Pistol Wraith (take 2)

So this was done a while ago but I forgot to post it. Literally it was just a practice model for SketchStyle that I had sitting around waiting for some reason to paint it. Nothing amazing except that this was roughly 75 minutes of painting max.

Pirate Queen Skarre

Finally done! After sitting on my desk for probably 3 months, Skarre is finished. A very big reason that she got done this week and not 6 more weeks from now is pretty much my desire to wrap her up before I leave on a bunch of work travel. More about that in my weekend roundup post later today.

This model is delicious. Seriously, I really enjoyed painting this model. I could have spent a lot more time on her. It's got a nice pose and overall I feel like it's fairly accessible. My only gripe is the left side of her face which is (probably) meant to be mostly hidden and shadowed, but it has just enough space to make questionable. There's enough gap such that some light could legitimately get in, meaning it should be visible. On the other hand, it is heavily obscured, making it easy to justify it being mostly shadowed. Again, tough call. Otherwise it's a majestic model. Kudos to the sculptor.

What worked well:
* Dark and brooding - I wanted a color scheme that created some stronger contrast in terms of brightness, but overall had a darker look. I feel like that worked out pretty well here.
* Lighting focus - I wanted to be very intentional about how I handled the highlights and shadows, and particularly how the eye was drawn. I feel like this also worked out pretty well. There's lots of deep shadows, with highlights predominantly on the upward-facing areas. The notable exception is her face where I purposefully highlighted brighter than the light would hit, specifically to draw in the eye better.
* Glowing parts - The glowing green pieces worked out pretty well, standing out as glowing against much darker surroundings, but not so overpowering as to draw the eyes completely away from her face.
* Ink glazes - I used a couple layers of ink glazes on the blue and purple surfaces to smooth out the blending better. This worked extremely well. I've read about this before plenty of times, but this was the first time I really felt like my own execution of it worked rather than ruined.

What could have been better:
* Multiple slops - During the course of painting I had a number of unfortunate slops. Particularly on her, uh, boobs. So many layers of paint there.
* Spending more time - I could have easily spent more time on this model and smoothed everything out better. The camera is a harsh mistress and really reveals the flaws. After staring at it for so long though, it was just time to be done.
* Some freehand - Adding some freehand, particularly on the cloak, would have really kicked it up a notch. Plus I need to start doing more freehand work to get better and more confident about it.
* Metals - Yeah, just... yeah... I spent a fair amount of time on them, but this model is rife with tiny details and had a lot of trouble getting the metals right. I think that my entire approach for the basecoating was probably flawed there. Definitely a lesson learned for the next time.

Skarre, Queen of the Broken Coast

Now this was a remarkable model to paint. Beautiful pose. Great detail. I think I'm in love! Seriously, this was one of the most fun models to paint out of all my Privateer collection. After rushing through all the other Cryx stuff, it was nice to hit the fully painted mark on Cryx with this model. Definitely worth spending the last 2 weeks working on her.

There were a number of things that went well, and a number that went poorly. First the good stuff. The skin worked out great. I used purple to shade the skin, bringing it fairly dark underneath where the light wouldn't hit directly, but not completely to purple. I feel it gives a rather warm feel to it. The detail on the face worked out pretty well too. I spent a lot of time trying to get the details to a level I was happy with. I'm still no expert, but it was a marked improvement over previous projects.

The base worked out great. Two key things here. First, it was pre-sculpted, and had lots of detail. After doing probably 5 or 6 washes and 3 or so highlights, I was pretty happy with the level of variation. Creating two different wood styles worked out better than I expected as well. It really helps the whole thing pop without being overpowering. Second, I used beach sand to fill in around the base. I didn't even paint it. Just superglued it down and it looks good. Gotta love natural beach sand.

Highlighting overall worked quite well. I used a combination of washes and highlights on some places, and multiple layers of two-brush-blending on others. The coat in particular was a good learning experience. I tried to get a bit more hue variation, and then do some decent blending while not changing contrast too quickly on the blends.

Ok, now a couple bad things. First, not attaching the sculpted base to a normal plastic base beforehand was a mistake. I ended up rubbing the paint too much and having to do some touch ups afterwards. I had debated it initially, but just decided to deal with it later. I'm starting to consider the merits of completely assembling the solid parts of a base before priming.

Second, and much worse, the model fell. At least twice. It cause some paint chipping. Mostly this happened because I hadn't attached it to a proper base, and just used a pin which I stuck to an old spray can. Being the clever monkey I am, I forgot to properly glue the pin in, so it fell off and landed on the edge of my porcelain palette. Fortunately it missed the wet paint, but unfortunately it chipped the paint in multiple places. I really hate doing cleanup work like that.

Well, enough of that. Again, this model was awesome, and I'm glad I spent so much time on it. Now that Cryx is done, it's time to obsess on a Legion paint scheme!

Nightmare

Hooray! I actually have a second painted Cryx warjack. And this one was a delight to paint. There is definitely a certain advantage to only painting models that I'm interested in painting. Then I'm not dragging my way through models that I'm only painting so that I can field them. I won't, of course, debate the competitiveness of such a model selection strategy.

