Walking the dog

A little bit of this and a little bit of that, basically I have fallen into the tap of trying to do too many things at once this week. Which means there isn't really that much that is worth taking pictures of.

The main focus of my attention has still been the Chaos Warriors unit, with the purchase of a second box I decided that robbing two to bulk out my hand weapons and shield to a more usable 20 minis (15 just seemed to thin on the ground.)

A unit filler (50mm X 50mm) and a lone warrior gain me an extra rank.

Warrior 10

 The WoC is done and ready for priming and the need for another shield design gave me a practice run at spawning Nurglings (a project for later).

Nurgling Shield

 Not 100% happy with where the moobs meet the belly or the way the thighs are on the Nurgling, but for a 1st effort good enough to probably swap the shield on to the Musician and get it a front rank space.

I just noticed I forgot the knee detail.

Unit filler.

Certainly not saving much time on this, which is surprising on such a simple idea.
 I compared a normal Chaos Hound to the Dire Wolves I am going to use as Chaos Hounds and found a horribly noticeable size difference. So other uses for the standard models had to be found.

 Lots of fur repair to do on the hounds neck and eyes, also on the left shoulder of the warrior. Pretty much making up the detailing as I go along and of course there is always the ever present problem of 'what do I do for a shield design.' ( It'll be on his back.)

Walkies !!!

Lord.

A bit of progress on the Herald of Nurgle carcass I'm using to build a Lord from, guts, torn belly GSed up, the beginning of a belt, Black Ork arms from the bits box and a styrene thigh armour panel.
 Much the same as the unit filler he is being made up as I go along, so the head, shoulder armour are a mystery still, all I know is the weapon will be a mace and the Shield design will be a Nurgle symbol.

Kidney for sale, one not so careful owner from new.

Sadly no painting has been achieved at all, so the sorcerer, a warrior and the musician are looking at me funny.
 Maybe I'll get the two normal WoC and the Musician started next week, the Sorcerer is stalled as I try and work out a skin tone that goes well with the armour colours I have used on other warriors.

More Warriors of Nurgle and Chaos Hounds

Painting

Well, had 3 WoN of the same armour colour to paint so thought I'd try a mini batch paint session.

It didn't make it past the armour stage as I did 3 different leathers and 3 different colours on the inside of the cloaks.

I just like too much variation through an army to stick at batch painting WoN but at least it is a pretty low model count army, unlike my 40K Orks. Experiment sort of failed as I moved on to painting a pair of them and split the Standard Bearer off to do individually.

'Housework' & Canine control

 I also gave my captured part of the dining table a big old tidy up and got a pair of old Cotton reel drawers as storage to stop the dog stealing any more stuff off the table.Foiled on that front the hairy lil bleeder stole my wallet off the side board and chewed a credit card out of it.

Plastic eating Chaos Hound.

Ok, not as savage as she looks, she fell asleep with her face against the bars and ended up like this when she woke up lol.

Spending

 Seeing as the dog hit my wallet I thought it was time I did too. First thing to sort out was the gap in the front row of the Warriors unit by dropping in a Lord, after a lot of looking and dithering over Blight Kings, the Plastic Nurgle Lord and various other minis I decided to get a Herald of Nurgle body ( Back) off Ebay and see what I could do with that. Should be interesting, so far it's been adding organic parts to Man made ones, this chap will be the other way round as I intend to add armour to the torso, arm/s, head and some to the skinny leg.

Lord of Nurgle to be.

 More core and some Mobility are probably a good idea so Chaos Hounds spring to mind ( no, not the Red and White one that keeps chewing plastic, damn Welsh Springer Spaniels). Although the standard kit is good enough Dire Wolves are better for a Nurgle conversion in my opinion ,so a box of those is in and the first 'test' mini is under the knife. So far I've just filled some of the 'Frankenstein' patch working and added a maggoty thing into the empty eye socket, pustules and other detailing to go on next.

Probably better get this puppy to the Vets.

Dragon Ogres also have hit the shelf of much to do, although I'm not sure about them as an army choice and if dedicating them ( visually, no rules) to Nurgle is a good idea either.

More Chaos Warriors, yes I will be boring the world with more as I struggle to find ideas for Shield designs, Halberds this time though, which will at least offer a change of some sort..

