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The Egyptians of old venerated the scarab as an aspect of Ra, the motivator that propelled the Sun across the sky like a dung-ball. Thousands of years later, the red desert has covered the sacred sites, and vulgar adventurers dig for treasure. But it does not do to profane the shrine of a god! Or perhaps it is just that, in the desert, everything is hungry. Either way, it's not pleasant. Or quick. What a great pulpy sculpt, and what a horrible way to go!

Here's 2 beetle swarms that I knocked out pretty quick this weekend. One basic brown, and the other with a more metallic look to them. Let me know what you think.

I finished off this, which is the first unit/test unit in a warband I'm putting together. I think I am going to go for off white skin for the rest of the army. Lots of fun with the bases, the ruins are by Fenris Games, then I added various bits from North Star and some jars from TT Combat.

I don't know whether these are done or not... Part of me feels like doing more contrast but part of me thinks that they are good enough for the table. These are all the Bones plastic bloodstone gnomes. I forget which one naturally appears on the beetle, and have done various body and arm swaps to create a unit. They will be part of an army/warband so one thing I need to decide is whether the skin tone is too dark for such small models. There are lots of small infantry models to paint and I want them to stand out whilst still having a 'cold' colour scheme.

Back in November I posted over on the Conversion WIP sub-forum about a mounted figure I was making using the Bones 4 Giant Rhinoceros Beetle and the Mudcroak Squog figure: https://forum.reapermini.com/index.php?/topic/93699-frog-riding-beetle-conversion/ This past week I finally got around to painting the converted figure, and I wanted to share the results. .

Back when the Bones 4 Kickstarter was running, when the Giant Rhinoceros Beetle was revealed in the Fan Favorites set, someone posted this photo of a Frog riding a Beetle to the Enthusiasm Thread, and I knew it was a conversion I would eventually want to try. I have an extensive Frog Army, and I wanted such a figure to be a Leader or Hero for my forces. I had the pieces I needed at hand; the Bones Black "Giant Rhinoceros Beetle", and my rider - for which i had decided to use the Bones "Mudcroak" Squog figure. As I looked at Mudcroak, I knew I would have to separate him from his base, but I knew there was no way I could remove all those little toes from the base without damaging them. So, right off the bat I made the decision to just remove his feet along with the base, with the plan that I would then resculpted them with greenstuff directly onto the beetle's back once I had the frog glued in place. Here's a test fit, with the frog held in place with blue-tac. That's all for right now.

Quick little 'paint' job with craft metallics over permanent marker on a cheap toy. Mostly done for some practice. 120mm x 95mm* MDF oval base. Classic DOOM imp shown for scale. *Found out AFTER custom ordering a bunch of these ovals that I was 1 MM off of the size I wanted... 120mm x 94mm oval, the base for enormous 40K monsters.

I painted these up awhile ago and finally got them varnished. No blog post as these were painted before the blog was started.

Here is the diorama I presented at the Summer of Monsters contest. It depicting a fight between three 02197 Blood Imps sculpted by Rene Perez and a 02564 Giant Scarab Beetle sculpted by Bob Olly. One of the Imps was converted to look like he was killed by acid burns, dropping one of its swords on the ground. The Scarab shell was cut and repositioned so that it will form open elytra. The bottom part inner body was filled with green stuff and sculpted like a real beetle abdomen. Finally, I slightly modified P02744B Cichastus wings set to create hind wings. The Giant Scarab is not glued to the tree so it can be positioned facing up or down. That way, it can be displayed as if it's attacking the Imps or fleeing after being fought off by Imp reinforcements. The custom-built pine tree and base were made with wires and green stuff. The paint choice for the Scarab was essentially inspired by the flamboyant striped love beetle colors. I used twenty four different colors and three different syntactic flock. Here is a link to the WIP topic that I wrote during the making off of my diorama. I hope you’ll enjoy it. C&C are very welcome!