164 Can you tell what it is yet?

Quick and nasty WIP shot of my latest piece for the Legion of Undead. Very fiddly!

162 Hoarding the Horde

I cannot express how happy I am with these models. They have been such a pleasure to paint, nice detail, easy style and great opportunity to go to the max if you so desire.

Spearmen and Black Knights mobbing together.They gel together really well, liking my standard "scab red" theme! :-)

You can really picture these guys charging across the field shrouded in mist and screaming ghosts and spectral horrors!

Still some work to do on the banner but I will come back to it I think.

The only issue with all of these is that they are quite fragile. Quite a few times I have had to stick arms or shields or legs back on!

161 Of Blackest Night (Black Knights)

Bases and some small detailing to go and these knights are done. Another nice and simple paint scheme on some lovely models.

As with their spearman brothers I found these quite spindly and will have to be careful with them to avoid breakages.

I went with a spectral helm for the leader to give me some link to the Spectral Nighthaunts I hope to do soon.

Something negative I need to put out there is that where these models are made to give you two options from the one kit I do think it means the fit on both types is a little iffy.

Some in progress shots showing how easy the skeleton horses are to get done and look effective. The same as with the spearmen, just a white undercoat and a good coat of Seraphim Sepia.

157 The Restless Dead

A full ten Skeleton Spearmen completed now. So simple to do! Knocked about five in a couple of ours, from sprue to painted.

I didnt try and do anything too special as I want them quite plain to let the Characters and other "creatures" stand out all the better.

I need to decide on the bases but a little experiment I did with Stirland Mud was less than inspiring.

And now the Black knights are rising up to join the Horde. This is a little wip of me trying to figure out how to make the colours work. Again going for all Bronze and trying to avoid any steel or iron looking metals.

I really want this guys to look like Knight of Old dragged from their barrows to fight again.

156 Bone Test (Skeleton Test Model)

Just a quick and dirty post today, I have been testing out a couple of ideas for my skeletons and while the photos dont do it a great deal of justice I think it works.

My bronze I am very happy with, it looks lovely and old!

The bones are white base coat washed with seraphim sepia with a touch of ushabti bone in places on top which I think works well.

155 Skeleton Horde!

Christmas brought me something good so I will be expanding my legion of the Undead somewhat this year! I have not decided yet quite how I will make this set up, Arkan possibly I think but we will see.

Plans for the type of bone is well underway, and I am currently errring towards a more traditional GW style of agrax over the top of a corax white but I have seen a lot of good things from zandri dust bases and others so I will probably do some tests first.

134 The Last King to Rise

Got my final Tomb King done and dusted over the weekend. He fits quite well with the gang but I have taken a slightly different style with him; going for a more corroded metal with nikilth (??) oxide to get a corroded brass look.

I stuck with the Dark Angels Green for the cloth (thats old paint) and general boney colours for the wraps and ribbons.

I tried to keep his shield front brighter as if he has carried on a memory to polish it as a reminder of his past.

I now need to decide on the basing style, whether to stay with squares or go round....

105 The Tomb King is Dead, Long Live the Tomb King?

It looks like Settra the Imperishable has finally perished and the whole of the Tomb Kings line is going with him. Sad times.

GW has put the entire Tomb Kings line on the "last chance to buy" list and wont be renewing it. I think the writing is on the wall for a lot of the "uncopyrightable" IP from WHFB and that Tomb Kings are just the first to bite it. We have already seen the Dwarfs changing drastically in form from where they were in WHFB and I think that is just going to continue with the other lines, either transformed or cut completely.

I must admit I splashed some cash to get Settra and a few other pieces when I first saw the news and popped back on a few days later to have a think about getting a few more to find that most of them were already sold out. Trust me to be getting into a line just as its being discontinued!

In other undead news I have been continuing on with my character models and am quite pleased with how my Tomb King himself is progressing. (I was panicking at one point because to be honest I thought I had cocked it up!)

I am going with the Gold/Bronze coupled with the dark green and cream/parchment colours and quite getting the feel of it now.

099 Continuing the Tomb Kings

I finally got round to putting some more paint on a Tomb Kings model! Ok this was mostly an excuse to break away from painting red and white on my Napoleonics but hey give me a break!

I had originally planned to tie the colours of my Tomb Kings and Vampire Counts together so that both would work when side by side but having seen my Prince Apophas end up all green I thought I should try and carry on that scheme through the Tomb Kings as a whole.

To be honest I am not sure yet, the one additional character model I have completed (do I ever really finish a model??) doesn't really scream success to me but I can see that it would work.

I experimented with different gold/bronze this time round to see what would work, I even tried some of the technical paints to see if I could make corroded bronze work but I think I didn't put enough effort in so you can hardly tell its there at all.

The Tomb priest itself provided a bit of a quandary to me in the end with regards to his skin. I wanted to avoid a weathered fleshy look as it would take away from the already pale bandages et al so I thought I would go proper dark mummified look but I am not sure I pulled it off. Maybe I need to add in some brown tones rather than just the grey/blacks....

077 A Pop Fuss!

Found a little bit of time this week to work on something a little different and I finally put some colour to Prince Apophas.

I started off with a black base coat and then built up some ancient ancient Dark Angels green, and some washes of the new green wash whose name escapes me completely...

You can even see I used the pop as my model holder this time round :-)

I went for green colouring to the scarabs just because it seemed a suitable colour for the bugs.... right up until my wife asked me what they were and when I said scarabs she said "well why didn't you paint them blue??" hmmmmm a quick google shows yes, most of the world and the 'Eavy Metal team chose a blue colour..... Oh well

I have started with a bronze colouring on the details of the head and shoulder. Not sure yet if I am going to pick out more colour or stay with a all bronzy/gold with some degree of corrosion.

074 A few tweaks

The necromancer got a couple of details finished off today, not a massive update but a little WIP.

072 Necro Post

Some progress was also made back on the necromancer, this is quite a cool little mini with some great potential for conversion work so I may have to invest in another one or two.

I am experimenting a little with skin tones, at the moment he is a little (ok a lot) too dark but if you dont try you dont know!

sepia wash over everything was another little experiment; conclusion? Looks good on the reds and browns... looks absolute crap on the black, just made it a streaky mess....

I need to figure out a good way to do grain texture on the staff/crook. I have seen some good paint jobs on it but dont have a clue how they have done it. Just a very steady hand and small brush??

069 New Acquisitions - Beyond Death

This model seen so much use, it’s incredible. You can hardly look at the internet without seeing a conversion that uses this model as its basis; Inquisitors, henchmen, adeptus mechanicus, you name it this model has probably been used for it!

That great hunched over shape and easy attachment for a variety of heads make it great for the grimdark.

I decided for my first use of it I would go with something more traditional and keep him as a straight forward Cairn Wraith.

I little bit of green stuff is all that’s needed to just fill in the connecting between the two back pieces.

I have yet to decide how I will “muddy up” his robe. Not sure whether to go for some sort of ethereal glow or just graveyard dirt effects.

054 Its Alive!!!

Hmmmm, ok thats from Frankenstein and this is more a Necromancer but its early hours and I couldn't think of something witty!

Progress snaps on the Necromancer; a little slow and I am bothered about the colours. I tried for something along the lines of the Wight but I am not sure the model suits it. Might have to go darker or dirtier I think.

Still coming to grips with the new GW paints, not really found a boney, fleshy colour I like yet.