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A long time ago I bought a blister of Squig Herders. I wanted something easy to quickly finish in between my other projects, which seemed to take forever. Well... I painted the purple Squig in 2016 and finished the Goblins last year. The pink and the orange Squig just left my painting desk. So talking about quick... Wasn't too motivated with this project, so it's more of a get-it-off-my-desk-quality. Still, it was fun, sometimes. Enjoy!

This guy came from a large number of Bretonnian miniatures given to my husband for a Warhammer army. He never set up an army, but after many years of sitting ignored in boxes I've recently begun pulling some out and painting them to use as tabletop NPCs.

Once a mere gladiator, Ventars brutality in the arena attracted the attentions of the Dark Gods. Remade into one of their champions, he now travels from battlefield to battlefield seeking out those that can provide him with an entertaining fight. Presenting Ventar, an Exalted Deathbringer with Ruinous Axe from GamesWorkshops Age of Sigmar range. This one was a bit of a challenge as non-human skin tones are outside of my comfort zone, but I don't think I did too badly. As always, any comments or criticisms are warmly received.

Looks like you will see the process from the middle, but i think it`s not a problem. As you can see, i have added some nice butt to her. That idea was around for some long, as i wanted to sculpt the legs for Boudicca, but decided not to do this (yeagh, if i do so, then i will finish whole series in a thousand years!) Anyway, i think that THIS WAY Lagertha is just good enough. Also, the detailed article about Tamiya putty on its way. See ya!

Finished these finally (yes I know the bases on the back ones aren't done yet) but the painting is done :P Just got something like 2 chariots, a boltthrower, a few lords, a unit of Calvary and I think I can pretty call his army done (at least for now). Really trying to get to more CAV and my Jabberwock this week! So messy pic:

Finally finished "Bob" my second Hellpit abomination, which is a large Skaven designed monster for Warhammer fantasy. He's pretty grotesque with a face(s) only a mother could love so of course I think he's adorable. One of those it's so ugly it's cute things. My first Hellpit, Pretty Boy, was lonely so I decided he needed a friend. Had a lot of fun with the skin tones on him, I think I'm getting better overall. I played around with a lot of different tones to try to give him a patchwork appearance - since this thing is essentially a golem, frankenstein type thing. Anyway so I took a ton of pics, some are a little blurry unfortunately. I've lost an integral part of my camera's tripod, that helps it connect so I was holding the camera and it shows.

Presenting Gutrot Spume, a Chaos Champion slowly mutating into some sort of tentacled thing. He's also my first finished mini of the year, and his WIP can be found here. Just had a massive amount of fun painting him up, and I think I did a fairly good job too. Any comments and criticisms are, as always, warming received.

These are 3 Warhammer Fantasy Lizardman Kroxigors (big lizardmen) that I painted up just because I liked the models. The blueish one is the champion and his sorta triceratops skull helmet is sculpted from Milliput with plastic horns. I'm still really happy with these guys except for that skull, it feels like it doesn't have enough detail to me now.

How do you best follow up a post featuring a Dwarven Slayer? With Trolls, of course! I've shown two of these trolls before, just two weeks past a year ago now, as it happens. Last week, while stuck for something to paint I asked Marouda to choose some models for me to finish and as a result, I finally got a third finished for them. Hill troll suffered a broken wrist many years ago, and with my meager skills of the day I "repaired" it by pinning and then wrapping wire around the join, as though it were bound with rope. Not the neatest of jobs, but it works passably, and I've not got the desire to destroy his wrist again in an attempt to repair it. The two that have already been shown were painted Blue, as GW-style "Stone Trolls" probably sometime during the period of 4th Edition of WHFB. Most likely the one with the boulder overhead "Cave Troll" was painted as he was a pretty good approximation of a Stone Troll. "Warrior Troll" was no doubt painted to match, and the "new" guy, "Hill Troll" was definitely started with the other two in mind. He just took a lot longer before I got around to completing him! These three together will make up a regiment-sized unit for my eventual Kings of War (Orc and) Goblin Army, made up of (mostly) older Citadel figures. Not to be confused with the Moria Goblins who I've been working on a fair bit this year. In the short-to-medium-term, there might be some crossover between the two, but only until I manage to get both playable. As it happens, I've just found that these three comprise 3/4 of the entire original C20 Troll range... queue a week-long delay in publishing this post to do a bit more BTS work... ...and also as it happens, I've also got their fourth, here, who just needed a little touching up and a rebasing from his old, 90's-style green-flocked base. I'll share Swamp Troll again sometime soonish with a bit of luck when I sort him out a pair of proper mates. And the final shot - all four of the C20 Troll Class of '87. Finally completed!

