Mini Post Mortem - Grand Master Voldus

"Painting is hard, why do I even bother?" I asked myself as I affixed my subject to it's base and collapsed back into my chair.
The cost of the mini itself, part of the Triumvirate of the Primarch boxed set is not cheap at one hundred and fifty clams Australian. This makes me look at the entire set with trepidation and doubt. "Do I have the painting chops to give these miniatures the attention they deserve?" For Voldus, unfortunately, the answer this time is a resounding and depressing no.
The reason why I started with Voldus first is that he was the miniature that I was most willing to risk, as I want to save Guilliman and Cypher to a point where I can afford to really take my time and give these impressive pieces the attention they deserve. One thing I tried to do with this mini is forced myself to experiment with some new techniques, in some respects I think this was the source of much of my ire with this project, so better to get it out of the way now before I start work on other, more impressive projects.

Sub-Assemblies
I chose to paint this model in two sub-assemblies, the head and the body.

First Stage - Armour / Metallics
Metallics have always been a problem for me, I've never been good at them. Thankfully the new Vallejo Metallic Air paints are some of the best I've ever use, and certainly didn't disappoint in this project. To establish the overall metal colour I started with a dark metal and layered up to the bright by heavy overbrushing, applied a black wash then applied successive layers of dry brush to bring out the upper layers and higher highlights. The end result was quite impressive and surprisingly good for how rough the process was.
The golds were a little harder to accomplish. Starting from a silver metallic basecoat I applied the Metal Colour Gold, washed with Reikland Fleshshade, then layered up the Gold again, then did a final highlight with a bright white metal. One problem that I have encountered with the Metal Colour paints is that they are very thin. While this is great for doing basecoating, it does make higher highlights not as prominent and difficult to achieve. In future a combination of these paints with my older, thicker metals may prove to be a winning combination for painting gold.

Second Stage - Robes
Since the robes are the next largest surface area they were my next target. As always, start at the largest surface areas and work your way down is my standard MO for painting projects, certainly didn't mix that up this time around.
I started with the inner robes using a darker red to establish an overall mid-tone. Then I hit my first snag, I can't wet blend for the life of me. Maybe it was a problem with the paints I was using, maybe I just suck at it. Either way I had a hard time trying to establish that transition between shades and highlights. While I did get a result that I am mostly happy with eventually I could've achieve the same result or better with a combination of glazing and layering, so I don't think I will be revisiting this technique any time soon. The outer white robes I painted with a more cream colour that uses Game Colour Bonewhite as the mid tone. The final result was way more to my liking as I fell back to my familiar techniques. I also tried some simple freehand on the robes to get used to it, the final result, a single purple line on the inner red of the cloak. Overall I had some hard time getting it even, but it turned out reasonably well. I also used this stage to paint all of the red and white components, which was pretty much perfunctory.

Third Stage - Black Leather, Armour Inner Suite and Book Pages.
I had some trouble deciding what colour to paint some of the books. They were layered and relayed several times which ultimately resulted in a fairly bad final finish when I settled on painting the book covers black. I used my usual technique with a mid grey and washing over until I get a black finish didn't quite work so I fell back to black with manual grey highlights. In the end the result was mediocre and this result was the point where I decided that I wasn't going to get the high quality result that I was hoping. The book pages were a major source of rage for me in this model. The detail is very soft and didn't take a wash well, so I had to layer up the pages with white lines to build up the impression of texture.

Fourth Stage - Scroll Work and Seals
Not much to say about this work, painted with the usual Games Workshop method. For some of the larger lettering I did try using a micron pen for the scroll work which didn't work out as well as expected, so I'll go back to using paint and brush for this work in future. The seals themselves were a simple purple with basic shading, layers and highlights so not much to write about.

Fifth Stage - Tubing
I wanted to try some glow effects for this mini, especially since the character is a Pysker as far as I understand. To achieve this I did a simple white basecoat and layered over with the Games Workshop blue glaze until I got an effect I like. I also used this to paint the eyes of the model to give the impression of an inner glow.

Sixth Stage - Flesh
I experimented with a new flesh wash this time around. It turned out okay but I probably could've achieved a better result with manual brushwork. But by this late stage of the project I just wanted it done, so I rushed it more than I should've and it shows. The beard on the other hand turned out way better than expected, a light grey washed over with black, then layered up with many small downward strokes of greys and whites. Generally I'm happy with the final result in this case.

