Good morning/afternoon/evening everyone!
Over the years, I've painted many, many miniatures for Richard Hale AKA Orclord, the lovely chap who runs the website The Stuff Of Legends. SOL is primarily a massive resource of catalogues, photos and information on fantasy miniatures. Hundreds of fans use it to check their collections, see what's missing from them, identify mystery miniatures, etc. and is a testament to Richard's love of the hobby of collecting miniatures. It's also a showcase of Richard's huge, and constantly growing, collection of professionally-painted miniatures. It's been my privilege to paint dozens of models for him over the years and I thought it would be cool to put all the things I've done for him in one place here.
Somehow, Slambo became more than just another Chaos Warrior, and became something of the generic Chaos Warrior, and served as the template for many different models to follow, especially the Heroquest Chaos Warrior and the 90’s single pose Chaos Warrior.
When GW released a new reworking of Slambo, Richard asked me to do both the old and new variants so I decided to do them in similar palettes, but in styles appropriate to the age of the model. Hope you like them.
Also included below are a few Slambo-inspired miniatures:
More pictures can be found here. As for the reason why the new one is so much bigger than the old one...
It was hard for him to remember being a mortal man.
The memories were vague, so long ago.
He was powerful, even then. He dedicated his life, and his axes, to the Chaos gods and they, in turn, looked on him with favour. He had never been bested in single combat and every foe he slew was another soul gifted to his masters.
And they gifted him in return. The dark gods had chosen him as a favoured son and bestowed upon him the gifts due a great champion.
How long had he lived now? Millenia? He had seen empires fall and rise and even the shattering and rebuilding of a world and, through it all, he had endured.
But what was he now? Certainly not human anymore although, from a distance, he could pass as one, but up close it was easy to tell he had been changed. He had always been big and strong but now he was immense, towering over other champions. His twin axes were as tall as a mortal man yet he wieded them, one in each hand, with ease. His armour had grown with him and now it could hardly be called armour at all. It was now his skin, as much a part of him as the ancient muscle and bone within. The once bright green and bronze now dull and tarnished with age. No part of what was sealed within the armour could be seen from the outside, just the eerie, sickly yellow glow emanating from the eyeslit of his helm.
Some said he was a demon. That the dark gods had removed all that had been human within that suit of armour and replaced it with the pure stuff of Chaos, that only the armour itself and the incredible willpower of the champion's soul held him in near-human shape. But nobody knew for sure. It was just another part of the legend, part of the stories told by firelight, or in hushed whispers as stories to scare children...
Whatever he was, he didn't care. All emotion was far behind him, lost to the ages. Why should he care? He had it all. He never tired, never aged, never ate nor slept. All there was, was the purpose: to kill for Chaos. Nothing else held any meaning for him.
The demon in human form.
The slaughterer of souls.
Slambo, Chosen of Chaos.
Why not indeed...
I really like the Marienburg Landship model. From an aesthetic point of view it sums up all of the madness of Warhammer. A giant battleship, powered by steam, on huge wheels. Imagine that chuntering across the battlefield! As a model, it's just awesome. Fully detailed, with half a dozen crew, it's a fabulous piece to put together. If you have the patience. The one I had took some serious effort to fit together. The two halves of the boiler/engine were slightly warped and had to be heated and reshaped (which only helped a little.) Green stuff was needed to fill the gaps. Then there was the mould lines. Every millimetre of mould line (and there was quite a bit) was over the wooden texture, and so had to be removed really carefully to preserve the detailing. And then there was the matter of getting all four wheels to sit flat at the same time... It took hours to get the thing ready for painting.
But it was worth it. A piece like this, when it all comes together and you can sit back and look at it all finished, it's immensely satisfying. And, despite the difficulties, I'd do another at the drop of a hat. Sadly, since the kit became OOP it's become very difficult and expensive to get hold of, and it's unlikely I'll see another one for a while. It's one of the reasons I love what I do. I get to play with toys that I'd usually not get the chance to. So, come on Forge World, how about a re-release? Please?
More pictures here.
