Fulgrime done

Now this model that has left me somewhat confused as to whether I like it or not. I mostly like the design apart from some details like the big open wound at the front. But my biggest issue is with painting this thing (I do not see how you could do that with it fully assembled). I tried breaking it down into subassemblies, as I usually do with big models, but there were not god way of doing this for the body. Either I had pieces where I could access all necessary parts, or I could assemble the model so that I did not get big seams at the front of the model, but I had to choose. Here I really think the sculptors should have a good discussion with the painters, so that they place joints where they can easily be hidden for breakdowns.

I am also not sure about the contrast in the face so I might need to go back and add some inks to give it some more depth, it might also be that the lights I used to take the pictures saturated the colours a bit and that's why it looks so bland.

Over all I am happy with how it turned out. I gott to play around with some new techniques, and I think the result is ok, but it is getting more and more obvious that I need to start working with the airbrush as it is to hard to get to all the places with a brush for smooth blending on these new complex models. I did not follow the box art colours for the model, instead I tried to match it to the Keeper of secrets that I have (which needs to get its base fixed). In particular I am happy with the combination of the dark and bright gold. The wings also came out nicely. I am also glad that I did the base and not just let him slither around on the ground.

It was an intense journey painting this thing. There are so many details and things to paint that it is easy to forget or miss something so you have to constantly go back and fix things, and when you think you are done you notice some more things that need sorting.

Well that is it. Now I have all the big four Demon Primarchs painted up. Next will have to be the Lion. 

But I have some other things to do first. Just need to figure out what it is.

The base of Fulgrim

Just a short update. Once I finished the Liaisons for my Forge Lord I started painting on Fulgrim. I am not really sure what to think about this model. Appearance wise it looks cool, but it is very difficult to break it down for painting and this makes it a bit of a pain to paint. But once the colours are down the result is very nice. My main issue is the snake body. As it coils around itself there are some places that are very hard to reach but are still highly visible from some angles. I decided to go for a blue purple colour for the main body with a pale, skin toned underside. Blending the colours were not easy and I hade to try some new techniques which is nice. I am still not fully done with the body as the fins need some more attention and the scales on the back are still not painted. I am at a bit of a loss on what colours to make them. Either I keep them blackish or I go for a bone colour. The later would tie in nicely with the base.

The model also do not come with a scenic base as most newer large scale demons do. So I had to build something so that he does not look so out of place with the other ones. I played around with some ideas of ruins etc but in the end I decided to go for a more simple platform. This was painted in rusted metal with some marble inlays. Once again I had to try some new techniques to get the marble effect I wanted. I am not sure how much of this will be seen once Fulgrim is on there, but it was nice to paint.

Once the body is done I will need to move on the the wings and try to colour match them to the snake body. Lets se how that turns out.

Vashtorr the arkifane

This is a model that I have been looking forward to painting, and it did not disappoint. Already when it was teased I knew that this was a model I wanted to get my hands on, but when it was released I missed it as it was in the limited box. So I had to wait until it was released as a singel model. One acquired, it sat in my to do pile until the opportune moment arrived, and it just happened to be now.

The model as such is a fairly easy build even though there are quite a few pieces. The level of details is great and I absolutely love the amalgam of machine and flesh. One thing I missed was that I should have placed a small managed in the chest so that the front armour can be removed to show all the detail beneath. This might be my one criticism of this model. It looks so good without the armour that I am seriously considering getting another one and totally forgoing all the armour pieces. Apart form the armour I also left the wings and the extra stack of exhausts of for painting but otherwise the model was painted assembled. The base was done separately, nothing fancy, just some extra filler to extend the scenic piece to the edge and some extra skulls.

The metal parts were done in my usual way with a black base and brown/orange blotches before dry-brushing bronze and white metal. The flesh is a variation on my standard chaos flesh, but instead of suing the Kislev flesh as a base I used Dechala liliac. Then I painted in the highlight and larger areas starting at Kislev and going up to bone before doing a green and red/brown wash. Then it was back to painting in highlights again and at the end I added a white wash. The last step with white turned out to be a mistake as it toned down all the other colours to a more monochrome tone. So I re washed the model in gren and red/brown and re did the highlights except the white.