Final Assembly
The last major problem was getting the head into the armour, I screwed this up at first and ended up getting some super glue on the model's face. I fixed this up with some matt medium once the glue had dried, but this instance did make me regret painting this model as sub assemblies. The base was my fairly easy usual technique to blend with the rest of my 40k collection, which turned out well as usual.

Final Thoughts
As a tabletop model it is a very good result, as a display piece the final paint job is definitely not up to standard. A combination of my own mediocre skill, quickly eroding patience towards the end all contributed to the standard of the result. I think it would help if I had a couple of different projects on the boil so I don't run the risk of getting sick of a particular project. Anyway, hopefully the other Triumvirates will turn out better than this fellow.

Warmachine Cygnar - A Retrospective

I admit, I find the fiction of Warmachine rather dull. You have a vaguely early modern kingdom of blue guys versus the Tsarist nation of red guys. I kid, Cygnar and Khador respectively. Unfortunately that is just about all I know about the fiction behind the universe. Oh, I also know that there are some undead guys, some religious fundamentalists, some crypto-fascist elves and some clockwork things.
So to be fair, I don't intend to do a deep dive into the lore, there are others no doubt whom are far more invested in it than I am, so they would be a better source of discussion on them. Never the less, I've completed a pile of Cygnar that I bought and painted for the purpose of gaming with one of my local buddies. Now that I'm done, and the models are sitting on the shelf I feel it is time for a bit of a discussion of the projects.

First of all, I love the aesthetic of the Trencher infantry models. They capture a look of steampunk soldiery that I definitely appreciate. With this in mind I knew they would always be the center piece of my army. My first Cygnar army did this, this new one is no exception. I've got one full unit of Trencher regulars and another of Trencher Commandos to fill out the rank and file. I mostly like the models for the regulars, but like the entire range they are fairly busy in terms of painting detail. Generally I start on the inner most detail, which is the armour in the coat and under the arms and around the chest. One of the advantages of the models is that they generally the conceal the faces, which mercifully minimize the amount of flesh that you have to paint. Unfortunately the Commandos don't have this advantage and will generally take a bit more effort to get a good result. The metallics also turned out fairly decent after discovering the combination of P3 Pig Iron layered over with the P3 bright brass colour. This means you don't have to layer up as much to achieve an even colour.

The Warjacks were hard work, thankfully they had their nice share of large curved surfaces that take two brush blending quite well. The downside to this is the tendency of P3 blues to take many, many layers to achieve an even base coat to work off, combined with the long drying times it makes the staging of these models take an interminable amount of time to dry. A weird complaint indeed, but I am a weird person, and this entire thing is basically stream of conscience about the experience anyway. The metallics were a lot of hard work as well, which blow out the time even more. In terms of model, I don't actually like Warjacks that much. They make sense from a steampunk aesthetic better that other products in this space, I guess it ultimately isn't for me.
In terms of model and material I'm not much of a fan of their plastics. I find them a bit too soft and they don't sand down very well, which makes trying to achieve and even fit and finish quite time consuming.

Finally, the Warcasters themselves are the best quality models of the entire run that I painted, though of varying quality. The two casters I painted were Striker and Sloane, first point I was much happier with the quality of the Striker model way more than the Sloane model. It went together far better than Sloane and the final paint result turned out way better. Sloane on the other hand didn't turn out that well due to a combination of difficult assembly and ultimately an unenthusiastic paint job on my part. This was also another attempt at doing the whole cork slate base thing for my HQ figures and I'm fairly meh about the quality of the final result. I'm particularly unhappy with how badly the flesh work came out for Sloane, which was my attempt to do a lighter, more feminine skin tone. Lately I've been achieving better results with non-P3 paints with more home made glazes, so I think my habits as a painter are beginning to shift in terms of my flesh painting techniques. The rest of Sloane's paint job was fairly standard stuff, layering and highlighting for the blue armour and washes, re-layering and highlights for everything else and washed metals for the metals. In terms of model quality I found that the Striker model was way better in terms of fine detail than the Sloane model, which I found very, very soft and kind of boring.

Overall, I think my somewhat mediocre paint job reflects my middling enthusiasm for the project. I originally intended to do way more for this project, I have additional models for some of the larger Warjacks, but no desire to paint them. The only thing I need to do for making my Cygnar competitive is re-painting my Grenadier Warjacks due to their current effectiveness in the meta. I'm planning to add them to my roster in the next cycle but that is it for Cygnar, unless the meta changes out from under me of course. That being said, Warcasters may make for some nice single model projects that could supplement my current line up, so we'll see what the future holds.