Behind the wall of Sleep - Part 4

Another plast from the past it is today !

Since many of the models I paint are at least 20 years (or more) old, how could I be more oldschool ? Well with paintjobs that are 20 years old of course !

Just as a reminder those you're about to see are not the first I unearth from the treasure chests :

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3

These are a little different though as they're some of the very first metal models I ever painted. Bought in 1991 along some tzeentch champions and all sorts of eldars. I was absolutely delighted to see them again after forgetting them for about 18 years. These bear my "touch" from back them with all the things that are wrong.

Just look at those splendid shadings in the skin, those eyes full of life and those big fat veins painted in blue ! Oh and look at the blending on the tail !

It seems I must have learnt about blacklining at that time, you can see how I subtly used that to help define contrasts. Oh and look, the veins have become pink now the skin is blue !

Behind the wall of sleep - part 3

I'm just at the end of moving home right now with the dust from boxes and furniture settling down and my evenings becoming a little more quiet.

I hate moving home, I mean I really hate it and the fact this time is the 4rth in 3 years time (11 in 10 years) doesn't help even though this new home might be the one and it's a pretty good one.

Anyway, what you're reading is still meant to be a modelling/wargaming blog so what is all this moaning and grumping about?

It is said some beautiful flowers can bloom on horrible soils and that wonder can emerge form horror.

One such thing happened yesterday while I was tidying the garage. I happened to come across a strange blue box that I'd seen from time to time without paying much attention to it. This time, I had decided to tidy things properly and not just put boxes in places where I would forget them forever, I gave a quick glance inside it...

Some of the content is clearly obvious and is the main reason why I didn't look too closely at this one before. We have a  lot of scenery pieces made by me. I remember these clearly because they were made just at the time of the release of WH40K 2nd edition. I had found a big blue isolation foam board and I used it to make a lot of scenery like :

A chaos altar

A paper toilet dungeon (at least I know where my chaos toilets will go...)

WH40K ruins and buildings

Barbwire fences

Some of you might as well have noticed something odd from the first picture... come one, take a good look, I 'm adding a little hint ...

it looks like some plastic package with a card back...

Let's have a closer look at it...

Oh, I remember getting this one from an old hobby shop in Nantes in 95 or something. Let's put this aside for a while and see what else we have here...

An Iron maiden patch with the Derek Riggs drawing for the song "seventh son of a seventh son" coming form the album bearing the same name (Maiden's best album of all time to me)

I had this attached to my jean jacket by my grandmother (god, I was wearing a jean jacket...) and later on it was attached to my wallet before getting worn out and me shying away from such fanboyism (I didn't want to frighten the few girls I managed to get close too at the time).

If you don't already know this brilliant song :

I also found a huge Union Jack offered to me for a birthday. Playing british wargames, and learning english by deciphering Iron maiden lyrics at 11 (not to mention reading pat mills comics, Tolkien and Moorcock books to name a few) must have had quite a influence on the young french teenager I was... (it still is to be honest).

Another thing  I found was totally not related with all these early 90's goods but comes from a trip in Martinique in 2005. It's jet black volcanic sand. Just how cool is that. There's no way my chaotic-to-the-chore heart won't find a way to use this the best way possible...

I hope you all agree this was quite a fluke to find such things while moving boxes of women shoes, children bicycles ans things like that...

What? You're waiting for something else? Oh you mean that old blister ? you want to know if it contained something or not and if yes, did had the balls to open it?

Well, it DID contain something... however, the blister was already broken and the content could flee from the blister without any help... The ogre was at the bottom of the box...

So Yes this was a VERY happy find and I didn't have to consider endlessly "do I have the right to open a sealed blister? because time (and moving home 10 times at least) had answered that question for me.

The only remaining question is : which one did I get from it ? It's obviously not the one I showed you last week but let's say if lats week's ogre was a captain, that would make him his higher officer...

My painting desk and hobby place are still not available at the moment (working actively on this though) but when everything's in place, I expect to come back at full speed !

