The Lichborne - Homebrew Warband

[Dr_Ruminahui]

Sorry you struggled with him, but the result is very nice.  In particular, the light effect from the chaos symbol on the pistol is fantastic.

 

One thing, though, is the ammo belt is a bit backwards from what one might expect.  Normally the back would be gold/copper colour (being the casing), the middle would be steel (if a metalic belt) or brown/grey (for a cloth belt) and the front would vary with the warhead/bullet type (for modern rounds, typically grey, steel or copper - I tend to do mine red or yellow for 40K).  So, not that there is anything wrong with deviating from kind of the expected colours, but its worth giving a thought as to what you want each colour to represent.

[Volgon]

Thanks @Dr_Ruminahui! I was a little frustrated I couldn't get anything to work for me but after tinkering with it and hitting up youtube earlier I think I have a better plan of attack next time. As for the ammo belt, thanks for the reference pic. I'll admit I didn't really have any thoughts on what the ammo types should represent. I just painted the front and rear parts of the bolt shell as brass and then picked the red on the basis of it being a color that wasn't metallic. I find that, despite the vibrant blue, my color scheme does tend to skew a bit towards monochrome/drab colors with all the blacks, browns and dirty silvers so I like to add a bit of extra color where I can. It's purely for the visuals even if it isn't necessarily realistic.

[Dr_Ruminahui]

I'm happy the picture was helpful.

 

I guess my earlier confusion with the ammo belt was thinking that the middle "fat" portion (so, the bit you've done red" was the belt or links and therefore should be in a steel or neutral colour.  After all, there needs to be something holding the individual bullets together and drawing them up into the gun - though I suppose "space (or just regular) magic" could be the answer, though an unsatisfying one to me personally.

 

The red kind of gives a meaty look to it, so it could be bands of flesh acting as the belt, which is a much creepier way of doing things but not out of line with the faction's aesthetic.

 

For those models you haven't started painting yet, before you do so you should really consider pledging them as vows for chaos in the 2024 Call to Arms.

Edited June 18 by Dr_Ruminahui

[Volgon]

Another day, another guy (mostly, waiting on some bits to spruce up the base) done!

 

For this guy, I wanted to try some new things again and I think I succeeded on most of them. A primary goal was to try and give the blue armor more pizazz. Firstly, I wanted to attempt glazing once again, and it actually worked this time! On my previous attempt I was trying to glaze two distinct colors together (similarly to what you see in power sword videos where there are two distinct colors painted on and the transition is glazed). This time, I painted my base tone and then glazed the shadows with a darker color. This made it a lot easier to get coverage and I didn't have a nasty gradient line to work with. That being said, IMO the effect is too subtle for the amount of effort it took. You can't see it in the photos (though I am no professional photographer), and while I could see it while holding it, it was harder to notice at arms' length and once it was in my display case just ~3 feet away from my face I couldn't see it at all. That being said, I believe the color I picked for the shadow was too similar to my base tone. If I had gone with something quite a bit darker like a Kantor Blue I think the effect would be much more noticeable. I am going to try it again at some point once I acquire a darker blue.

 

The second technique I attempted was also to spice up the blue. I did a scratch mark weathering technique which many have probably seen before. It just involved painting a scratch on an armor piece with a dark color (I chose a dark grey for mine) and then highlighting that scratch with the highlight color for the armor. Very simple, cool effect, and I was happy how it came out. Unfortunately I made the mistake of doing it before the sponge chipping which, once applied, makes it difficult to make out those scratches. Next time I think I will do the sponge chipping first and then paint over the chipping or in non-sponged areas with the scratch marks to make them more visible.

 

I tried hazard stripes for the first time. I've never thought they looked particularly difficult to do but I was wrong, at least for this guy, as the space to work with was so small. I also made the mistake of trying to paint yellow stripes over black. I had reverse my order and totally redo both pipes by basecoating white then painting yellow and then painting black stripes.

 

Lastly I took the good @Dr_Ruminahui's previous suggestions and worked on my bolt belt. I kept the casing a darker color and then also tipped the bolts red which I think is a cool effect. Perhaps I should have painted the entire tip red rather than just the front flat part but I think it's ok as is.

 

The heavy bolter gunner marks the last of the generic operatives in the kill team. I have the 5 bespoke operatives plus a handful of leaders both kill team related and not remaining. I already have my Anointed conversion primed so he will be the next project.

