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Nice bike

 Boss Salvage wrote:
As great / ridiculous as the freehand art is, I can't get over the veiny exhaust pipes Great / disturbing eye for detail there!

EDIT: Looks like I never complimented you on how well the gaunt legs work for that daemonette, or how kaiju-tastic the gaunt body is as that possessed's head

Thanks. That daemonette is a bit of a favourite - I even had a look at the hormagaunt set to see how well it'd work for more of them, but turns out most of them don't have the semi-upright stance the free-mini-of-the-month one did, I don't think they'd take to a humanoid torso that well. Fun fact about those exhausts, I did briefly contemplate having, well, let's just say 'a white substance' spraying out the back, I'd like to say I decided against it out of good taste, but in fact it was that there's so little base behind the bike there wouldn't be room for an exhaust trail that looked like it'd been expelled at speed, it'd have just looked like it was dribbling down onto the ground directly below the exhaust as if it was stationary.

 FeindusMaximus wrote:
Nice bike

Thanks

So, this month's painting contest space marine - to recap, during February I was browsing through a PDF of the Book of the Astronomicon and noticed 'Brother Lustgarten' on one of the ad pages (fifth row, far right):

Naturally the name caught my attention, and on googling I found out that the same mini had originally been advertised as 'Brother Quiff', so that was enough for me to ditch my previous idea for March (I picked up that 'armour through the ages' made-to-order a while back and haven't painted any of them yet) and bring Brother Quiff out of obscurity and into the present.



Primaris Lieutenant as the basic miniature, with hair grafted on from a daemonette - I didn't initially mean to go that big with the hair, I was thinking more something along the lines of the original mini's battle mullet, but I spotted the head in my bits box and now here we are; the hair's actually flowing sideways on the daemonette, but once she'd been scalped that wasn't an issue, although getting the top/back of the Lieutenant's head in just the right shape to line up with the hair without big obvious gaps was a bit of a struggle; I ended up favouring the left side for lining up the pieces since it's the viewing angle of the mini, so the right's a bit off, but never mind. Despite all the weapon options in the Lieutenant set I stuck to the basic bolter on Quiff's original mini. So that was a long wait through February to get started on him - although I put the time to good use, I've gotten back to working on my Sonic Obliterator, and now I've largely solved the 'what colour is that bit going to be?' issue that was stalling me I might be finishing that in the next couple of months.

That is a Bringers of Wonder helmet on the base, I decided they'd be honoured to be killed by Brother Quiff (and probably masochistically get off on being killed anyway) - although I do wonder how exactly the back of the helmet's got room to be buried like that since presumably the stone eagle continues underground... I don't have a lot of dusty paint colours - not a lot of call for them with Slaanesh - so I made do with various dark flesh tones instead. For Quiff himself, besides the blue-with-red-stripes hair from the original (I slimmed the red down to just a single stripe on each side) I got out my 3rd edition Space Marine codex with its Crimson Fists cover art as a guide, although the chest wings on those were quite bright, which I initially copied, but then decided I liked the steel look on other depictions of the Fists' chest wings, and darkened the white back down with a coat of Space Wolves Grey contrast. But the 3rd ed codex provided the green laurel wreath (on the lead marine's chestplate on the art) instead of the gold used on the Primaris Lieutenant's promo photos, the fist-with-lightning-bolts army badge on the left knee (it's on another chest plate on the codex), and just visible on one marine on the cover, the troop type icon being a pale blue outline, rather than the same kind of red-icon-inside-a-red-circle design as the chapter logo - I thought the different style would be more fun, and also given the name badge (which I just barely managed to get his name onto) there's not a lot of room left on the right shoulder. On the occasions when I've been painting Primaris minis in loyalist colours (either half-converted marines, or captives) I've been using grey plus a black wash for the underlying bodysuit, rather than the bronze-plus-agrax I do on my Legionaries, to make them different and a little more advances - in this case I decided to extend that to all 'metal' areas, so the techy bits of the backpack, the bionic eye (neatly echoing the original mini's eyepatch), and the underside of the bolter, with a light grey highlight (which I don't bother with on the bodysuit) to make them stand out a little - so kind of accidentally my first real effort at non-metallic metal, and I think it turned out pretty well.

So that was a lot of fun - as was a White Consul I did not long ago, I'll show him off here sometime when I get around to it - and as a result, I've been thinking it'd be nice to paint some more classic chapters, just as one-offs; I'm kind of thinking it'd be more satisfying if each one was a particular character (not necessarily a canon character, just each mini having a particular 'thing' that defines it, like Quiff here recreating the old mini), so future loyalist minis may have to wait for individual inspirations to strike, rather than just me buying a box of Primaris Interocitors or whatever the hell they're calling Tacticals nowadays and doing each a different colour, but I expect more loyalist marines will turn up in time.

