Villainy Inks are here! Grenade Crabs and other stuff.

My Villainy Inks arrived this week, and I have been very happy testing them out. I also got a bottle of their 'Anti-Death' low-toxicity, odorless mineral spirits. I still use my ventilator since when it's chilly my painting area isn't the most ventilated(it's better when I can have the window open, but we've been slowly getting warmer up here, bit by bit), but they really do have very, very little smell(and the thinner basically has none.) 

I decided to start with the Grim Core I set(and a spare bottle of Caput Mortuum, a color I figured I'd be using a lot with the next pieces coming up.) I pretty much plan on immediately ordering more; I think Flesh Core I coupled with Coelia Green and Ichor of the Damned. (I didn't want to buy a full set off the bat, and both sets 1 and 2 have colors I want/need for it. I can get the last four over time after I get the mentioned ones, since those seem a bit more situational.)

The packaging is pretty awesome.

Okay, so they uploaded backward, unboxed and then boxed. 

The colors I grabbed seemed to be immediately useful to what I was doing; Goon's Grime is this dirty looking, matte-drying wash, Decrepit Filth is a black wash(and a favorite), Caput Mortuum is a reddish-purple and great for gore, Sector Rust makes a great first rust pass for rusty armor(and rest assured this will get a lot of work with Dirty Down Rust and AP's Grim Rust), and Decay of Death is a pale greenish type of deal that makes things look slightly decayed; it's going to likely be good in small bits for corpse stuff and the like. 

So far, here's an example of a Hunter of the Left-Hand Path, with an initial Decrepit Filth pass(with a mineral spirit pass to remove some), followed by Caput Mortuum(not removed yet, but I did that this morning and it looks great.)

They have a bit of a learning curve, but they're absolutely going to be a ton of fun to experiment with even more! I mixed up some Caput Mortuum and Decrepit Filth to put over the gory bow and inside(inside: Bloodmoon Red from AP, covered in a wash mix of Carroburg Crimson and Purple Tone. Outside: 3 Parts Slaughter Red to 1 Part Murder Scene speedpaint, all over a skin tone of Grey Castle + Brainmatter Beige acrylics; it's basically a good setup for that.) Finally, ABT Ivory Black oils for the arrow and the nails, but I'll also be punching up the shadows with an oil wash in those bow recesses.

Basically it's been a lot of fun messing around with these!

Also if you're a TC fan, I'm sure that you've seen the Grenade Crab, a new mascot apparently. Grenade Crab is everything.

You mess with crabo, you get the slabo.

I also have been watching the Grimdark Compendium's Mordheim series, which they offered for free for a few days on their anniversary. It's stellar, and goes a whole lot into how to kitbash and the inspirations involved in all of this. They even have a terrain list too, and I had grabbed the Night Lords courses since I was looking into that Nemesis Box at some point. (Speaking of which, I found through that course that Liquitex Prussian Blue Ink is an incredible, saturated, overpowered blue that can be dialed down and actually I think I like it more than Night Lords blue.)

Blue OP, plz nerf.

Anyway, just wanted to update with how much I'm digging the Villainy Inks. I can't wait to try them out on more stuff and practice more with them. It's going to be a lot of fun playing with them on the Goetic Sorcerer and the Pit Locust, for sure!

'Til next time...

Trench Crusade Part 5: The Base(And completion?)

 With any model, comes a good base! While tabletop ready bases is like, painted, rimmed(snorts in Uranus jokes) and perhaps with a token grass tuft, I hold that a good base should have time and care put into it. It's usual that I can take a couple of sessions to do a base(sometimes they need extra drying time, too, due to texture paste and so on.) It should compliment a model, though not overtake it completely. Sometimes I go simple with a base, like with my cavern elf warrior(a fighter/barbarian), Thanrel Zin, from PF2e: 

Just some skulls, blood and bones since he's a bit more of a chaotic neutral grim character(surprisingly, though to be fair I do play more pleasant characters as well, at least sometimes), and a...somewhat of a lumpy stalagmite(I was working with some other type of paste before I got my Vallejo standby stuff.) 

I've been going a little more in-depth with the grimdark-style bases, like on the rat ogors previously, since I really wanted to capture and atmosphere, and I find myself doing that with Trench Crusade, since that game oozes atmosphere. So I'm going for muddy, dusty, broken down, or otherwise messed-up looking bases. This is what I have so far(still unprimed. Also the Metal Slime coffee mug says hello.) 

Yeah, including one of my token inverted crosses, though the other two are going to feature other trappings. (I promise to have more on other figures, though.) Trench wire, some boards, I was trying to give the impression of this lad having cleared out some trench of faithful or something, hence the bones. (I'll be painting them up far more detailed, or at least trying to.) The inverted cross was probably him flipping one of their crosses and spiking the skulls on it. Like I learned as I've been doing research, trying to tell a little story with the base, too. 