[Dr_Ruminahui]

He's looking great!  I love how you did just the flats on the bullets - it looks great, and I think for these bullets anyway the effect looks better than if you had done the whole head (doing it your way never occurred to me, but looks better).  As for yellow over black - yeah, don't do that (for the reasons you have learned).  Much better to do black over yellow.  If you do need to do yellow over black, paint the yellow bit white first, then paint over that in yellow - white tends to have better coverage and will do a better job at cutting the dark background than mutliple coats of yellow.

 

You should really consider vowing any lichborne you haven't started yet for chaos in the Call to Arms event.

Edited July 2 by Dr_Ruminahui

[Volgon]

Glad you like it @Dr_Ruminahui, good to hear about the bolt belt as well. I think the effect is helped by the fact that this specific ammo belt has flat tipped ammo.

 

As I mentioned in my previous post, next project will be my Anointed. I want to continue working on the blue to give it more complexity. I'm definitely going to give glazing another shot. I will try to make a return to "less is more" when it comes to the sponge weathering, similar to the latest Chainsword wielder or the Chaincannon gunner. I feel like I overdid it on the Heavy Bolter and it made the paint job more muddled than I really want.

 

My current plan for the blue is:

1. Recess glazing with a dark blue (Kantor Blue in this case). A dark blue should offer much more contrast than what I used before and will hopefully be more noticeable. Visually, I'll have to see if the armor retains its overall shade with the inclusion of the dark blue.
2. Brown chipping in the lower areas of armor panels. Go lighter on this than on the heavy bolter gunner to allow other techniques like glazing to show through. Retain some larger splotches where I can paint in silver areas to mimic paint chipping all the way to the metal.
3. Blue chipping with a highlight color for some chipping contrast. I haven't done this before but I may attempt it next time.
4. Do scratch weathering last to ensure the effect shows. I don't want to repeat the mistake of sponging over the scratches to dull the effect.

Edited July 2 by Volgon

[Volgon]

The Anointed is DONE! What an absolute beast of a mini. So much detail, lots of little cracks on the armor, and the backpack with the tiny vertebrae. Very happy with the result though! I think he may be my favorite so far. A little backstory: the Anointed in kill team is basically a pre-fully Possessed marine. Personally, I am not a fan of the generic Chaos mutation stuff like tentacles, claws, pustules, etc, and for my warband specifically I don't see them as drinking the Chaos kool-aid (hence no mutations on any of my minis) but you can never fully escape the warp's degeneration (hence this guy). The warband's sorcerers ply their trade as necromancers, using Chaos as a tool to replenish their ranks. This Anointed has been brought back from the abyss one too many times, however, and the mutations have manifested.

 

Because of the nature of the warband, I see many of them as being nothing but bones and withered skin, souls fractured by reanimation, and sustained by unholy energies. It makes sense then that a collection of, essentially, skeletons and zombies would exhibit mutations of the bone variety, so that's the direction I went with this conversion. I haven't been that happy by my normal bone recipe that I've been using on the skull helmets so far, so I wanted to try experimenting on that a bit and this guy was perfect for that. Out of the 5 bone recipes I was pretty happy with 4 of them, and of those 4 I was super enthused about 2. I used a lot of stippling on the bone growths, the backpack, the claw and the shoulder pad to get some transitions/textures and I love the color and look (these were Stormvermin Fur base > stipple/drybrush Rakarth Flesh > stipple/drybrush Wraithbone). For the skull helmet I did a Vallejo Sky Grey base (for coverage, this is basically Grey Seer) > white > Nuln Oil order and then tapped some Stormvermin Fur on the brow to make it look more worn and I really like that recipe as well.

 

[Volgon]

Haven't posted a WIP in a while but thanks to @spiros14 I wanted to try my hand at some stitched flesh/sutures. I can't sculpt very well but I thought it would still come out better than attempting to paint them on. I also like the physical nature that the sculpted sutures add, rather than painting them on. I'm pretty happy with how they came out. I think the chest staples might be a little large but on the other hand their size may help them stand out further away. They aren't perfect but I think once paint is down they'll look pretty ok.

