M.I.A

Sorry folks, I've kind of been missing in action for a little while.  Rest assured that I'll be making a couple of blog posts this weekend, though. I've been working on another Death Guard marine, and also on a Predator (which is very much a work in progress).  I've also been chucking ideas about with my good mate Tim on a Land Raider conversion.

In the mean time, here is a picture of a bloke with a toad on his head:

This type of thing has actually happened before, and last time one man died.

For some reason I also had 5 Magics by Megadeth in my head last night for no good reason...

Ye Skaven of thee vile Clann Cheeseboarde - part 2

As anybody with even a passing familiarity with skaven doubtless knows, they are cowardly yet cunning creatures.  Hence, the combat oriented heroes they have are all a bit crap.

They do, however have some nasty magic tricks up their voluminous wizards' sleeves.  With this worthy arcane knowledge in mind, I obviously had to have a few spell casting rats in my army.  Here are a couple of them now...

This is the grey seer from the screaming bell kit, to which I added a hand holding a grimoire from the plague monks  accessories sprue

In this shot, he looks like he's leaping over a fence.

This one includes a poor attempt at free hand on the pages of his grimoire.

Overall, I was reasonably happy with the job I did at the time.  If I was to paint him again, I'd probably do a few things differently.  For anybody that's remotely interested, a couple of those arcane symbols are recreations of some of the cave paintings in Twin Peaks.

The Grey Seer Thanquol model.  Good fun, even these days, even though his hands and feet are well out of proportion.

From another angle.  Come to think of it, his staff has a  fairly  thick haft. Ah, the halcyon days when  it was too difficult to do a thin spear or staff without it being too delicate to even consider...

I called this plague priest the Stinking Bishop. I love this model.

Mmmm, gelfling?

I do like that they sculpted this model with a hunch back.

Ye Skaven of thee vile Clann Cheeseboarde - part 1

I was having a bit of gander (a "look" for the non-Northerners) at my external hard drive the other day, and I stumbled across some Skaven that I painted a couple of years back.  So I thought I'd share them with you few that are following / lurking on this blog.  Plus, I think you probably deserve a break from the Death Guard stuff...

Therefore please meet some rat ogres, by the unlikely names of Klaus, Heinrich and Schnitzel.

Klaus unfortunately went blind after biting into a discarded warpfire thrower, which as you might expect exploded in his face. Overwhelmed by a level of pain and frustration his tiny mind just couldn't cope with, Klaus has become very belligerent and has to be goaded carefully in the correct direction whenever his handlers take the field.

Klaus is a very large and powerful rat ogre and often breaks his restraints.   On one  rather memorable occasion he burst free of the sewers & ran amok in the gunnery school of Nuln. Non were left alive, and several drunken guards were hanged for dereliction of duty.

Schnitzel is quite possibly one crazy experiment too far.  Having  a comparatively  agile mind  for  a rat ogre, Schnitzel  has time and again shown an almost calculated taste for simplistic cruelty.  His higher level of intelligence can probably be attributed to the mutating essence of the huge lump of warp stone that has been implanted in his shoulder.  Having said this, it unlikely he could surpass the typical village simpleton in most tests of rudimentary intelligence.

Schnitzel has a warpstone and steam powered enlarged surgical blade affixed to his arm.   He is able to distinguish the difference between beating man-things into greasy paste with his fist and slicing them asunder with his blade.  Both of these outcomes please him immensely.

Heinrich is somewhat sedate for a rat ogre, although far from mild mannered - until threatened!  It is said in the vast corridors and tunnels of the Under Empire that  he has become the personal steed of a certain powerful Grey Seer...

I think my painting has probably improved a bit since I did these, so don't, like, judge me maaaan and all that jazz. But I did have good fun messing about with these.  If they were dogs, they'd probably be described as "big, lovely, chunky pups" or something.

The Left Hand of Doom

OK, so maybe Hellboy has a right hand of doom, but Entombed walked the Left Hand Path...

Yep. I've not been updating this old blog all that much recently. Been a bit busy doing other stuff which has mainly included not enough drinking and not enough curry, along with a stray bit of skateboarding.  "But dude, you're nearly 35!" I hear you cry.  Yes, and I still paint toy soldiers as well.  When I get the chance at least!!

Something rotten on Okassis...

Strange silhouettes flit through the smoky ruins and a stench most foul pervades the very atmosphere itself.

