WoC - Slaanesh Army WIP

**JMR** · 04-02-2010, 03:00 PM

Hello everyone,

I have been lurking these forums for quite a while now, and today I decided to start my own progress log.
First off, I got myself into the hobby around 9 years ago or so, but haven't done much for the past three years. Recently, the lure of the paint-brush suddenly popped up again, and I decided to start something fresh.
I've always been more into painting and modelling than into gaming, mostly because my delicate conversions always break when I transport my mini's

My very first purchase, 9 years ago, was a box of Chaos Warriors (for less than half the price of what they are now

), and I'm still following Chaos today. This progress log will be about a Slaanesh army. The idea of a stylish, slender yet fully evil army has been in my head for ages, and it's been a real pain in the butt to find models that suit my vision.

Although modelling and painting comes first, I do enjoy being able to field my units properly if I happen to play a battle once a year.

Anyways, on to the pictures!

My Marauders. 20 of 'em to be precise. As you can see, I'm a bit random in my working order. Some have hardly started assembly, and some are primed or even already painted. The two painted ones are test-cases. I just wanted to get a feel for the models to make sure I'm on the right track. The painted one in the second row has a different skin-tone, also a test-case. I'm not too keen on it, so will be using the slightly darker tone like the one in the front row has.

The legs are from the Dark Elf Corsairs. Normally they wear pants, but hey, who needs pants when you worship Slaanesh?

The problem with making them pant-less, is that I have to sculpt butts, which proves to be a pain in the... well, you know.

Here's a better view of the one I've been painting.

The lightning wasn't too great when I made these pictures, and it makes the colours come out a bit weird. Also, please keep in mind that most of this mini isn't finished. I'm still trying to get a good colour scheme figured out. Most notably, the sword and shield still need to be done.
I feel the model needs a little something more to make it pop, somehow. I think it needs a brighter colour somewhere. In a way, the model only has 2 different "colours" at the moment; there's the skin, and there's the leather. I feel it needs a third colour to make it come more alive. Perhaps some gold on the shield will do. I'm also considering making the face-mask gold or somesuch. On the other hand though, should Marauders have so much gold on them?

I'm also considering giving them a totally different skin-colour with a more otherworldly, cool/cold look, like a very light blue, purple or even pink. I used a normal skin tone, because I wanted the Marauders to be mostly human. My warriors and whatnot were to have stranger skin-tones. What are your thoughts?

P.S. Is Warlock Purple supposed to be such a pain to paint with? It seems very... oily or something.

**BPI** · 04-02-2010, 04:01 PM

Hi JMR, welcome

Warlock Purple can be a bit tricky. Shake it well & choose an appropriate base colour. Mixing a tiny bit of something neutral in, like Kommando Khaki, can help too.

For the third colour why not use bronze rather than gold. That way, with Scaly Green verdigris you get a nice colour to set off the purple.

Cheers, B.

**JMR** · 04-03-2010, 07:04 AM

Thanks for the reply BPI. It really motivates a ton when people reply to your work.
I'll keep the Warlock Purple tip in mind next time I use it. As for the verdigris, I'm not so sure. I had to google the meaning btw :P It's basically rust or weathered bronze, right? I want my Slaaneshi to have smooth and polished armour, so I don't think the verdigris is gonna fit in. But it did get me thinking

Right. The other unit I've been working on is a unit of 12 chaos warriors with halberd and shield. Halberd + shield is a pretty solid setup when gaming, but it just looks sweet aswell. I've always had a weak spot for glaives and such, especially for Slaanesh.

Now, when I started this army, I wanted to go for a sleek and shiny army with the addition of a boob here and there. My main guideline was the GW Slaanesh Champion on foot model. The mounted lord is sweet too, but the foot model was my main guideline. I've also always been intrigued by the Cult of Slaanesh fluff that was used during the Storm of Chaos campaign.
Unfortunately, wanting a sleek army meant that the regular chaos warrior models just don't fit in my opinion. They're far to bulky, and I've always been extremely turned off by their amazingly boring poses. In fact, I've never even bought a box of them yet because of it :P

So, after searching for suitable parts for ages, I came up with this:

That's pretty different from the average Chaos Warrior, isn't it? :P

As you can see, I've been a bit chaotic with this unit aswell. Painting and modelling at the same time. I'm trying to finish my modelling first now though.
The unit champion has been finished while the rest was still in bits because I wanted to attend a local conversion competition. I was really pressed for getting it done, and it's actually not even really done :P The weapon needs to be done and the tabard and cloth on his/her upper arms don't make sense.

Here's some pictures I took of the champion a while ago, mostly just to mess around with the camera and photoshop.