I used the same scheme as I did for Deneghra on this one. Only fitting as the story on Nightmare is it's the jack that rescued her when she was cut in half by her sister, Haley. So I kept the same NMM scheme with rusted iron, dark green plates, and clean steel blades. Also the lava base reinforces that unity with Deneghra. I've been quite happy with the relatively uniform look of my Cryx force, and even though they aren't painted to as high of quality as I could do, I really enjoy the look of the force together.

One of the most fun parts of this model were all the glowing runes. They are sculpted as raised runes on the surface of the armor plates (and a couple of skulls). In order to really bring them out, I started with Iosan Green covering the raised portion and a small bit on the surrounding surface. Then I used Necrotite Green on the raised rune itself. Then to really step up the glow, I used some Cygnus Yellow in select spots to enhance the brightness of the runes. Typically I used it where rune lines cross, or on any dots, but also on a few rune ends. For the very top central runes I used a little pure white on the points where the lines cross to really enhance the glow. I'm really pleased how these turned out.

The NMM effect on this model is not so great, but I decided to limit the amount of time I spent on all the Cryx models. It's an interesting exercise to aim for the balance of speed and quality and see what turns out. I honestly do not regret doing this either.

Well, on to one last Cryx model!

Cephalyx Drudges

Now this is my kind of squad. Notice the subtle majesty! Hands replaced with saws, swords and drills! Tubes that go from faces to crotches! The stink of being somewhere between alive and dead! That's right... these are the Cephalyx Drudge Mind Slaves. This rounds out my third Cryx unit.

I spent more time than I expected on these, despite them not really being too much above tabletop quality. The blending breaks down in a few places where I used washes and it pooled too much. I mostly followed the NQ #14 guide to painting them just to understand what they were doing with all that mixing of different colors. It was interesting. The flesh really does have a lot of interesting tone to it.

I experimented with one of the new GW washes (Devlan Mud) on this one. You can't really see where I used it anymore, but I was fairly impressed with it.

One thing I'm still not sure about is using metalics. I'd been experimenting with NMM techniques on some of my Cryx models, but not all of them. The Cephalyx and the Revenants all use real metalics, whereas everything else uses NMM techniques. It creates a little inconsistency in the overall army, but I'm not losing sleep over it.

Anyway, here's some pics in groups of 3...

And a group shot of everyone including the Slaver...

Unfortunately I just set my photo setup back up and didn't get the lighting right (again), but it's close enough.

Terminus

Now this was a big model. Lich Lord Terminus is probably in the top 5 largest models I've painted. This is the latest addition to my Cryx force. I kept in style with the other Cryx models I've painted, and also focused on a balance of speed painting and quality. As a result, I got him done pretty fast, mostly due to the use of washes and 2 brush blending techniques.

Still having a little bit of color balance challenge with my photo setup again, so the blue/yellow shifts between the left and right sides. Kinda screwed up the saturation which makes the blade of the sword look all white. It's actually painted to look like carved bone. Oh well.

The armor was the standard formula I've used before. The skirt and darkened armor plates was CXH then 2 brush blended with CXB and then black to shade them.

The wings were a whole different issue. I did a number of passes and washes, starting with a base mix of half Rucksack Tan and half Midlund Flesh. Then I did a heavy wash of Battlefield Brown and "sponged" and "rubbed" some places clean of the wash to restore the highlights. Then I did 2 more heavy washes of Umbral Umber and Black in controled areas and 2 brush blended the washes at the edges to smooth them out. This created a deeper and richer shading for the wings which have a lot of surface complexity to work with.

There were a number of features of this model that I didn't like so much, nor make a big attempt to work with. The face/mouth are an example. He actually has a gun barrel in his mouth, but honestly I thought it was kinda silly. There's lots of detail under his chest as well which I didn't put much work into other than the standard washes. I could have done a bunch of OSL work, but again, the focus was on finishing in a timely manner. Overall I'm happy with the results and don't regret any of the shortcuts I took.

Cephalyx Slaver

This model got a bit of an unplanned bump in my painting schedule. I'd been eyeballing it for a while and love the look of it, but and planned to wait until I was ready to do the whole squad of Cephalyx Drudges as well. However, I finally couldn't resist the itch to paint it and got him primed and prepped the other day. Poor Dougal is in progress still while this guy got preferential treatment.
I pretty much followed the painting advice in No Quarter #14 for this one. However there were a few differences. First, I added some shading to the deeper folds using armor wash, and shaded some of the lower sections as well. Second, since the article didn't have any advice on the metals, I decided to start using a basecoat of Pig Iron, then a heavy Metal Wash, then actually paint over the lower portions using Thamar Black in order to make the metal look like very dark iron. Then I picked out highlights using Cold Steel. The hinge points got Blighted Gold and Shining Gold treatments to make them stand out and give the metal arms a little more character.
Due to holiday visitors, I had to tear down my photo setup and reassemble it today. Unfortunately, I seem to have gotten the lighting positioning wrong. So the color balance is a little off, but not terrible. You can see how the right side of all the pictures is a little more yellowing from the tungsten bulbs, but the left side is more balanced (due to sunlight bleed from the window through the curtains). I had the same problem with the Gandalf model I just posted a moment ago. Anyway, it's still not too shabby.

