Building a W40K Chaos Army - 2Q 2013 Schedule

No more pussyfooting around, it's time to put up or shut up. More than one-and-a-half-years into this hobby and I am no closer to putting up an army to game.So I sat down and finally put to paper a rather ambitious schedule over the next three months to finally get something on the gaming table.

Almost unachievable but it does spell out what needs to be done to get an army up in 3 months

Some 18 months from my very first miniature till today, I have only managed to complete painting roughly 53 miniatures and assembled/primed about 35 or so. Not exactly a blistering pace, which makes my 2Q plan above that little bit more crazy. First week of April will either see me triumphant in completing the Word Bearers Dark Apostle thus kick-starting my grand hobby schedule, or simply crash in flames filled with utter humiliation in seeing a plan fail before it has properly begun.

Kinda hurt my arm (I think I pulled a muscle) while cleaning my grandma's grave during the Qingming festival so my hands were a bit shakier than normal this weekend resulting in me doing more assembling than painting. Even then I kept dropping pieces all over the place while the super glue was still on the separate pieces. Sigh.

Nonetheless, I still managed to finish assembling and priming a Black Legion Forgefiend. As I lack the skill to use magnets, I guess blue tacks will have to suffice for the time being when utilising the various weapon choices available to the Forgefiend.

Forgefiend with various possibilities in head and weapon choices

I also have a Word Bearers Helbrute fully assembled and primed so that will at least make my life that bit easier in April's punishing schedule.

This Helbrute is going to be in Word Bearers colours

Looks like I have my work cut out for me. While I am itching to get off the blocks, I am also partly dreading the amount of work that lies ahead. Am gonna need all the luck that I can get. 

Word Bearers Anointed [Completed]

After a lot of procrastinating, I finally managed to complete my Anointed squad. I was generally pleased with how they turned out even though they can be improved on further. I am just glad to get them done and move on to other miniatures in my Chaos army.

It never pays to ignore the Word of Lorgar

Pride of Guilliman ... or not

Generally, I took longer with the final two Anointed as they had more details to paint. For example the trophies of war mounted on the spikes were more elaborate and the unmasked Anointed had flesh tones as well as a loin cloth which I wanted to spend as much time on as I could to avoid them coming out looking ... well ...bad. I hope I managed that at least.

Final two Anointed to complete my squad of five

Flesh tones came out a tad too healthy-looking with too much Ogryn Flesh wash added to the Dheneb Stone basecoat

Nice side view of the Ultramine head on a spike as well as a bag containing the warrior's Kahonas

Loved painting the skull icon ... it never gets old for me to do that

Less details than the unmasked Anointed but more details on the trophy spikes

Ogryn Flesh kinda does a good job at simulating rust on the blade

Can you feel the energy being pumped into the power maul?

There is no "I" in Team Lorgar

To prevent too much dust from settling on the miniatures, I placed them in a display case I got from your local Daisho shop. Got the display cabinet more than a year ago but never got around to using them till now. Was reminded of them when I saw them being used by a fellow blogger LordAK. They cost more than the regular RM5 as it is with most items in a Daisho shop ... around RM10 to RM20 me thinks, don't really remember. Need to get more as the IKEA display cabinet doesn't really keep dust away, not that I expected it to.

A Word Bearers cultist and Anointed squad in a stasis chamber

Stasis field engaged

So that's it then. Might start working on the Dark Apostle now or Cyrene Valantion or ... hmmm ... I guess I should do up a schedule to better plan my time, a 2Q 2013 hobby guidance if you will. Till my next post, thanks for reading and any comments are most welcome.

Inscribing the Words of Lorgar

For the Word Bearers Dark Apostle miniature that I am currently working on, the holy parchments attached all over his armour would undoubtedly be the main focus one's eye. So how well the parchments are painted/drawn will either make of break the painted miniature.

From the fires of betrayal unto the blood of revenge we bring the name of Lorgar ...

With that thought in mind, I took my time with the parchments and tried to figure out the best colour scheme, writing style and symbols that would best portray a bringer of the Words of Lorgar. While the actual paint/writing work was completed in a relative short time (two hours at most), it still took me nearly a week of researching as well as trial and error doodles to find out what might work best.

Doodles of Lorgar

Having prepared the best I could, I feel that the end result were reasonably satisfying on a personal level (my standards aren't that high) but it nonetheless left me thinking that I perhaps could have done better (one of which was to make the inscriptions less thick ... failure of which was due to me applying too much pressure to the paint brushes and pens that I used). Below are some steps showing how I tackled the challenge of painting/writing/drawing the Words of Lorgar.

Step 1

Early stages yet

First, I painted the parchments with a basecoat of Khemri Brown on top of a Chaos Black undercoat.

Step2

Bleached skin taken from the followers of the False Emperor

I then proceeded to paint about three very thin layers of Bleached Bone onto the parchments. It's important not to apply the paint too thick at this stage as it would result in an uneven surface which would make painting, writing or drawing on it very difficult.

Step 3

Majority of the symbols were painted/drawn on the front of the parchments

There were less details on the back as they would not be that obvious to the casual observer

With the help of the smallest brush that I had (a triple zero sized paint brush) and some fine-sized (005) ink pens, I inscribed the Words of Lorgar onto the parchments. As can be seen from the above two pictures, at this stage, everything still looked very harsh (for want of a better term).

Step 4

Words of Lorgar ... faithfully inscribed with hate

More words of anger and hate (mustn't forget the latter now being a Word Bearer and all)

Finally, I washed the parchments with Ogryn Flesh to add aged patina as well as to make it look as if real human skin was being used, which is what I presume what Word Bearers would use. This had an added effect of reducing the harshness of how everything looked earlier in Step 3.

Incidentally, I finished the third installment of Anthony Reynolds's Word Bearers trilogy i.e. Dark Creed at roughly the same time. I enjoyed the books tremendously and am looking forward to more from the author as the story alluded to an internecine warfare among the Word Bearers ranks.

Cover of Anthony Reynold's third book in the Word Bearers Trilogy

There are still a lot of my Word Bearers army still left undone and I feel that my progress is starting to slack a bit more. Oh ... and if you are wondering ... the pesky Skyrim arrow is still in my knee. =)