The Eternal Court of the Carmine Rose

[benvoliothefirst]

Wight Queen:



Yes, I haven't painted the base edge yet, wanted to post it up before bed time though.

Ah shit. I've been staring at that exact same model, unpainted, in my "to do" pile for years, and never realized it was a woman. Didn't really look too hard at the breast plate before, I guess.

Great paint job you did though! Your army looks great. Black coach is ace, and I definitely think the magnets on Sleeping Beauty were worth it if you can use her elsewhere as an objective or just separate her so people can gawk. Nice work!

 

[Shadespyre]

Yeah, I can see how that might happen, she's not exactly a looker after all!

Thanks for taking a look and leaving a comment - I am still alive and still working on this army, though at a DEAD slow pace at the moment. I'm slogging my way through the base colours on FIFTY grave guard at the moment, and that makes other projects seem much more interesting!

 

[Kingside_Bishop]

Great job on this army, I love the theme! Especially good job on the basing -- the stones and leaves just really tie it all together so nicely!

 

[Shadespyre]

Thanks, I'm really pleased with the way the bases are working and the impact they have on the army, I don't think it would look so good on my usual green grassy efforts.

And after a slow couple of months, I've got back onto the Vampires. Here is the latest addition to the army, the Grave Guard:

Phew, it's been a long few months with those guys sat staring at me, and a week of late nights to get them done, but they look pretty good now. They are based on the colours used on the Black Knights (as they are all Wights) but I found it impractical / impossible to paint the same effect on the weapons - the sculpt of the weapons isn't crisp enough to edge highlight in the same way - so I've gone with this as an alternative. Not 100% sure but then I felt the same about the Black Knights too!

 

[Duke Danse Macabre]

Damn!
I don't think I have ever seen that many old GG models in one place. :O

Nice painting though mate, so nice to see fresh bright colours on undead for once as well.

 

[Borgnine]

Yes, that's really a lot of GG oldies. Collecting them all must have been quite a task - or maybe lucky

As usual in the case of this plog - I just love how strong the theme here is! The painting is nice, and the composition of red and green here looks definitely awesome! Kickass unit.

 

[Von Calyptra]

Good lord, the old Grave Guard! I love those old models, and you've definitely done them justice.

 

[Shadespyre]

Hey thanks everyone, glad those have gone down well. I am never painting 50 of anything at once again though!

They weren't so hard to collect, I just had a search running on ebay and picked them up when they were at a sensible price. They don't seem to be in huge demand to be honest, I suppose GG with GW are more fashionable?

Next up - I think it's time I tackled some ethereals, I like the idea of the Nihilakh Oxide wash so I'm going to have a look at that. I'll start with some spirit hosts, then there are banshees and wraiths to try out too. Once I'm happy with those I can contemplate doing my hexwraiths or the Coven throne...

 

[Blutsauger]

Hey thanks everyone, glad those have gone down well. I am never painting 50 of anything at once again though!

They weren't so hard to collect, I just had a search running on ebay and picked them up when they were at a sensible price. They don't seem to be in huge demand to be honest, I suppose GG with GW are more fashionable?

Next up - I think it's time I tackled some ethereals, I like the idea of the Nihilakh Oxide wash so I'm going to have a look at that. I'll start with some spirit hosts, then there are banshees and wraiths to try out too. Once I'm happy with those I can contemplate doing my hexwraiths or the Coven throne...

Wow, the only times I've seen the metal GG on eBay, they were going for around $10 a model...

 

[robtion]

I agree, those GG look great. They will really stand out on the battlefield with all that red. Still looking forward to your Coven Throne. It's a great model to paint.

 

[Theerteen]

Damn, you brought exactly the look to your GG that I wanted to create, and then forefeit after I didn't get it after 3 or 4 trys. Outstanding unit, I got only 20 of them, imagining painting 50 makes my brain bleed through my ears...But it looks great! ...while my favourite in your army is still the sleeping beauty black coach

 

[Shadespyre]

Probably the worst thing about 8th edition Warhammer is the bigger infantry units, it's a heck of a lot of tedious painting (or I guess a lot of creative unit fillers, those remain on my to do list!).

Good for GW's sales though I suppose

Here's a start to this month's project:

Take a whole bunch of miniatures
Add a whole can of Skull White spray paint
Add a whole pot of Nihilakh Oxide
Mix well!

And you get this...

