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Welcome back for another array of miniatures of the month. A bit quieter one this month, but our intrepid bloggers are still hard at work creating miniature masterpieces. I must confess to being in a bit of a hobby rut myself, but that just means I need to mix stuff up. Prepare for something completely new from me in the near future! In the meantime, lets see what my colleagues have:
Iron Man (Marvel Crisis Protocol) by Sam de Smith
Well April's been a quieter month for me, only a dozen or so figs completed - really just getting the heroes and villains done from the Earth's Mightiest Core Set for MCP. I'm particularly happy with how Iron Man turned out, as I decided to do him in a more stylised, comic fashion than I would normally go for. First, the mini was primed grey and drybrushed with (you guessed it) Vallejo Deck Tan. Then, the yellow metals! Yellow is famously tricky, and I normally start with GW Averland as a rich, dense, mustardy base (omnomnom) - however, for this I stuck to VJ Game Colors, starting with Golden Yellow, then layering Sun Yellow and Moon Yellow, then pin washing (just into the lines with a very fine brush) with a thin amount of Seraphim Sepia before finally blending some Arctic white into the top of the Moon Yellow. The same yellow process was done in reverse on the explosion and blast effect, before they were drybrushed with Orange Fire, Red Gore, Stonewall Grey and finally pure Black. The Reds were similarly layered from Bloody Red to Red Gore, and then along the chest plate hit with more Orange Fire and, once dry, Arctic white with Sun Yellow around the edges. The blue glow was Electric blue drybrushed around the edges of the white. A fun fig to do, even if we STILL don't have a classic Iron Man landing / action squirrel pose... Maybe next time.
Arbites Exaction Squad (40K) by Neil Parker
I’m playing a fair bit of Warhammer 40K Dark Heresy at the moment. After my very enjoyable time playing a sanctioned psyker, I then tried out an Arbites officer. So, I bought the Adeptus Arbites Exaction Squad. Essentially, I wanted a mini to use for the RPG, but I love the minis so I’m painting the whole squad bit by bit.
The paints I used are a mixed bag. Mostly Citadel and Vallejo. I started off building a Subductor model, with shock maul and shield because it closely resembles my melee focused Player Character.
A good thing about modern Games Workshop models is you can customise the figure and also it is easier to paint some parts. The models are excellent quality. The Subductor model has a vox device at the back along with a las pistol holster and tucked right back is a baton, manacles and storage on a utility belt.
With this figure I started with layers of black, then lighter black, a little brown and touched up the edges with highlights to add depth and contrast. The shield I painted separately. I used gunmetal, a little silver for highlights and bronze for metallic features and Nuln oil for shade and Casandora Yellow for a shade on the bronze parts. Finally, I built a cyber mastiff and two ranged units with a marksman and heavy gunner. I still have the rest of the squad to build, but this will do for now.
Ghoul (Fallout Board Game) by Northern Invasion Stu
For those of you that take the time to regularly read the miniature of the month blog post it will not come as a surprise that I have again been painting a model from the Fallout board game. Ghouls are one of the most recognisable and characterful denizens of the Fallout world. This dapper gentleman sports a three-piece suit (minus jacket of course), complete with tie and dress shirt. Outfitted for both the wasteland and settlements alike, the ghoul also sports a suitably impressive sidearm.
In order to blend with the rest of the miniatures that I have painted from the board game, I first primed the model using Zandri Dust before applying some blocking base colours and finishing with an Army Painter soft tone wash. Despite the well-dressed nature of the ghoul it really isn’t necessary to achieve anything like a clean or crisp finish with Fallout models. Therefore I kept things simple/basic and didn’t get too concerned with the final details on this one allowing myself to skip much of the highlights. Instead I went for a weathered look and tried to select a couple of points of the mini to pop visually, namely the energy sources and pipes on the sidearm and the ghoul’s lucky red tie.
It’s not clear from the picture but I did take a little time to make sure that the ghoul’s dress shoes were suitably impressive in a two tone finish of black and white - almost like a bowling shoe today. The 1950s styling of the Fallout miniatures included within the board game are fantastic and really are a joy to paint.
With the success of the TV series, and given how much I have enjoyed painting the miniatures for the Fallout board game over the past few months, I have recently invested in quite a few miniatures from the Fallout Wasteland Warfare game - namely the models from the robots and automatons faction. Hopefully there’ll be some progress shots of these in the coming months before it’s all hands on deck painting-up new armies for fourth edition Age of Sigmar