[Volgon]

Finished up the Shrivetalon today! I did some sculpting on the tabard to turn it into a flesh apron. I used a variation of a fairly simple Contrast recipe for skin from Darcy Bono on youtube for all the skin parts. I think it came out decently, too dark/red IMO. I put 2 coats of each color (Skeleton Horde then Volupus Pink) but I think next time I'd want to thin the paints down more than I did and also maybe only do one coat, or perhaps 2 coats of Skeleton Horde but only one of Volupus Pink.

 

Also I experimented with Blood for the Blood God for the first time. I think it's pretty solid, I am not sure whether I prefer it to my normal bright red blood spatters. The gloss is a cool effect but I do like the matte nature of my normal blood technique, and it was a little more difficult to use as it was gloopy right out of the pot. I didn't try thinning it (or do any research into it) but maybe next time I can try that. Definitely makes it more difficult to get really thin wisps/streaks of blood from the larger pools at the consistency it was neat from the pot.

 

[Dr_Ruminahui]

He looks great!  I think the blood looks great on the sword, while the skin is probably too red (as you noted) - in some photos it looks more like cloth while in others it looks more like meat then skin.  I think its most effective where you have the stitches and less so for the piece on the shoulder pad.  So, if you try the effect again, I would try to have more of the pink show through the blood as to me that's what makes the centre pieces more convincing than the shoulder piece.

 

Oh, and the wear on his legs is particularly good.

Edited July 31 by Dr_Ruminahui

[Volgon]

Thanks @Dr_Ruminahui! I think what I was going for was similar to your take; I was trying to get redder areas near the stitching (going heavier with the pink) but just ended up going overboard. I probably shouldn't have added the blood effects to the skin as well, though it does seem a bit washed out because of how red the skin is overall. I think the blood effects would definitely look better on much lighter skin, stippled on the tips and high points. Always learning!

 

And thanks, I think the legs look nice as well! I tried stippling my usual silver on the thighs this time; for whatever reason that isn't a technique I'd used for any color other than the brown. I like the effect a lot! Especially on the thighs where it can be a bit of a struggle to get some complexity with this color scheme. Also the calf plates are the areas that I am happiest with regarding my glazing. A good transition and a nice color that is noticeably different than the base tone. Still working on that, as I think I can go even darker on the shadow color. Right now it's just Kantor Blue but I mixed up some Kantor with Black to check the tone and that is definitely another option. I think I'll probably have to use that color combination for shadows if I really want the contrast to pop from a distance, or try some wet blending with my base color and black.

[Tallarn Commander]

Wow! This guy is looking great. I especially like the weathering, which is looking better with each model.

It’s been awhile since I hand painted paint chips or used a glaze—you have inspired me to try these techniques again soon. Also I have never thought of green-stuffing stitching on human flesh. I’ll have to try that on a Night Lord soon. Thanks for the inspiration!

[Volgon]

Cheers @Tallarn Commander! I feel like the weathering really ties the minis together. To me, it never feels like I've done a decent job until I start doing the trim and armor chipping. I blackline all the blue areas, but I think using black trim means the effect is lost a bit, so the blue always feels flat until I start putting on the weathering. The weathering definitely helps to hide painting mistakes and add complexity/depth to areas that previously had none. I am not sold on the "scratch" weathering (the spots where I paint lines and highlight them to mimic blade gouges and such) but the sponge weathering is by far my favorite step of the process, especially on hard edges like the bottom of the calf/ankle plates, the butt armor and the hip armor.

 

And happy to inspire other painters! I've mentioned before that I was inspired by @spiros14's phenomenal Emperor's Children to do my own stitching. I based my sculpting on this Juan Hidalgo video. I modified the process a bit; he gouges small areas and sculpts the stitches within the gouges whereas I laid the stitches over the "flesh" part and just flattened the edges. I have a one off Night Lords praetor conversion I've been working on and want to do more stitch sculpting on him. I may alter the process a bit, where instead of sculpting the puckered flesh areas I gouge lines into the plastic itself with a knife/saw and then sculpt stitching over that. I've seen that done really well on a Nemesis Claw Night Lord paint job.

[Volgon]

Progress is ongoing on the Butcher but I wanted to show off the axe. I'm really stoked how it's looking! The outer silver edge is a bit darker IRL so I might relayer a bit of the silver to brighten it back up as I really like the stark difference between the edge and the black metal recess in the picture.

[Dr_Ruminahui]

That's really nice - what kit is it from?