Armour was done with a basic gold rim and some two tone striped plating (the model has some structure but not as much as I put in). Not sure if I will attach it or if I will leave it of. Model looks better without armour, but with the graves and arm plating on it looks a but strange to not use the back and chest pieces. If I were to do another one I would re-sculpt the lower legs and the left arm so that no armour was used. Just the flesh and machine.

The hammer was originally done as a marmor type stone but it did not look so good so I went back and redid it in a hot metal type of thing. First time I do this on a large piece, I am normally not to comfy doing these light effects. I guess one should have done some OSL also but one thing at a time. At some point I need to try that though.

Over all it was a very fun model to paint, and it is testing my technique a bit but still staying close to the look I like.

BeLakor

So, now he is done, and I am pleased. I like how he turned out. I have intentionally keep him as monotone as possible so that all the details in the model does not over power the impression except for a few key colours like the blue flames and red loin cloth. All metals have been made as either rusted iron or bronze with Verdigris to go with the brown of BeLakor himself or the magical flames.

One thing I noticed on this model is that I am coming to the end of what can be done with my dry brushing in terms of shading and blending. I continuously end up wearing away the base layers before I come to the level of blend I am attempting. That probably means that I need to start air brushing, at least parts of the models to get a smooth transition. I will probably continue with the current technique on the armies where I have started this but to evolve I think I need to learn new techniques. Fortunately I have a long running project in the form of the Opus Magna that requires an air brush (since it is to large for brushes) where I can learn.

That being said, the model was both a pleasure and a pain to paint. The parts are large and difficult to hold and once all the small chains etc are attached it is very difficult to handle the wings with out breaking things. And one the wing are on the body it is very difficult to reach all places. I do not understand how any one could paint this if fully assembled before painting. But seeing it coming together is very satisfying and the sculpting is superb with so much detail that I honestly skipped a lot of it and just let it end up in the background.

And I think I am finally coming to terms with bases. The former gamer in me screams immersion breaking but the later collector and painter murmurs something about context and balance. Well, since models like this is more for display than play I have now problem with decorating the ground as well.

Now I have some smurfs to finish, and I need to get going with the build of the Opus so that I can start painting..

BeLakor WIP

The last few weeks I have been working on BeLakor. This is a fantastic model and really shows what is possible to do with current CAD designs and injection casting. It took me two or three sessions just to get all the pieces separated from the sprues, cleaned up and assembled for painting. The joints in the base are well hidden and does not require any extra work, but Belakor him self has a few quite obvious joints  on the back and hips. I filled these with GS and I think I made a decent job of hiding them.

When it comes to paint this is a real challenge as there is just so much details everywhere and it easy to miss some and you have to go back and fix them. For colours I went with a black brown scheme. I have long thought about doing some skin that has lighter parts, like what you would see on some animals, instead of doing a homogeneous colour all across the model. In this case I choose to make the chest and stomach in a lighter shade of brown then the rest of the body and the legs more of a black grey tone. I did the same for the wings with a lighter shade in the middle, toning towards back at the bones.

I also went with my rusted metal look for all the chains and will carry that on to the armour (can see BeLakor sitting around polishing his armour so it would be a bit grimy).

There are a tone of skulls on this model and I added some extra form the skull sett just to fill out the base. Not sure what Khorne thinks about that. I also choose to go with a blue power/lava stream on the base instead of blood/lava stream that is on the box art just to get some colour that breaks with the brown black.

I also added the fallen spacemarine to the base and did him in my Ultra Smurf scheme. 

BeLakor is starting to take shape and I am looking forward to seeing him with his wings on but he will require a few more sessions before he is done.