The Mournghul
With all the fuss about Nighthaunt at the moment I thought I'd look at a model that obviously heavily influenced the current line, the Mournghul. The Mournghul is a truly horrific creature, with it's body torn away, leaving just a monstrous torso held aloft by two spindly arms. I painted it with very pale tones, starting with a mid fleshtone, before washing it with blues and reds, wet in wet. I then stippled the highlights up to a greyish white. I wanted it to look like there was many layers of blood on the arms, where old blood had dried and layers from fresher kills had been layered on the top. I did this by sponging on a dark, faded blood colour then a rich, flesh blood colour. On top of that I sponged a gloopy mix of glue and paint to look like dried, clotted blood, leaving the other colours visible beneath. As the miniature is shown with a fresh kill, I also added some fresh blood using paint mixed with glue, strung between the fingers and around the maw. All in all I was pretty happy with the effect. It looks absolutely disgusting. I have to admit, I'm sorely tempted to get one of these monsters for my upcoming Nighthaunt force, maybe painted as a ghost...
More pictures can be found here
Limited Edition Space Marines
These two were released in 2014 (and painted fairly soon after) to celebrate the rebooting of the GW webstore. I chose to do them both as Ultramarines because, well, I know it's not very cool, but I really like Ultramarines. Blue is a really nice colour to work with and it usually photographs well, meaning it looks good in real life and in pictures. I really enjoyed researching the character backgrounds too, and working out how to apply them to the captains. Mind you, the personal heraldry was a pig to get right. That Ultramarine symbol is awkward to get even at the best of times, and I decided to paint it as a keyline. I lost count of the amount of times I had to repaint that. I got to have some fun doing up a couple of scenic bases for them, as they were special editions, and I think they set the miniatures off nicely. You can find more pictures of them here.
So, here it is. Credit for all these photos goes to Richard Hale himself, and I'm grateful to him for letting me use them here. He takes a damn fine photo, and manages to make my work look awesome. I'll be adding more and more to this as I go along so please check back for updates. If I can think of anything interesting to say about the models, I'll add that too. I'm only going to post one or two of each model so, if you want to see the other views (and Richard normally photos at least the front, back, left and right views) you'll have to head on over to the website and check them out there, along with the fabulous work of the other painters that Richard has working for him.
Not that you need any encouragement to do that, right?
http://www.solegends.com/
There's nothing like starting with something really classy. And this is nothing like...
One of the first pieces I ever did for Richard was one of my all-time favourite miniatures (no, really), Aly Morrison's Chaos Toilet. I honestly love this model. There's so much character, from the unfortunate trying to claw his way back out, to the hand clasping the toilet roll. I have the sneaking suspicion that, if he could get away with it, Aly would happily sneak a new version of this into the current Nurgle range...
More pictures can be found here.
More pictures can be found here.
A Tale Of Two Slambos (and their friends…)
After the Chaos Toilet, we come a lot more up to date, at least partly. Here’s a couple of versions of an old favourite, Slambo. Old Slambo started out as just an ordinary Chaos Warrior, sculpted by Jes Goodwin, back in the ‘80’s. Back then, many citadel Miniatures were given names on release, and so Slambo joined the likes of Cedric Hammerhand, Mighty Zug Arkwright and, yes, Sir Gigal De Appliance.Somehow, Slambo became more than just another Chaos Warrior, and became something of the generic Chaos Warrior, and served as the template for many different models to follow, especially the Heroquest Chaos Warrior and the 90’s single pose Chaos Warrior.
When GW released a new reworking of Slambo, Richard asked me to do both the old and new variants so I decided to do them in similar palettes, but in styles appropriate to the age of the model. Hope you like them.
|
|
Also included below are a few Slambo-inspired miniatures:
|
|
|
||||||
|
|
It was hard for him to remember being a mortal man.
The memories were vague, so long ago.
He was powerful, even then. He dedicated his life, and his axes, to the Chaos gods and they, in turn, looked on him with favour. He had never been bested in single combat and every foe he slew was another soul gifted to his masters.
And they gifted him in return. The dark gods had chosen him as a favoured son and bestowed upon him the gifts due a great champion.
How long had he lived now? Millenia? He had seen empires fall and rise and even the shattering and rebuilding of a world and, through it all, he had endured.
But what was he now? Certainly not human anymore although, from a distance, he could pass as one, but up close it was easy to tell he had been changed. He had always been big and strong but now he was immense, towering over other champions. His twin axes were as tall as a mortal man yet he wieded them, one in each hand, with ease. His armour had grown with him and now it could hardly be called armour at all. It was now his skin, as much a part of him as the ancient muscle and bone within. The once bright green and bronze now dull and tarnished with age. No part of what was sealed within the armour could be seen from the outside, just the eerie, sickly yellow glow emanating from the eyeslit of his helm.
