A Librarian and a Predator: Works in Progress

Regular listeners of the Chaos of the Warp podcast might remember a discussion we had just before Christmas about miniatures that were the bane of our lives? Well, I stupidly said something along the lines of "yeah, that hasn't happened to me in ages".

Then this fellow came along.

A while back, Gav from the podcast gave me a commission to paint up his Chaos Blood Bowl team for him. He also sent me this Forgeworld Librarian miniature as well. Now as I often do for people who do me favours from time to time, I told him there would be no charge for this miniature. Why? Because whenever a non-gaming customer asks me to create and paint an army for their significant other I often turn to Gav, the GOD OF LIST BUILDING (a direct quote from the podcast's co-presenter Rich, by the way) to help me out. And he does it. Gleefully. Every single time. Usually the very same day I ask him for help.

So I thought I'd paint this guy as a little thank you. He's pretty much done as you can see (just the eyes and the axe to go, the base is to be left unpainted so Gav can match it to his existing figures). Looks like an easy enough model to paint doesn't it? Well, this is attempt number 6. I just could not get the combination of Gold, Blue, Purple and Silver to work together, no matter how hard I tried. I eventually had to give up on the silver altogether. Ironically, Gav didn't even specifically request any silver on he miniature. I just have this thing about using silver metallics whenever I use purple. Even though silver doesn't really work well with gold and a Space Marine librarian model really does tend to be covered in stuff that needs to be painted gold.

However, this next figure was a joy to paint. A Heresy Miniature's "Hurn". This is the Hurn as he was about an hour ago, after I applied a dark Umbar wash over the base-coat. There are still three layers of highlighting to go over the top of this (and there's the base and the weathering of the metal) so there's another two or three hours work to go before the miniature is completely finished. When finished, the hide will be much more creamy white looking than it is now (with the possibility of some brown dermal patterns added at the very end). The metal plates with also have a final, very fine edge highlight, of metal.

Although you can't see it clearly in the photograph, I've managed to get the green armour looking slightly metallic. I originally tried to go for metal that had a greenish tint (like it was in the original film) but I didn't think it looked very convincing. He'll be finished tomorrow, apart from the base ( I'm waiting on a few bits to decorate with the base with arriviving in the post).