Drug-Crazed Psychic Vampire Space Elves & Other Strangeness

[The Traitor]

The Talos is looking great, loving the white faceplate for contrast!

[Calyptra]

Got another 12 hours of painting done on the Talos.

 

 

 

The end is in sight, but I don't think I'll be able to to finish it this week. There's still a Haemonculus waiting for me once the Talos is done, so my chances of completing this challenge by the end of December are dwindling.

 

Action shot. (Get it?)

 

 

As always, comments, questions, critiques, etc are welcome and appreciated.

[Slaanbull]

The talos is looking awesome, but I'm really looking forward to your take on the haemonculus. Keep it up Calyptra. :)

[Calyptra]

Freehand design work for the Talos. After I did the one on top I decided it was too busy, and came up with the simpler design below. I still like the original drawing, so I might adapt the design for something else later on. Also, I think it looks a bit like kelp (doubtless the Kelp of Suffering or Doomkelp or some such).

 

 

And here's the finished Talos.

 

 

 

 

 

Next, I've started the Haemonculus. This is mostly base shading and establishing midtones; his skin should look quite different when he's finished.

 

 

Here's a detail of his sump organs, before I glued the plate on.

 

 

Please share any questions, comments, critiques, etc.

[The Traitor]

The Talons looks ace, can't believe you painted those organs! :P

[Calyptra]

The Talons looks ace, can't believe you painted those organs! :P

There was no way I wasn't going to. They're one of my favorite parts of the model. I love organs! I just wish they were a little more visible, which is the usual problem with organs.

[Calyptra]

Finished that Haemonculus.

 

 

 

 

 

It really is a lovely model, and I had a lot of fun painting it. For some reason I'm particularly enamored with his feets (in a cats on the internet way sort of way, rather than a Tarantino sort of way).

 

Those beans!

 

[The Traitor]

The model is awesome, the cloak in particular looks really great, love how you've painted different flesh tones and the overal gritty feel it has (curiously the feet have a similar colour to the cloak...), and the spine is also very cool!

[brother_b]

Wow, impressive stuff. You are quite the artist. I am horrible with fine detail work and freehand. I'm not an artist. Any tips for someone who would like to do a little free hand but always seems to screw up the paint application.

 

Basically I have a hard time painting a small line...

[Brother Lunkhead]

Absolutely awesome work you mad genius you 

[Calyptra]

For the past couple months I've mostly been removing mold lines and gluing stuff together. I'm not bothering with pictures of that. ("Yep, that sure is a plastic, unpainted model. You sure did remove those mold lines.") Some day there will be Scourges, and I glued together the last of my Wracks, at least until GW deigns to permit me to buy more.

 

The ossefactor is a wonderful and unique bit, with its secondary little arm to work the weapon's control panel, and I love it. The trouble with unique, characterful bits like that is after you've used them a couple times, the repetition starts to feel awkward. I decided to convert this model in order to mix things up a bit.

 

 

 

I also painted up the last few of my Rogue Trader Dire Avengers, so here's a crappy group shot. (My poor old camera struggles with depth of field when I'm shooting several models at once, and won't let me adjust it manually. It's old and dying and should be forgiven. The models in back look pretty much the same as the models in front.)

 

[Sagentus]

Dam that Haemonculus looks amazing, absolutely amazing level of detail. The latest conversion looks just as promising, looking forward to seeing that painted.

 

Those dire avengers look great too, think we can let the camera off this time lol

[Achinadav]

This log, all on it's own, is a good enough reason to allow dirty xenos lovers to post. Most entertaining commentary I've read! Shame about the powers-that-be vetoing most of the circus pics.

 

My wife is heavily into art noveau and was astonished that someone could paint those designs on something the size of my wee men.

[Calyptra]

Because I'm apparently a sucker for making promises I'm not sure I can keep, I've entered the ETL.

 

If you enjoyed my antics in the Xenos Challenge, here we go again.

 

I, Calyptra, rise to the challenge of E TENEBRAE LUX, nominally for the True Kin and the glory of Commorragh, but mostly for personal gratification. I hereby vow to paint 5 Scourges (blasters, blast pistol, venom blade), valued at 140 points, on or before August 1st 2018, unless I get distracted or bored, in which case I shall wear the Badge of the Oathbreaker until year's end.

 

 

Don't worry, if enough people kick enough babies, I'm sure they'll get their wings.

 

I'm guessing it will take me somewhere between 75 and 100 hours of painting to complete these models (15-20 hours each). We can find out how wrong I am together!

 

After almost a week, here's what I've gotten done so far.

 

 

 

She's mostly done, I think (apart from the wings). As the first Scourge, I'm still experimenting and figuring things out. I haven't decided yet if the faceplate and eyes are done, I think the gloves might need one more stage of highlighting, and I'm waiting to the finish the crest until I know I'm going to paint the wings.