What hope can there be for mankind when the lost and the damned stalk these rubble-strewn streets?

something a bit different - here's some hefty tomes

So, I thought I'd write about something a bit different to gluing loads of monsters together for a change.
The Mrs will be well pleased. Not writing about Warhammer can only enhance my street cred.  Yes, I actually had some once, and everything.

I digress...

Back to the matter I wished to discourse on, I have come into possession of a fair few tomes in recent months, some of which were Christmas gifts, and others that I managed to pick up from charity shops, Ebay and the like.

This one is quite special to me, and is the book that is the deep seated root of my inevitable downward spiral into becoming a near total spazz-nerd.  I found this edition in a charity shop on Putney High Street a couple of weeks back.  It's a 1966 edition, and at the time it would've set you back 8s & 6d, according to the cover.  What's remarkable is that this is the very same edition that my dad gave to me a 7 year old way back in 1984.  So I was made up when I found this. Two quid. Victory to the Maher.  I'm particularly enamoured with the original concept sketch on the cover of the death of Smaug. 

Anyway, next up is a snap-shot of my 'To Read' pile:

Yep. This lot should keep me occupied on my journeys too and from work for the foreseeable.  

It's become a bit of an aim for me to try and read as many of the titles in the Fantasy Masterworks and Sci-Fi Master Works series of books.  I've read a couple before, namely Do Androids Dream of Electronic Sheep by Phillip K. Dick (uhhuhhuhhuh, he said 'dick'), which is way beyond good, just in case any of you haven't read it before.  If you don't like reading, a) don't panic, there's not many pages, and b) I suggest you kick your computer screen in so that you won't have to read my rantings and ravings any more.  I also read (after years of persuasion from my dad) Rendezvous With Rama by Arthur Clarke.  I thought the quality of writing was good, and he had some nice ideas and all, but the complete lack of conflict in the story kind of left me scratching my head a bit.A good enough read and all that, but it did not inspire me in the slightest to pick up any of the sequels.  I can well imagine it was way more thought provoking back in the day (1972) when it was originally published.  Anyways, reading those two, as I was saying, inspired me (in a very lazy way) to check out other stuff in the collections.  If you feel interested, here is a link to the wikipedia page for the Fantasy Master Works series of books, and another to the SF Master Works if you want to see a list of titles.  In the picture above you can see a couple of them, including Fevre Dream by George RR Martin, which is going to be the next thing I read, and The Book of the New Sun volumes 1 & 2.  People on the internet keep insisting I read these, so when I saw them for a couple of quid in a charity shop the other day, I thought I may as well grub them up. Word.

By this point in the post, it's likely people have stopped reading, and may not even care that much, but below is a picture of what I'm reading at the moment:

These are like a collaborative sequel to Raymond E. Feist's original Riftwar saga, which was set on the world of Midkemia (a typical Middle Earth rip-off), but very enjoyable nevertheless.  These ones here are set on the world of Kelewan, which is on the other side of the Rift.  It's almost like a feudal Japan type setting, only with sentient insects and all the animals have 6 legs.  And the sky, obviously, is green.  I'm currently on the 3rd book (yes, the one with the cheesy painting on the front that makes it look like a lady's book), and I have to say, this series is far superior to the original Riftwar trilogy.  if you for some mental reason want to find out more about these go to the Wikipedia page

If you made it to the end of this, I thank you for your patience and your indulgence.

Possessed Death Guard marines - in progress

This weekend I've managed to get some modelling done.  Some of you may recall that a few weeks back I posted up a couple of pictures of an idea I'd had for some possessed marines for my Death Guard army.

Well, I managed to find the time to do a bit more work on them, including one that I managed to build completely.  Behold the dread apparition that ripped it's way through Tim's penal legion yesterday evening.  All they did wrong was fail to dedicate enough care and attention to maintaining their kit and weapons.  The next thing they know, they've had a sound bollocking from the local commissar and found themselves in the vanguard and a whole world of manure...

Bleuuurrrr. I want to eat your pancreas with some acorns.

I once met a dude with even worse teeth than this.

The situation at the moment is that I'm in need of a selection of suitable right arms to help finish off the other four.  I've got a couple of ideas, but we'll see how we get on...  As it is, I've added in legs from the loyalist marine assault squad, and fixed the heads in place using a mix of super glue and green stuff.  Well, here they are. Warts n'all.

Don't look them in the eye. They'll only get angry.

These were great fun to mess about with.  I reckon I'll be adding more soon...