I also saw some Nurgle Bile Trolls on ebay and clicked 'buy it now' on a whim, at a £10 saving on the Forge World cost and no postage on top seemed like a bargain. The casting is terrible, there is a bit missing and I reckon the closest they were ever to the Forge World factory was Beijing before they got to me. Nothing I can't sort with GS, but a tad annoying as I bought them so I had a Unit I didn't need to convert the daylights out of.

Another thing sort of connected to the Hobby was a new Camera, an upgrade from a little auto pocket job (Fuji Z10) to a bridge camera (Nikon L330), so be prepared for some dubious Photography as I work it out.

That lot should keep me busy for a while anyhoo.

Warriors of Nurgle, bits and bobs.

A bit of a scrappy selection of progress in this post I'm afraid as I  try to get more of the Warriors unit done.

Painting.

Warriors 6 & 7  painted, taking the unit to near half strength (including a Lord and Sorcerer). Whilst I like the effect doing the Warriors different shades of green it isn't very good at helping me get them painted.

The eagle eyed among you may have noticed the lack of Static Grass on the last few painted minis, this is because I now have the only internally flocked spaniel in Sussex. Little blighter has a thing about chewing plastic pots and bottles and somehow nabbed the flock off my table, GW seem to have stopped doing the really light sand coloured static grass so I'm on the hunt for a replacement.
Not so bad on this army as it's only just started, but very annoying if I can't get a match on my Tomb Kings..


Modelling.

Had real trouble thinking of designs for the last few shields, but doing the Fly head on the Sorcerer has helped a bit spawning a fly head shield (which is a good chance to practice the colours for the Sorcerers head),a 'maggot' shield and with so many mouths done already a 'other end' design.

Next up is 3 warriors that are the same colour (just how it's worked out) so I'll try and be a bit more 'batch painter' on those and speed myself up some, I'll probably end up doing bits on the Sorcerer in between as well. Also I have to finish off GSing up the Musicians horn, which is the last bit of modelling apart from the Lord ( which I don't even have yet).
The eventual plan is to do a couple more Warriors when I get another box to be able to swap out the characters as well.

Uses for left over Green Stuff.

Some thing I nearly always find myself doing is mixing up more Kneadatite (Green Stuff) than I need.

I used to just stuff it under the bases of whatever mini I was working on at the time but then I had a better idea.

Many WHFB and 40K Armies have little things that appear on a lot of the minis through out the force, tiny, insignificant, fiddly little things that in enough quantity help make the theme. Nurgle = pox/boils, Tomb Kings = Scarab Beetles, Orks( Orcs& Goblins) = little toad stools. There are more I'm sure but those are some I have experienced myself. There is also the more generic little teeth, horns, medallions, symbols and gem etc that adorn GW minis.

Never waste a bit of GS again, use it to make pre fab bits for these details. ( If you are impatient like myself these will help speed up some of these details without the dreaded moment when you squish a bit you just finished while working on the next.


Things you'll need:
Good sharp knife, Blu/White tac ( poster stuff) Kneadatite ( GS/Green Stuff), an old paint brush and thin liquid polyester glue. Oh and a little box or pot for storage.

For this I'll just show the simplest use, but with a little extra effort and variation of shape you can fit this for most armies.

lil Green Balls.

 Whenever left with some GS roll it into little balls, normally I just do this lightly in the palm of my hand with a finger tip. ( Hey Granny, I'm gonna tell you how to suck an egg!) drop em into an out of the way place or a storage pot and forget them til they are set and you are working on a model that you can use them for.



 Ok you built up a store of lil green balls, time to grab that rattly container and use them up. In this example Nurgle themes, boils, pox call em what you want, there is loads of places you can use them.
Sometimes perfect spheres are usable but something with a flat back is easier to glue in place.

Squidge a line of Blue Tac and place the ball you want to use on it.

 

Grab your sharp knife and carefully cut them in half.

Now you have a selection of pustules to glue on to whatever it is needs a dose of Papa Nurgles love. I Use Liquid Poly in small dabs to glue them on and then a brush to coat them with a bit more Liquid poly to seal them in place better. ( Hence the choice of thin.)

Ovals for Insect eyes.

