Hello chaps, I hope you’re all well! I have two minis to share with you this week – again, I have been working through my pile of undercoated but otherwise neglected minis. First up is this official looking chap from the ‘Spacelords’ range from Moonraker Miniatures:

He’s pretty straight forward on the painting front, and is very much intended to fit in with my PDF types on the clothing colours, (though he can also double up as a generic civilian, security guard, robot handler, prisoner transport officer… he’s quite a flexible little fella!). The model isn’t that great if I’m honest – loads of nice detail, but I suspect it is slightly miscast around the insides of the arms… it doesn’t show too much though, so he’ll do:

Secondly, I have an experiment to share. I returned to a mini that I have started and stopped about three times – I have really struggled to find any motivation to paint this guy for a number of reasons…  1: He’s an Eldar, and I really don’t find the faction that interesting (even in RT). 2: He’s an Eldar, and that means clean lines, crisp colours, sharp highlights… a far cry from my usual weathered look. 3: He’s an Eldar.

BUT… this time I grasped the nettle and decided to get this guy off my bench once and for all. I also had an idea that I wanted to test – I wanted to see if I could get a reasonable coloured metallic look out of the new Citadel gem paints, and this guy got to be the guinea pig. I decided to try the green gloss over a copper base coat on his body armour, and it turned out like this:

Hmmm…  Not sure if I like the effect or not – the paint is basically a coloured gloss and so looks quite thick and gloopy on the model, (though to be fair, I did get a bit impatient with the application, so this is at least partially due to my own heavy-handedness!). I also think that the colour scheme is a bit ‘meh’, which doesn’t really help the overall look. However, looking at the positives, the end result is certainly is metallic and coloured, so I have to conclude that the test is at least a partial success. I am certain that a more patient approach with thinner layers of this gem paint will likely look much better, and I strongly suspect that the blue one would’ve looked better too. I’ll probably test this idea further, (I quite fancy trying a Sigmarine in blue enamelled armour instead of the usual gold), but I’ll leave it to you, dear reader, to decide if you like the result or not :-)

Anyhow, that’s it for another week dudes, have a good one, I’ll catch you on the flip-side.

Hello chaps, just the one finished model to show you this week – I have had him undercoated and kicking around the place for some time, so I thought I would crank him out with a view to clearing some backlog and sharpening up my brush work. This time it is the 1991 Penal Trooper – aka ‘The Human Bomb’, (political correctness being less of a thing 25 years ago!), though I prefer to look at him as a max security prisoner who is wired to go bang if he misbehaves rather than a walking piece of ordinance. I had the prison break scene in ‘The Running-man’ movie in mind, and, as such, I didn’t want him to look ‘equipped’. In the end, I just gave him a makeshift weapon using bits from the ever-popular Flagellants kit – I imagine he’s in the act of breaking out of Supermax, (or is mid-riot inside), and he has just grabbed the first hitty thing that he could lay his hands on:

Paint-wise, I embraced the deranged facial expression of the mini, accentuating this with a 2 o’clock shadow, and added some tattoos and a rather pleasing blood spatter effect. I couldn’t resist going with the obvious Guantanamo Orange for the jump suit, and I used Kantor Blue for the explosive vest. Happily, this ties him in with a few other little collections I have on the go:

Overall, a quick and satisfying paint job, and another half-finished piece off the list. That’s it for another week, catch you next week & have a great weekend :-)