Some said he was a demon. That the dark gods had removed all that had been human within that suit of armour and replaced it with the pure stuff of Chaos, that only the armour itself and the incredible willpower of the champion's soul held him in near-human shape. But nobody knew for sure. It was just another part of the legend, part of the stories told by firelight, or in hushed whispers as stories to scare children...
Whatever he was, he didn't care. All emotion was far behind him, lost to the ages. Why should he care? He had it all. He never tired, never aged, never ate nor slept. All there was, was the purpose: to kill for Chaos. Nothing else held any meaning for him.
The demon in human form.
The slaughterer of souls.
Slambo, Chosen of Chaos.
Marienburg Landship
So, I had planned to follow up Slambo with some Heroquest-y and Chaos-y connections, but Richard posted, on Facebook recently, about his growing collection of Empire Steam Tanks and he included the Marienburg Landship that I painted for him (although not all my own work- Richard added some extra crew and details later) a while back and I thought, "Why not feature that here instead?"Why not indeed...
I really like the Marienburg Landship model. From an aesthetic point of view it sums up all of the madness of Warhammer. A giant battleship, powered by steam, on huge wheels. Imagine that chuntering across the battlefield! As a model, it's just awesome. Fully detailed, with half a dozen crew, it's a fabulous piece to put together. If you have the patience. The one I had took some serious effort to fit together. The two halves of the boiler/engine were slightly warped and had to be heated and reshaped (which only helped a little.) Green stuff was needed to fill the gaps. Then there was the mould lines. Every millimetre of mould line (and there was quite a bit) was over the wooden texture, and so had to be removed really carefully to preserve the detailing. And then there was the matter of getting all four wheels to sit flat at the same time... It took hours to get the thing ready for painting.
But it was worth it. A piece like this, when it all comes together and you can sit back and look at it all finished, it's immensely satisfying. And, despite the difficulties, I'd do another at the drop of a hat. Sadly, since the kit became OOP it's become very difficult and expensive to get hold of, and it's unlikely I'll see another one for a while. It's one of the reasons I love what I do. I get to play with toys that I'd usually not get the chance to. So, come on Forge World, how about a re-release? Please?
More pictures here.
 |
 |
 |
John Blanche's Femmes Militant
On the subject of things I wouldn't normally get to paint...The Femmes Militant range was a very limited series of 40mm scale miniatures based on the artwork of the great John Blanche, sculpted by a selection of the world's greatest miniature designers. They are as rare as the proverbial doings of the wooden horse and don't come up for sale very often and, when they do, command vast prices. There is no way I would ever get to paint models like these for myself.
When Richard asked me to do Mona Bathorii I was delighted, and threw myself into it. I wanted to do a base that would fit in with the Blanchian stylings, so I broke up some bits of old watches, which were carefully aged and weathered, and mixed with dried and sealed mosses. The paintjob on the figure itself was about thirty hours, and I went well outside of my usual styling comfort zone, to go for a dirty, worn look, with muted colours. All in all I was well pleased with the finished result. The only thing I would change would be the lettering on the edge of the base. It's not a very Blanche-esque style, and doesn't fit in with the rest of the work.
Ratspyke, on the other hand, is a piece I'm not particularly happy with. I don't know what was going on in my head when I did this one, but I'm fairly certain I must have been on a pretty low ebb at the time, as this is far below the quality that a figure like this deserves. There's nothing intrinsically bad about the paint job, but there's nothing outstanding about it either. The red is entirely the wrong colour, and doesn't sit well with the rest of the colour scheme, and is badly rendered; the base is uninspired (particularly in comparison to that of Mona); and the whole piece is below my usual standards, especially for a miniature as special as this. Definitely one that I'd like to have the chance to redo.You can find more images of these models, and some more Femmes Militant painted by some of the best painters in the business here.