Today we have just a few models. All three were painted recently, though the standard was completed last (week!), since I was a little uninspired by the cloaky nature of the sculpt and struggled to find a way to finish it to my satisfaction. In the end I decided that there wasn't a lot I could do without getting unnecessarily ornate with the cloak which is really just supposed to be a darkened rag-cloak and that the head(skull!) and banner itself would serve suitably as the focal points These Skeletons are from at least 1989, and I believe that all three of these were sculpted by Aly Morrison. I've kept to Marouda's overall Undead army colours of Black, Red, old Brass and Steel (and bone!) Shields can be a bit of a challenge, in that I like to keep to smaller ones that don't overpower/hide the rest of the model too much, but want to make them interesting in their own rights. I went with an era-appropriate smaller shield and gave it a half-skullface design, with a bit of an attempted depth painted onto it. The unit they will lead does not yet exist, so rather than hold them back I decided to show them off now. The Standard bearer could potentially end up as one of the ASBs in the bigger undead army, but we'll have to wait and see after the new KoW rules come out in a week or so. Of course, I can always use them in AoS in the meantime.

Today's update shows off an "Oldhammer" Warhammer Goblin Unit made up of 2nd-3rd Edition models, almost entirely sculpted by Kev Adams back in the day and based on Rounds and turned into a KoW regiment by virtue of some blu-tac and a movement tray. These figures have been painted over quite a few years, with many painted 5-10+ years ago, a couple last year, and the last stragglers done in the last few weeks as part of my "finish those bloody things" drive. I'll show them off in threes to start with. The command group of the unit (not that these things matter in the new edition of KoW, but I digress). The leader is "Kleaver" from the Goblin Battle Chariots box set with the addition of a Marauder Goblin Shield. The rest of the crew also found their way into this regiment. I think I started painting them to add to the chariots, which I never got painted and slowly faded into the depths of time. I'll have to do something about those sometime soonish. Perhaps they can have some plastic crewmen? The other two are simply command figures from the late 1980's, probably painted sometime in the 1990's. I didn't feel a need for a flag or pennant. Not all standards are giant flags, after all. I gave the musician a Nine Inch Nails back tattoo, since as a gobbo musician he's clearly really into his industrial music. The leader got a red hood to make him really pop, especially given his chainmail coat and plate boots take away a lot of the opportunity to add colour and interest. The next three feature two more from the 80's command figures - the mod-posed figures are a Champion, a Leader and their cohort is a regular goblin from '91. Though I think he looks like the sort to be a unit champion with his cute little glaive. Two of these three also came off the chariot sets mentioned earlier. The centre spear and hammer. Clearly the "red" spear is a close relation to the Hammer, and no doubt that helped me decide to paint the pair of them at the same time. All three of these were originally painted in the 1990's... ...and then the two on the outer were "re-finished" this year. The copper and Bronze scale mail were originally red, and purple. Hideous, you might say? Yes. The shield was originally absent entirely - just a shield boss sticking out of the back of the figure, painted black - so