Hoff to a good start...

A quick pic of my hoffbeat painty rest break... I feel better after messing around with these.  Its got my juices if not flowing, but defrosted enough to peel off the cling film and stick it back into the mental microwave.

The spaced out druid is fun, but I really should have done a bit of a proper fill and file as he is from the era of rough surfaces and crappy fingers.  Not sure what to do with his lantern yet.  I may do source lighting, but he is already pretty light.  Hmmm.

WF Spaced Out Druid, Asgard Adventuress, GW Chaos Cultist, Confrontation Hybrid

The Asgard adventuress was the first in a whole slew of bare bristol warriors with crossed straps.  Citadel did a bunch almost identical several years layer which appeared in fighters and chaos fighters and I think Ral Partha did one too but I will check on that... I will do a side by side shot once the others are painted up.  Needs a lot of work on the eyes still, and I suspect she should be a brunette... (opinions below)  She had bug eyes, which is always hard to paint... and is generally poorly sculpted except for the obvious bang on bits.  Anyone know who sculpted her?  Still, nice to finally have her transition from ugly grey lump to ugly colorful one.  More polishing required before varnishing.

Third up is one of the snap together chaos cultists from dark vengence. 
How exactly does dark vengence differ from regular kind?

I decided to go way out there with style, painting them to be gleering out of the darkness with source lighting.  For colors I am keeping tightly with orange vs midnight blue, and keeping them muted.  The base is a Renedra 25mm plastic base.  Yeah, yeah but it will work better in tightly packed necromunda hives.

Finally is the lovely confrontation hybrid beastie from Rackham.  One of my Skulldred playtesters is using the system to resurrect the Arkalesh game world... and I love that idea.  I have enough rackham to make large dirz, goblin and undead warbands, as well as a good fist full of smaller bands.
Painting this guy is F.U.N.  plus I realised if I kept the basing simple grey flag stone, this versatile bastard is ideal for Inquisuitor, weird world war, nurgle, warmahordes cryx, modern horror and cyberpunk genre games.
Thus I went with a green metal armor and offset this with purplish hues for the flesh.

Oh you can see some bob olley dwarfs from mega minis just behind on my painting rack.  These will be appearing in Skulldred if all goes to plan.  I painted one with a white undercoat and cried 'sod this 'after a couple of hours and sprayed the rest black.  I just have to face it... I am a black undercoater.

A Desk! A desk! My Kingdom for a Desk!

I am exhausted but have a grin across my face only the Joker could top.  For the last few years I have been working on a makeshift desk, cunningly crafted from my student drawing board layed upon two filing cabinets with blue tac to act as a cushion.  The cabinets gave me no leg room, so I worked with a twisted back, and the drawing table itself had sharp metal ridges that gathered particles of epoxy, wire and epoxy and lead filings.  Not very healthy.
Kate and I decided to throw out the cabinets, shifting everything into storage boxes and buy me a proper desk...  and boy, its a thing of beauty.

Dave now makes stuff here!

I now have leg room, a dust free working space and finally room to work on a few scenic items and have a few to one side drying.  I am just so incredibly happy to finally have a dedicated space.  Bless Ikea. Creative energy flows around the room on the gentle breeze that bloweth on my straightened knees!

It took six hours of hard work to clean out the study, refile everything into 24 interlocking plastic storage tubs and make room for the desk,  as I blog this (and drink that coffee there), Kate is still busy refiling her paperwork into a storage folder.  The house is chaos!  Once she is done I will take over to do mine.  It is staggering how much crap can build up in a room if you let it.  The final joy is going to be dragging the grey, sombre, tin filing cabinets out to the road to be picked up by the council waste truck.  Begone foul soul sucking, knee cramping fiends!