For now...

PS : By the way if some of you are fanatics to the point to want this blister, I can give it to you, I also found the same blister which contained the only slanns I ever bought so that makes 2 John Blanche blisters in pretty good shape (if you don't consider they're damage enough to let the minis go.

Somehow, throwing away such blisters even though empty doesn't seem right to my oldschool heart...

Behind the wall of sleep : part 2

Since I'm on vacation again, I won't have the opportunity to take pics of recent painted stuff, yet I have a few older things I believe to be of little interest to some :

In 2004, I bought myself some ogre from the the comic "chroniques de la lune noire" This minis was painted to a relatively good standard considering my skills at the time. The real subject here is what happens when you put resin models in foam trays? :

Here's the answer

Chaos giant

 Yeah, I know, it sucks BIG TIME. No matter how hard I tried to get that one straight, it always got back this silly way. The upper part of the face and the helmet are of my composition though and remain quite to my taste apart from the fact I realised too late it made him look like a big-hat (giant) chaos dwarf...

If you wonder about his weird face expression, it's actually what I wanted to achieve since I was highly inspired by Death metal for this army and wanted him to look like Glen Benton from Deicide :

Next thing uncovered from the mists of time is my "Harry the Hammer" version. I got it the day of the release. The base is being used as filler for my undead units but has to be painted. I tried to be as subtle and realistic as I could on this one which proves to be hard to read (especially when poorly photographed). It was nonetheless a great joy to paint it and now, I wish I had bought 2 of them to try a more funky paintjob on it.

Harry the Hammer

 The avatars of war chaos champion is a model for which I have mixed feelings. I own the necromancer who was unfortunately rather badly cast and on the other hand the female vampire which is an absolute HIT for me. The chaos champion certainly has charisma but his ridiculously small feet and somewhat awkward pose made me paint him without really knowing what to do. I just painted him very simply like the rest of the army but it's unlikely I shall make hime the general of my army (maybe for some roleplay or some other project).

Avatars of War chaos champion

 This one has been waiting for too long now. When I converted my 3 dragon ogres, I found myself with arms and heads on the hands. I decided to build myslef a shallot. Though I love Alex Hedstrom's models, his shallot doesn't do the trick for me. I wanted one like the one in the realm of chaos. i decided to get my hands on some carnosaur and some pieces do build a really bulky shallot. The pieces you can see are just assembled with blu-tac to try poses and I have to find good chain and a suitable eagle to try to copy the best I can the excellent one I saw when I was a kid. The blade is made from plastcard and is a bit oversized but I guess such a lad can hold somthing this big without complaining too much...

Dragon ogre Shaggot 

This last one, I believe a lot of you remember it if you bought the WD issue in which it was offered (or any other imperial wizard). It has the distinctive blood on th esward all my minis had at the time but as a richer background than others. Look at the red on it. This is hardcore gloss enamel (varnished satin later on) and the day I painted this one I shook the pot of red like a maniac without holding the top with my thumbs as I usually did. 

The cap and all the paint of the pot jumped into my right eye.

I screamed.

I ran screaming to my parents with bright red pouring from my eye.

My mother nearly fainted.

My dad facepalmed and took me to the hospital.

A lot of people at the hospital fainted and I was admitted in top priority...

When the doctor discovered what had happened, he just laughed his ass of and got some product I don't really remember. He laughed because he was a hobbyist too and had experienced such a problem but in his hair. He washed my eyes (which looked for 2 weeks like if I had picked a fight with an ogre ).

Yep, my clumsiness and that little chap did just that...

For the record, I got to painting with acrylics the day after that, maybe without this incident I would have become the next Fraser Gray? Nahhh, I would have sucked anyway, but who knows?

Bloody Imperial wizard

Behind the wall of sleep - Part 1

Those of you who have read the novel form H.P. Lovecraft will understand this title at the end of the post and those who haven't could  read it and find themselves enjoying one of the best novels form the author (to my taste at least).