Warwitch Deneghra

This model went remarkably fast. I primed her Saturday afternoon and pretty much painted her all in one day yesterday. Again, it helps that I'm balancing quality vs speed, so the couple corners I cut really helped speed things up, but part of that was offset by trying to do more NMM work on this one as well as having to work delicately on the skin. I ended up spending a lot of time correcting mistakes that spilled over onto her skin. However, the end result worked out pretty well. I like the overall look of the NMM on her witch barbs. The spear could have been better, but I decided not to dwell on it. I can always get the other sculpt at some point and paint her over again.
Working the NMM areas was much easier on a single model instead of 10 at once like with the Bane Thralls. I was able to keep paint wet and workable longer and could take my time getting just the right shades. Her skirt was also a nice place to practice some very controlled, small 2-brush blending work. I wouldn't necessarily rank this in my favorite models to paint category, but the delicate and accessible features made for a much easier project that some of my other recent choices.

Bane Thralls

Let me say it again: Painting squads can be really soul crushing. It takes so long, and it often feels monotonous. Fortunately, these models were not completely soul crushing. I was pretty stoked to paint them, and although I only aimed for tabletop quality, I still feel pretty happy with the results.
Again, I used the NMM rust technique I've used before (on the witches for example) and I really like how it turned out. I also used NMM on the axe heads which, well, it turned out adequate, but not fabulous. They clearly could have benefited from much more effort, but by the time I got to the axe heads (last) I was pretty antsy to get them finished. I used a couple washes on them (black and Bloodstone) to sort of dirty them up which really helped. In hindsight, I think getting a better spread of grayscale paints would really ease the whole NMM thing for simulating steel.
Admittedly I cut a few corners. There were some inner sleeves that I skipped, and some dangly bits that didn't get extra attention. Fortunately the washing technique gave them enough pop that they didn't need additional work, and in a group it's less likely to be noticed. Part of me hates to cut these corners, but I'm trying to stick with balancing quality and speed. It's sort of a "time boxing" rule I guess, as much as using that term makes me sick.

Last Revenant

And finally I round out the Revenant Crew that I have been working on for so long. This one is a converted Press Ganger Pirate. I loved the model, but wanted to make him a Revenant instead and this worked out pretty well. Probably one of the more extensive conversions I've ever done, which is kinda sad for my conversion abilities. Anyway, no more Revenants until Rengrave managed to press a warcaster into service on the field of battle.

Another Revenant

Here's Revenant #10. This one is half Risen (bottom half) and half Revenant. It makes his torso seem a little extra long the way I assembled him, but I don't think it's terribly obvious. This is another fast tabletop quality paintjob. One last Revenant left on my desk at this point.

More Revenants!

Nothing fancy here, just trying to round out my Revenant Crew finally. 5 of them have been sitting on my desk for practically a month now with just skin and metals done, so I finally am getting these little buggers done. Just tabletop quality stuff here (barely).

These guys are some of the conversions I did for the remaining Revenant Crew members. I'm fixated on making sure all my Cryx unit models look different if at all possible and so these guys got a little work. Some of them have parts from my scap bin, and others were cobbled together from a combination of Revenants and Risen models.

Pistol Wraith

I was working on this one in parallel with the Harrower and managed to finish him up a day later. I got some good inspiration on him from the PP forums. The glow effect worked out pretty well I think. I liked the overall effect, and this model is really a majestic one to paint.

Harrower

Wrapped this bad boy up finally. Behind schedule, and the last item to fill out the 350 point Cryx challenge. All the practice with washes really helped accelerate getting this one done. It took alot less time that heavy jacks normally take me. It's not a great paint job, but I'm happy with its table presence. Something to note though, this one was a real pain to assemble.

Witch Coven of Garlghast

It's amazing how some things seem to just linger and not get finished in a timely manner. I just finally wrapped this group up. The witches have been done for probably 3 weeks now, but it took me a while to get them based and then the Egregore was a whole mis-adventure. I had a grand scheme of using magnets to make the Egregore float, but that didn't pan out. It was just too much weight and required too many magnets to make it feasible. In the end I had to strip all the magnets back out of the core and then start over. I probably wasted 10+ hours messing around with it but I'm glad I did. I'd have been kicking myself later if I hadn't at least tried.

The bases added a fair amount of work as well. Huge thanks go out to BobbyBrady from the PPS forums for the help and advice on how to make this style of bases. I spent a fair amount of time experimenting to find a good reproducable method of making these without spending too much time. In the end I'm very happy with how they are turning out.

These models are a huge departure for me in my normal style. I did alot of "NMM" type of work here, some of which is arguably metalic looking. Great learning experience, even if it didn't end up looking very metalic. The blades at least look metal. All around, I had a good time painting these models, and feel like they are up to the quality I'm trying to reach in my showdown painting push.

Group shot:


Egregore:


Witch 1:


Witch 2:


Witch 3: