That was an awfully big Marine

Lacking a closeup “before” pic as I had some fleshy highlight paint (cadmium flesh and pale flesh, both from Game Colour) on my palette one night and slapped a few on without thinking about blogging it on here.

So a badly-lit shot of my first few highlights. It felt as if some of the shading was a bit fierce (I’m guessing some flesh wash ink). I toned this down with some Bugmans Glow and built the raised cheeky muscles back up.

I wrapped up the face with a few more highlights and getting his mouth done.

A simple basecoat of Dryad bark. I added a bit of cadmium skin to the temples so it’s not too Lego-like.

Highlights were nice and simple. A drybrush of Steel Legion Drab and Rakarth Flesh.

I wrapped up with picking out the port on his forehead. Between the extreme closeup and my aging eyes this doesn’t look great. It’ll have to do.

I’ll also need to do his eyes again. It’s not quite there but let’s move on.

That’s enough texture. I slapped on some more primer. There are a couple of patches of cork brown showing. They’ll be a lot less obvious once the real paint is down.

I then painted the ballast Model Colour US Field Drab, and the concrete slabs in Model Colour Stone Grey, buy not too precisely, and mixing the two a bit.

I finished with a drybrush of Model Colour Buff, and a lighter drybrush of Model Colour Pale Sand. I then tidied up the rim with another coat of US Field Drab.

That’ll do for the base now. I’ll probably do a bit more work on it when the miniature’s finished, to tie the two together. That’s quite a lot updates just for the base. I’ll get on with the more interesting bits.

Gah duplicate entry! I think I upset the project system.

I grabbed some 5mm (ish) cork and broke off a biscuit about the size of the base. I made a hole for the marine’s foot. And then …

Having broke the base down, it was time to build it up again. The plan was to show the marine landing on some concrete, breaking it up.

I grabbed some 5mm (ish) cork and broke off a biscuit about the size of the base. I made a hole for the marine’s foot. And then …

Then I just broke up the cork and glued it on to the base fairly at random.

The chunks of cork were just super glued on, with contact points of varying quality. I packed some Milliput into the gaps to give the whole thing a bit of strength. Although I doubt I’ll ever play with this miniature I always have an eye on making things strong enough.

The brown stuff is fine model railway ballast. It’s there to add a bit of texture to the concrete chunks – and particularly to the gaps in between.

With all minis I prefer to do the base first. I’ll inevitably make a mess and I’d rather make a mess of the primer, not the finished paintjob.

I said in the intro that I hated the base. This was largely based (sorry) on the lack of “plinth” and the 28mm details – a little underscale for a 54mm mini.

Popping him on a 60mm GW-style base changed this entirely. I decided to keep the resin base. some of this was the mini (a hefty lad) seemed very well attached and it gives me a nice big contact area.

This still leaves me with some teeny-tiny details, but those can be removed and covered with … something bigger, hopefully something better.

I then glued him to the plastic base and added a few pins (not taking chances with such a heavy mini).

I finished this stage by priming what remains of the resin base. This will be covered in the next stage but it’s there in case anything still shows through.

This is Captain Artemis of the Deathwatch. He’s the old, old 54mm mini for Inquistior, rather than the 28mm released a couple of years ago. I’ve had him a long time, and our own Gerry/Avernos had him a long time before that. He’s challenged me to finish this as a spring clean challenge, so let’s do it!

Artemis is a cracking mini but never got finished I have a couple of excuses: I hated the base I put him on, and I was a bit intimidated painting anything on this scale. I’ll replace the base and … well just get on with it.

I never liked the 40mm base – it looked like he’d toppled over at the slightest provocation. I’ll put on a “GW” type base but I think at 60mm. It’ll hold up his bulk (he’s a big chonky boi as I believe the kids say) and it’s not a bad scaling up for the 32mm base his little brother uses.