anybody has any suggestions?

Baby plaguebearers

Old Fogey is proud to announce that the patter of tiny feet will be heard in the coming months. These little sweeties all arrived today and there are more due any time soon. Possibly not quite as cute as the baby pandas, but surely a close second.

It should be fairly obvious which bits I have used on the four junior members, especially as the one on the far left has not been modified other than to have his loin cloth removed. I might add some grey stuff to make little tummies, though as they will be rear rankers this might not be worth the effort.

Frost bite (WIP and RANDOM)

Greetings from my slumber.




Because I'm still not able to sit behind my desk and start painting anything, I'll upload a shameless "test" I've made some time ago. The painting phase is totally not finished, but here you can see my approach to the mini. I decided to make more like textural approach than just coloring certain areas. Here I've strippled, washed, glazed, scored and scratched to make different surfaces look more natural. Yes, the pics are cryptic. I enjoyed painting Skrag's skin thoroughly - There's necrosis, frost bites, scars, and spooky silhouettes. After I correct his eye, he looks like mean business I hope. Blood in the cauldron was again made with acrylic inks + tamiya clear. Ahh...

Those crazy goliaths..

..What ever are they up to? Cadian plastics + marauders + big hair = goliaths. If I´ll ever manage to paint more than one, that´s a different question entirely.. 

A possible way forward

I am still looking for a decent sized project to help keep me sane through the long winter months. One possible idea is to work on my Nurgle daemons. This picture shows some of the collection - an Avatars of War herald, a very old painted Fenryll putrid horror and a pile of plastics. There's 15 assembled plaguebearers plus a complete box of 10 still on their sprue. In addition, I have 7 old school metal plaguebearers that I painted a few years back - these are on round bases and are pink, which may or may not be a viable starting point. I have a few other bits that I reckon I could add to this lot, I am pretty sure there are a few more metals lurking around the back of the cupboard somewhere, plus more non-daemon plastics that could be drafted in. At a minimum then there are 32 plaguebearers here, plus 2 rather portly heralds. With a bit of chopping and scrounging from other sources I reckon 2 units of 20 plus herald would be doable.

Here's a scale shot of the heralds and a minion. They are big chaps, there's no doubting who is boss here. The winged daemon I would make some changes to - probably remove the wings and some of the softer looking spikes. I would repaint him too, the dark green is a very poor base to add special effects such as gore and drool.

Hands up if you love Nurgle!

Grand Inquisitor conversion.. DONE!

A.k.a "walking traffic cone" :).

He´s more machine than man nowadays; who knows what lies under the hood? Orders are issued with a cold metallic voice, and his arm has suffered some damage revealing bionic upgrades...

 Got this puppy done, and I must say I do struggle a bit with them bright colors. All the red was glazed with red tamiya clear ink, giving than super vibrant shade and the gold metallics are JRN style, with purple ink and clear tamiya orange glazing. Base color is coat ´d arms "bright gold".

Group photo with his maniacal posse coming up soon..

Head issue

Here's pretty rough sketch of the forthcoming character for my Mercenary Group. The reason for why there ain't a real life miniature of this fella yet is I'm quite sure that somebody has a better idea for the head. long horse skull with meaningless wiring just doesn't work well, and I'm here to get inspiration from you guys. Also, the second reason for the lack of figurines is I had a surgery last week and I'm slowly recovering. I'm able to get known to my sofa better and better, but I'm not able to sit yet. Phew.

Check this Gladiator out:

The idea behind this character is to represent a gladiator who has seen his best days. His Lower body is amputated, and now he drags his remains in a mine cart. Yes, I know the dimensions here are goofy, but hey, what the heck. I decided to use the mine cart form Battle of Skullpass and upper body of a Gorger. Fits well. BUT THE HEAD!

I see red people....

The missing link,the last member to this inquisitorial posse getting some paint thrown at it. HAH! you didn´t expect the RED inquisition.. What´s that sound? It´s a sudden dose of inspiration hitting old fogey like  a thousand volts.. :)

Looking for some....

.....of this. A nice big spoonful would go down a treat just now.

Now that the long summer days are slowly dissolving into a distant haze (for the four northerners anyway), I feel like I should unveil some grand master plan, some amazing project to look forward to. The problem is, I don't know what to do next.

It's not like I don't have things I could be doing. I have piles of unpainted figures crying for attention. For warhammer, I have some recently acquired plaguebearers, marauders and skeletons from years ago, semi-painted trolls and dwarfs, almost built  chaos knights, and a vampire and fell bats primed just a couple of weeks ago. I have a shit load of Studio McVey Sedition Wars stuff from the kickstarter - a new parcel arrived just this weekend, I have barely looked at it. I have a small selection of Darklands figures that are still in the box, one is part-painted and looking for love. And I have a delivery of Red Box dwarfs that should turn up sometime soon. And yet, none of these appeal at the moment.

What are you guys going to do over the next few months? Maybe your ideas will feed me the inspiration I desperately need.

Back in the game

I was invited to join, and did so with pleasure! It´s great to be among a set of painters of this caliber, and I feel even more motivated to finish off some old projects and start some new ones.

Most know me from the warhammer forum and warseer as just plain old "Mika", so I decided to keep the same handle here. No, i´m not the gay singer, though..

As far as my history, I have 20+ years of painting experience under my belt, and around 10 of those years I have focused mostly on a darker, more realistic type of painting, often described as "dark & grim". For me, the inspiration for color schemes has always been in real life, and I like my paintjobs to have some sort of connection to, or a sense of reality.

As far as the hobby scene goes, I have always been a GW mini painter. Not too thrilled about the direction the company is taking at the moment, so I predict my focus will be more in older minis and conversions for the time being. I would definitely like to do something for both necromunda and mordheim, as I seem to enjoy those projects the most.

I hope this inspires the co-bloggers to get some painting or converting done as well! I hate to repost stuff, but here´s my latest finished piece, dubbed as the shotgun preacher;

5th member of the Crew

Dear followers of Brushes United: 

I'm happy to inform there's a newcomer in our group ready to take over the earth with the original grime and eerie madness. United we stand taller. (At the moment he shall remain anonymous until he's ready...)


Please welcome our "new" face - and surprise yourselves with awe, wonder and fear.

Coming soon!