Finished - Genestealer Cult Aberrants

I feel like these Genestealer Cult Aberrants have been on the table forever. In reality, it has only been about a tich over 3 months. I stalled out on them because I did not like how they were turning out. I thought that I had made a good plan with my first mini, but as it turns out, I lacked direction. I did not like how the skin was turning out. I did not look closely at inspirational pictures of similar minis. Had I waited until the Genestealer Cult Codex, I could have gotten some better inspiration and direction. 

Specificaly, I messed up where to paint the mini blue and where to paint them purple. I should have stuck to painting all the hands, feet and faces purple and only the bodies blue. I confused this on my test mini. I also chose to not paint all the obviously Genestealer-looking parts in Xeno colors. I wanted to highlight that these are humans corrupted by Xenos and not wholly alien creatures. I feel like this backfired as the minis look uneven and inconsistent. I think that I am going to change all these mistakes going forward. After all, these are aberrant. 

I like some of the experiments that I took with painting skin. To get my basecoats down, I painted the minis brown, flesh base and then a flesh tone by drybrushing in quick succession. The flesh areas got a wash of flesh. I washes selected areas purple then touched up with flesh again. After that, I washed certain areas again with purple and then touched up with flesh. the idea here was to give the look on unhealthy tissue, the war between human and Xeno played out in purple bruises. I think that it was of limited success. I wish I had just painted the Xeno areas in Xeno colors but the experience of using purples in flesh was interesting. 

The bases are just plain bases painted silver and washed black. I am not going to do custom bases for a horde army like this. 

I am going to continue to use the "Tyranid" tag for the Genestealet Cult minis as I plan on never starting a large Tryanid force. 

On The Table Now - Genestealer Aberrants

I am refining my techniques on painting Genestealer Cultist skin and trying to speed up the process. My first experimental mini took way too long but I learned a lot. Now, I am basing the mini Mournfang Brown, drybrushing Tallarn Flesh and then drybrushing Cadian Fleshtone before calling the base colors finished. Then the skin areas get a flesh wash and a touch up. To make them look mutated I wash on some purple and touch it up with flesh color. 

Finished - Genestealer Cult Aberrant

I have to be careful what I post about the Deathwatch game because I know that at ;least one of my players reads this blog. 

I need a mini for a "Genestealer Cult Champion" for the Deathwatch game. The Final Sanction calls for a General-type but I thought it might be fun for the Kill team to square off against a hulking monstrosity. As I am painting the Deathwatch: Overkill game, I have a Genestealer Aberrant available. 

I painted him up with flesh tones but worked in some purple wash to certain areas. It was a good experiment to test out the color schemes that I plan to use on the rest of the cultists. I think the mini turned out over all very dark so it may need a little extra highlighting on the skin. For the most part I am pleased. 

Finished - 6 Genestealers

These little buggers (pun intended) have set on my painting table for over a month. In that time, projects have been started, set aside, picked up, set aside again, forgotten, picked up, completed, clear-coated and put on the shelf. I don't have a reason why these minis sat untouched so long but they did. I often paint in groups of 3 or 4 minis. Granted 6 is a fairly large group and perhaps that is why they daunted me for so long. 

Regardless, they have languished too long on the sidetable of procrastination for far too long. I made it a point to finish them and everything else on my sidetable before moving on the next project.

I lied to myself, of course. 

I started the next Dreamforge proxy Knight Titan before completing these Genestealers. Regardles they are done now but I have not touched the other projects on my sidetable like my Lord of Change or finish the base for the Tau Barracuda. 

Finished - The Last Lictor

This is the final Lictor needed for my very small Tyranid army. The army started when I had 22 Space Hulk Genestealers to paint. Then I ran across the Apocalypse of "Vanguard Infestation." It was always my dream to field a Tyranid army that represents an early infestation. 

Genestealers range way ahead of the Hive Fleet and infect worlds through a crazy and counter-intuitive process. They emit a psychic signal that attracts a Hive Fleet. One of the first critters that land are the Lictor scouts. They act like landing beacons for the Spores. 

