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Lookin good there Azazel

Great fine work on the tattoos! nice designs and easily distinguished as what they are meant to be, the circular one on the veteran dwarf is great!

All I can say is.. dem tats!

Yeah the tats are incredible.

EDC

It does look better with the larger base. Nice work as usual : )

Nice dwarf And goblins. I do hope you keep them well separated at night? Would ate for the dwarfs to be picking on the gobbos.

Thanks guys - I've really got to get back to my ogres soon. There's enough exposed skin on them to really go to town with the tattoos. At the moment there aren't quite enough Dwarves of Gobboes to really make a lot of trouble, but I'm working on rectifying that sooner rather than later by bumping both to at least being ally-sized contingents for KoW...

Heh and then small army size, large amy size true horde size.........

Exactly!

Its a never ending horrible cycle of acquisition and paint. But with the quality of your painting it is a joyful cycle to watch. I think those dwarfs are some of my favorites of your work thus far.

Thanks Archer - I appreciate the kind words.

My final entry for May in the painting challenge. Not to be confused with the "update" - the 2015 End Times/Age of Sigmar model: Neferata, Mortarch of Blood. This is the original model, circa 1999-2000. Sculpted by either Colin Grayson or perhaps Trish Carden (Morrison) or Aly Morrison, it was released to compliment the first edition of Warhammer Armies: Vampire Counts, for 5th Edition Warhammer Fantasy Battle.



I bought this figure sometime around then to paint as a gift for Marouda. The fact that she came with a cat familiar was a significant factor in doing so. As readers of the blog would know - I like cats. Anyway, fast forward more than a decade, and the figure still had nothing but a base coat of a green dress, and so recently I got off my fat arse and decided to paint and actually finish the pair of them.



I didn't really worry at all about painting Neferata "correctly". My only concern was painting her as a good looking vampire model. Due to her size, she got transferred to a 32mm base. I went for a deep red dress. I considered adding some fancy swirls or the like with silver as embroidery, but I preferred to concentrate on the transition from deep shadow at her feet to a highlight at the hips and breasts. My challenge was highlighting red into "light red" without going into either orange, yellow or pink. I think it actually worked pretty well, actually. Her pale almost-white skin was shaded very slightly with red and purple, though I'm having some contrast issues with these photos as I get to grips with my new camera.



The cat, Bastet, originally had a tiny skull on his forehead which got carved off, to make it a little more cat-like and leave space for Leonard's forehead "star". Bastet has now been taken over and renamed Leonard. The slight satin sheen of the varnish has had a nice (intended) effect on the fur where I'd only highlighted very subtly. Because it's black fur, not grey or white.

Clearly, Neferata will make a perfectly good Vampire Lord for Kings of War, perhaps even using Lady Ilona's profile.



Don't mess with Leonard!

Leonard looks fierce, how did you paint his fur so realistically .

Great work on some WHFB classics, nice that you have been able to break up painting a lot of rank and file with some great character miniatures.

Great stuff! The 6th Ed Vampire Counts were excellent as well.

I like your take on both the vampire and the cat. The transition on the dress is subtle but quite effective.

Good pair of models and I love the real-life link. Always fun to do stuff like that.

I love her skin tone for a Vampire .

Leonard is not one to mess with, surprised you survived that encounter

Thanks guys. Leonard helps me to paint blood very realistically when he gets carried away with "play". Much more realistic than BFTBG...

I finally made myself finish off a couple more of the Minotaurs I've been (not) working on in the past couple of months. Both models are most commonly identified with 40k Second Edition, but actually date to the late stages of Rogue Trader. The Captain "Veteran Captain" is listed in the 1991 catalogue, and the flamer marine to 1993, right around the launch period of 2nd Edition. For a long time, I did my best to purchase and collect every space marine figure, so that means I've had this captain for 25 years. Good thing I've finally painted them, eh? Shame about all of the others I've yet to get to...



Both are painted more or less the same way that the test models were. I got a bit stuck on the colours for the Captain's gemstones, as I want to avoid the use of too many colours on the Minotaurs and keep the overall palette quite Spartan (see what I did there?) Green will be a rare spot colour, with blue only a little more common. Where possible, I'll be keeping the palette to bronze and red, with iron/steel/bone and a touch of yellow for specific markings. I've used a couple of bits of Forge World's Brass Etch on the Captain - the bull's head chapter badges on his Shoulder and also the one on his Bolter.



One original backpack, and one modern one. I've used the modern pack on the flamer marine to help blur the lines between the older models and the more current ones, as they will all be mixed throughout the force - along with armour variant marks from FW and Calth, conversion bits from Anvil, maxmini and Puppetswar, and so on. As can be seen, I've based the pair of them on 32mm bases. They're not exactly filling them out, but even these older marines overhung the 25mm rounds, and I do like the space it gives them.



It's a little hard to see in these photographs, but I've also used a metallic red as a final layer on the Captain model's pauldrons as another point of differentiation between him and his men. Vallejo's Turn Signal Red. I'll also be using him as a Veteran Sergeant, rather than a Captain - mostly due to GW having produced SO many gorgeous captain models over the years, so the eventual commander of this force will be a little more fancy, and it also allows me to get use out of a nice captain figure that would otherwise have sat in an unpainted marines box forever.



When combined with the original test models, I actually have a combat squad worth of painted models. Hurrah! Now to finish off the final four tacticals for this group to make them a full squad.

Some tidy lookin Minotaurs chapter marines

Nice job Mr Azazel

Very nice indeed. Are you planning to paint up a full army of these guys?

That's the plan! Though I've got no idea how big it'll be in the end. To start with there'll be 2 Tactical squads, 1 Devastator squad, a normal Dread, Moloc, Ivanus and Hekaton, some Termies and then ???? (aka requests for someone to help me write up a legal list.)

Some beautiful work on those old 2nd Edition minis. I think I have those two somewhere in Mum & Dad's house still.

I love seeing the older marines done so well Az! really goes to show how decent the classic stuff is still today :-)

I really like the older marines. I especially love them in your Minotaur colours. They look fantastic.

I really like those minotaurs they are neat. One day I might get around to painting the dozens of RT marines that I have been hording in boxes. Well done for making a start!

Still loving the armour colour you have achieved - really nice effect

Minotaurs are looking awesome, I really like the style you've used for them.

Wicked work on the Vampire too, the red dress looks great, but honestly it's the cat that really sold it to me!

EDC

Thanks guys - I need to find some more cat miniatures at some stage. Any ideas on where to find some that are roughly in scale?

I appreciate all the kind feedback on the Minotaurs as well. I've been working on another 8 of them, then I'll do a little on the 5 Devastators that Nerdy kindly sent me recently. I might glue them down to the new 32s now, actually...

reaper probably do cats. I got 5 different types of dog off them anyway. Just seach for familiars on their website and you will get domestic cats. Search for 'cat' and you will probably get cat-men, sabre toothed cats and ligers etc knowing reaper.

What else can I ad but the Minotaurs look gorgeous, so jealous of that brass/bronze you can paint. An army of these will look stunning.

I don't know how it would fit in the miniatures list, but how about painting up the reaper brazen bull
http://www.reapermini.com/OnlineStore/brass/sku-down/77256#detail/IG_4254_1
Even if it was just mounted on top of the command rhino as a statue (since they are very gothicy and honored by the high lords of terra).