Vlka Fenryka : The art of preparation.

It's only a week into the project that I fully realize how healthy this is and how much I needed this. Gone are the old restrictions, and I'm busy designing the new vision, new focus, and that is always a process of creation, but also elimination.

I think I will do a single model each month - part of the massive appeal of this new project. By the end of next year I will have an army of 15 warrior gods and wulfen beasts, and possibly some armor for them.

Last night I airbrushed all the base colors on the Lord and his base. Feels like cheating. Smooth as photoshop, fast as a rendering farm. I've got some new paints from spain, seen in the picture, that have simply stunning flesh tones. For somebody who has lived in the cold moonlight saturation for years and years, getting to paint a very realistic, feral, deep and vivid skin is quite a feast.

I also picked the palette last night. Seen in the picture below. And cleaned this bigger drawer that used to be for Legion paints. I will use a bunch of reds - something I almost avoided all together for Legion.

The full new back of tricks will include:

• Airbrushing to get the overall direction of light, but the tool will not be visible at all in the finished piece. (the model air color palette is not pictured, 5 or so paints that I apply with the airbrush on Tamiya grey spray)
• Vallejo and these new Acrylics 77 something, Tamiya acrylics applied as progressive wash like flows of highlights and shadow. 
• Oil paints! Full on weathering techniques I learnt doing the knight. (not in the picture)
• Enamel filters (not in the picture)
• pihments
• pledge and tamiya flat medium varnish to get the exact gloss (lack of where I need it)
• combination of metallics (acrylic and enamel) left unvarnished to really get that pop.

I believe this will result to the best miniatures I've ever painted, with a style that is distinctly mine, but also a fresh combination of different influences. First results in a week or so I would estimate.

Vlka Fenryka - The Wulfenkind Attack

"The Bear shall take up the mantle of

Gatekeeper, and the Lost Kin return to the

Realms of Man. Brother shall slay brother, as

at the Dawn of Time, but the Were-kin stand

aloof. Their task set in stone before them. The

Son of the Traitor shall lay waste - First the

Gate, then the Palace. The Children of Russ

shall oppose him or perish, their names

reviled for all time. Now is the time, mighty

Wolf. Your hunt is nearing its end. Your

quarry is set before you. Your saga shall be

sung for all time."

— Prophecy of Frode

"The voice of Russ was the loudest of all, [Text lost] but Guilliman and Dorn gainsaid his counsel. To enter the Occularis Terribilis would bring disorder on the surviving Legions, they said, leaving Man vulnerable to both the xenite and apostate. It is said that Russ, as was often the way, took his own counsel and sent forth the Wulfen to hunt down Abaddon and his followers. Others say that the Thirteenth Great Company pursued the heretics of their own accord, as hounds at the chase who heed not the calls of their huntsman. Others still maintain that the Wulfen had been tainted by the Dark Gods and were summoned by their call to join the Traitor Legions in the netherworld"

News, 

Imagine the bravest, the most dedicated, those who paid the heaviest price of the VI Legion, Adpetus Astartes, Vlka Fenryka,  Emperor's executioners. A Warrior band of individual heroes and hounds, in pursuit in to the warp 10 millenia ago to hunt down Magnus and the rest of the heretic Primarchs. Imagine a beautiful set of illustrations by Dainton translated to model form by an exquisite set of conversions and hyper realistic, but moody paint jobs.

XX Legion fought in moonlight, these will dwell in a warp blizzard. Things will be flowing in different directions, there will be a swirl of death and thunder around each hero and huscarl, wulfen and wolf. A dozen or so insane(ly) powerful warriors and or beasts. Empowered by the liberties in army selection that is the seventh edition Warhammer 40000.

A whole new level of scale (beyond what the insanity that was and is Legion) and new material feel with different weathering effects. 

I've finally started a brand new project. In the planning ever since I saw the new Horus model.This is a return to my first love, the Space Wolves, but the extreme 13th Great Company. You will notice a common theme to Alpha Legion. Stealth and duty, hated but loyal to death. I needed to wait until my birthday to open my box of goodies and have been having a blast this weekend. 

