We're back with March's edition of having a look at what I managed to paint each month. I spent a disgusting amount of time dealing with a crisis over a CoS paint scheme, but still managed to paint a fair few cool pieces. And, perhaps more importantly, dealt with that world ending crisis and settled on a new scheme. So yes, you can breathe again, and enjoy seeing...
What I Painted In March 2024
1) Ushoran
This big boy was the first model I painted for March, right off the back of really enjoying painting up the Flesh Eaters since the start of this year. Ushoran was quite the complicated sculpt to paint, with many areas probably benefitting from sub assemblies. I just find that kills my enjoyment of painting, so I decided to make life harder than it needed to be, and paint him fully built. A true joy of a model to paint, and I loved having my paint scheme translate to something on a larger scale. Honestly such an amazing new sculpt, both to build and paint, and so I think anyone who enjoys painting, or perhaps paints things for display purposes, should have a go at this guy. Despite feeling like he did take a little a while to paint, I think I completed him in two days simply because of how enjoyable the process was from start to finish.
2) Royal Decapitator
Still high on my paint scheme for these kingly and totally not delusional fellas, I decided to paint up the last couple of characters I had. This guy provided the perfect backdrop to really go to town on the grey and blood effects, seeing as his garments are made from human skin. It was really fun to keep playing around with these technical effects, but I especially enjoyed working the blood into the blade, attempting to show a mixture of dried and wet blood.
3) Abhorrant Cardinal
The final character was this pope like fella, and he was just as fun as all of the other Flesh Eaters. His particular sculpt really allowed the colour scheme to shine, contrasting the bloody and flayed flesh against the royal blue, with the brightness of the bone providing a little extra pop. I was glad to see these colours blend seamlessly with one another, creating a rather crisp looking finished paintjob. I really am happy with how this guy came out, and so he joins the rest of the slowly growing gang.
4) Epidemius
Taking a break from the bloody gore of the ghouls, I wanted to finish up on the puss ridden gore of Nurgle. I started painting this model a while ago, but quickly stopped when my motivation ran dry. I decided to try some different things on him to get him painted, and I ended up really enjoying the process. I go between thinking I enjoy painting resin sculpts more than plastic, due to the slightly grittier finish. There were a number of things I probably could have done with spending a little more time on to make him extra special, but was happy to just get him off the desk and into the finished pile!
5) Druanti
After painting so many gross paitnjobs as of late, I wanted to completely change track and paint something pretty. I settled on painting a couple of Sylvaneth, a faction I have never painted before. I knew I wanted to retain the brown and green earthiness that I felt these tree faring fellows would have. But to give it that special pop of colour, I tried to create a pink ethereal looking finish to the spirit elements of the model. It didn't quite work out as well as I wanted, mainly due to not really working with pink before, but for a first time, it could have been worse! I also wanted to make some pretty blended patterns on the wings, using a mixture of blue and purple, and I'm pretty happy with the end result. I utilised wet blending to get smooth transitions, and I think it came out pretty great!
6) The Lady of Vines
Following on from my enjoyment in painting Druanti, I wanted to to transfer that over to this sculpt. It was much larger than I thought it would be, and while the blends of the brown to green came out pretty well, I found that I kind of messed up the pink spirit elements. I wasn't sure if it was down to the larger scale, or the fact that maybe I should have just used a more traditional metal for the armour, instead of forcing it to be ethereal. I was a little too deep into it to change plans, so tried to make the best out of some poor painting work, by cleaning up and giving it a wash. Overall, I do think the paintjob is decent, but I need to work on improving my ability at working with any colour...or more specifically, pink.
7) Vampire Lord
After spending some time painting more complex sculpts and techniques, I wanted to paint something small and relatively simple. The vampire Lord provided the perfect canvas for this. I swapped out the head for something a little more intimidating, and got immediately to work on the armour. I ended ups ending hours working on the metal, with about 5 different layers worth, to try and create a 'true' metallic colour. It definitely looks pretty good, but perhaps not so much for the effort and time than went into it. Though I did really enjoy doing so, and will absolutely keep working on my metals to make them better looking. I also found the pale white skin came out really well too, despite being nervous with painting with white. Overall, a great little model that gave me some things to think about!
8) Steelhelms
I was really struggling with the Cities of Sigmar force I had started towards the end of last year, getting sick of the exteme use of green for the Living City. So I spent a considerable amount of time coming up with a new and custom scheme. These three steelhelms are the end result of that, and I'm really happy with how they've come out, but more importantly, the paint scheme as a whole. The colours will provide enough interest, and flexibility, so that painting a whole army full of different sculpts and details, should hopefully not become too overbearing or boring. Only time will tell with that one, but for now, I think these little guys look great in their new colours....just what do I do now with all the models I've already painted in green!?
9) Fusil Major on Ogor Warhulk
Finally, the last model I painted in March was this fantastically ridiculous sculpt. Having just working out the new CoS scheme, I wanted to apply it to a bigger model, and I really wanted to paint this specific one. It ended up being a hell of a lot more complicated and time consuming than I thought, with all of the copies amount of detail and hard to reach areas (again, no sub assemblies). But at no point did I lose my steam, and really did enjoy painting it up. I'm so glad I changed the scheme before attempting to do so though, as for sure the green would have been too much. The three prime colours of the paint scheme allows for the model to look so much more interesting, and I'm already looking forward to transferring that scheme to the next sculpt. Please do excuse the lack of basing for them though, I'm in the process of figuring out what kind of environment I want them to exist in, but I'm probably going to go with a grassy theme of some kind, to provide a little extra contrast to the overall scheme.
And that is everything I painted in March! You'll notice two of the models aren't in the main picture of them all together, which is due to selling them very quickly! I always paint to sell, because my enjoyment is in the painting side of Warhammer, so please do get in touch if you see anything you'd like to purchase! Or more importantly, now that I'm pretty much trying to paint full time, get in touch regarding commissions! I don't think I charge very much, and my desperation for money so I can eat may cause you to get a pretty decent deal (one that still respects the art, skill, tools and time, naturally).
Otherwise, if you have no trouble painting yourself, please get in touch and share what you painted in March, I would love to hear from you! You can do so via here, plasticpreacher@gmail.com or @plasticpreacher via Instagram.
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