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Just a quick one today, a Druid type (actually the old LotR Radagast!) that started out as the mini equivalent of a sketch, just me messing around with some ideas with no intention of finishing or showing off the model. He came together quite nicely though, so I finished it off with a few final touchups and took a couple of pics. Nothing too fancy, but I think the colours fit together rather well.


Currently trying to 'learn' how Primaris work... Having painted a few hundred regular Marines over the years, it's really weird to make the switch; they're the same general shape that I'd normally paint on autopilot, but everything is just 'wrong' enough to make my muscle memory useful... They certainly seem to lend themselves to a cleaner look with the larger amount of sharp lines/less flat panels, but I'll figure it out.... eventually!

Beautiful work Paradigm. As always!

I love that model, and you've done it justice! Very nice work indeed!

Brilliant as usual, but have to add, wonderful colour scheme, just so perfect.

Cheers chaps.

New stuff! A trio of Primaris Marines from the Easy-To-Build set as I wanted a nice cheap way to experiment with the new models. As such, I've taken a different stylistic approach on each one to see what works and what doesn't.

First up, a stock Intercessor in Ultramarine colours. The armour on this one is mainly worked up through drybrushes and glazes, which gives it quite a nice semi-sheen under the grime.


Next up, an Iron Hands lieutenant, in the metallic black look I tend to use on Deathwatch. I'm not convinced this works that well on Primaris Marines, something about it doesn't work quite as well on MkX armour, might be the larger, flatter panels don't take the wash as well.


Leaving what I think is the best til last, a Blood Ravens captain. Much more traditional method here, basically just basic layers and washes with weathering over the top of it all. I like the overall look though.


To be perfectly honest, these are probably going to be the only Primaris I paint any time soon, I don't really see that they offer much over the last couple of generations of regular Marine kits like the Deathwatch, Veterans, Space Wolves ect. as far as painting/converting opportunities go. This was a fun experiment, but probably won't amount to anything more than that, I'm not really a Primaris convert.

Speaking of Regularis Marines, here's a quick one I threw together from parts, a Lone Wolf done as a bit of a step back into my usual territory after the recent experiments with different types of stuff, while I think about what's up next. Nothing particularly special, though I do think the conversion has a nice amount of character.


Anyways, that's all for now, any thoughts welcome! Ta for looking!

As a fan of grungy models, I do like how you marry the sm aesthetic with muck. Putting the grim back in the grimdark

What paint did you use on that Iron Hand? Vallejo makes a good metallic paint called gunmetal that is so dark, it's nearly black. It still has the metallic shinyness to it though and even has a slightly bluish tint. Hit that stuff with a black wash and it looks like a metallic black. It's what I used on my Shadow Keeper Custodes. It might work well for your Iron Hands guy, too.

inmygravenimage wrote:As a fan of grungy models, I do like how you marry the sm aesthetic with muck. Putting the grim back in the grimdark

That's the plan!

Barzam wrote:What paint did you use on that Iron Hand? Vallejo makes a good metallic paint called gunmetal that is so dark, it's nearly black. It still has the metallic shinyness to it though and even has a slightly bluish tint. Hit that stuff with a black wash and it looks like a metallic black. It's what I used on my Shadow Keeper Custodes. It might work well for your Iron Hands guy, too.

It's my usual drybrush silver> splodge on colours> wash black method. To clarify, it's more the artistic side that's bugging me, I think the technique is fine (I love how it looks on regular marines and termies), I'm just not sure it translates well to Primaris armour which seems to play better with sharper highlights and smoother shades, the metal look loses something to my eye for whatever reason.

I enjoy your gritty style.I think the blood raven turned out best. Followed by the Ultra.

More Marine! It's been slow going on the painting front as I'm spending most of my hobby time running a weekly DnD game at the moment, but I have got something done. This month's challenge entry, Cato Sicarius.




Keen-eyed observers will notice a few differences between this and the stock model, mainly as a result of me getting a metal version dirt cheap second hand but missing the head, pistol hand and backpack. Being a) a good price and b) not Finecast, I figured it was worth it, and just patched it up with a few spare bits. On the whole, I think he still looks the part. Not entirely pleased with the end result paint-wise, as I've always really liked this mini/character and I'm not sure I've entirely done him justice. At this point though, I've spent so long tweaking and not making any actual improvements so I think I have to call it a day.

In any case, cheers for looking, and do let me know what you think! And stay tuned for something a little different coming up (probably) next week...

I, Cato Sicarius, am going to guess that you will paint a Bounty Hunter next because I, Cato Sicarius, am all-knowing.


He looks great. Unfortunately, the way you've highlighted his face makes him look like a genestealer.

This is a gargantuan hobby blog of pure glory!

Sicarius is ace, and good luck with the DnD stuff. I saw this awesome video the other day of this guy who's been running the same DnD game for thirty-five years. Pretty incredible stuff!

Cato is looking quite nice. I like your grim take on the Ultramarines.

You should use your D&D game to drive your hobby. Plenty of minis to put down for a fight. And at the rate you paint, you could get each weeks encounter painted and ready to TPK by game night. I know we used to heavily borrow from my WHFB armies for out games. It helped that I played undead and chaos, so villeins abound.

Cheers guys!

@Ember: Close, but no cigar on the guess, I'm afraid!

Point taken on the face, he is a bit ruddier than I intended. I painted the head separately and it looked fine, but once I stuck it on the body the red cloak and dark armour do darken it a lot. Not
much I can do about it now, it's hard to reach past the gorget and put some more highlights in.

 Nevelon wrote:

You should use your D&D game to drive your hobby. Plenty of minis to put down for a fight. And at the rate you paint, you could get each weeks encounter painted and ready to TPK by game night. I know we used to heavily borrow from my WHFB armies for out games. It helped that I played undead and chaos, so villeins abound.