Priming it up, I opted for gray, though I decided to mostly leave the wood-the soft wood gets stained very nicely by paints, and it'll be find to give the paint something to 'bite onto', so to speak. I have primed wood before, and it works, but I decided to try it without this time, to see what sort of effects I could get from it. 

I really like speedpaints on bases, though I use regular acrylics, too(and as you'll see, pigments.) I dunno what exactly it is, but I really like how speedpaints work on bases and over this rough terrain; it just ends up looking really good for that grimy, grimdark style, but it also works for other stuff, like ice and so on(my beloved Frostheart makes for a wonderful base ice color, with UV resin over it!) 

So I start with some nice grimy colors. Mummified Grime(which pulls its weight in this series), Desolate Brown, Brownish Decay, and Pallid Bone all come in handy for varying tones of earth and wood, with Burnt Moss giving that greenish, corrupted look. I just have fun here and lay out the colors, which I went over with a variety of earth tones and ochre acrylics with drybrushing and all of that. Added a few more odds and ends like dust via some light sienna pigment powder, a dyed strip of cloth draped over the cross(possibly from one of the corpses), and some other washes and thinned paints on the skulls to give them various states of aging and decay. 

And then finally, it's time to attach the model and do some more. Like, of course, comes more gore! Via my favorite stringy glue + AP Effect Paint method(I would like to try Dirty Down Gore one day), I put some around the model on the axe, the hook, and a scattering other places that might make sense. 

This one took me a little longer than I'd have liked, but since I'm not on a timeframe to get this warband done, I'm not too sad. I think doing a process blog for it was fun, and I'll be back with more painting stuff, possibly a gig review later(depends on my Thursday schedule) this week and whatever else! 

Trench Crusade Part 4: More Rust, Verdigris, and some Metal Hair

 Alrighty! Back with my next progress on this guy. I actually went and started to add rust to the other models, too, a bit, but I'll be coming back to those. My general plan is to get this guy done and based up as my 'Base Dude', someone who's base I'll be able to lift ideas from(they all are going to be a unit, and while I'm not going to copy each base verbatim, I'd like them to share a *somewhat* uniform trench-base appearance.) I might not get to finish the base until Monday, though, since I wanna grab some pigment powder besides the mossy-colored one I have(I need a slate grey one.)

So I started with...hair! I wanted to make him look uncanny, kinda disturbing, and importantly, black metal inspired(despite being in WWI, look, he's hellspawn), since I'm trying to keep with my brand here. So I took some colored(thanks, Mummified Grime!) Q-tip cotton and brushed it out(also thanks to the Grimdark Compendium.) I think it turned out pretty cool! I also darkened up the verdigris with a back-and-forth mix of Poxwalker+Pine Hollow Shade, Coelia Greenshade, a bit of Verdigris to grit it up and Mummified Grime helped darken parts of it. 

After this, I started adding blood-you can't have these guys without copious amounts of it. I did the ol' splatter method and used a messed-up brush. Also started adding some thinned-down Gun Metal streaks here and there to add to chipping, and kept going back and forth between Grim Rust, Dirty Down, and the Gun Metal after spattering. Also dyed the hair a bit darker, and added some of the glowing orange in the eyes(well, I don't have orange fluoro, but I tried with some Bold Titanium White and Emberveil.)

Also, this is where I started dusting the bottom of his fur piece and the bottom of the cloak with a mossy green FX pigment to make it look somewhat dusty. 

Finally, more blood, more back and forth. I'll probably be doing more of this tomorrow while at the same time, starting to craft the base! 

Alrighty! I think this lad is getting close to done, at least the figure. But basing is very important for atmospheric pieces, too, so I'll be coming up with a good scheme for it and snapping some pictures of that, too! 

Anyway, 'til next time! 

Trench Crusade Court, Part 3: The Rust Begins

And with a playlist heavily fortified by 1349(I am totally not getting an idea for a Black Grail army with this):

Rust. Lots of rust. I did some highlighting with a mix of Heavy Metal and Gun Metal, and then went in with some straight Gun Metal at parts. The horns are done with Dusty Skull. 

And then, started the rust. I actually had to come back to this after getting a proper mask. Using small amounts quickly is one thing, having to hold the mini up to your face and work with it for minutes at a time is another story entirely, even without an airbrush. Better safe than sorry. 

I cleaned up the blobs that were left behind after my first foray. Also messed with Grim Rust for some lighter parts. Mummified Grime Speedpaint came in handy for the deepest recesses, to show the really old, nastiest rust. 