I decided to add a shield. I went for a leering goblin face design. I'm not entirely happy with it, but it falls under "good enough" for me. I could spend time trying to figure out why I'm not satisfied with it, or I could just move on and do a better job on the next freehand shield. So I've chosen the latter. These three are a little more interesting. The first goblin, with the hammer and net is an early slottabase figure, from the C13 Small Goblins range, circa 1885-ish. I haven't managed to find this specific figure in the catalogues, but it looks to be the same style as figures like "Spear Thruster", so possibly/probably sculpted by the Perrys. This one was entirely painted recently, and while I'm not super happy with how his musculature came out, the head is fine, and the mohawk was a fun old-school touch. The other two figures were also painted years ago. The middle figure is one of Bob Olley's Iron Claw Goblins from 1988. It's from the same range that the recent Fanatics I shared came from, and he was probably even purchased in the same blister that they came in. I went for something entirely different on his shield, trimming off the edging and painting it in a kind of pseudo-3D goblin moon-face style. Why is the moon red rather than yellow? Probably so it'd stand out more against the green of the goblin's hide. Dunno. It was an experiment, after all. That's what the more individual metal models did for me back in the day, before mass plastics were the norm. I liked to experiment with a lot more of my models' paint jobs, even if it meant that they lacked a unified unit look. The final figure, another of the late-'80's "champions" also had a shield experiment. The narrative to that figure, if you will - is that he painted his shield himself. I always wondered how brutal creatures like Orcs and Goblins, who had brutal and crude weapons and armour always had such fine, delicate and artistic designs on their shields, banners and gear. I decided to paint this guy's shield as though he'd painted it himself. [see boxout above] Recently. The skull is crude and simple. The blue (and red) paint is messy and spattered everywhere (including on his clothing) and the paint had also pooled at the base of his shield, leading to a mess on the metal where it was leaning on the ground in a pool of paint. Cast yourselves back to your Primary/Elementary School Art Room, and you'll feel the inspiration for this guy. On the backside of these three, both the Iron Claw goblin and the art-school candidate had their clothing repainted. Iron Claw boy lost his garish purple and yellow 1990's tunic and skirt while The Artist's blue scale mail was repainted in a bright copper. Are Heartbreaker miniatures "Oldhammer"? Technically probably not since they were sculpted after Kev Adams left GW's employ, but then again their aesthetic follows the 3rd Edition Warhammer Fantasy look and feel quite closely. This guy is still available today from Ral Partha Europe/RPE as part of their range of Kev Adams Goblins. I should buy some more of them sometime, but at 2 quid a figure by 12 or 24, that comes to £24/48 or a little shy of AU$50-100 for one unit, which is a bit hard for me to justify to myself right now. I just wish they had discounted unit prices for sets of 10 or 20. Basically, they're super-cheap for heroes and unit leaders but it adds up quickly if you want to build whole units. (Though they're probably still cheaper than whatever GW is charging for plastics these days!) Still, this guy is a great figure and for only 2 quid, an easy and easily-justified purchase. And now, The Unit Shot! (Lots more over on the Wordpress)