The tabard and cloth need to be the same colour. Either both pinkish, or both purple. However, I've been working on a completely different colour scheme so I might have to repaint her completely sometime.

The model I'm using to find a good colour scheme is this chap:

Uuff.. man he looks bad on a picture! I don't think he's this messy in real. The tabard used to be Liche Purple, but it made him a bit monotone. I absolutely love the champion on foot painted by Jenova, seen here:
http://www.jenova.dk/SlaaneshChampion1.htm
or, with the colours swapped around:
http://www.jenova.dk/SlaaneshChampion2.htm

So, I've been trying to use that on my warriors, but I don't feel it really works out right. What do you guys think? Maybe I need to try the inverted scheme, using Turquoise on the armour and Warlock Purple on cloth. I'm also considering painting the tabard near-white, in tone with the skin-colour and freehand a slaanesh symbol on it. Or maybe I should add a symbol to their armour somewhere somehow?
Or... just paint the entire unit the way I did the champion?

After having complained yesterday that sculpting butts is such a pain, I actually got around to doing a few of them for my Marauders yesterday. Makes sense, no? :P They even turned out okay too! Not really interesting enough to take pictures off though, so you'll see the Marauders again when they've come a little further along.

**JMR** · 04-07-2010, 08:18 AM

I've done some more work on my Marauders. 6 more are ready for basing and priming now.

This means the first two rows are now complete. ... apart from painting ofcourse

The other ten (20 marauders total), need to get butts green-stuffed, arms attached and green-stuffed and finally a head glued on.

I've been fooling around a bit with the cloak from the Marauder sprue (usually used for the champion). And I have to say that I'm a bit tempted to add cloaks to either my Marauders or to my warriors. It's just a shame that some have already been primed and stuff... Adding cloaks to my warriors does bulk them out a bit. Opinions are welcome!

I've also been working on a unit of Forsaken since the start. Seemed like a cool converting project. Does require quite alot of green-stuffing though. The thing is though, that I have the feeling that Forsaken are a bit of a useless unit-choice when gaming. They take up a special slot, and a unit of chaos warriors with additional hand weapons (and possibly with a mark of Khorne) is the same price, and probably does better with 3 or 4 attacks vs D3+1. The Forsaken have the advantage when it comes to movement speed though. Does anyone have anything sensible to say about this? Should I just continue building them, or should I try to turn them into Chosen or somesuch?
I'll try to get a picture posted of them soon...

And lastly, to everyone reading this: Please leave a message! It motivates me greatly when people respond. Thanks!

**JMR** · 04-13-2010, 01:30 PM

Over 400 views and only one reply! This makes me a sad panda

Anyways, been working on my Marauders again:

The weapon, boots and gloves still need to be done. Am still trying to find a suitable colour scheme. As you can see, I gave this one a golden helmet instead of purple. I think it's an improvement. I've also had some fun with the shield, which gives it quite a different appearance from the Marauder I've been doing earlier. The added colour from the shield gives this one the extra "oomph" the previous one was missing a bit.
Unfortunately, using washes proves to be an excellent way to bring out all the flaws in my green-stuffing skills :P (See the upper arms)
Also, if anybody out there is considering using Dark Eldar arms: don't, they're rather poop. I had them lying around from the Chaos Warriors, so figured I should put them to use. Oh well...

I'm also never going to do this kind of major conversion work on a large unit like this again. It kinda stops being fun when you need to do 20 of 'em!

5 more are in progress, getting their skin done:

Still pretty rough, especially the ones each end of the line (one far left, one far right). These have been painted in a different way and I figured I'd try to save them, but I will probably have to redo them completely. I've had a pretty hard time getting the basecoat to stick over the black primer. It took like 4-5 coats, and the black still showed through on some places. I guess this means I need to try out these "Faundation" paints I hear everyone talking about? I've never used them, will they make my life easier?

And while I'm on the topic of paints... I've always used watered down paints instead of washes/inks. Is there a noticeable difference between the use of GW washes vs. just watering down some Chaos Black (or whatever other colour I might need)?

The photo's aren't really coming out too great in my opinion. Especially the black/dark parts seem to lose all their depth. Could the colour of the background used when making the picture have anything to do with this?

I'm really, really itching to muck around a bit with the Chaos Knight kit, but I'm trying to prevent myself from buying anything new before my current units are (mostly) done. Besides, I still have Forsaken to work on, as well as the Slaanesh Lord on boobworm -and- a giant conversion! So much to do, so little time!

Anyhoo... leave a comment please!

