Odds, Sods n ......Stuffs. A Medley of Mayhem

Recently started up 2 new projects. One is my own and the other a commission piece.
First up is from the Nord faction from ParaBellum for their game Conquest-The Last kerfuffle of Kings and he is a brute beast and a red………. well……. a very big fella. Measuring in at about 16cm tall, he is definitely the tallest ‘mini’ I’ve worked on!!

He is part of Para Bellum artisan series and they brought in one of my favourite sculptors, Michael Kontraros to create him. The sculpt is stunning!!  Casting……. well, usually I am a complete whiny bitter little bitch when it comes to resin casts as it is my favourite medium for minis ( cast stuff not 3D printed) and therefore am really critical of bad/sloppy/amateur/lazy casts (yes FW & Raging Heroes, I am thinking of YOU)  The Ice Jotnar’s (should really be Jotun as Jotnar is the plural form but anyways) cast was nearly perfect. There were a few wee bits of cleanup but nothing that took more than a few minutes. Honestly one of the nest casts I’ve had in my hands. There was a few stories flying around that they had gotten a jeweller to do the casting etc etc. Fantastic sculpt & a fantastic cast. I was moist!

I’ve gotten a bit of work done on him now on stream (Saturdays are Jotun Days) and he is coming along. I’m doing his skin portion by portion as trying to paint all the skin at the same time would be a fool’s errand and exhausting. As I dont really keep a paint diary or a recipe list – I took a photo on my phone of the paints I’m using so I can make sure that the skin will be all painted the same, with the same paints and end up homogenous when done. I bring each skin section up to about 80% complete before moving on to the next section. The final 20%,  mostly a few final highlights and tweaks plus some glazes,  will then be done all at the same time to bring it all together and unify all the different areas.

The eyes…….. I hummed and hawed about the eyes for a while and in the end,  on a whim during stream,  I decided that something like that which the white walkers fellas in Game of  ̶b̶a̶d̶ ̶e̶n̶d̶i̶n̶g̶s̶ Thrones sport would make for a nice strong contrast against the softer more subtle blue tones of the skin. They were intense to paint!!!

On a side note – I have an affiliate code for ParaBellum’s webstore.  If anyone is getting into/expanding their Conquest army, use the code JANUINE at checkout to get 10% off their first purchase.  Money saved is money gained and all that pish 😉

Next up we have a rather special new project.  (Typing htis for the second time as the website just crashed >< )  This is a commission piece for a viewer in the States.  Darth Vader! This is a limited edition alternate sculpt of Darth for Star Wars: Legions that was only released at some con in Chicago in 2019. Its resin rather than their usual plastic (yay) and the cast was near flawless. Literally took me 10 minutes to cleanup. Weirdly enough, considering how much I love Star Wars (Solo was a crackingly fun movie ALRIGHT?!!) this is my first Star Wars mini to paint!!

So, the client wants this mini as a display piece rather than as a game piece which is aces.  I decided to build and paint the base first as the light from it would have an effect on Darth himself. I settled on a lava base scene as am sure Anakin/Darth would love the chance to revisit Mustafar (meeeeemories!)

For the plinth I wanted a very dark wood that would complement the overall scene. I’m not a huge fan of painting the plinths black so if at all possible I will choose a wood whose natural colouring will fit in with what is on top. For this one I decided on a wood that can be a bit tricky to source – African Blackwood. Once turned and polished African Blackwood has a really lovely dark veneer and sheen with a slightly warm feel. Perfecto!
The mini comes with a rocky base topper as it is so it was just to expand on that and bring it out to cover the plinth top.
I used the rock base that came with, some resin rocks from Spellcrow and mordant earth crackle paint from GW to form up the scene. Then it was to the painting.  The base progressed along these lines:

As this piece has a huge amount of black it was going to be important to try and set the different blacks apart as well as have them work together harmoniously – so I decided on a warmer feel to the base with the lava and the rocks there (I added a very soft charcoal feel to the rocks by using some warm beige mixed into the black on the rocks as well as the hot colours of the lava) to contrast against the colder more jet blacks (planning to use blues in the black for Darth) that would be used on Darth Vader.
With the base complete it was time to build Darth and get him primed up for painting. I primed him just in black forgoing my usual lateral second prime with white for picking out detail and sketching a light source as a)  its Darth Vader, he is all black anyways and b) there wasn’t really going to be a main light source from above.