The first two figures in this update are a pair of the first batch of Squig Hoppers released by GW for 4th Edition WHFB, back in 1991-1992. WHFB3 (the "Oldhammer" edition) didn't feature Squigs in any form, and goblins were really just goblins. When WHFB4 came around with it's 40k-codex style army books, Goblins gained several subtypes in a properly-supported form, such as Night and Forest. I seem to recall mentions of Night Goblins predating 4th edition, so there's that. Night Goblins have kind of become the de facto subtype in more recent years as opposed to the more generic ones from WFFB3. Anyway, I really quite liked these models, and so I collected quite a few of them. One of these two was painted quite awhile ago (5 years? 10? Who knows!) while the other was started right afterwards and only finished last year. It was shown last year in near-complete WIP form at one point, but I never showed off the completed model. As I've stated elsewhere - sure these Kev Adams sculpts look cartoony, disproportionate, and not especially realistic. But they do have real character. I'm well aware how often "character" is used as a kind of code/excuse for poor sculpting of older models, but here I really do mean it as a positive. These models might be a year or two out from "Oldhammer", but being from the Kev Adams run of goblinoids, they're Oldhammer and Old-school enough for me. More importantly, they're great models in their own right that still stand up well today. The second pair I'm sharing today were both painted a long, long time ago. Back when I used to actively play WHFB, in fact! These are Bob Olley sculpts - Goblin Fanatics from his Iron Claw range circa 1998. Since they're painted in the colour scheme of Night Goblins, they'd have been painted during the early days of 4th Edition. As regular readers will know, I'm not an especially big fan of many of Bob's sculpts, and these are no exception. Still, back in the day you pretty much only had what was available - and this was it. No eBay, no internet shopping and mail order to GW from Australia was a rare and exciting occurrence. Especially for a teenager or young adult. You can see that the flame motif used on my more recent Night Goblin Fanatics goes way back, though. Because I am nothing if not imaginative and experimental. With these models being real outliers of the "weird and random" part of the WHFB Orc and Goblin list, they don't really fit in to a KoW Goblin Army as the list stands right now. Hopefully with the "officially unofficial not-GW army lists" that are supposed to come out later on in the year, these guys will find a home on the tabletop again in 2015.

As part of my continuing push to clear off my painting desk via actually finishing off models, I gathered together these three Goblin Fanatics a couple of weekends ago. I got them either from eBay, or WAU, or something like that at least a couple of years ago. I can't even remember, to tell the truth. It was certainly before we bought this house and moved in. They had been assembled, sprayed black, had their bases painted goblin green, and parts of their skin had also been painted goblin green. Unless that last part was me. Anyway, they'd just kind of floated around since I got here, and had been separated, and one of them had suffered a fall from the shelf due to Leonard the Cat going "fishing" from the top of the bookshelf - snapping the chain, which was hanging by a thin thread of plastic. My "Assistant", Leonard the Cat. "Helping". So anyway. I saw a couple of them taking up space and decided to finish them as a quick weekend project. The plan was to get them entirely done in the one weekend. It ended up taking two, but close enough. Glued the chain back together and off I went. It took a bit to decide what to do with their clothing. I feel that while Night Goblins can be dark as you like, it's nice to make their "special" models pop in some way. I also hate checked patterns on goblinoids, so I went with flames. Initially using an off-white, I decided they'd look better with a bit more colour, so I went with the brighter flames. Yes, I know that the base of the flames "should be" yellow as it's the hottest part, and the red at the edges. These flames, of course, are made of paint representing a pattern on cloth rather than actual flames, so I'm fine with the red being adjacent to the green of their faces, and the yellow against the black of their hoods. It's all about contrast and "pop" here, but without over highlighting black cloth or green skin up to white, which always bothers me a little. I also experimented a little with the balls and chains. I wanted them to look like worn and rusted metal. While they took a little longer than I'd planned, I'm quite happy with the final outcome. Now, on to the next models.

Converted Ogre Hunter for Warhammer Fantasy. I tried to give his pants and leather boots/straps some texture to look like linen and worn leather. -Melissa

Hello everyone. I've recently started up a creative blog (mostly focused on painting miniatures, with the occassional character journals and short fiction popping up), and thought that you all may like to take a gander at some of the figures I've recently finished up: Queek Headtaker from Warhammer Fantasy, painted for a local painting competition (ending today). Geronimo! (from Wild West Exodus) One of the LE Sophies from our very own Reaper Miniatures Jack Ryan, another one of Reaper's (second time painting, first time was for a commission) And finally Karzoug, again from Reaper. You all can find the blog here (including the WIP shots of all these figures and many more): MagiusMinis.Blogspot.com Hope you all enjoy, and any feedback and constructive criticism is greatly appreciated