My brother in law visited and we had a bit of a hobby session. Speed painting his Spess Mareenz got me nicely warmed up to painting again, and I decided to have a bit of a retro paint session last night to use that positive energy. I decided to paint to completion something from right back at the start of my collection, and the first thing that leapt out where zombies... Lots of zombies! Well, ten of them.
The first three finished where two of Kev Adam's brilliantly characterful zombies, and one of the highly sought after oriental undead, 'li-chee' which is a classic example of eighties pun names and racially insensitive humour. His pose reminds me of Tommy Cooper.
Compared to my old batch of these zombie figures from when I started this blog, these figs really highlighted to me how much brighter, crisper and richer my painting style is these days. It feels more retro to me, and much more aligned to the reason I started this blog... the enjoyment of eighties miniatures.
The bases where an experiment with cheap Jo Sonja's Hooker's green and moss green craft paint. I diluted them with windex in pots, which gave me really nice dark mossy results that reminded me of Fraser Grey's base work. Instant love!
Fraser used enamels, and formed his bases from found objects inserted into plastecene clay, covered with a shell of two part epoxy resin and grit. I tried it once, and found it cracked too easily, stank and you could get better results with cork and superglue.
I do like how the deeper mossy green makes for a background for the minis own colors to pop out. The cooler, less yellow moss highlight also will work well set against my goblin skin... One of the reasons I started to venture away from my forrest green basing colors.
Kev made the best citadel zombies. After his tenure, the zombies where replaced by dull, stiff, flat posed, weightless shat knocked out under the 'paid per mini' system that wreaked havoc on the nineties, culminating in the worst miniature of all time, metal Nagash.
Comments appreciated! I love comments. Comments make me happy.
I really like the mossy green effect on the bases here, Delaney. The base on the middle zombie is definitely the best looking of the three, in my opinion. The combination of bare base and base "topping" creeping over the edge works very well. I see the use of some different colors to add texture on the base on the left- it adds a bit of busy-ness to the color scheme, which I am not sure if you were going for, or if it is perhaps a digital camera tricksy thing going on. I think perhaps a Kev Adams 'shroom or two might work better. You're spot on with respect to these being the best of Citadel's zombies- great sculpts all around and comparing these to the Morley dredge that followed is like comparing two entirely different genres. Not even the same effin' sport.
ReplyDeleteGreat job as usual!
Morley. Him, plastic arms and the craze of painting everything yellow, red and green at the same time made me leave the hobby.
DeleteAnd discovering girls.
Mainly the latter.
Lovely paint work. They're my favourite zombie sculpts too, possibly down to them being the first zombie models I ever saw. They were in the spring '86 Citadel Journal and like most of the models I saw in there have remained firm favourites. Haven't got around to collecting any though (yet!). I do like your retro basing too. Whatever methods you've used over the years (?) I think the end results always seem spot on.
ReplyDeleteThanks stone cold. You rock the hairy stick too!
DeleteAll the ladies say that ;) lol
DeleteJust don't dunk the ferrule.
DeleteLove these zombies! I'm a fan of the kev adams sculpts too. Got a couple painted up (not as good as yours) but have had a hard time finding more zombies going for decent prices on ebay. At the current rates it's probably better to just get some new zombies from Otherworld instead.
ReplyDeleteYeah, what is with ebay prices lately? Figures are double and postage from the usa is three times as much.
DeleteVery nice!
ReplyDelete