There and back again... with a blue horror!

Well met once more brave grognards of the lead! It is a good feeling to be speaking to you once more here on the blogosphere and sharing this charming (if such an adjective can be applied to daemonic entities) Kev Adams blue horror from 1989. 

My health declined from March onwards as I needed a nasty operation. To cut a long story short, after the surgery I developed complications and was prescribed a series of medicines: sadly, these caused me to suffer a massive siezure which sent me to hospital. Though well enough afterwards to return home, I continued to suffer further seizures, hallucinations and other general unpleasantness until I was diagnosed with a severe allergic reaction to amitriptyline.

I am now recovering, thankfully, and should be back to my normal self in a few weeks time. Having spent the past three or four weeks largely in bed, I was keen to get back on the battlefield and take on a miniature or two. Obviously, I was concerned that my illness would have had an impact on my painting ability, but apart from loosing my alarity with paint I was able to knock out this grining horror in three or four leisurely hours. 

I so enjoyed working on him that I have fished out the other blue horrors in my collection and will be setting forth painting them up over the next week or so. If you are interested in my recipe for this model it was really quite simple. I used Foundry's Sky Blue A as a base coat (over a white undercoat) and washed over with the old 1980s blue Citadel ink, undiluted. Once this was dry, I repainted the skin of the horror with Sky Blue A and added pure white gradually to blend up the highlights until I was satisfied that the model 'popped' to quote Warlord Paul.  

I used colour harmony on the teeth and horns, adding a tiny amount of Sky Blue A to the Boneyard triad and simply highlighted up, using far more white on the final coat for the needle like teeth. Using the classic '80s purple ink (I know they are not the best quality-wise, but the colours they produce so envisage the classic era that they are well worth tracking down) I prepared a watery glaze and washed over the teeth to give them a slight contrast to the flesh. 

The eye was achieved in a slightly different way. I first picked it out in pure white before painting the orb of the eye in orange. Two yellow highlights were then added (again by adding pure white) and the eye was finished off with the same purple glaze used on the teeth. 

Very simple, easy and effective for my first model in many months. Here is a rear shot, worthy or the Ole Dirty Boye himself, Chico (it is even slightly out of focus!) I actually painted this long after the front half of the model, so it doesn't quite match the paleness of the front view, but no matter. I have also been working on a number of historical miniatures from the Perry's. They are very similar in style to Citadel that they feel quite familiar under the brush. I only tinker with them, a guilty pleasure really, but I hope you don't mind me posting these here in the future, as I have no where else to show 'em off! 

Orlygg

Acceptable in the '80s: Dale Hurst's Tzeentch Warband

In yesterday's post we discussed the seminal dwarf army article by Wayne England, and thanks to some knowledgable fans of the force, we now know that more units of the army appear in several later issues of White Dwarf. I just need to set about tracking them down so we can have the pleasure of examining the models chosen in greater detail. We also heard from Wayne himself on Facebook and he mentioned that he is working on a brand new dwarf army as we speak - so hopefully we will get the chance to check out that force too at some point.

Today we are looking at another highly influential force from White Dwarf 135 - Dale Hurst's heavily converted Tzeentch chaos warband. Realm of Chaos fans hold on to that sanity and we turn the nostalgia factor up to 11!



If Wayne's article launched a thousand dwarf armies, then Dale's must have signed the death warrant of a thousand toy soilders. For the first time, White Dwarf published a comprehensive guide to converting troops for play and displayed the final result as a unit. Sure, during the heady days of the release of Slaves to Darkness, John Blanche had taken us on a little journey about how to manufacture mutations in metal - but that work was more broad in scope and lacked the nitty gritty detail that aided the inexperienced modeller's first steps with scapel, saw and wire.

So what do we get? First up is a little look at Dale's philosphy for the unit. Paint quick and play fast. Its a philosphy that we are perhaps more used to now as many wargaming companies promote huge forces and many of the paint sets and techniques used nowadays really aid the painter in getting stuff on the table faster. Painting culture in the late '80s and early '90s was, at least where I was based, very labour intensive - with many of us spending hours and hours getting the most out of our plastic space marines and never really having much time for gaming. Still, I don't recall seeing the horror of horrors - unpainted units on the tabletop - being pushed around in games until much, much later. In a Peterborough GW in the early 2000s, I saw a game being played entirely with boxes of miniatures, with the sprues still rattling around inside!!

Still, using Dale's block colour philosphy it would be possible to get a striking looking force on the table quite quickly, which would allow you time to get games in, while doing further work at your own speed in between bouts. Its certainly not an approach that I would take - preferring as I do to lavish time and energy to all of the models I field, so at least they look good as they are routed or destroyed by huge 'tar pit' units of skeletons! But its a perfectly acceptable approach that other people may well wish to employ.

This second page give sound advice about how best to choose which models to convert. The collector in me rails at the thought of chopping up my beloved Citadel models in anyway, and I do search out broken or damaged models just for the purpose of 'improving'. Obviously, at the time this article was written access to the classic models used was not an issue, but gamers today now have a huge wealth of companies and componants to turn to when converting models. Though its not something I would do myself, I really do enjoy seeing the intelligent ways many Oldhammerers make use of plastic and resin parts to update classic and modern figures and make them their own.

The photocopable banner is a nice touch here, and something that I love making use of. From my previous life as an archaeological illustrator, I suspect that this design was produced with technical pens at a much larger size, and then reduced down on a photocopier. Freehand designs always look more impressive with a good deal of planning behind them after all. Have a go, even if you are printing an image off the internet and painting over the top. You'd be surprised how effective this can be.

