Saturday 31 August 2019

Little Prick the wizard

The other day I stumbled on these two wizards I painted several years ago when Frostgrave was released. Somehow I never showed them here.
Little Prick the wizard and his apprentice, Warwick W. Widget.

Any similarity of the halfling with Willow, George Lucas' 80's fantasy movie lead character, is purely coincedental. 

Willow was played by Warwick Davis of course, who also played Wicket the Ewok in Return of the Jedi.  My first Starwars action figure, incidentally. For mysterious reasons he was called Wicket W. Warrick on the Kenner Toys blister pack.

Don't know about you guys, but I thought it was so funny to call the halfling like this, it had me giggle for days.

I'll be rationing my blog posts the coming months because this year's edition of the Lead Painters League is coming up. This means I will be painting teams that will not be shown before published on the Lead Adventure Forum for the contest.  

EDIT: I dug up my old Mordheim buildings and scenery from 1999. Touched them up a bit with spraycans and contrast paint. 


Tuesday 27 August 2019

Dark Fantasy Warriors

If you've read my other posts on this blog you may have noticed I've been a big Copplestone fan for many years. I loved his 40K and Bloodbowl miniatures at the time but when his Future Warriors were released I was just blown away.

When Mark Copplestone left Citadel around 1990, he joined Grenadier and sculpted many of the hot new Fantasy Warriors line. Interestingly his style became much more realistic compared to say, his earlier Bloodbowl players and Chaos Warriors, while Citadel entered the crude and chunky Red Period.

Recent chats and various blogs about Blanchitsu, grimdark Mordheim and AoS28, reminded me I still had some unpainted Fighting Men that could be darkened up.
These were the Grenadier equivalent of Warhammer Empire or Bretonnia. In reality they are historical Wars of the Roses miniatures.
Funny thing is there were no lush magazine pictures of painted examples around at the time.These Fighting Men were nice but boring I always thought.
Retrofitting grimdark Blanche-esque neogothic techniques kind of changes everything.

I did  a deep red armour with contrast paint to approach old school chaos warriors or a vampire lord.

 Evil Jeanne Le Noir is a Bob Naismith sculpt.
For the rusty armour I've been trying out GW contrast medium mixed with pigment rich Vallejo military paints. a drybush with gun metal  and a second layer of medium with black paint. A final  higlight of silver and a bit of rust paint on the swords.

Tuesday 6 August 2019

The Western Lands

It must be the heat, but I'm totally into Dracula's America western stuff. Not just dusty Sergio Leone imagery but also Acid Westerns like Jodorowsky's El Topo and Dead Man by Jim Jarmush. I should watch Blueberry too again, actually. I vaguely remember it was pretty good.
I settled for "the Western Lands" as a working title for this project, after the W.S. Burroughs novel.

In any case I've been painting more miniatures the last few days. 

This is King Rat. Sculpted by Mark Copplestone in the early 2000's I think. Based on the title character of China Mieville's book but in victorian dress. I imagine King Rat has crossed the Atlantic from England to America to track down Count Dracula for revenge or to settle an old debt. Taking out any vampire, necromancer or harbringer on his path.

I absolutely love this sculpt. It's a bit bigger than the usual 28mm miniature but just look at his face:

Following are these two zombies. On the left 'Dead' Iggy Jenko. On the right an old Grenadier 'Fantasy Classics' zombie Copplestone sculpt.

Iggy is done with a black undercoat, highlighted with GW Wraitbone and painted with Contrast paint.
The coat became a bit grimdark Blanchitsu in the process.