Now, that is my idea of an awesomly themed and fluffy army. It is in no way competitive but it 10 out of 10 fluffy. Until very recently, it was also not legal to field anything like this. With the advent of Unbound armies and this Apocalypse sheet, it becomes viable. 

I had finished two other Lictors including a Deathleaper. This triad forms part of the leadership of this army. My headcannon is the Deathleaper has a retinue of two Lictors and is the catalist that turns the Genestealer infestation in to an army. The Broodlord is the leader of the Genestealer brood as a proxy for the Patriarch. 

With the addition of my Deathwatch: Overkill game, this means I will be able to field a Genestealer Cult army as well. Given how long it has taken me to paint up the Tyranids and Space Marines from the Space Hulk game, it will be a long time before this dream is a reality. 

The dream would be to field a Deathwatch and PDF army against a Genestealer Cult army with a cool opponent. 

I don't know that I have done a TMM CV post about the Lictors. A quick search on my own blog reveals that I have. This Lictor has the same value of $54 as my other Lictor. 

On the table now - 6 more Genestealers

I have had these Genestealers on the painting table as a side project since February 20th or so. I use them as a break from long or repetitive projects. I would do a little work on them to break the monotony. 

These are a mix of Space Hulk Genestealers and 40k Genestealers. The 40k ones are assembled in a way that annoys me. You will notice that they have scything talons in the forelimb slot and claws in the midlimb slot. Compare that to every Space Hulk Genestealer that has claws in the forelimb slow and humanoid hand in the midlimb slot. I tried to swap them but they are glued in too well. I almost broke them mid-arm when I tried to pull them apart. It is too late anyway as they are already painted. 

Finished - Broodlord

Stick a fork in him! I should have made that the tag for these posts rather than "finished." I could probably figure out a way to change the names but I am scared that I'll just erase all the tags that I have applied. 

I like almost everything about how this guy came out. I am confused at one thing. Why is he not symetrical? On his left side the human hand is in the front and the claw hand is in the back. It is the opposite on the other side. Seems strange. I tried to reverse it and the mini did not fit correctly. 

I should do a post about all the Space Hulk Genestealers when I get them all finished and I hope that I remember to. Currently there are 9 and the Broodlord finished and 13 remaining from the box. I bought 8 more to field an Apocalypse formation of Vanguard Infestation of 3+ Genestealers and 3+ Lictors. Currently I have all the minis save for one Lictor which I am looking for currently in metal only. 

It is a long road from here to there though. 

Up next I am working on the 30 Cultist project and the custom Lord of Change from Greg. I think I have been bitten by the Slaanesh bug and am thinking about expanding my Noise Marines. 

On the table - Broodlord

I am sorry that I did not get more in-progress pictures of this mini but it was basically done when I came back to it. Sometimes I have time for painting and sometimes I have time for Blogging. Rarely do I have time for both. 

The Broodlord was painted in the same style as the rest of the damn dirty bugs, only I spent more time on him. The details are a little more fine. The pile of skulls got some extra love too. Perhaps too much. I went a little crazy and was not paying enough attention to the wash pooling. There are areas where detail was erased by too much wash. I am mostly ok with it as it is only on the base and only in places where the shadows are. 

He just needs a little more detail on some of the arms and assembly and he is finished. 

Finished - Three Genestealers

I am trying to clear the painting table of any projects that are sitting in limbo. I had a Broodlord and these three bad boys basecoated and waiting for wash and detail work for ages. Wash and touchup went great but I really stalled out on the detail work. 

I made an intentional choice not to highlight the skulls, metal and helmets as much as I normally do in an order to make them not overpower the main body. These minis are very dark overall and a bright red helmet would draw attention away from the killing machine. For the Skulls, my final color was Rakarth Flesh. For the red armor the final highlight was Evil Suns Scarlette but only in very small amounts. I left the green lenses as Knarloc Green and did not do any countershading or reflective dots. 

I spent so much time learning how to do those techniques and how to do bright highlights and tho choose not to use them for effect is a strange feeling. Less is more is not really my style but I am happy how the minis came out. 

