Summoning Up Motivation

Every so often, there's a blog post where I'm genuinely chuffed with every single element of it.

This is one of them.

First up is a Daemon Prince for my 40k Tzeentch Daemons. It's made with the basic (and surprisingly affordable for GW) plastic kit, with only a small bit of kitbashing to give it a bird head from the Burning Chariot kit (along with a tongue made from a Screamer tentacle), to make it more reminiscent of a Lord of Change.

I went with a sword and malefic talon as its armaments as I didn't want it to be too 40k looking, so that it could do double duty in games like 7TV: Fantasy.

Arguably, I made a couple of mistakes with the sword arm. I could have chosen the other option which wouldn't have the blade almost tangled with the wings, and I accidentally left chunky mould lines on it, and only really noticed them after I'd finished the skin.

However, despite being nervous about it, I took the plunge to scrape the lines off after the fact, and fix the skin. It worked.

In terms of painting, the skin was done with a base of Grey Seer, a was of Drakenhof Nightshade and a heavy drybrush of Blue Horror.

The claws and beak were done with Ushabti Bone and Skeleton Horde, the loincloth is Flesh Tearers Red and an Emperor's Children highlight. The gold is Retributor Armour with an Agrax Earthshade wash.

The wings were actually done first with Black Templar contrast paint over Grey Seer. I then did a drybrush of Adminstratum Grey and drenched them with Drakenhof Nightshade when I was doing the skin, to tie them to the overall blue of the rest of the model.

I'm really pleased with this model. I've not done something this size (barring WW2 tanks) for some time, and I really enjoyed it. He's a suitably impressive leader for my army until a potentially even bigger bird materialises.

These standing stones are from a Mantic Terrain Crate I picked up half price for my birthday. I've said it before, that the chunkier contents of the Terrain Crates are really good pieces and these are no exception.

Done simply, with a dark grey base coat and a light grey drybrush, these are likely to show up in all sorts of games: pulp, fantasy, superhero, sci-fi and so on.

The beacon is from the same set and is equally chunky and good. I can see it being used in my burgeoning Rohan village for Lord of the Rings.

The flames were done simply with a heavy wash of Cassandora Yellow over white. I appreciate that the flames are backwards and the orangey reds should be on the out parts of the flames. However, I actually like the cartoony look of the flames, so I'm leaving it as is.

A fun element of the beacon is the fact that the flames are removable, which makes this a useful interactive piece of terrain for scenarios.

I've really enjoyed this batch of painting, and I think I'm on my way out of the slump.

In terms of my tallies, I'm only counting the beacon and flames as a single model, but that's still six more in the painted pile. However, on the last post I forgot to add three Doctor Who miniatures my daughter bought me.

Acquired: 81

Painted: 73