Something stirs in the barrows -- Constant Drachenfels' army blog

[Mahlek von Horst]

As someone who is relatively new to the hobby, and only a fledgling with vampires, this is massively inspirational. I would feel inspired to start my own plog as I begin my VC army (just finished converting my Vampire Lord) but plogs like this would make my painting skills look distinctly amateur.

Fantastic work, keep the plog going. very inspirational.

 

[Constant Drachenfels]

Thanks for the feedback guys, glad you like it (so far)!

I agree with the necromancer's skin being a bit outlandish.. definitely not my usual take on a mortal. ^^ But I felt if painted him the usual way, he'd not stand out from all the corpses and I desperately needed some contrast there.

@Telliphas: I painted the bell in a mixture of dwarf bronze and boltgun metal, some nuln oil shading, some verdigris (watered down mix of hawk turquoise, skull white and warpstone glow) and highlight with a mix of boltgun metal and chainmail.

 

[Duke Danse Macabre]

Damn thats impressive.
The colours are so vivid and stand out yet its in keeping with the dark image of the undead.
Hats off to you sir, you have another winner here.

 

[BloodbathMcGrath]

Now I may not be a huge fan of GW's zombies, but yours could be some of the very few that I like...
However your corpse cart-- oh man! It looks amazing, and I am really digging the purple skin on your necro (reminds me of those dark elf fellows from WoW...) Also the bell is fantastic, after reading the amount of colors you put into it I would say your work paid off many times. Also a nice touch are those little rats with the glowing eyes- very cool looking.

 

[Constant Drachenfels]

Also a nice touch are those little rats with the glowing eyes- very cool looking.

Hehe, thanks McGrath! Very cool that you noticed them.

 

[Theerteen]

I'm so looking forward to black knights or monstrous units. Hush! To your workbench, create some more awesomness!

 

[Loran]

:O

These are amazing!
I'm especially in awe of the Necromancer conversions! Having played Skyrim, I've occasionally thought of converting a unit with similar masks, but never really figured out a good unit to do it on. Necromancers are a natural choice, of course

Keep 'em coming! The people want more!

- Loran

 

[Adam_Barrow]

I gotta say it, man. I cannot wait to see what your Mortis Engine looks like. You are /crushing/ it with these Undead.

 

[Constant Drachenfels]

Dire wolves are done! Damn these took a while. But I'm quite happy with the result.

I made the regimental bases to go with the arrow formation, but by using a little themed scenery to fill the missing spots I inadvertedly built them in a way that I could even use them as one 12-strong regiment. If ever I should wish such a nonsense.

Now, this is what all my 1k Vampire Counts (plus some extra characters) look like together:

>> click here for a larger pic

Next on my list would be a vargheist and some crypt horrors. Maybe some additional skeletons for summoning purposes and the 24-strong ghoul regiment when it gets towards 2k points? And I'm still missing some real killing power.. a varghulf or vampire lord and black knights maybe - sometime in the far future... :konrad:

 

[Tawg]

Nice, I haven't seen this before; I feel like I'm really missing out too, all the links are broken on the first page :zombie: Or perhaps taken off?

But page 2&3 hold plenty enough to gape at; I am a fan of the overall look though, everything put together and with unit fillers and all.

Does your army you have listed out only have Weight/Necro heroes (+1 Wraith)?

Love when those dogs have glow-eyes

 

[Adam_Barrow]

I think your ancient graveyard army needs some Ghosts, my friend. Your Wraith has a cool Ethereal effect. I'd like to see more of it. I really like your army.

 

[Constant Drachenfels]

Nice, I haven't seen this before; I feel like I'm really missing out too, all the links are broken on the first page :zombie: Or perhaps taken off?

Can you try and reload the page? The pictures are all there, I found no broken link today.

Does your army you have listed out only have Weight/Necro heroes (+1 Wraith)?

Yeah so far only two necros a wight and a wraith. I probably want a vampire sometime in the future, but right now at that small scale I'm happy with the necro casting power.