Very much WIP, and you can't see some of the models hiding behind the Coven Throne Spirit Host, but you get the idea. It's a veritable sea of ethereals!

 

[Kingside_Bishop]

Great results from a simple start! I love the number of ethereals, too... It's easy to forget how striking the coven throne/mortis engine model is, but it really looks great here.

 

[Shadespyre]

Well, if you like those, I hope you like these finished ones:

Some spirit hosts, a couple of the traditional models and the other two are the Night Spectre and The Summoning from the Reaper Bones range - being plastic I could hack these around a bit to make them fit with the basing a little better.

Some individually based spirit host models and banshees or ghosts (again from Reaper). These could be used as character models or as spirit host bases in conjunction with these

An additional bunch of grave and rose themed fillers, to make this sort of ensemble

I've made more of those 20x20mm unit fillers in the past, they make ranking up some of the other units (like the Rose Maidens) so much easier and are an easy way to spread the rose theme around the army.

It will take a while longer to get the wraiths and hexwraiths ready as they are getting some colours other than ethereal green, specifically I'm painting the weapons as "real" for a bit of contrast and variety.

 

[robtion]

Love your Reaper ethereals, they have some great models, I have a lot of them. Unit fillers look great too. I am a fan of the oxide technical paint but haven't seen it on ethereals before, looking good

 

[Theerteen]

Oh damn, I really like the colour of your sh. Looks great! Nice take on the oxide method!

 

[Shadespyre]

It really couldn't be easier, too.

Here are some more...

Some Cairn Wraiths with a Banshee...

Some more Reaper Banshees or Ghosts, can't get enough of their miniatures!

And finally my Hexwraiths...

After some thought I decided to paint the weapons as solid, and leave the rest of each miniature as purely ghostly. They looked fine as all-green to be honest, but I wanted to break up the colour of each unit a bit and also felt that the roses on the scythes should be "real" to tie in with my army theme.

 

[ObliviJohn]

Really nice. Nice touch with the empire scythes and the bases are mint!

 

[robtion]

Nice move with the scythes, looks great Yep, Reaper really does have an abundance of great minis. I just bought 20 or 30 for the new WE army I'm starting to paint.

 

[Yorga]

How do you add the roses? Are you that good with greenstuff? :|

 

[Shadespyre]

Thanks guys, I get great support for everything I post here, which is a lot of encouragement to keep on working. I appreciate it!

@Robtion...

You beat me to it! Wood Elves will probably be my 2015 Warhammer project ( I assume there will be a new Army Book and models by then?) and Reaper models are likely to feature heavily. Although, also tempted to go all old-school Citadel as it's now cheaper to collect late 80s early 90s models than buy new GW plastics... We'll have to wait and see.

@Yorga...

Haha, if only!

The roses on the scythes are part of the scythes, which are from the Empire Battle Wizard kit ( I cleared out a couple of bitz sellers, I think I've used 7 or 8 in the army so far!) They are slightly different as I have reassembled them in different ways, sometimes adding extra bits of creeping briar.

The roses on the unit-filler bushes are the same as the ones on the Rose Maidens (dryad-ghouls). If you look closely they are a lot less realistic, and they are all press molded copies of one original. If I was starting again I would have made copies from the roses on the scythes, but live and learn huh?

Finally, the roses on the shields and some of the banners are press-molded copies of some earrings!

So you can see I needed very little talent with green stuff and just a bit of cunning

 

[Shadespyre]

It's March, and I think this month's project will be big bats: vargheists and fell bats.

Here's a pic of my old Fell Bats:

I've always been pretty pleased with the "flying through dead woods" look of this unit, but it doesn't match the basing scheme of my new army. I'm tempted to keep the trees and just modify the bases to suit the new graveyard look, if that doesn't seem too lazy?

 

[Kingside_Bishop]

Love the trees, they really give the bats a sense of motion. Did they come with the kit? No, right? I definitely think you should keep them... Rebase, as you say.

EDIT: nope, trees not included. Also, GW is charging $50 for three of these bad boys... Ouch!

 

[Mc1gamer]

Awesome work!

 

[Shadespyre]

The trees are twigs from heather, which I collected from hill tops around the country while on various hiking trips. Because it grows in difficult conditions the branches have a really good twisted, gnarled look to them, and they also dry out pretty quickly when they get broken off. Perfect for scary dead trees...