Having engaged myself in the oldhammer community a deep further recently and in my hobby since the beginning of this blog, I've come to the point I spend 2-3 hours a day on painting/modelling and not much on watching TV/video games. With the Monthly painting challenge on the oldhammer forum, I've also been slowing down a lot on photos and I've even halted on the khorne champions I was about to finish :

 My way of painting is simple and can be summed up in 1 word:TAYLORISM (prime everything, base colours on everything, shades on everything, highlightson everyting, metals on everythngs and so on...)

I only paint batches or groups, The only mini I've ever painted alone was the Brettonian Hypogriff. Apart from this one, whenever I want to paint a mini I always pick up a few I'll do alongside. Until a month ago I was even still imagining painting my whole chaos 40K army in one go (100+ marines and  5 vehicles...)

For this reason I always pushed the beginning of this army to later. This time I started painting only the Rogue trader part of it and starting a bit gave me the will to paint the rest but splitting it into more reasonable groups. When these are finished, there will be the 2nd edition part and so on...

The other drawback of painting huge batches like I do is that you never finish anything until you reach the final touch on every mini at the same time and you end up with loads of finished minis in little time.

I don't mean to change my way of painting much. I can't paint a mini after another, I like efficient techniques on rank and file minis to save time for more time consumming ones. That apart, I do want to get out of the confort zone to try new techniques and new colours to progress  bit.

Now where am I going if I keep my title in mind? (remember the Lovecraft theme...)

Well, as I was roaming through the lead treasure chest digging for trade fodder, I came across some special minis. I know you all have some like these, it's the ones you made for no reason, ones you had not planned or which were not designed for any particular army you owned.

What you are about to see is no level to be proud of but I loved them at the time and still do now. Amongst all this I found these :

 This one is quite special since it's the first one I ever painted. It's obviously the "battle master" ogre standing on its regular base (sawed like I could at the time). At the time (some 22 years ago) I was already collecting chaos champions and eldars but I couldn't get myself to painting them for I was terrified at the idea of ruining such beauties. One day though, my father told me he still had his Humbrol paint pots he used to paint his warship models with and got them from a closet.

I decided to use these on the ogre since I was less reluctant to ruin a plastic figure first. I got my hands on painting with enamels and using the solvents needed. This mini sealed my fate and my unlimited dedication to chaos... (that and the fact my mother decided that day she hated miniatures and RPG's because it had made her son a depraved and violent kid painting blood on his toys...)

This other one came out.I had completely forgotten it and how I had loved doing it, sculpting a world eater symbol on th ekneepad while listening to metal. (you can notice the blood is still present on the weapon). If I remember right, it must date back the release of the first ogre kingdom amry book for this was the weapon I had been waiting for at the time.

This last one is the best to me. It's a pile of junk and bits which were not meant to fit together and turned great (to me though). Sharp eyes will have spotted a tarentula and legs froms a spacecrusade dreadnought, heavy bolters from the 2nd predator version, guitar string and ork guns. It was not intended to be part of any army nor any game, just for the fun of using pieces.

Lost in so many projects and so much silly deadlines, I found very refreshing to see what had been hiding behind the wall of sleep and which I had long forgotten.

It reminds the progress I've made (though it's not spectacular given the time I've been into this...) and what made me love this. It's why in a close future I will let myself have hobby vacations in the form of small bands or single minis, just for the fun, just to have that special hero or special monster ready for a game I'll never play, just for the pleasure to have done it. I've found a lot of these and many more half finished. I'll pick them as they come and may finish some or let some be.

Anyway, my mind rigt now is centred on finishing this rogue trader renegade army and I'm having a very good time with the dread actually, whenever I finish a part of it, another idea pops into my mind. Let's hope everything will be to your liking and then I really want to turn my attention back to the Khornish and the doomed one...

That, and to the many rogue trader adventurers I've laid my hands on lately...

I still have got some Nurgle fellas to show but the pics are no good and I'm working on a better photo strategy, so pics of good stuff should come in a near future.