**cheelfy** · 04-13-2010, 01:34 PM

That isn't really good. For me you have to shade your metals, to blend your highlights on the skin, to rework on the helmet and maybe to highlight a bit the face.

**JMR** · 04-13-2010, 01:42 PM

Wow... I brought my models down from the attic where I take my pictures. I accidentally dropped the ugly one on the right. It bounced down two staircases.... I was sure it would be all over the place.... but it's still completely in one piece!

I guess my green-stuffing wasn't completely without use

**JMR** · 04-13-2010, 01:58 PM

Originally Posted by cheelfy

That isn't really good. For me you have to shade your metals, to blend your highlights on the skin, to rework on the helmet and maybe to highlight a bit the face.

Thanks for the reply Cheelfy. I know my painting skills pale compared to some people who post here. Am trying though!
Which metal do you mean precisely? The weapon is pure chainmail at the moment.
As for blending, I'm not 100% happy about it, although to be fair, it seems much worse on my pictures than it does in real :/ The contrast seems to go up a ton with the pictures or something. The picture with the 5 of 'em are obviously still getting their skin done btw. And I really do need to redo the ones on the far end completely. Probably shouldn't have posted them :P
I agree that the face needs more definition.

Any tips when it comes to blending?

**cheelfy** · 04-13-2010, 02:41 PM

You have to dilute your paint until it has a milk consistency, you also can dilute it more until it is between the glaze and the wash but it will be sooooo long to paint like this and it's only if you want to get a very high standard result.
Here's a video that could help you: http://www.figurines-tv.com/kws/inde...=fichier&id=46 in French and it's 20 minutes long.
And here's a little translation of the things he says:
At first he says that he's gonna start with a tint a bit brighter than the average tint to be able to work with shades. Then he starts "drawing" the volumes with shades. The first shade is a Elf Flesh/Dark Flesh mix, he just pulls the paint to the shade areas with a brush with almost no paint on it, the movement has to be very light. Second shade you add a bit more Dark Flesh. The again a bit more Drak Flesh and the he adds some Ice Blue to this mix and he applies it on the deepest shadows. Next he starts back with the basecoat to give a transition between the shade areas abd the light areas. After that, he adds some yellow to give a contrast with the blue of the shades and he goes frankly on the areas that receive the more light. Then he adds an ivory tint to his last mix. He next adds more and more ivory to go up in the light (do you understand that?) and as long as he adds ivory he also adds yellow to warm the tint. He concentrates more and more the light on some areas to do the light point, he tries put the little light point with very very light brush strokes. He next uses diluted white followed by less diluted white to give more light to the area. After that he does a "home made purple" mixed with some ivory white to "highlight the shades", it's to tone down the transitions and to give more wealth to the shades.
I hope you understand at least most of what I've written.

**JMR** · 04-13-2010, 03:32 PM

Thanks a lot for that Cheelfy.

I noticed a few things that seem to really make the difference:

His model is a lot smoother than my poor green-stuffing work :/
He applies a thin layer over the primer for the basecoat, and it's fine right away. I have to use 4-5 layers of paint just to get the basecoat done. I guess I should try out white primer instead of black?
His shades (and highlights) stay much closer to the basecolour compared to mine. The contrast between the colours I use is much, much larger. I use Elf Flesh as a basecoat, then shade with Dwarf Flesh, Snakebite Leather and even Scorched Brown. That's not really helping I guess :P
Also, I should probably shade less heavily, and highlight a bit more.

Point no. 2 bothers me the most... I was really annoyed by how much of a hard time I was having getting basecoats to stick. The skin needed lots of coats before it started to cover, and when doing the gold, I seem to get a lot of "brush strokes" showing. It's like the paint just doesn't stick or something... Basically, I apply the paint, and with a second stroke the paint just immediately "moves" and I have a black spot again... Bit hard to explain :P The only way to get the gold to stick was to barely dilute it, which can lead to non-smooth surfaces

I really don't recall this being such a pain last time I painted, which was quite a few years ago.

I do dilute my paints all the time btw. I assume using water to dilute is fine?

**BPI** · 04-13-2010, 04:41 PM

Hi JMR, water is fine to dilute with. There are other options though, simply distilled water or moving onto other commercially available mediums. Not tried them myself

Black & white undercoats can be used for different effects & suit different personal styles. Play with them both to see which works best for you. For general tabletop I'd suggest that black suits layering while white suits basecoat/wash/highlight. Citadel's Foundation Paints will make basecoating over black easier but I'd have a play with white first before investing in more than a couple of pots (Tausept Ochre & Tallarn Flesh would be my suggestions).