 

I'm kind of nervous about the wings. It's a *lot* of feathers, and I'm not sure yet how I want them to look.

 

It took me about 9 and a half hours of painting to get this far, which is about what I expected. How long the wings will take is pretty much an open question. Things should speed up a bit after the first model, but real life is complicating things. I'm pretty much wrecked from performing, and I'm contending with a nerve injury that's effecting my left arm and hand. It's difficult to paint when you don't have it in you to sit upright.

 

...but not impossible. Action shot.

 

 

Comments and criticisms are always welcome and appreciated.

[Trixie]

Lounging in a bed, what looks like a take away pizza next to you and painting miniatures. Slaanesh would be pleased !

 

Some damn sweet looking bad space elves as well.

[Calyptra]

I am well and truly overdue for an update, and the reason for the delay is stupid.

 

I'm contending with some health/medical issues right now, which I'll leave vague only for the sake of brevity and because the internet does not care about my suffering. It's not that I can't paint (more or less). The problem was I ran out of matte varnish, and then could not physically go buy more for the better part of a week. Now that things aren't all shiny any more, I can finally share what I've done.

 

What I've done is spend 14 hours painting feathers.

 

Action shot:

 

 

Dear god the feathers.

 

Here's the effectively completed first Scourge.

 

 

 

 

 

After telling myself over and over that I didn't want to base the wings on an actual bird (because Scourges are more alien and exotic than that) I ended up basing them on the red-winged blackbirds that I used to see all the time where I grew up. I still feel like the faceplate and eyes need something, so I might go back and mess with them later. I know I don't want to do the usual bright/contrasting color for the eyes on these models, but maybe a glaze and reflected highlight or something would do it. I certainly have more faceplates coming up to experiment on.

 

A box of Scourges comes with two sets of bat wings and three sets with feathers. I definitely want the Solarite to be feathered, but I think I'm going to swap the third set of feathered wings for some bat wings from another box. Because OH DEAR GOD THE FEATHERS WHY

 

 

Finally, here's an extremely WIP picture of Scourge number two.

 

 

I love that head so much. I think I need to come up with ways to change it so I can use it on other models without them looking like they've got the same head as this guy.

[hushrong]

Your dark elder are magnificent! The fleshtones, that skin cloak, the Talos with freehand, and these scourges! Awesome work!

[The Traitor]

The feathers look truly amazing, but 14 hours is insane!!!

[Calyptra]

The feathers look truly amazing, but 14 hours is insane!!!

It is, and while I've made a vow to paint these five, it has me concerned about ever finishing the other fifteen Scourges that I own.

 

Some of that time was trial, error, and experimentation - the first model generally takes the longest - but not *that* much. Unless I come up with a different technique that yields results I'm as happy with, I expect other feathered Scourges to take almost as long.

 

If you think about it, it's maybe not all that surprising. I think each wing has nearly as much surface area as the entire rest of the model. Given that this surface area is almost nothing but sharp, fine detail (I think I did 4 or 5 stages of line and dot highlighting) I arguably made pretty good time.

 

It's still a lot of time to spend on a non-character model and there are more feathered Scourges where she came from. I'm more comfortable with the Solarite taking that much time, but I think I definitely need to experiment with other ways of painting these. Without compromising on the results.

 

I'm going to be starting the first set of bat wings soon. I'm not worried about them - I was actively afraid of the feathers - but I don't really know how I'm going to paint them yet, and it's still a lot of surface area. I'm not expecting them to be quick, just quicker than the feathers.

 

The only real problem with spending so much time on each model - apart from having enough finished stuff to maybe play a game ever - is there's so much stuff I just want to paint that I just can't seem to get to.

[Trixie]

Love them wings

[Bluedoo]

Those "brands" you freehanded are incredible! I'm liking your "style" maybe if you call it that, those harlequins are awesome. I'm mesmerized by that purple that's all over in places..

 

Please keep posting the xenos!

[Calyptra]

ETL update!

 

Remember when I said I thought the Scourge with bat wings would go faster on account of not having feathers? Yeah, so about that....

 

Listen! Do you hear it?

 

That's the sound of a tiny plastic bat wing crying out, begging to be painted in all sorts of interesting ways. Two brush blending! Stippled glazes! Vascular freehand!

 

 

How could I say no?

 

I even skipped my plan to paint some sort of design tattooed on the wings because I was having so much fun painting the membranes.

 

 

 

 

Total painting time was 25 hours. I regret nothing.

[hushrong]

Damn, that is a thing of beauty you painted. A tattoo would be cool but the membrane with veins coursing through it looks fantastic!

[Achinadav]

That really is astonishing. Did you use anything as a reference, or just make it up as you went along?

[The Traitor]

The veins in the wings do look amazing, might steal that idea for my DoK Khinerai... Great work as usual!