Week 15: Ghouls out for Summer

The sun has well and truely arrived in Exeter and to mark the event I have now passed 50 ghouls painted.

These bad boys are starting to look pretty good on masse, even if I do say so myself..

Another 15 painted this week, including a Crpt ghoul ghast.

The Crypt ghoul ghast has been converted up using the body of an Empire Flagulent. I think that I have lent the head too far back, but apart from that I am quite happy with the result.

Once again I have been combining about half of the ghouls into shared bases, so that figure placement is easier.

I have had to do a fair amount of conversion on the ghouls with skeletons on their backs, but have now hit on the idea of putting a shield there...

I think that I will try this again, it appears to work quite well..

Week 14: Ghouly gathering

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Of trays and ghouls

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After a weeks break from painting I am back refreshed and ready for action... To mark this precious state I have elected to tackle a few more ghouls. I am trying to reproduce the original paint scheme but I didn't take any notes, so I'll have to have a few goes at obvious colour combination's until I can work out what I used. I am modeling about half of the figures in paints as shown above. The idea is that this will make ranking easier.

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 I love these figures because they look so very manic. The only problem areas are around the shoulder blades and on the hips, where I have had to apply so greenstuff. The only other problem is the figure with the skeleton on his back. If I am going to model and paint 80 of these guys, then I will end up with 8 of him. The problem is he is so very different and 8 will stand out too much. I have therefore decided to convert half of these. The chap above has received a simple conversion with his hair replacing the skeleton.

I have also had to knock up a couple of bases. the ones above are for the chaos Marauder horsemen. I put magnetic fridge magnet material on the base of the figures and metallic paper on the movement tray. This mean that the bases sit too high in comparison with the tray. The solution is as shown above. I use cardboard off a breakfast cereal t raise the edge. I then slap on loads of PVA to create a nice smooth front edge to the whole thing. When this is dry I apply PVA & grit in the conventional way. Easy...

Easter shopping: Day 1

A week away from my painting base has given me the perfect opportunity to collect some more fresh clean plastic and metal ready to be abused with my paint brush.

It all looks so lovely in it packages that I felt the need to photograph it...

For your delight, fresh from the shoppe shelves, 40 ghouls, 15 chaos nights, 20 Grave guard, 6 bat swarms and a winged vampire.

Week 4: I finish a unit of crypt ghouls

Week four has come to an end and I've just about managed to complete my first unit of Crpyt ghouls.

I have not yet assembled a ghast, but that will come how I've decided I want to model the blighter. I've been playing with ideas around some of the old Mordheim figures, or following Games Workshops lead and converting up a empire flagellant. I have a few from my empire army.

I have tried to combine a few on this base to make casualty removal a bit easier. The rock is just a bit of foam cut to shape. I experienced problems with the GW undercoat melting the foam, but overcame this with a layer of PVA. Now I just need to work out a resilient way of gluing the figures onto these rocks. The idea behind he rocks is that they will try to tie the various units together visually.

In total I need to bang together about seventy of these chaps, but I think it might be an idea to return to these in a bit otherwise I might just run out of enthusiasm.

All of the unit are mounted on magnetic strips to make carrying easier.

As regards progress, I promised myself that I would complete 16 painting points per week (each model is worth his units strength squared in painting points). This is now the end of week 4 so I should be upto 64 and I've only done 60. Ooops. Lets see if I can try and catch up a little next week.

The ghouls have been quite fun, but to be honest its now time to switch to something with a bit of colour in it. next week I plan to have a go at the Chaos marauder horsemen. 4 of these will stop me slipping further behind.

Week 3: A go at Crypt ghouls

After spending the first two weeks with Chaos warhounds I thought that it was time to try my hand with a little Vampire Counts. Cypt ghouls feature in both of my vampire counts armies, so the logical conclusion was to have a go at them.

The Vampire counts book states that these are living creatures and that "their skin is dark and filthy, their eyes bestial and insane, and their snarling lips reveal sharp pointed teeth". I therefore decided that I wanted these figures to look as if they had never washed, but I wanted them to look alive.

I went for a brown / grey look with a number of washes to create a dirty look. I have then added red washes around the elbows, knees and heels to try and make them look a little alive, from frail.

The colours kind of work on my painting table, but I don't appear able to take a decent photo of them...

Only managed to get 10 figures painted this week. That makes a grand total of 50 painting points in three weeks. The target was (3x16) 48, so I'm ahead of programme, but I only can see myself painting 10 next week.