I think your ancient graveyard army needs some Ghosts, my friend. Your Wraith has a cool Ethereal effect. I'd like to see more of it. I really like your army.

Thanks Adam! Haven't thought of ghosts yet as I regularly face WoC who so far seem to be utterly unimpressed with ethereal enemies. ^^ But I do have some of those old models lying around somewhere...

 

[BloodbathMcGrath]

Howwwww do you paint such clean units Drachenfel?? Those wolves are so sharp and crisp! Another fine piece of your work.

 

[Constant Drachenfels]

Howwwww do you paint such clean units Drachenfel?? Those wolves are so sharp and crisp! Another fine piece of your work.

Thanks! The recipe is just lots of thinned washes and some careful highlights for me. Oh, and spending the better part of two weeks painting the damn things. I am a really slow painter.

 

[BloodbathMcGrath]

I think I just have to take my time, as well. It's hard to accept that units of 40-some skeletons cannot be finished in a day. Maybe Ill start doing my bigger blocks only 10 models or so at a time, so I can give them better details.

 

[The Lich King]

I just saw the first few picture in your plog and i have to know... How long have you been doing this? Your work is fantastic.
-TLK

 

[Tawg]

Yeah, I went back and the first page was functioning. Might have been the web-browser or just.. something stupid, but the first time I checked it the page just had names like:

[Skeleton Unit Filler]

[Necromancer 1]

or.. similar to that. Or maybe I just didn't wait for the images to load up the first time? I love the unit fillers though, especially since they are not simply square chunks of the unit; That's a really great idea, and done extremely well. I'm a little surprised, you said you did all the rock-structures on them with molded clay, cut down afterwards? Is that correct? I have to ask, why not just insulation foam (I usually see it in fairly huge sheets about an 1" deep)? Seems like that's always what I've seen people do things like that up with. How heavy are the unit fillers? Seems like clay/sculpty might be a bit heavy?

I also just barely noticed the white-under-line on the Purple moons on those shields. Which makes sense since I understand the point most painting techniques to be "Bringing out Contrast". They look so good, the white lines are almost unnoticeable, but totally bring the shape out. Funny how the eyes work, and how much work good artist put into fooling them.

 

[Constant Drachenfels]

I just saw the first few picture in your plog and i have to know... How long have you been doing this? Your work is fantastic.
-TLK

Hey thanks I have been painting minis (badly) for some time as a kid, got into Warhammer (40k) in 1999 and have been painting stuff pretty much ever since.
Wow, now I feel old. :skull:

I have to ask, why not just insulation foam (I usually see it in fairly huge sheets about an 1" deep)? Seems like that's always what I've seen people do things like that up with. How heavy are the unit fillers? Seems like clay/sculpty might be a bit heavy?

I guess I probably just used Fimo because I simply have this stuff around. It comes most handy for sculpting large things as it is relatively cheap and you can immediately work on the next steps of your sculpt after it is out of the oven, so unlike GS you won't have to pause for half a day or so. I can totally see insulating foam being used for that kind of scenery, though I would think it will probably chip easily when being handled during a battle.
The unit fillers are heavy but not unwieldy - the dolmen for the grave guard is barely 40 grams total.

 

[Adam_Barrow]

dolmen

Huh, just learned a new word. Thanks for that, heh.

 

[con-fusion]

Wow to everything in here. Your painting could actually sell me on post '91 GW minis.

 

[Constant Drachenfels]

Wow to everything in here. Your painting could actually sell me on post '91 GW minis.

What, you mean the minis pre-'91 were better than the current models? Apart from the fact that GW used to paint pretty much everything in green and red back then.

 

[Ravenstein]

Lookin great! I particularly like the barrow wight theme and unit fillers, creepy and cool idea!

 

[Theerteen]

I demand wight kings! Alternatively I demand big asskickin' Vampire counts on monsters!

 

[Constant Drachenfels]

What, more wight kings? I already got the one good model they have!

 

[Theerteen]

In this case, I DEMAND WIGHT KING CONVERSIONS!