On the subject of things I wouldn't normally get to paint...The Femmes Militant range was a very limited series of 40mm scale miniatures based on the artwork of the great John Blanche, sculpted by a selection of the world's greatest miniature designers. They are as rare as the proverbial doings of the wooden horse and don't come up for sale very often and, when they do, command vast prices. There is no way I would ever get to paint models like these for myself.
 |
 |
When Richard asked me to do Mona Bathorii I was delighted, and threw myself into it. I wanted to do a base that would fit in with the Blanchian stylings, so I broke up some bits of old watches, which were carefully aged and weathered, and mixed with dried and sealed mosses. The paintjob on the figure itself was about thirty hours, and I went well outside of my usual styling comfort zone, to go for a dirty, worn look, with muted colours. All in all I was well pleased with the finished result. The only thing I would change would be the lettering on the edge of the base. It's not a very Blanche-esque style, and doesn't fit in with the rest of the work.
 |
 |
Ratspyke, on the other hand, is a piece I'm not particularly happy with. I don't know what was going on in my head when I did this one, but I'm fairly certain I must have been on a pretty low ebb at the time, as this is far below the quality that a figure like this deserves. There's nothing intrinsically bad about the paint job, but there's nothing outstanding about it either. The red is entirely the wrong colour, and doesn't sit well with the rest of the colour scheme, and is badly rendered; the base is uninspired (particularly in comparison to that of Mona); and the whole piece is below my usual standards, especially for a miniature as special as this. Definitely one that I'd like to have the chance to redo.You can find more images of these models, and some more Femmes Militant painted by some of the best painters in the business here.
The Mournghul
With all the fuss about Nighthaunt at the moment I thought I'd look at a model that obviously heavily influenced the current line, the Mournghul. The Mournghul is a truly horrific creature, with it's body torn away, leaving just a monstrous torso held aloft by two spindly arms. I painted it with very pale tones, starting with a mid fleshtone, before washing it with blues and reds, wet in wet. I then stippled the highlights up to a greyish white. I wanted it to look like there was many layers of blood on the arms, where old blood had dried and layers from fresher kills had been layered on the top. I did this by sponging on a dark, faded blood colour then a rich, flesh blood colour. On top of that I sponged a gloopy mix of glue and paint to look like dried, clotted blood, leaving the other colours visible beneath. As the miniature is shown with a fresh kill, I also added some fresh blood using paint mixed with glue, strung between the fingers and around the maw. All in all I was pretty happy with the effect. It looks absolutely disgusting. I have to admit, I'm sorely tempted to get one of these monsters for my upcoming Nighthaunt force, maybe painted as a ghost...
More pictures can be found here
 |
 |
Limited Edition Space Marines
 |
 |
The (Not) Scooby Gang
I never get tired of working on Hasslefree miniatures. They're the perfect painter's miniatures: lots of detail but not so much that there's no scope to have some fun, coupled with dynamic but realistic poses. I've never had a bad miniature from them and, if the rest of my painting life was spent just working my way through Hasslefree's back catalogue, I don't think I'd mind one bit. Some of their more entertaining sculpts are when they're riffing on some established characters and these ones are some of the best of the type. Two guys, two girls and a great dane. Ruh-oh! When it came to painting them I briefly toyed with the idea of going for an animated style but, in the end, stuck with my usual style because A) they are not sculpted in a cartoony fashion and B) I wasn't sure I could pull of the cell-shaded look on something so small. However, I did stick to the colours from the..."originals" and I had a lot of fun doing them, especially the little details like the torn tights on the post-apocalyptic version of Felicity and all the little blood splatters. More pictures can be found here and you can purchase Hasslefree miniatures here. Go on, you know you want to...
 |
 |
p.s. if you like what I'm doing here, a click on the link below and the donation of the price of a pot of paint would be a wonderful gesture. I'm thinking of adding special stuff to the Ko-fi, like competitions and prize draws, so it'd be a good idea to at least have a look there now and then 😁
Nice stuff Stuart, you skipped quite a bit of stuff though!
ReplyDeleteCheers Richard! Don't worry, I'll get to it all eventually. Unlike the Middlehammer Memory Lane page, I'm not going in chronological order with this page. It's more of a "whenever I can think of something interesting to say about what I've painted" kinda thing...
DeleteWhat about the 6th edition champion which has a clear Slambo influence?
ReplyDeleteWell, if Richard ever asks me to paint him, I'll include him here, but this gallery is just the models I've painted for SoL...
DeleteThat HQ prototype is amazing! Nice homage to the MMV job. How on earth did you get the lightning that fine?
ReplyDeleteThanks very much! I've always wanted to do a direct copy of Mike"s paintjob on the HQ models, and doing it just increased my respect for Mike"s work. The man is the master, as far as I'm concerned. The fine lines were achieved with a good brush (W&N Series 7, size 0), a very steady hand, and by holding my breath.
Delete