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Fall is here and winter is not far away.

I know this may not seem like much of a challenge for many people on this forum but I find it hard to commit to a painting project and see it through. I have many half finished projects (Crimson Slaughter, 4 Horseman Themed 40K Chaos Lords, Skaven Blood Bowl Team, Chaos Chosen Blood Bowl Team, Tyranids). So in order to force myself to commit and making a promise to have a my current full Death Guard army painted, and fully based by Christmas Morning. In order to do that, I'm forcing myself to finish up my half completed Crimson Slaughter 10 man Warp Talon squad first.

So to lay it all out here is my total Death Guard Force
1 - Mortarion
1- Lord of Contagion
1 - Malignant Plague Castor
7 man - Plague Marine squad
20 - Poxwalkers
1 Noxious Blightbringer
1 Foetid Bloat-Drone

Aside from Mortarion and the Poxwalkers, the rest of the Death Guard are in various stages of paintedness. Mortarion and the Poxwalkers are assembled but not painted.


I wanted to settle on a basing theme for them before I started this so I could be confident they would be fully complete. So did a bit of internet research on snow and ice effects and came up with the following based on internet consensus and my own personal comfort.

- Snow flock, bought from Michaels
- Plain 'ol PVA Glue
- a shallow, container I don't care to wreck with my snow mix
- toothpicks for mixing and spreading around the snow mix
- Rockcandy Crackle Medium for ice effect
- Recollections extra fine glitter (white) from Michaels (it's in the scrap booking section)

Several of the tutorials relied on crushed glass to give the snow effect a sparkle. Lots of warnings about handling it safely, don't get it on skin, etc.... and I thought that seemed rather extreme for getting a little sparkle on the snow effect so after about 15 minutes browsing around Michaels I stumbled across the extra fine white glitter in the scrapbooking section and thought that looked suitably sparkly without near the danger in handling it. So the extra fine white glitter is my substitute for crushed glass.

I started out with pva glue and some torn cork board for rocks, then some grit down around to form the edges of the stream, and of course a frozen over stream running down the middle of the test base. The goals of the test base are

1) acheive realistic snow effect
2) achieve good crackle ice effect
3) have a scene that could look like winter in time for Christmas.


So to start my Death Guard Blog we have the results of my test base for my winter Death Guard.

The ice effect was acheived with a base coat of Ultramarine Blue followed by consecutive dry brushes of Teclis Blue, Temple Guard Blue, and a smidge of White Scar. Then a fairly hefty dose of the Crackle Medium. Left to dry overnight the next day I added Drakenhof Nightshade to help highlight the cracks followed by a light dry brush of White Scar to rough up the edges of the ice and make it look a little worn.


The Snow effect was 2 Parts PVA glue to 1 Part Snow effect. I'm ballparking that. I kept adding glue until I got a slightly glue-like paste consistancy. Mixed up and then spread on with a toothpick. I used a rolling action with the tooth pick to get mounds of snow in spots so that it looked like fluffy, undisturbed snow. After I got the snow down where I was happy with it I added a sprinkle of snow effect on top to add a little extra fluff and then a sprinkle of the extra fine glitter to give the snow that sparkle. The result was immediate and made my quite happy for a first effort.


Lessons learned: the snow effect will shrink somewhat as the glue dries. I had initally had a band of snow right at the edge of the base but it shrank away from the edge as it dried leaving a little gap between the snow and edge of the base I'm not happy with. I need to pay attention to the shrinkage factor when laying down my snow for reals.


Start off with a Top Down view of the base



Decent view of the snow mounds




The snow sparkle looks pretty good in this shot. Internet consensus said to used crushed glass, but I think the effect is just as good, easier to create, and safer to use with the fine white glitter.

You can also pretty easily see where the snow shrank away from the edge as it dried. When I laid it down it was flush with the edge of the base but left a noticeable gap I'm not happy with after it dried.







Next up will by my lord of contagion for next week

Now that's a gorgeous snow base. Personally I like the snow not making a rind around the edge. From the snowless areas in the middle it looks like the snow's patchy. If there's a ring of unbroken snow around the outside then it leaves me wondering why it's melted in just this little patch...

Already well behind schedule but I have been batch painting a lot of what I have yet to show. First up though is my Lord of Contagion on his snow/ice base, X-mas base

Some 3/4 view shots to see the model and base together. Still have to clean up the sides of the base. Based on some comments I got from another forum I toned down the blue in the ice to get a more grayish blue ice colour. I'm still debating whether I should whiten it up further or if this is a decent colour or not. Please let me know.




Front View


And back view

Wanted to share some In Progress painting of Mortarion. He's about 95% base coated and ready for some shading next, followed with a few layers and final highlights. I'm a super slow painter. It's taking me over 12 hours to get to this point.



I have been hesitant to touch the wings yet aside from a base coat of zandri dust. I'm still looking at some online tutorials on wing painting. I'm planning on freehanding some designs on the wings at some point

Okay, so waaaaaay behind schedule. I just got completely stuck on Mortarion's wings. I re-did the wings 3 times. Couldn't get it right at all and just just disappointed with myself that I couldn't paint what I envisioned so I walked away for several months.

After the break and sat back down, came up with a different design for the wings (one I felt was within my skill set to achieve and then I went with that. So After many, many longs months, and hours of painting, repainting, and basing Mortarion is finally done and I feel like I can move with the rest of my Death Guard army painting.

So without further ado here are some completed pictures of Mortarion on a snow/ice base.

Good job, I like the way the wings turned out. I've been procrastinating getting my own Mortarion done.

Updated with my finished Plagueburst Crawler. Left the weapon options off. Still getting painted. But wanted to show the bulk of the model

Some wintery Myphetic Blight Haulers I recently finished up for everyone