As I've mentioned before, back in 2nd/3rd edition I played loyalist marines, the Furies chapter - and having just said I wouldn't go buy a box of Primaris marines just because Brother Quiff was fun, I went and bought a box of Primaris marines, and among other concepts (which I'll post when they're done) I had an idea: what if I painted one as a Furies marine, but starting from scratch inventing the colour scheme anew, rather than just copying my 90s colours (which were red because I started painting the 2nd edition tacticals as Blood Angels to go with my Space Hulk Terminators, then decided I wanted them to be 'mine' and painted black over the helmets to make a new chapter). So here's the result, along with the Furies. previous incarnations:



Starting from, obviously, when I got 2nd edition (which would've been 1996 or so) - I do have better examples even of the old monopose tacticals, I just picked what was obviously baby's first paint job to get the full range of 'styles' here. Not 100% sure where the backpack's gone, it may be debris on a base for one of the warband now. Next, 1998, third edition, and I'd discovered both ink washes (which accounts for the shininess, those things didn't dry matte back then) and highlighting - although at the time I didn't highlight the black casing on the boltguns, which I remember led to one of the GW staffers back then giving me a points penalty in the campaign the store was running for 'unfinished paint job', which I felt was a bit harsh. Next, early 2000s sometime, the store had a show-off-your-homebrew-chapter event, so I made a custom marine, using armour parts from a bike and an Eldar Guardian backpack, plus the high-collar 'errant' torso in the 3rd edition sprue, to make what I guess would be a heavy intercessor or something today; also tweaked the colours a bit, changing the blue eyes to red, losing the black helmet, and having bone instead of black on the shoulder trim. Next up, my entry for last year's marine month here - back to black trim, but I went with just the face of the helmet black rather than the whole thing, although mainly since with it sitting on the ground if it'd been all-black it would've looked like it belonged to someone else. I used a varnish to recreate the old ink wash gloss, and in hindsight I probably could've ditched that part, I'd done a fairly restrained set of highlights on the armour and all the reflections from the gloss obscures most of them. And yes, they were lady marines from the start, what else did you expect from me.

And finally the reboot version - black since I ditched the old Blood Angels red, although still with a bit of a crimson tinge, both as a nod to the old version, and because while the Furies are more associated with black in Greek mythology (that's what wikipedia tells me anyway), they did wear red when they showed up in Xena, and that's an important primary source too. Their old backstory was a cavalcade of heroic clichés, I imagine the reboot version would be much more akin to Legion of the Damned - they're not supernatural (or whatever the LotD are), but they do the same 'show up out of nowhere, kick ass, leave without explaining themselves to anyone' thing, with virtually nobody knowing what the deal is, except that somebody high up in the Inquisition's sealed their file and put a big 'not heretics, let them do their thing' stamp on it.

I'm absolutely not going to do an army of them though, all that edge highlighting (and the new Furies scheme has two layers of it) is even more of a chore than the spiky trim on chaos; the only way I'm getting through the Primaris box is that each of them is their own colour scheme, which helps keep it feeling somewhat fresh.

This month's contest entry for Let's Finish This - I started out with the goal of finishing nine miniatures (all in various states of progress at the start of the month) to complete my 2k list, but by the time these five were getting their final touches I was feeling a bit tired of legionary-type sculpts, and since pushing on regardless would just mean I'd start rushing just to be rid of them (and I had five minis done, which is all I needed, and they did finish off the Chosen) I called it a day and put the others aside for a later day. Anyway, here's the final five members of the Servants of Bliss, my list's 10-strong Chosen unit:



All with a head on a spike mounted on their backpack, that's how I distinguish Chosen from the regular Legionaries, since my Legionaries also have mutations and funky wargear.

Starting from the left, the obvious solution to Chosen being able to have bolters and plasma pistols at the same time, because I feel like it's okay to have a bolt pistol just chilling in a holster but a plasma pistol is Important and should be more easily visible on the mini. I'm kind of surprised that worked as well as it did, I just sliced the round top off the shoulder of the lower arm, mounted it low, and sliced the upper shoulder to fit, it's really just luck that it doesn't look more awkward. The shoulder pad has Leda and the Swan painted on it (vaguely), which seemed appropriate for Slaanesh since they'd be okay with a) lack of consent (in most versions of the tale) and b) banging an overgrown goose. The trophy helmet's a genuine RTB01 beakie, painted in the colours of the Shadow Falcons - that was a homebrew chapter that won a couple of Golden Demons in the 90s in squad categories and got featured in White Dwarf as a result, and was a really striking design, so... okay having your head stuck on a spike is kind of a backhanded compliment, but it's the thought that counts.

Next up, starting from a Possessed body - my squad of five Possessed only used one of the new ones, so I had these leftovers, and I feel like even though they're not possessed possessed, Chosen ought to have a few mutations and daemons rattling around in there since they've been in the Eye of Terror so long. It's mostly hidden in this photo but in place of the usual claw on the left hand I just stuck on a chaos bolter, with the right hand and grip clipped off and replaced by some spike or horn or something from the bits box, which I painted pink and fleshy, and did the same thing to get rid of the hand on the plasma pistol. If memory serves the ponytail is from a witch elf or whatever they're called nowadays. I wasn't initially sure I wanted to go with the bare flesh for the thighs, since I feel it looks a little comical on the GW promo photos, but since this mini has that maw in her abdomen, plus the left shoudler's got eyes growing out of it so I figured that should be flesh, I decided to go for it, and ended up thinking in the contest of a Slaaneshi warband it's a good look. This was the first flesh-heavy paint job (more than just a head) of the minis I was working on, and I tried out a contrast-heavy approach, starting from the middle of the three caucasian contrast skin tones and highlighting all the way up to pallid flesh - good look I think, so I did the same on the rest. That backpack's the one with big eyeballs sculpted in place of the vents, so on a whim I painted them as regular human eyes (blue, if you're curious) and painted a blotchy little fleur-de-lys on one of the backpack's 'arms', to indicate it was a sister of battle who's been mutated into a backpack because... I dunno, my gals thought it'd be fun I guess.