I want to considerably up the ante from Legion (sure I'll add to them too) and truly go nuts with the best of FW models... Which I painstakingly avoided with Legion's plastic only goal. There's something to be said about the power of restrictions, and equally letting go once you've built the stamina and skills in a given area. I want to make Legion look crude in comparison, and Space Wolves built out of the box look like toys. 

I hope you enjoy the journey and feel free to engage in discussion and feedback.

Migs

A Lord and his hound - Wolf Lord Harkon Bloodmoon a few details from primer and very early look at first of the Wulfen.

Birthday treats and the warmth in which the frozen beasts will take shape...

Of terrain and miniature warriors and war machines.

Annual cycle as ancient as my history with Citadel Miniatures has turned to the season of most productive character. Autumn. Or more of summer here in California.

I have stuff to share that on a personal scale of excitement is somewhere between Epic and Off the chart. I'm working on new terrain. Tons of it. So fast it feels like cheating. Spray primers to block the main colors in, Airbrush to bring it up to match basing and oils and filters to add depth and shades.

Terrain to me has always been what makes the difference. Take our game in Nottingham this summer as an example. Gorgeous models aplenty, but it was JBs terrain that pulled everything together and elevated the event. Plenty of great armies out there, insulting little quality terrain for them to fight on. Games Workshop has corrected their direction and Forgeworld has been on a tear. Last year I got to the satisfying goal of having a quality real of battle board and enough nice terrain to fill it. So now I'm pushing to turn nice to something a bit more spectacular.

That very much works in concert with the models. I've become accustomed to friends describing my goals better than I can do. And this comment at Dakka is important.

"Beautiful! It's crazy how you so seamlessly combine almost monochromatic painting techniques with such bright, rich colors." -Weirdingway 

I think he captures a significant portion of the essence of my Legion work. I've found a spot, I think, where the models look like they really live in the 40k universe, wear and tear with the horrors, and fight on gritty and fitting basing, but also really stand out from the terrain. Much of my previous armies would really disappear and lack punch in terrain.

I painted a bunker as a test piece last night. In an hour! And spent 15 minutes to prime one of three new Forgeworld tiles I am working on. And I give you crappy photos, late at night in the garage. I will how ever, aim to finish the fort and the entire trench network by the end of this week/weekend and set up for a proper army photo shoot with the new terrain the weekend after or so.

Warrior Mystic Alpharius

XX Chapter of Adeptus Astartes does not maintain a Librarium. However, they do employ the weapons of the warp, esoteric and arcana, forbidden lore and far seeing arts.

This is the work of a legion Warrior Mystic, psychic masterminds and warrior gods as individualistic and creative as chaos. Each mystic has an apprentice if a worthy candidate is found, and millennia of lore is passed in secret, verbally, in remote planets and webs of the galaxy.

Mystic Alpharius, master of the farseer, brother of the moon, student of the old one and leader of Stealth team Argolith.

Quick teaser and thoughts from the work bench

I've been getting somewhat excited about Space Wolves - and skimming through the new Grey Knight and Space Wolf codexes, gave me an idea to quite possibly move to the "count as direction" from GKs to SWs, as my army structure was seriously hosed by the changes and disappearance of Inquisition units.

The real dilemma is the two Dreadknights that I love and would like to include. One option might be to make the "Sentinels of Mars" (Imperial Fists rules Mechnaicus units in the army) the main detachment, and try an ally Grey Knights and inquisition and see how that goes. There is a new GK detachment that only requires one troop unit and gives you up to two DK.

Any ideas and opinions welcome! I've been overloaded with the amount of rules, detachments and options and can't quite possibly see the forest for the trees.

At the same time, working on the Librarian. Warpaint, alien runes, skulls, feathers, a grimoire, and hopefully the end result will be an intimidation warrior mystic. Part classic Space Marine imagery, part tribal shaman and a little bit of samurai vibe thrown in. The end result obviously need to fit in the squad.