One of the fun things I did today with the project was go through every one of my sketch books and remove any miniature designs, placing them into plastic flip folders for easy access.  I had about fifty sketch books, so it took most of the day to do.  I ended up with two A4 folders full of designs, which reportedly hold around 250 pages- giving 1000 a4 pages all up, with an average of 5 figure doodles on each page.  Thats well over 5000 miniature sketches.  That should keep me busy for a while.  :)




The first thing onto my desk was one of my new Dwerg Burrowguard troops and an Arcane Asgard Creature of Chaos Elephant Man to match the one that appears in Aly Morrisons 'Eavy Metal article in White Dwarf 80.

WIP Viking Forge Creature of Chaos (Aly Morrison Asgard Original Inset)

Colors matches in real life, but the photo changes it quite a bit.  As you can see, the two figures vary..  For starters, the weapon is cast lower down and has bandages wrapped around, I suspect to avoid breakages.  I am not sure if the original had a seperate weapon- which some of the Asgard figures do (never a good idea in my book), or if Aly converted it.  If anyone has an original I would be pleased to find out (and buy one).


Mine came from Viking forge, who have most of the Asgard molds.  I found quite a few little variations.  The model is surprisingly small, and seems to have warped quote a bit over its very long life.  The face is longer, the eye flatter, the trunk thinner near the bend, the shield rougher on the inside, the whole body feels squished horizontally and the front leg is about half as thick as it is wide.  Weather this is a casting issue or the original sculpt was poorly proportioned, its hard to say.  I was so delighted that this figure was still available that I grabbed two.
Mine has a belt and a roughly torn kilt, but Alys appears beltless and smooth all the way to the hip.  I suspect he has filled it with milliput to allow for decoration, as he definately did with the Skaven Plague monk from the same article.  I filled mine with liquid green stuff, just to check out how it performed really.  Not as good as milliput but more convenient.


  The White Dwarf 80 article has long fascinated me, and I have been eagerly collecting all the figures it showcases.  You may remember the copy I made of his Skaven plague lord from the same article.  I have most of the figures now, and trying to work out what bits are what for the converted models.  I would love to have a showcase featuring them all.

Well, I am now going to take my new found creative energies and put them into finishing off some more sculpts.  Have fun.

Go paint something.

Asgard, Hasslefree, Rarities and my new 30mm Ply Bases

I got a few hours to base up and partially paint Hasslefree minis Svala and dynamic kaylee-For one of my Skulldred demo game warbands (aka the orange team!).  Kev White, as usual, rocks my socks with two awesome figures, understated details, fluid, dynamic and paintable as heckaroonie on a stick.  Yep, well worth your cash - get em here.

Hasslefree Svala and Kaylee (converted) WIP paint jobs

I lightly converted Kaylee, shaving off her chaos symbol and replacing it with a grinning monster face, as well as adding extra fabric to her arms to give more space for her team colours.  All this was done with greenstuff.  I then decked out her base with mushrooms, creepers and leaves to make use of all the new space on my BRAND NEW BASES!!!!

So the story with my bases is that I really needed some extra room around my figures so they dont bump up against each other in gameplay.  I also like decorating them, so having the extra room is great.  I made a bunch of lipped deep dish bases, since I hate the way you cannot pick up lipped bases, but have had issues with leeching oils through the resin- clearly my resin is out of date :(
I decided to try out some laser cut 30mm ply discs and you know, I love them!  I am sorely tempted to move my whole collection across to them now.
What can I say?  Cheap, roomy, easy to pick up, easy to modify, light, have a little bounce to protect the figure, soak black paint up so they chip black, and look the business.  At 30mm, they are the exact same footprint as Malifaux or Warmachine bases, but without the annoying lip.  You know, I am totally sold on this.  Very surprised, considering my experience with plywood bases for HotT has been less than spectacular.

Converted Hasslefree Kaylee framed with some Asgard gems- Lizard man and Poisonous Stalker
Kaylee's shield sculpted by me.  All Work in progress paint jobs.

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Kaylee vs. Lizardman wips - playin' Skulldred, naturally!
The lizardmans pokerchip base gives me room to sculpt a torn apart
adventurer using procreate.