I want to take some time, now, to sort of explain the 'story' I see for these guys. I'm a TTRPGer at heart, and this carries over into other wargames. Rather than just "Hell Knights", I like to think like, what happened to these guys? Hell Knights, in the lore....well, I'll let the Trench Crusade Official site describe them:

"The silent battalions of Hell, summoned when the Court of the Seven-Headed Serpent seeks sport, are composed of Hell Knights. Their ever-burning banners stream as they march to war, carrying out the bidding of their masters. They are the bannerets of the high lords of the Court, and champions who respond to foolish mortals daring to challenge the hunting parties of the Serpent’s nobility.

Heretic Priests whisper that these Infernal warriors were once lesser fallen angels or mighty mortal champions raised into devilhood, only to be cursed by their liege lords for some slight, real or imagined. Cast out from the burning palaces of the Pit, the alabaster architecture of their bodies has been twisted, folded upon itself a thousand times, entombed within their once-splendid armour which is now an eternal prison. 

To glimpse the body inside is to gaze upon the sheer horror of divine flesh warped beyond reason. Glaring eyes of light, mouths uttering blasphemies, and pulsating inner organs that gibber and shriek, all crushed into a space barely a tenth of their original form. Despite their reduction in stature, their inordinate pride remains unbroken, and they brook no insolence from the wretched mortals that serve them.

Once privy to the secrets of Creation, their minds are now clotted with endless blood-red waking dreams. Their thoughts are crushed to a singular, jagged prism of murderous obsession. Their form is tormented by the cold of the earthly realm, which they are forced to endure just as humans suffer in the flames of Hell. They are mighty still, yet mere shadows of their once exalted glory. Even so, they are terrifying and implacable foes to a mortal soldier."

So these lads are essentially single-minded killing machines, encased in armor that's probably bleeding(yes, that'll be coming eventually, along with some eye glow.) Their armor and weapons are going to be messed up because they're, again, single-minded murder machines permanently encased in their armor. This is not armor that is taken off and cared for. It's going to have trench battlefield mud, grime, and rust all over it. Despite being single-minded murderers, though, I like the idea of some of them keeping some semblance of their former lives as a slight subconscious thing here and there, in this case in the form of some grisly trophies(hence a few skulls hanging here and there, and the one that's probably getting pieces of a priest frock), or nastier weapon additions, like the rusty hook. I kind of want to let some of the design choices tell that story. 

Knowing all of this now, we'll get back to the model! I was a bit tired today after a bit of extra exercise and a rough night of sleep, so I just did a couple other things. Started on the fur-this is going to be done in a dirty ochre color(Tainted Garden so far, with a bit of Dusty Skull on the skull), and just washed with Grimdark Shadow. I'll be adding some drybrushing and stuff with it tomorrow, though it's going to be pretty dirty looking. Drybrushed a bit of the metal chain. 

Also started a verdigris recipe. Testing it on one lower part of the cloak, it's a drop of Verdigris, a drop of Temple Gate Teal, about 3 drops of stabilizer, and brushed it on. after it dried, drybrushed some Evil Chrome over it(which is really more of a bronze color, though I might fiddle with the color some.) Verdigris is still wet here, you can see. (Also messing with Grimdark Shadow on it, too, for a sort of unifying look, though I might work with the Mummified Grime here too.) 

Tomorrow, going to start manipulating some of the rust to lighten it here and there, and adding metal scratches around where there'd be battle damage, as well as work on both cloaks and the skull more! And hopefully start to add blood, of course. (I'm trying not to take forever on these models, since they're an army; I have no need to rush and I won't, but I'd like to see if I can not take my usual eleventy billion hours to finish.) 

'Til next time! 

Trench Crusade Court, Part 2: Drybrushing and starting metals!

Okay, continuing!. (Also, here's a picture of the primed flail. I put a jawbone at the end of one of the chains.) 

Decided to do my initial drybrush in AP's Banshee Brown, believe it or not. No, you don't see it *super* well, but the idea here was to have a reddish-brown undercoat for the rust, of which there is going to be quite a bit of. 

I then followed it up with an AP Grey Castle, picking out some details here and there, and particularly hit some things like the skulls and such with it. I also did a few things in AP's Abyssal Blue(which will be verdigris-laden bronze.) Each model has something that will be bronze-the Hell Knights with bronze chain cloaks, the Yoke Fiends each have a little something, like a trinket, or some bit of armor. 

I went heavier on the Grey Castle brush with the fiends' skin, which will be a very sickly pale, mottled color(at least, I hope) at the end. 

Next, I started do do a rust undercoat for certain things. The chains and barbed wire are going to get a rust undercoat(AP's Dark Rust), and drybrushed metal over it, but the rest will be painted first and then I will begin the rust applications with Dirty Down, Grim Rust and everything else. 