I also "primed" the trench network with Tamya paints and opened my Forge World imperial stronghold tile to find it cracked. I glued it back together and will see if it holds, or if I need to try and see how FW customer service treats me.

Pictures of something finished this weekend. Until then:

A point in time - Old and new ventures.

The trip to Nottingham and Denmark was inspirational to say the least. And I'm back to working on stuff in a nice state of exhaustion and excitement.

7th Edition Warhammer 40000 seems to have spiraled in to a release cadence and data-slate sanity where it is close to impossible to keep track, or even know how to build an army. Just as I had my Legion guys ready, the new Grey Knight book mixed things up again. Not complaining, mind you, just acknowledging I'm too busy and old to keep up.

I am how ever excited and focused as ever to pushing the project to new heights.So very thankful of all the new models. Having just seen a vast range of unbelievably cool models in Europe, it's exciting to see that the coolness in my own cabinet, at army scale, can stand proud! The sheer intimidation of a full squad of "art-scale" Space Marines and all the adjacent craziness keeps me going with this particular labor of love. The Knight came out quite nicely too.

So next,

I will finish painting the Librarian. He is going to a very sinister, warrior shaman direction. Every bit the super warrior a space marine is, but with clear, sinister, mark of the witch, and master of forbidden lore. Hoping to get this done soon to show you.

I also need to find the stamina to paint 4 more Mechanicus storm troopers, to finish the squad of ten and reward myself with more esoteric Mechanicus characters. Fabricator Captain Siimon, desperately needs a new model, and the old one will be demoted to his aid.

To enable new additions, I just ordered way too many models and some terrain from Forge World and Games Workshop, and am now fighting a pretty cool Space Wolf idea to not get derailed. That might include Horus model and some Gal Vorbak into Wulfen work.

...and then there is Aquila Illuminati - part 3 of the trilogy.

I'm grateful for the blog and all of your comments. Humans are social beings after all, and it doesn't help to have all of my modeling friends the wrong side of the atlantic. Lets see if I can get you pics soon.

It's been a while - from nothing to Epic!

So far 2014 has been the busiest of my life and it's been hard to find time for the hobby.

To balance the quiet, I give you a pictorial of an EPIC +I+munda event that took place in Nottingham very recently, followed by a special get together in Denmark. It is incredible what amazing experiences and friendships this hobby can create.

I'm sure this game will be reported and documented properly else where too. What it really is, is a celebration of the hobby that also involved some random rolling of the dice. But the focus and genius is really on the narrative and the spectacular models and terrain.

Very soon, it's time to talk about the future, and the third installment of my Inquisitor Trilogy. Powered by this inspiring experience.

The gorgeous terrain, together with an insane host of Mechanicus things and marketplace goods built and painted by JB

More of JB's genius, with Peter's gorgeous rusted gear

JB's robot, with Kari's arco unit, "integrated".

JB's robot II

Neal's incredible Market Place quarter master. Neal brought an utterly brilliant set of weird, dystopian, war hammer gear.

Tim's Mechanicus models. Wish I had more pictures of these lovelies. Tim teamed up with JB for the game

Johan's Radical =I= and my partner in crime for the day.

Johan's models travelled in style

Peter's classic beauties. Don't have enough photos of these, but they have been well documented elsewhere.

my Alter Daemon, one of two new models I brought - which is pretty pathetic considering what all others did!

Johan's guys advance

Borsus and Curze set up

Silas and crew sneak forward

towards and inevitable clash with JB

Kari's Flagellants versus Silas

who would kill both

before cutting open the injured to unleash the Alter

who would go on a tear

one of Tim's gorgeous mechanicus horses

group shot of my guys

Flagellant Ambrosius

Peter's stunning rust work and Mechanicus guardian

War!

our survivors from a bloody game.

And then on to Denmark... To meet with Jakob and Stefan

Stefan's vintage GD winner

Jakob's Crystal Brush best of show.

Miracles do happen, Stefan is back to painting! and I'm honored to have one of his to join a few of Jakob's and a few of JBs in my collection :)