 The figures shown are all part way through painting, really needing neatening up and a bit more shading.  The next ones are even more WIP...

Citadel WF6 Aggressive Aardvark, LE-4 The Black Dwarf and DL2 Hobgoblin shaman
Primed and ready to be drooled over.

So you can see the raw wooden bases onto which I have mounted some dead sexy rare citadel gems- including the 'other' black dwarf (see my earlier posts for the Jes Goodwin masterpiece from Asgard).

The only pain with the ply bases is that the laser scoring around the edge needs sanding off.  I found if you use two grits- course to get the lines off and a really fine to polish it really shiney, it looks just like plastic once painted.  Using a diluted chaos black wash allowed the paint to soak in- making the base absorb the paint deeply and so it chips to black- which will keep my collection looking a little less played with hopefully.  The underside, being perfectly flat, also looks nice when you flip a model on its side too- no ugly slottabase grooves.


I do worry about acids from sap in the plywood leeching into the model and causing leadrot.  A few really old models I have prised off wooden bases show damage where they contact the wood.  I have kept a thin layer of epoxy around the figures to protect them, and sealed the surface with superglue here and there.  That ought'a hold it.


I think its about time citadel allowed 30mm bases for 40k- the models have scale creep'ed to a point where they could really do with the extra stability and protection.  Don't you agree?

A motley Crew, Asgard Black Dwarf and friendsElf

Some poncy Elf, Nob the Mercenary, Bird Thing (Chaos Familiar)
The Black Dwarf (Asgard), CP2 -Bryan Ansell's Heroic Adventurers boxed set Cleric
FF5-2 Demon with sword and whip

I thought I would go back to doing some mixed group shots this year.  What a motley crew.

Starting on the left is an experimentation piece, starting with white and working down using thin washes.  Yawn.  I also tried out some NMM since I was trying out new stuff.

Nob got a polish- I worked up flesh tones, but still have not got around to doing his clothes.  He is a citadel mercenary- a variant of the militia figures-  you will find a few with the same body in that line.  Both ranges go for moderately high prices now a days.  You want old school character, this range was a high tide point.

Bird thing is one of my favourite figures of all time.  A classic Jes Goodwin sculpt.

Next up is a real joy for me.  White Dwarfs great cousin, The Black Dwarf.  He is from Asgard miniatures, and from a series of probably the coolest dwarf proportions from that time.  I spotted him back in the 1980s in an 'eavy Metal article by Aly Morrison.  I took the red and black chequered hood and tiger fur from his pic, but went in a different direction with the rest.  God how I loved that figure and poured over that article!  I have about 80% of the figures from that display now, some of which I have painted in the same way to fulfil a childhood whim.  The converted figs may have to be scratch built.  :)

Asgards Black Dwarf- so ahead of its time its breathtaking

This guy is the grand daddy of all Chaos Dwarves.  Look at the poise, the brooding nature, the expression and detail on the shield and that unusual weapon!  Whoever sculpted it (answers in the comments if you know) should be really proud.

Hans - Citadel C26 Feudal  work in progress

I have never really  loved the feudal range to be honest, but am starting to see the character in them now.  This one needs a bit more work, but I like the atmosphere of the piece so far.  All my peasants are getting the drunken Brughel, Gilliamesque 'oh look Dennis theres a lovely bit of filth over here' treatment.

Asgard Owl Bear

Okay, I have NO idea what went through my mind when I purchased this hunk of lead.  But I like him.  I really like him.  He go boo.

Asgard owlbear

Asgard was the training ground for a lot of infamous Citadel sculptors- though I dont actually know who sculpted this one.  They probably wouldnt be keen to put their hand up either.  However I do have the Dwarfs from the series and they are brilliant.  My fave has to be the Black Dwarf, as he appeared in an article by Aly Morrison in White Dwarf.  I am also keen to grab some of the chaos monsters from that range.

Hope you like him.  He go boo.