[Volgon]

@Dr_Ruminahui Thanks! It's a kitbash. The arm and haft are from the 40k Ahriman kit. I chopped off the anchor looking piece at the butt of the haft and attached a bone grip from an old WHFB sword (not sure of the source unfortunately, might be orks?). The axe head is from Sigmar's Korghos Khul/Mighty Lord of Khorne.

[Volgon]

Another day, another operative done and dusted! This time we have the Legionary Butcher/Master of Executions equivalent. This fella was my longest project by far. I didn't keep exact count but I want to say I spent somewhere between 20-25 hours working through everything. I am super proud of the result, I think he is my favorite completed project so far!

 

A few highlights:

1. Going in I was anxious about the coat. I had never done fabric/folded stuff before so I was concerned about whether I could properly paint the volumes. I think it came out fantastic! Up until my previous session I think it was my favorite part of the mini. I love the color and weathering on it.
2. The axe really blew me away once I had finished it. I was struggling with the eyes until pretty much by random chance I decided to drybrush the red from bottom to top rather than top to bottom. It gave a bit of a sinister looking red underglow which I thought was really cool so I kept working at it until I got what you see here.
3. The conversion itself is probably one of the top 3 I've made for my warband. It was actually a little different for the longest time until right before I started painting him. I initially use the Judiciar sword arm converted to an axe (I've posted it very early on in the thread I think). I soured on that pose over time. I wanted something more casual, with the axe being dipped downwards in a relaxed fashion. I wanted him to exude supreme confidence in his ability to take on his next victim, beckoning them to their end. I like to tell stories with each conversion and I really think it goes above and beyond for this guy.
4. I alluded to it in the first point but my favorite part was the helmet! Not necessarily the head itself but the glow I was able to do. I really love the way it came out and will definitely be trying to included it on everything else from now on (and likely at some point I will go back to previous minis and incorporate it into those as well). Here is a better picture of the eyes/glow. Not perfect white dots but they're pretty much completely unnoticeable IRL.

 

I also scaled back the weathering a bit. I didn't include the highlighted light blue + grey scratches on the armor panels (I am not sure how else to describe them) as seen on my last two operatives. Any thoughts on that? It was a nice experiment but I think I prefer the weathering a little simpler with just the brown/silver sponging and silver chip highlights. As always let me know what you think!

Edited August 16 by Volgon

[Dr_Ruminahui]

He's awesome, and your first foray into painting cloaks is very nice (personally, I find painting cloth elements really satisfying, as its really easy to get nice effects predominantly through the use of washes, which is one of my preferred techniques).  Other elements also stand out as excellent - the eyes and axe as you've noted, but also (as always) your warband symbol, the arrows on the helmet (very impressive, I find it really hard to do arrow heads, particularly that small), and the striped helmet trophy on the back.

 

The only thing I feel is a bit of a missed opportunity is the way you've done the bone handle of the axe in black - I thought it was such an evocative element for the model as a whole, and think it would be even more so if done in bone so as to reinforce it being an actual femur rather than just a femur shaped metal handle.  The fluted section of the handle might also look nice painted in bone as well.

Edited August 16 by Dr_Ruminahui

[Volgon]

Thanks for commenting @Dr_Ruminahui. The handle actually is painted as bone, but it was a bit of an experiment. I was trying out a reverse bone color, with darker colors near the end of the piece and brighter at the base. The idea was based on an Artus Opus video and also the new Vizzik Skour mini revealed for the Skaven range in AoS. I would consider it a failure and one I should have worked on a bit more, at least brightening the bone area near the base if nothing else. The progression is meant to look like Black > Stormvermin Fur > Rakarth Flesh but I think I overdid the first two colors without reinforcing the Rakarth layer. Ends up just looking pretty dark overall.

[Volgon]

I decided to act on the advice in my WIP thread and shortened the haft of the axe a bit. It was just a bit too unwieldy looking even for me. I also reworked the colors of the bone handle at the end of the haft as suggested by @Dr_Ruminahui. Lastly I also weathered the Fire Hawks helmet as I had completely forgotten to do that. I didn't include a picture of it as it's just a minor detail but it has my usual sponging and scratch highlighting on it now.