Pustules

 

Eyes

Rivets,Gems and Eyes

 With extra GS you can add more detail or drill little holes whatever you need and take it as far as you want.
Got a tube making tool, make tubes, vary the shapes around and build up a stock of useful forms to glue and use later on for your Army.

Here is a game of spot the lil Green Balls.........

3 lil green balls.

1 lil green ball

5 lil green balls

That game got boring fast din't it lol. But you get the point, why wait for hundreds of little GSed details to cure so an item is safe for attack of the impatient sausage fingers when you can use up wastage to pre prep them and just wait for glue to dry instead?

Sorcerer all built

Sorcerer (again).

It is with some satisfaction I have finished converting up the Fly Head Sorcerer and base coated him up ready for painting.
The plan was to create a unique sorcerer to use as a scroll caddy ( he might get a promotion ) with a big nod to an old Nurgle Champion I always liked, you know the one, you've probably seen it for silly money on Ebay if you searched with either the words Nurgle or Chaos Champion.

Original inspiration from back in the day.

It's been a fun conversion, although waiting for all the fiddly bits of GS cure before I could do the next bit was a bit of a grind. I do however have a horrible feeling he will have to be handled with care during gaming and transporting or break.

 

Well you are all probably sick of the sight of him now, so I promise you wont have to see him again until he is fully painted and that won't be for a bit as I have set myself of doing a few basic Warriors before starting him.

Vash

Sorcerer Spew and Champion Paint

Champion.

Decided to jump on to a front rank figure on the Warriors unit painting to make a change without changing unit ( or army or game system for that matter). So the Units Champion got slapped about with the brush.

Sorcerer.

Next up is the Sorcerers staff top, it's not finished yet but is starting to look like it is blowing chunks for a suitably Nurgly spell, well maggots anyway. Also the midriff Nurgle symbol, antennae ends get a bit of work.

Just need to infill around the Maggoty bits with a bit of GS, tidy up a few bits and bobs and he is ready for base gravel and undercoat. No doubt I'll have to go over him again after undercoat as it always seems to find mistakes I don't.


After that It's back to the exciting world of GSing shield fronts and painting warriors for a bit.

Nurgle Sorcerer progress

Sorcerer.

Some progress on the Nurgle Sorcerer to show today.

The fiddly job of adding Antennae and Palps has started with yet more wire formers as well as some more detailing on the head end of the Proboscis.
 I get the horrible feeling I might be pushing my luck with trying to GS such spindly and fragile parts though.

 

Also started a bit more of the generic sort of Nurglification, boils, holes in the loin cloth and amour corrosion.

In other non sorcerer related snooze a bit of work on the other conversion heavy model for the unit.

The Musician's worm horn gets some stumpy lil leg spikes and the worms skin starts to be be modeled up with its sores.

Musician.

 

Work is stealing my hobby time.

First rank finished

Actually managed to get a pretty decent shot of the rear rank all painted and finished. More than anything else this picture has got my excited about the project, something about starting to put a group of painted minis together for a picture is satisfying for a person that paints as slowly as I do.

Unfortunately my work always gets hectic just after Christmas and New Years Eve which means not much time for models. I have managed to to do a bit more GSing on the scroll caddy Sorcerer though.

First off the head; I was going to originally do a classic Fly head on him but the mouth parts just kept on turning out like a miniature Elephants trunk. After staring at various fly pictures I just gave up and rethought it somewhat and went with a blood sucker type bug. No one spreads disease like a mosquito so that was the vague idea here, yellow fever anyone?

I have also cut out and then filled in a couple of open sores, blanked out a disk on his midriff ready for a Nurgle symbol as well as starting to fill a nasty mold line down the staff and arm .

 

 Next was something for the staff top, once again I have had a change of heart. Originally the plan was to pop a Nurgle symbol on the end, but this just didn't work from certain angles. So with a couple of bits of wire I have made a form for a spiral which I will GS into a sort of spewing vomit style affair to represent a Nurgle spell.

 

Warhammer 40k Scratch Built Slaanesh Questor Scout Titan

Something I built years ago but have been scared of painting for a long time.

 This beastie took me nigh on two years of stop start building, but I won't bore you with all the progress pictures as there is rather a lot of them lol.
Hopefully getting an Airbrush for Christmas will cure that fear, well once I learn how to use it that is.