Colours come on as the nights draw in

Over the weekend I found a few hours to do some painting. Rather than sit at home alone and paint, I went round to a mate's house and we both set to work being all arty and geeky - productive, sociable, and just generally a nice chance to catch up with how things are (helped with having KFC for dinner). It's always nice to talk to fellow gamers about their armies and projects/plans they have. This friend has been working on a squig-themed night goblin army. I haven't played against it yet, but it sounds like great fun and the models look brilliant - a fantastic red and yellow colour scheme makes it really distinctive. He has quite a few different armies (to say the least) and they all have a really nice design idea behind them - as do other ideas he has planned/might like to do if he won the lottery and could afford to spend more money on little plastic figures!

This is something that I can relate to as the design aesthetic is something that I really like about different armies - my dwarves have their red and brass colour scheme and rocky bases, along with their 'pound them with guns then smack them with hammers' mentality; my black templars are a definite assault force, looking for the knightly valour and punishing the heathens, in their characteristic black army, white/bone tabards and red detailing; and then my fimir will be a magic-heavy force (ideally 3 wizards by the end of the project) backed up by some brutally blunt melee, lurking from the mists and the marshes. I wanted a different colour look from my other armies, so the blue kilts seemed like the perfect area to focus on - the dark blue of the base fabric and the bright light blue drybrush over the top. These blue colours will be key aspects across the army - even the moorhounds have the light blue as their eye colour.

So I was able to spend a brilliant bit of time on the fimir and moorhounds and the washes have really brought them to life. I knew that the black wash on the metal, shields, etc would work nicely to dirtify them; but I was really pleased with how well it worked on the kilts - darkening the dark blue base, providing the shadows for the folds, yet leaving the light blue nice and bright on top. And then the moment came to try the GW seraphim sepia wash over the grey undercoat for skin. Ok, I think I might be slightly biased but I'm really bloody pleased with how it has turned out!

Just need to finish the standard bearer model by adding something to the top - like an animal skull or similar. I do have one that I think would look really nice, but it's metal and would make the model really top-heavy and unstable. Then I need to finish off the water effect and grass on the bases, possibly adding in a few bits of bark as fallen marsh trees. Then it's just a case of mounting them all up, but it's all coming along rather swimmingly (not that you can swim overly well in a swamp - so perhaps the phrase should be swamp-stride-ingly). And then It's on to making more models and attempting some of the other troop types for the army. So many ideas, so little time and money!

Unforeseen reinforcements

Today I was doing some painting of my fimir (blog update to follow in the next week or so) and talking to a good friend of mine about the next steps for the project. I started talking about other units from the army book that I want to model - in particular the Marsh Reavers. These are fimir riding bog beasts into battle. I have has my eye on a particular model for the bog beasts for quite some time now, and came home to just check on the model again and think about what I wanted to do with them when I eventually get around to getting that far in the project many many months from now.

Then I read their website homepage which said they are stopping their online store on 4th November 2013! In a mad panic to get the model that I wanted I may have inadvertently impulse bought three of their Dragonblood Miniatures Lava Lizards - oops! Just imagine it painted in swampy colours!

Colours in the mist

I have finally managed to find a spare hour or two to get some paint on the fimir. The photos may look a little odd owing to there being base colours on the kilts, weapons, wood, etc, but the skin still being the base grey of the undercoat. Normally I would paint the skin as one of the first areas and then work my way outwards, however on the fimir I'm trying something different as the skin is simply going to be some coloured washes over the undercoat to give a shade and subtle colour. 

The kilts were slightly tricky to paint owing to the texture of the gauze, but it has worked nicely to get the dark blue base colour and then the light blue drybrush to highlight the texture, making it look like a rough-spun fabric. 

The hounds show how the shading of simply a wash over the grey undercoat can work. They have simply had a wash of Badab Black (GW paint, updated to Nuln Oil) and that really nicely gives depth to the colour, darkening the light grey, adding a bit of character. They will receive another black wash to darken them some more, but also a green wash to show the marshy environment that they live in. I'm not sure what colour to paint their eyes though - red would be a classic option, but possibly the bright light blue might make them glow and stand out. Also I need to work out what to do on the horns/spines and teeth/mouths.

God knows when I'll find time to make some more progress on these!

Grey scale

Progress may be slow, but I've got a plan to actually start some painting this weekend - I doubt I'll get much done but it will be good to actually get some colour on the models and see if my ideas will actually come to fruition.

In preparation I managed to undercoat my models that I have produced so far. Grey might be an unusual colour to undercoat, but it provides some really nice shading, but also still some vibrant colours. Besides, it's going to enable me to use a rather quick painting technique on the fimir. Here goes! I'll see you on the other side!

Pushing on

Well as predicted it's September before I have managed to get anything else done to my fimir. However, getting married and then going on a honeymoon is a bloody good way to spend your time. Everything about the wedding went exactly as we wanted it to, including the extra little surprises that we hadn't told anyone about - like the falconry display/have-a-go, the after-dinner pub quiz, and the lego cake!

By all accounts everyone enjoyed themselves, and loved those extra little touches. Plenty of people have said that the wedding was 'very us' - which I think was meant as a compliment!

And now we're back from our honeymoon in Denmark (which was lovely - a really great place to visit!), and virtually straight away we're into the new academic year. My wife (I'm still getting used to saying that, and it's all rather exciting!) is also a teacher and started back on Monday, whereas my school doesn't officially start until tomorrow (Wednesday), but I did a full day on Monday and a half day today to try and get myself organised for the new year having done less school work this summer than I perhaps needed to owing to the wedding festivities. However, I'm now feeling more or less prepared, so took the opportunity to catch up a little bit with the fimir project.

So far I have modelled five fimir warriors, three moor hounds and one base, but three of the fimir were still without their kilts so that needs to be rectified before I can move onto the painting stage. The other two cavalry bases and all five warrior bases also need doing. So I sat down this afternoon to make a start. It's nice to feel as though I'm making some progress again.

Though unfortunately my progress may continue to be rather slow as we are still trying to work our way through the 40k campaign that I'm playing my Black Templars in. And Space Marines are getting a new codex (due out on Saturday) so I will be spending a bit of time re-costing my Templars army and possibly purchasing a few units that are now newly available to me. However, I will not let the fimir get forgotten about - I'm genuinely quite excited by the prospect of what I can achieve with this army - a definite sense of pride!

The bells

Just a very quick note to apologise that there has not been any fimir update in ages. Firstly there was the end of the school year which is very busy and knackering as a teacher. Secondly I'm getting married in just under a fortnight's time so I'm busy getting the last few bits sorted for that. If I get a spare moment I want to get a few bits done, but to be honest I can't see me making any progress this side of September! Sorry!

The Hound of the Fimirvilles

Of course Fimir aren't the only things that live in the marshes:

"There are countless tales of massive black-haired hounds stalking the moors in search of prey. At least some of the stories are based on the daemonic hounds summoned by the fimir as trackers or as allies in battle." - extract from the fimir army book, courtesy of the Warhammer armies project.

GW chaos hound models are absolutely spot on for the moor hounds!