[Volgon]

Newly (fully) completed Balefire Acolyte! Similarly to the Butcher from my previous project, this guy involved a lot of experimentation and learning. I believe this project was a major breakthrough for me. I learned a LOT about blending colors. Part of the way through the process I found a Reddit thread explaining stipple glazing which opened my eyes once I started breaking down the process. I also began mixing colors to make midtones for blending different sections together. This has made it significantly easier/simpler to blend gradients together. The way I describe my previous process was basically brute forcing it: glaze my highlight or shadow color over my midtone (no layering involved) a LOT and hope the result is acceptable. This got results but it took a long time and was inconsistent; I had a lot of issues with glaze consistency and drying unevenly which meant the gradient was mostly smooth but didn't look very good to me. The best example I can give on my (hopefully) improved blends is the blue armor panel on the helmet where I feel like I did a pretty smooth transition between the midtone and my highlight/shadow colors.

 

This was also the first time I've painted flames. I took what I learned about blending colors and applied it to the flames. My first attempt was decent; not great but passable at a distance. I decided to try again, this time going heavier with mixing midtones up for smoother transitions, and doing layering (previous to this project I had never layered before). I am much happier with the result. The colors I chose for the flames may not work for the color scheme; I was adamant on going for a spectral flames look with pastel green and turquoises rather than a much more traditional warp flame look with greens. The color difference between the flames and the armor is more noticeable IRL than in the photos. I will think on it some more, an alternate color scheme I have been considering is darker purple (think Castellan Crowe's box art sword) with some of the brighter turquoises I used here for the inner glow.

 

As always, let me know what you guys think!

 

[Dr_Ruminahui]

He looks great - particularly good use of the bloody corpse, it really ties in with the model.  And the skull faced helmet.

 

Because I like to quibble, while I think they are very well done, I think the blue flames are kind of lost against the vibrant blue of the armour - particularly those on the knight and outstretched hand.  I'm thinking that maybe green might be better, in providing contrast but still being closer tonally than red or orange?  Maybe kind of like the green flames on these guys, but with less yellow?

Edited August 28 by Dr_Ruminahui

[Volgon]

Appreciate the kind words @Dr_Ruminahui. I don't disagree that the turquoise may be the wrong color. I was inspired in particular by this piece of art of Ahriman (credit: https://www.artstation.com/weizheng ):

 

The color scheme for 40k Thousand Sons isn't miles away from mine so I thought it was a decent comparison. I tend to associate certain colors with certain types of magic and for my warband I see them as using a lot of spectral/biomancy/life drain magic which I tend to associate with colors like turquoise, pale green and purple. For the longest time I was going to use the box art color scheme for Nighthaunt from AoS. That very pale white and blue-green look. I ended up transitioning to turquoise because I thought the Nighthaunt scheme wasn't quite striking enough. I have some Spirit Hosts I have considered priming up to test painting different flame-esque schemes as those models aren't far off from looking like fire. I might try the Nighthaunt scheme on one to see how it looks.

[Dr_Ruminahui]

Yeah, given my recollection of your background for your killteam/warband, I suspected that the cool blue colour scheme for the flames was a tie in to the necromantic theme.  So that does make sense thematically.  My comment had less to do with that, though, than its aesthetics.

 

I also agree that one can do some amazing art with a restrained colour pallet - in fact, IMHO some of the most stunning figures and art in 40K are those that do sharply constrain themselves in terms of the colours used.  The art you shared is a prime example of that.  To make that really work, though, I feel you need to find and make contrasts in another way to make the art visually striking - and this is usually done in the arts use of light and dark contrasts.  The above picture is again an excellent example of that, where the constrained use of blues and greens makes for a striking scene because of the heavily lighted element in the foreground where the rest of the picture is in comparative shadow.  That, to me, is what makes the picture work as a stunning piece of art.

 

For your model, you don't have a similar light/dark effect (nor as restrained a pallet) which is why I think you would be better off to create some visually interesting contrast by going with a different colour of fire (though I think one that keeps with the somewhat cool tones of the mini, which is why I suggested green).  Not that there is any problem with the mini - its really good, I just think that it could be even better.

 

If green doesn't work, purple might instead though I think you would want to be careful not too go too warm with the purple you choose.

[Volgon]

Absolutely valid criticisms @Dr_Ruminahui. I knew going in that it was probably not going to work aesthetically so I made the sacrifice there for what I thought was appropriate for my lore. I had to see the result for myself, otherwise it would have been one of those things eating away at me as "what could have been". Unfortunately it has been raining so I haven't had the chance to prime anything to try out new colors.