Naked Demon Ladies

This year I got some naked demon ladies for Christmas from my wife. She found a vendor on Etsy, TheSaltyPrints, who sells 3D printed sculpts. Apart from the delivery time, approximately 2 month (which was not the vendors fault), I am happy with the quality of the models. 

I have as some might remember played around with some 3D printing myself, mostly titan parts and knight interiors. For this I use an Ultimaker 3D printer which is a fairly good printer as far as FDM  (filament printer) printers go. I was however never that impressed with the prints as models for hobby painting due to the very visible print lines. These demon prints however I assume are done in a SLA (resin) printer and the level of detail and smoothness far out stripes the other printer. If I am ever to invest in a printer for the hobby it will have to be an SLA version. 

There was some lose white powder on some of the models and there were some small parts missing on some were the resin had not cured and had been washed away. Looking at the models from afar they look like any plastic models I have ever bought, smooth and very detailed. If one looks very closely under a bright lamp it is possible to see the layers. Since my go to technique is dry-brushing it was a very interesting thing to try it on these models. The models were not supplied with bases (bases are available) but my wife thought (correctly) that I would want them on the same bases as the rest of my Naked Demon ladies and Demonettes. The problem with that was that I only had spare 28 mm bases and the stance on these models are in some cases quite broad and would be better on a 32 mm or 40 mm base. But I had waited a long time for the models so I just glued them to what I had and got to painting.

The sculpts are very interesting. The poses are very nicely done with believable articulation and musculature. Some of them are a bit hard to interpret though as to what is armor, trousers, bone etc. So I decided to do two test models first to get the color balance done before committing to painting to many models. One thing I noticed directly is that the problem with digital sculptors doing STL files for printing is the ability to think about the painting process. With 3D printing it is easy to sculpt thing that are impossible to paint for the only reason that you can not physically possible get to all the places with a brush. These models were not really in that category but they are leaning towards it. The base body is fine, but the split tail circling the legs can be in the way of properly painting the legs and as they are part of the focus for these models that might be a problem, especially as the model comes as in one piece so there is no option of painting it in parts.

Well, that being said the models were quite pleasurable to paint. After basing them with a hobby spray paint I based them in Fenrisian Grey and gave them a wash of The Fang. At this stage any print lines would have shown up as the darker  colors would have gone into the joints, but the color flowed out evenly and I could start the dry-brushing. To build up the skin I started with Fenrisian Grey going to Blue horror and White Scars. After a good rinse under flowing water and subsequent drying I repeated the dry brushing and at the end I did some pinks and purples on the horns. The skin turned out nicely and I can not say that it can be seen that they were printed and not cast. The claws were given the bone treatment and the legs were painted black. The armor I decided to do the same verdigris bronze as on my Keeper of Secrets.

I also had some harpies from Raging Heros that I had stated but not finished. As the paint scheme for these and the "Demons" are the same I decide to finish them in parallel. These have been covered before so I will not say much about them. As sculpts go I think they are better then the "Demons" with more detail in the from of skulls and bones hanging from their belts. If I have understood things right these are also digitally sculpted and then 3D printed to create the master molds for the casting of the models. I can not see any great difference in the quality of the models form a production point of view. Maybe that the Raging Hero Ones suffer a bit from mold lines that are absent from the direct prints.

All in all I must say that I am really impressed with what can be done with 3D printing today but I am a bit afraid of what that will do to the hobby. In principle it is good that any one can produce digital sculpts (and there are a lot of original, beautiful ones out there) and that any one can print it to high quality (or get it printed through a print shop), in principle by passing the production companies. But then there is the grey area that is proxying. I understand that somethings are very generic and models can be used in many ways and that no one company my claim the IP of these. But when sculpts are specifically done to imitate someone elses IP but with a twist it gets tricky. Then there is down right piracy were a design is copied, either as a sculpt or as a 3D scan.

I must say that the Naked Demon Ladies are being marketed as Demonette proxies, and I am not really ok with that. The design elements of the models are reminiscent of the real deal, but I do think they have enough of their own design not be be copies even though they share some design elements.

Well that was a wall of text...