For the base metals, as much as I love my beloved John Blanche Heavy Metal, my bottle is starting to get somewhat light, and I need to order some singles soon. They don't sell them in local stores around me yet. I want to also use this on the Praetor and the Saint, so to ensure I keep enough on hand, I used this as the base for the Yoke Fiends, which have less metal. For the Hell Knights, I opted for the excellent and aptly named Scale 75 Black Metal. I don't use a lot of S75, and I've seen some of their colors not do too hot, but I love this one and it goes on smooth and easy. It's also incredibly close in color. 

If you're a Citadel person, btw, the best suggest I have for you is 1:1 Leadbelcher(the Citadel Gun Metal equivalent) and Abaddon Black, and Leadbelcher straight instead of Gun Metal. (As for the other colors, I think Doombull Brown 1:1 with Rhinox Hide, Mechanicus Standard Grey and Thousand Suns Blue are close. All that said, I do not think I am someone you want to be taking paint advice from; I'm just listing color equivalents. There's a slew of way better painters than me online that give way better advice.) 

Anyway, here's the crew with some basic metal stuff done! (it's a bit messy, but I'll be painting over any of that, so I wasn't trying to be particularly neat here.)

And that's it for tonight! Tomorrow I am going to start the highlights and the weapons-Gun Metal for a lot of them, but I'll go over some other color picks. Note that starting then, I'm going to not be doing them as much in batches, due to the extra details I'm going to be doing. I want to give the three Hell Knights different levels of verdigris on the cloaks, for example, and they're going to have heavier rust in different places, and so on. But for the priming, drybrushing and base metals, it seemed good to do them together. 

Til next time! 

First real army getting painted, Trench Crusade Court, part 1

 So, while I've actually put paint on a lot of miniatures since late September, I have never painted a full, real army yet. Finally getting my Court of the Seven-Headed Serpent army in for Trench Crusade(I am partial to skirmish games a bit more than the Real Big Ones, and I like TTRPGs the most, even over wargames-but TC is awesome), I thought it might be cool to sorta catalogue the building, kitbashing, and painting process of a general noob in a little series. 

It goes without saying this army will be painted in the grimdark style. I have ideas on how I want them to look; whether or not I'll be saying "That's a fine looking army. WHY DOESN'T MINE LOOK LIKE THAT?!" will be up in the air. 

My chosen soundtrack for this is, surprisingly, a lot of 1349 and other assorted black metal. I know, shocking. 

So, the next photographs are just of the basic, new army; unassembled, I printed up the appropriate sized bases for them, and assembled the Praetor and the Desecrated Saint, both of which needed some. Particularly the Saint. I also filled in some gaps with Milliput. These are all the base models still. 

Desecrated Saint

Pic of most of the army. Then the Desecrated Saint(2 pics), Hunter of the Left Hand Path+Pit Locust, Praetor, and Sorcerer

Starting off, I decided to work with the Hell Knights and Yoke Fiends. I knew I wanted to add chains, barbed wire, skulls, inverted crosses, and all that good stuff to them, so I started attaching stuff to places, drilling out skulls and so on. Added a couple of demonic skulls as shoulder armor and a shield deco for the Yoke Fiends, as well as some additional weapon embellishments. Also was messing with some tissue + cigarette paper + PVA glue + water + a variety of speedpaints and washes to make flayed skin to add for cloaks and pieces later. (Grimdark Compendium Youtube Channel has been a wealth of ideas for this bunch.) 

After all of that, I added a few more embellishments, as well as a pass with some Green Stuff putty mixed with water(Tamiya + glue is stickier, but it's very cold out and my painting place isn't too well ventilated, so I went with the lesser fumes. I do use some fume-y stuff sometimes in winter, but this took me a little while to do, compared to the shorter bursts of working with things like a bit of Dirty Down or assembling models or whatnot.) I then carved up some of the putty areas to add some damage and weathering, and then some cheesecloth to a mace handle. (in hindsight, I shouldn't have dyed it yet due to it probably being hit by primer, but oh well. At least I see how the color looks.) Green stuff pictured in next bunch. 

From here, we did the other weathering passes. First with some AK corrosion texture to anyplace that seemed like it could be rusty, and then with some Vallejo Thick Mud to greaves and lower capes and armor and stuff. 

And the crew is now ready to prime! 

Part 2 soon, with the priming and drybrushing. Might go over the color choices then too, but I am still milling over a couple of those. 

(Bonus! I started to build a flail, though I'm not sure which yoke fiend is going to have this strapped to his back. Not primed yet because the green stuff isn't cured fully yet. Also I had decided to, after all, add some cheesecloth to one of the Hell Knights, since he had fewer embellishments. I think it looked pretty good in the end. I do have to prime him tomorrow morning, still, but hey. Also I am so thankful that I like skirmish and TTRPGs the most. If I had to hand prime and entire army I might walk into the sea.)