There is also some sound advice about using a knife properly. And the word 'hobby' hasn't been sprinkled around the text like confetti at a wedding either. In the later stages of my White Dwarf buying this really got up my nose... 'Use your hobby knife to cut the plastic parts from the sprue... Then use your hobby saw to remove the unwanted head... Before using your hobby glue to sit everything together...' Ahhh! I much preferred this type editorial style - as it made me feel like an adult and not some foolish child while it was educating me. 

Anyone setting out on their first conversion journeys needs to know about pining. Even tackling the much larger monsters (such as the spined dragon I worked on last year) is made all the easily with a good understanding of why heavy parts are pinned together. Before I read this article back in the day I had no idea whatsoever about supporting limbs, wings and other appendages with trimmed down paperclips. Thanks to this article I asked my dad what a pin-vice was! Luckliy, my old man was a highly skilled railway modeller (Scale Four you know) and understood exactly what I was referring to. Within a week he'd gone out a bought a nice new one, and I had his battered campaigner in my bits box. Sure, within the first few minutes of using it I managed to impale the bit into my hand and bleed all over my Bloodthirster, but at least its wings never fell off!





The article goes on to describe head swaps. One of the easiest techniques to master and something which many of use have lost the art for, especially with the tendancy of modern kits to automatically give us a range of options in this regard. Actually hacking off the head of one metal model and attaching it to another can be quite a challenge, but if done correctly it can breathe new life into an old model. Seeing the range of heads on display here, I mutilated much of my Heroquest plastics with ill-informed improvements. But at least I learnt how NOT to do it!

This final page gives further detail about how many of the more impressive conversions were achieved. Reading through it once again with far more knowledgable eyes Dale's words make much more sense. I seem to recall much of the discussion here was beyond my modelling skills back in the day - especially in the filling department. I read about how he used plasticine to fill gaps and copied this with the grotty plastercine I found at the bottom of my younger sister's art chest. Needless to say, the results of me building up a minotaur's back were utterly disasterous!

There is a great quote in here for all Realm of Chaos conversion affectionardos. "With some imaginative interpretation of its attributes, I ended up with a very strange-looking creature." Imagination is a vital part of any good conversion, and in a world of proscribed paint schemes, defined unit layouts and trademarked insigia - the conversion is one of the few bastions yet to fall to the 'hobby-suits' (look, there I am adding that dreaded hobby word on to nouns) who threaten to derail us from the freedom wargaming should allow us.

Get converting!

Orlygg

'Eavy Metal Specials: White Dwarf 114

 

As many of you will be aware, we have reached issue 114 of White Dwarf in our history of Warhammer Third Edition. As an offshoot of the 'Acceptable in the '80s' series, we are dipping into the work of the 'Eavy Metal painters of this period. There had been a period of change for the figure painters, and things were certainly much more organised than when Colin Dixon was first employed. If you recall, Colin was the original full time miniature painter, though by the later '80s the department had grown to include a wider group of artists, lead by the very capable Phil Lewis. Andy Craig, the great friend of Oldhammer and this blog, started his career as WD114 was organised for printing, and examples of his early work appear within the articles presented below. He would soon be joined by other '80s painting heroes, such as Tim Prow, Ivan Bartlett and many others. Unoffical members who were friends of the studio, such as Pete Taylor, also has their work showcased during this period.

If Helen of Troy was the face that launched a thousand ships, Phil's Bloodbowl minis must have lauched a thousand spin off teams. Such an iconic collection of minitures, and colour scheme, with many one off conversions. I am currently working with Phil to do an interview about his time at the studio and, hopefully, he will give us a little more information about the creation of the Chaos All Stars.

Steve Mussared's work was famous for the heavy gloss layer of varnish that protected these miniatures. He was an avid gamer and all of his miniatures were painted with gaming in mind. He had an unique style, and I have said it before, back in the '80s you could pick up a mini and name the sculptor and idenify the artist too because there were so many differeing styles. The converted daemon of Nurgle is a particularly memorable model for me. Steve's signiature grey bases really offset the bleached colours on this model.

Chaos never looked so good as it did when the original RoC books were being produced. The range of colours was wild and varied, yet consistant in their own strange way. Here we see many of the models painted for the Lost and the Damned, inlcuding one of Andy's plaguebearers. This, and many of these models, were on display at the Foundrty during the Oldhammer Event. Seeing them in the magazine is nothing compared to the real thing, believe me!

An Tzeentch gets its chance to shine, cracking (as they do) with deeply magical hues. Again, some of these models were on display, and I recall sing that Tzeetch champion among others in the Foundry cabinets.

Quite a varied bunch on this page; Bloodbowl, 40k and Warhammer. Note several of this minis. The Eldar Titan was painted by Andy Craig using his (then) signature yellow and black combination. The 'Kinky' Chaosette also was painted by Andy but he gave the model away to an ex-girlfriend! Opps! Perhaps someone will be lucky enough to discover her again one day! I love the Knights Panther conversion here, obviously made in homage to the famous John Blance painting. 

Another mix of Bloodbowl and Chaos. This page sees a rare glimpse of the '80s Chaos Chariot from the talented minds of the Perry Twins. I love this model. I bought in 1989 and foolishly sold it about 10 years ago. Thankfully, I have since got my self a second version and have painted it up for my Khorne Army!

 

 

Any thoughts or comments on these models. Any memories that you are desperate to share? Please do.

 

Orlygg.