In the middle, the only one this month I started completely from scratch, because a few days into the month I was looking over my list and realised I'd never gotten around to making the Chaos Icon mini - mainly because I hadn't decided what I wanted the Icon to be, I like them to be a little more elaborate than just a symbol stuck on someone's backpack (because, again, everyone has extra junk stuck all over them anyway); in the end for want of any better ideas I nicked the Terminator Sorcerer's staff, since that mini got assembled as a regular Terminator so the staff's a leftover, and stuck the Slaanesh symbol from the Chosen sprue's (rather small) Chaos Icon onto the front of the magic eye. Since the mini needed a bolter I replaced the left claw with a power fist (not actually a power fist ruleswise) and stuck half a combi-bolter to it, Calgar-style - it was only later, after most of the painting had been done, that I double-checked the list and realised she was supposed to have a plasma pistol as well, and since I was out of limbs (it'd have looked comical in the little limb growing out of her side) I chopped off the spike from the top of the axe and mounted the pistol on that, making it into some kind of wacky plasma glaive or something; my first attempts was atcually to paint her mouth and cheeks as if they were glowing green from within, to suggest she could just spit plasma, but it looked awful so I painted skin tone back over it and went with the axe option. That head's from Stormbringer issue one, since issue one is always cheap and I'd got it just for parts. Since she's on a large base for balance, but doesn't actually occupy much of it in terms of her actual footprint, I added a backpack just to stop it looking too bare, with the winter camo-ish pattern of (according to a Rogue Trader era source) the Executioners chapter.

Next up, a series of errors that turned out alright - I had the Victrix sprue from an issue of Imperium I found, and decided to use one helmet and one bare head for this to suggest that a Victrix had turned to chaos and stuck his own helmet on a spike to mock his former comrades - leaving the Victrixes otherwise intact just with one alternate head; later I realised the 'alternate heads' are actually meant for Marneus Calgar, who's the other half of the half-sprue the magazine came with. That's fine, he's just a marine who looks like Marneus Calgar - it's not like there's a lot of variety in space marine faces for the most part. (I ended up giving the Victrix sprue away at the local gaming group, they're such specific that I didn't really see a satisfactory path to converting one into a chaos marine without it ending up just looking like a Victrix with an axe or something.) Then the face sculpted into the chestplate caught my eye, and I thought it'd be fun to do something with that - my first idea was that as part of merging with the armour the marine's head had relocated to his chest, with his former head now just a piece of armour that still looked like a head, but leaving it smoky white looked like I'd just forgotten to paint it - so then I painted the head as if it's dead, on the basis that this guy tried to turn to chaos, but chaos rejected him (maybe he wasn't sufficiantly lusty, who knows, I feel like 'corrupted by chaos' is a two-way street, you can try for chaos and fall short), and his lifeforce was drained by the armour, which is now itself alive, and carries his corpse around inside herself as a trophy. Again, replacing a mutated spike with a gun to make her a Chosen rather than Possessed, the left arm is a regular Legionary arm with the shoulder sliced to fit into the cavity meant for the Possessed fleshy-cleaver arm, and the hand from the Terminator to give her a combi-weapon. The head was initially pointed off to the left like she's reacting to something over there and bringing her gun up to fire at it, but now the chest-face is looking directly ahead I guess the pose is just puffing her chest out to intimidate whatever's in front of her - if I had it to do over again I'd rather have positioned the head with a zombie-like tilt, but it was already glued in by the time I started changing my mind.

And lastly, paired accursed weapons - I feel like 'accursed' weapons should be a little bit more funky than just power weapons that happen to be wielded by chaos, so we've got two spikefists from the old Possessed set. How does she play with herself between battles then? Carefully. Or maybe not, you never know what Slaanesh. The head's from the Chaos Biker, and since she ended up with a blank shoulder pad I gave her the succubus from an old game series called Wizardry - the original art has some of her hair draped over her hip and between her thighs to give her some modesty, but a) Slaanesh don't do modesty and b) I'm just painting blobs of colour anyway, what is there that needs hiding? For the Scourge trophy head I went right back to the beginning for them, with the dark blue and silver colour scheme from the cover of the first Codex Dark Eldar in 3rd edition. Normally I do the eye lenses in trophy helmets dark, but I felt just the blue helmet wasn't very identifiable, so I added in the red eyes - maybe the Scourge is still alive in there, who knows? Given how much effort they go to to avoid Slaanesh getting their souls, being stuck as a still-living head on a spike may not be the worst thing.