Finished - Genestealer Cult

Greg from Cranky Old Gamer now has a finished Genestealer Cult. The step-by-step here worked out well and I adapted the color scheme to the robes of the Hybrids and the armor of the Cultists. Greg had requested a blue skin tone for the human Cultists but I could not make it look good. My back up plan was to add some purple wash into the shading on the skin. I had been doing this on my eyes for a while now but I took it to a new level. 

The base colors go on well but there is a fair amount of fine detail work that slows down the process. I have had these minis for almost three weeks and the painting took about 35-40 hours because of that detail. 

Finished - Deathleaper Lictor

Long ago, I had a dream about starting a Tyranid army. It was going to be a first wave of a bug invasion. A Deathleaper as an HQ, Genestealers as Troops and Lictors as Elites. None of the Tyranid creatures that are normally associated with a later invasion. 

I scrapped that dream in early 2014 when I traded all my Tyranids on Bartertown for some Forge World Terminators and a busted Baneblade. 

I resurrected it when I started Greg's Genestealer Cult minis. I used my Space Hulk Genestealers as test minis for that project and just kind of kept going. The minis were turning out so well that I dug out some Lictors that I had not been able to trade for a good deal and painted them up too. The plan is to use the Lictors with some special rules in Space Hulk or in Deathwatch RPG but before I knew it, I had an almost 300 point Tyranid army painted. Now, I am starting to think that I could make this happen after all. 

Finished - Genestealer Cultists

It is difficult to keep up with On the Table and Finished posts with these small batches of essentially the same mini. My plan is to post Greg's Genestealer Cult when it is done as one post and all the Space Hulk Genestealers as their own post. I may post occasional pictures just to document my progress but I am unlikely to write posts or tag them. 

I just have to finish the Magus and Greg's minis are done. However they is a pile of Space Hulk Genestealers to finish on my end. They are going to be a long term side project. 

Finished - Genestealer Hybrids

Finished - Lictor

I think I am a pretty good painter but every once and a while I pull something off that blows me away. I started this guy a few days ago as a side project and a few weeks before that, I had never even used this technique before let alone painted a single Tyranid. I did a few tests and a few more but this mini turned out great with very little effort. I thank the blue paint gods for making it an easy color to work with. 

I started with Kantor blue as my base and did a heavy drybrush of Techlis Blue over that. I washed with Drakenhof Nightshade and then did a light drybrush of Teclis Blue again. I had to touch up some areas with Teclis Blue but very little. Mostly just the edges of the armor. Some areas had to be shaded again thanks to some over-zealous drybrushing. After that, A little Temple Guard Blue finished the blue areas.

On the table now - More Genestealers and Lictor

Finished - Purestrain Genestealers

On the table now - Puresteain Genestealers

On the table now - Genestealer Cult

Finished - Test Genestealers

 I have a lot of balls in the air and many of those balls are Genestealer-shaped. I have finished the three initial test Genestealers from this post. I also have three more Genestealers in progress from this post. 

I did some interesting thing son the bases of these Genestealers. I went for a subtle and dark tone for the bases. The minis painted up great but are overall very dark in tone. I wanted the minis to be the focus and didn't want the bases to overpower them. To that end the bases are shaded twice as much as I would have if they were part of the mini and not highlighted as much. You can see this specifically on the skulls and the red armor. The red actually contains no Blood Red and the final highlight is Mechrite Red. I even went so far as to apply a Blood Angel Transfer to the shoulder guard. 

I'll so an epic post when if they are ever finished and determine their value then. 

On the table now - Genestealers and Lootas

 Until inspiration strikes, I am working on some smaller side projects in addition to my main project of Greg's Genestealer Cult. I had some extra bits to make some more Lootas so I banged them out. The down side is that I am missing the supporting structure that links the ammo arm to the gun arm so I'll have to figure something out later.

I am also trying to get my technique down for painting the Space Hulk style Genestealers so that I don't mess up Gregs minis. I think I have a good idea how these paints work. After painting so much red, blue and purple are like a dream. It is actually hard for them not to turn out well.