Your comment about gold, let it dry before the second brushstroke, then it won't move. Are your paints new or the ones you used years ago? Metals in particular might be worth replacing. Lots of people basecoat with a reddish brown before putting gold paint on, although other colours work too.

Don't thin your paint too much, you mention non-smooth surfaces when it's too thick, dilute to a tiny bit after this point but no further for base coating.

Plough through loads of the WIP threads here & learn from others mistakes/experiments. I only picked the paints back up a couple of years ago & blimey, there's a lot to take in!

Lots of views, not many comments? Stick with it, comments grow as you establish your presence. It's also been pretty active here over Easter, I've barely kept up reading all the posts, let alone commenting & voting

I hope that's answered at least some questions. Cheers, B.

**JMR** · 04-13-2010, 06:14 PM

Thanks for the tips BPI.

Some of my paints are pretty old. I reckon a couple of years. I toss 'em away when they're not liquid anymore, but I suppose my gold has gotten a bit thick. Is there anyway to revive a paint if it's still liquid but getting thick? I don't suppose water would mix well on the long term... Maybe I need to stop being a cheapo :P

I might pick up some white primer and perhaps foundation paints tomorrow if I find myself near a store. Shame my other guys are already primed with black and I don't have anything new to prime atm...

Ah well, work to do! Thanks again!

**BPI** · 04-13-2010, 06:54 PM

A couple of drops of water in the paint & a good stir helps keep them going. I'm still using some that are comfortably over a decade old. But I do live in a relatively cool country! The stir is important, you may well find that the metallic particles have gummed to the bottom of the pot in thick lumps, in which case, time to renew. My original starter set gold did that, I was trying to paint with a weird greenish medium without metallic particles because they were stuck to the bottom of the pot! And I thought I was applying it to the mini incorrectly :roll-eyes:

Cheers, B.

**JMR** · 04-14-2010, 07:44 AM

Haha, cool BPI. I'll give that a whirl.

I just got back from a local Warhammer-selling shop (non-GW), and did find Foundation Paints. However, I noticed a date on the bottom of the jar saying 2007, I imagine this is the date of production. Seems a bit old

Will have to drop by the GW sometime.
On the other hand though, I browsed through the blisters in said shop, and found some really old stuff there too. There's even some in the full-red package! I'm not sure when they stopped making those, but it should be quite a few years ago.
Amongst those blisters, I found two (metal) mounted demonettes. You know.. the really cool ones with the nipples. I almost bought them, but I'm not sure what to do with them exactly :P Maybe I can convert them a bit too be used as sorceresses...

I did buy the Champion of Slaanesh on foot model though! Am afraid I won't get around to painting him anytime soon however.

**JMR** · 04-14-2010, 02:29 PM

Righty, just sat down for some painting and redid one of the Marauders:

This was actually done pretty quickly. I think in 30min or something. First thing I noticed when taking and reviewing these pictures is that the shade in the lower back is no good. However, I think this is a step in the right direction. I can probably do a better job if I practice this more, and if I take more time for it :P
Unfortunately, my poor green-stuffing skills along with the kit-bashing, result in the anatomy of the model not being 100% correct. For example, there's this "spot" underneath the armpit that shouldn't be there. Ah well, those kind of flaws shouldn't show on the table-top.

Above two pictures are without using photoshop's auto-colour levelling. The ones below do have the colour levelling.

I tend to say that the first pictures show the true colours of the model a bit better, but the second one just looks a bit criskpier. Which do you think is better?

**JMR** · 04-14-2010, 02:37 PM

Oh yeah, I just remembered I was supposed to post some pics of my Forsaken unit. I haven't done anything on them for a good while now, and they do need tons of work, but here's a peak to get an idea of what I have in mind:

This one, with the pose and all, is the picture I had in my mind when I started this unit. The others sorta just came along from there

I also mucked around a bit with parts I have laying around. Stuck 'em together with some poster-dummy-gum-whatchamaycallit:

Missing a leg obviously. Hum.. looking at it again, I suppose the arms are really just too big. Guess that's a no-go! I wanted to turn the weapon into a great-weapon, and use some helmeted head, maybe from the Chaos Warriors or such, but I reckon that is far too large for the body too, just like the arms.
Ah well, 'twas just a spur of the moment!

**JMR** · 04-20-2010, 05:48 PM

Righty, time for a small update.

I'm -still- trying to find a colour scheme that I'm happy with, much to my own frustration.

Here's some work on a Chaos Warrior I've been painting:
These are just some quick snapshots btw, so apologies for the lower quality.

After which I redid the cloth using Warlock Purple instead of Turquoise.

I think I'll settle with this. Probably going to do the boots golden aswell.

Opinions please!