As we play online mostly and I tend to DM with rather abstract combat rather than going for exact distances*, we don't really use minis, otherwise that would be a good excuse. I do intend to paint up a representation of the Party at some point, though we have a Tiefling Warlock I'm struggling to find a decent mini for (there's one in the WizKids 'Nolzur's Marvellous Minis' range but he doesn't quite have the right look, and I'm not sure about the quality of those models as it's hard to find decent pics online).


*Basically, as far as I'm concerned things are either in 'I can hit it' range, 'I can move and hit it' range or 'I can move, and will need to move again before I hit it' range. Much simpler than grids when we're playing over a video call.

Interesting that you are staying away from the Primaris side of things (and I totally get where you’re coming from there). Your Regularis (nice wordplay bye!) works are lovely jubbly anyway sir.

For me, I’m in the interesting place of having very few Marines in my collection, so a few Primaris will be fun as ‘real’ sized Marines for tiny skirmishes and random fluffery in general.

Great stuff. Like everyone else, loving the dark vibe

Loads of awesome stuff since I was last on Para. Especially like the raven guard survivor and the bust.

Your work is just so inspirational. Fantastic bud.

Would love to see your take on the 8th Legion Paradigm! Think your style would really suit their aesthetic.

A grizzled Heresy veteran in particular.

I, CATO SICARIUS APPROVE THIS POST!

Great work Para

Thanks all! Apologies for the lack of updates, I have been painting but haven't got round to taking many pics recently. I'll see about getting some of my recent minis photographed over the next few days, as there have been quite a few.

Pics of painted stuff!

First off, somewhat late but alluded to in my last update (which, blimey, was a month ago!), The Law. There's been a lot of Underhive scum running around recently, and someone has to step in and clean up the streets. Enter the Adeptus Arbites!



Built mostly from Anvil Industries Regiments range (I can do a full parts list if anyone wants one) with Skitarii heads and a couple of 40k weapons. Another testament to the amazing versatility of Anvil's output, any range that can do not-Vostroyans one month and not-Arbites the next has a lot going for it. They're also doing a KS for some not-Sisters at the moment which are looking superb, so I probably ought to give that a shoutout. Check their N&R thread for more on that.


And back to my old stomping grounds, a couple of different flavours of Space Marine, the products of some bits box raiding while I was back home over Easter.

First off, and definitely my favourite of the two, a Wolf Lord from various Grey Hunter/Thunderwolf Rider bits. I often struggle to make my preferred grey scheme for Wolves pop, but I think it does here thanks to having a bit more detail to work with than most.


And finally, a Dark Angels veteran that again just got put together from various bits and bobs (actually a lot of Anvil on this one as well now I think about it). Nothing too special, but I quite like the more beat-up dark green armour.



That's all for now, I've got the other half of the Arbites patrol in the works and I need to think of something to do for this month's challenge as well, so there should be another update relatively soon! In the mean time, thanks for looking, any thoughts welcome.

Incidentally, since I'm at a bit of a dead end paint-wise at the moment, does anyone have anything they'd really like to see me tackle? I'm trying to push my horizons at the moment but with a fairly limited budget, but if anyone has any suggestions I'm all ears.

All kinds of lovely. Paint some grimy Gotham now!

To be honest, there probably won't be any Batman for a while. I did go in for the Monolith KS so next year there'll be a ton of Gothamy goodness, but there was so much in there that nearly anything I could get from KM in the mean time would just be doubling up... I tended to paint my KM stuff as I got it, so there's not really any in the backlog at the moment either.

Nice work Para... love the Arbites squad.

That green armor on the Dark Angel is so dark it hardly looks green, at least to me. He does look like he's been through some serious combat, though. Love the Arbites squad, too. I wish they'd make some official models of them, maybe as a "gang" for Necromunda (with different type of objectives compared to the actual gangs).

I absolutely love the "Batter up!" pose the guy with the maul has. Great looking squad.

Thanks guys.

@Zerg: The armour definitely is green, though it is rather dark and there's a lot of weathering layered over the top. I believe Enforcers are coming to Necromunda at some point, but I'm impatient at the best of times, so I built these guys instead!

The Enforcers are absolutely top notch. Your style is so suited to the gritty nature of Necromunda and Inquisitors. I really like the Wold Lord too.

The use of the face paint is an interesting move. I would like to do red face paint on a Spacewolf army to represent Kjarl Grimbloods great companies habit of marking there helmets and faces with red if they have killed something with fire. But I am hesitant of obscuring the face. You have done well.

 Archer wrote:
Your style is so suited to the gritty nature of Necromunda.

Hmm... you might want to keep an eye on the blog over the next couple of weeks in that case..

The use of the face paint is an interesting move. I would like to do red face paint on a Spacewolf army to represent Kjarl Grimbloods great companies habit of marking there helmets and faces with red if they have killed something with fire. But I am hesitant of obscuring the face. You have done well.

Full disclosure, the face paint is at least in part a product of me screwing up part of the face itself, and needing something to obscure the mess! However, there is a bit more thought to it than that. The choice of blue was a deliberate one as while red might be thematically appropriate, I use a lot of reds/purples/browns while shading the faces, so the contrast would be a lot weaker. Using a cold, almost icy blue over the warm skin tones helps it stand out more, and as a bonus, ties the Frost Axe into the rest of the model (same with the blue plasma glow) and helps the whole thing look a bit more coherent.

So if you're wanting to use a red face paint, I'd suggest experimenting with a colder skin tone, not quite into Dark Elf territory but mixing in some blues/pinks rather than reds/purples into the skin tones. You need the contrast, otherwise it looks like you just splashed paint across the mini's face by accident.