Knight of the Realm #04

Yet more of the same, kind of anyway.

Third knight painted during this run and the complexity just rises together with me remembering again how to paint. The color scheme for this one is taken from the coat of arms of Venice (or at least the one that appears in Europa Universalis). I decided to paint him with some extra ornaments, waves and little flowers on the blue fields - because I like Venice, I like this "Venetian Knight" and wanted to go extra mile for him. Also to test out some freehands.

I took a different approach with yellow, so unlike the previous knight, this is quite vibrant. Blue also turned out pretty nice, I am very glad with the color scheme here. It's only a shame I forgot that the heraldic beast in Bretonnia are supposed to be facing the front of the horse and be mirrored on two sides of the barding... I'll remember it next time.

Knight of the Realm #02 & #03

Now I'm back with yet another Bretonnian knight - or two, to be precise.

You see, this one was black & yellow - and when he was done, I wanted to compare him with one of the first Bretonnians I ever painted, also in the same color scheme. Putting the quality of the painting aside, I was really surprised how dull and unsaturated my yellow turned out this time. In 2008 the color is vibrant and striking - and the one from today, well, it seems all the grim darkness of all my "recent" works really changed my perception of yellow. I will try to adjust it for the next guy, but this one will stay as it is, I enjoy having them all mismatched.

Blood Bowl Nurgle Staff - Infectius the Plague Doctor

Now this model was actually painted before my hiatus - and even photographed, but I just couldn't go through yet another round of editing. So, using my new setup, I retook the photos and here he is, sorry for the delay.

The colors were chosen to fit my Putrid Punters, with the notable exception for the white cloak. I painted it this way to make him look just a tiny bit more like your usual doctor. Just in case his helpful nurse, a sign, a doctor's bag weren't enough of a clue. Now he can join the team as the first proper member of the staff - first one of the many more to come!

The WIP for him can be found HERE.

Even if you are not interested in Blood Bowl, Blood Bowl may be interested in you! Such is the life of poor Infectius, a quiet, nerdy boy who always had a passion for all things biological. That evolved later into devoting himself to Nurgle and studying all his diseases and peculiar physiology of his beloved creatures. He would spend the rest of his days cooped up in his laboratory if not a recruitment organized by one of the high-ranking daemons. He wanted to create a guild of Plague Doctors, as a Nurglite alternative to Blood Bowl apothecaries. Being too timid and awkward to refuse, Infectius went with the daemon - and unfortunately for him - proved himself to be an exemplary doctor, being able to patch up even the weirdest of bodies and injuries. Then he got together with the Putrid Punters and the rest is history. The jocks from the team still occasionally make fun of him, but at least they respect him as the last chance to get back, should their regenerative powers fail them. And Infectius, while stressed and anxious most of the time, can at least find some meaning and purpose in his difficult task, which also involves endlessly learning new things about Grandfather Nurgle and his devotees.

Knight of the Realm #01

Ok, here it is, the first painted model after the break. First cats over the fences, as we say here in Poland. Nothing too fancy, your usual Bretonnian fare with the blues and reds. I have more of them started on my desk, but I'm not even trying to batch paint those guys, I want them really diverse, so different hues all over them are more than welcome - they will be coming here soon.

Another big success, I managed to do a proper photo setup. I can take pics at night and in a controlled environment, sparing me the excessive editing to make the background look consistent. The shadows are a little stronger than I'd like, but that's a good exchange. Perhaps I'll try to texture the background somehow? We'll see.

Also, I'm not even trying to write a backstory for every single one of those dudes. Does anyone even still read those?

I'm back, I guess?

I wonder if someone even still reads this...

So, after more than a year, I finally managed to put myself together, dust off all the brushes and paints - and actually started painting again. Sometimes I was worried I would never go back, but thankfully that wasn't the case - it would be really bad for the pile of shame. In the meantime, I received several Kickstarters, did a lot of home improvement, got through a covid, managed to buy one of the last available Cursed Cities, only to find it re-released by GW much later and played a lot of video games. I also installed much better lighting in my workspace and intend to do my photos at night, with reliable lamps, without relying on natural sunlight. All the editing really killed my motivation back then.

Still feeling a little rusty after the break, I decided to start with something clean, easy and simple, my ages-old Bretonnians. I will be slowly posting them through the weeks - it's much harder to binge-paint minis than before, free time is scarce, so I can't promise regular submissions. I'll try of course.

Besides, I treated myself to this box of new Chaos Warriors - I had an idea about them for a long time, a brand-new collection. Should also be easy to implement, so that's good too before tackling big, complicated projects again.

Also, a side note - my two-year-old son is also now big enough to be curious about what I'm doing at my desk, a very interesting development to me. He loves all the colorful paints and always wants to use them to change his cars' wheel colors or paint over his Duplo blocks - which is lovely, only if he would understand how expensive those paints are...

Those are weird times we are living in, stay safe out there folks.

I need a break

I know that people dislike reading such stuff, but I still want to say something so that any people visiting won't think I forgot or died.

As I stated in the title, I think I finally got burned out - after painting continously and without larger breaks since August 2015. While I had lots of fun sculpting those weird beastmen from last weeks, I was forcing myself to paint them and I reached the point when I just need a break from the hobby. No more paints, greenstuff, cameras, photoshop, etc. Keeping the format of one post a week was easy earlier, but now it turned into an obligation - and that always kills the fun for me. I also fell really behind in commenting all the great works that's been showing up recently. I don't know how long it will take and I don't plan anything, I just need to clean up my desk and actually start to miss all the painting. I'm sure I'll be back, I'm way too deep in this shit to just close it completely.

Curiously enough, what having a baby and moving twice within six months couldn't do to my painting streak, the routine of the lockdown finally did...

Blood Bowl Chaos Chosen - The Unmade

After way too much time, we're finally at the last duo of weird beastmen - the Unmade (I couldn't find a fitting name that wasn't also the name of a GW Warcry warband...), the beastmen who mutated in ways directly beneficial in Blood Bowl - a very rare sight.

These are the ones that certainly gain the most after painting them - they both have big, creepy eyes on them. That also meant that they were pushed to the very end of my beastmen - I was intimidated by the prospect of painting so many eyes... Thankfully it wasn't as bad as I thought. Besides, painting wood and a lion's face from a photo were some nice changes to the usuals in this project.

The WIP for the left one can be found HERE and the right one HERE.

Most beastmen playing in the Lost & Damned are just random fluctuations of Chaos that had to cope in the new, Blood-Bowl-obsessed world they found themselves in - but some are created special. Those Unmade, were seemingly disassembled by their gods and made anew to carry unique mutations to help them play. It may be an ability to split oneself in two halves to dodge better, an arm mounted on a wheel to help pass farther and or eyes flailing on their nerves to see everyone and everything on the pitch and react accordingly. Still, no matter how useful or skilled they are, they don’t get many fans during their careers - they are literal slaves to their roles, single-mindedly devoted to filling their tasks. What starts with a strong drive and focus, turns later into psychosis. In their final hours, they get so overwhelmed with their specialization, they forget things like walking, seeing, breathing, perishing without understanding anything around them.