As Monday night draws to a close I have managed to get some Slaangor (that's Slaaneshi Beastmen to the uninitiated) completed, based and have added their shields. Like Adolphus in the previous post, these models were started quite some time ago and were abandoned as my interest was piqued in other areas so its good to get them finished. As I did with my Khorne army, I attempted to match as many of the tones for these miniatures as those used in Slaves to Darkness; namely pastel hues of green, pink, blue and purple. Black and gold were also added for good measure.
Here we have the first two Slaangor. I am not sure who sculpted these, but they did a good job, filling the models with lots of additional details that were fun to paint. I used inks to add depth to each of the colours in turn before creating highlights by adding white. The metals were painted in my usual way. I was particularly impressed with how the two shields came out. I had opted to use different shaped shields than those used on the Khorne models. There I favoured the round shields but with the Slaanesh beastmen I chose to use the original chaos shield shapes. I have painted on them before in the past, and several of my Khorne army have got them attached on their shield arms but this was the first time I had used them extensively. A change in shape brought about the need to adapt my 'chaos face' designs. Have a look at how the designs came out- what do you think?
Here's a close up of the first design. This is the first time I have painted a design on this type of shield and I must say I feel its once of my best. I opted to paint a more human face but this time in profile. The addition of the glaring eye and gnashing teeth gave the design enough malign presence to be suitably chaos like. Again, I mixed in purple ink with my purple paint to create the depth and richness of tone before highlighting the detail with white. My son, who is three, told me that this shield was 'too scary' and that I should hide it high up in the cabinet!
This design had a great deal more in common with those I have done in the past, with the addition of a few subtle boils to the 'skin' of the face. I also shaded the eyes in with green to contrast with the light pink of the face itself. This colour was achieved by adding a touch of white to a very bright red. This gave a deep pink that was suitable as a base colour. Over this I shaded with a chestnut ink/red ink mix. I added white to create the highlights in increasing stages.
Next, the standard bearer. This was a simple conversion. I cut away the old spear that this miniature is armed with and drilled through with a pin vice. It was a simple job to push the wire through and create the banner pole. The banner itself is made of paper, a departure from the tin one I made for the Khorne standard. The method was much the same, with the background created through flicking paint in varying shades against a parchment base colour. The large, purple face was added later and was painted in exactly the same way I do the round chaos shields. I added some plastic shields and an orc head from suitable decoration.
A closure shot of the beastman and his shield design. I stuck with the colour themes of pink, gold and black with this one as well as purple and green as spot colours. The shield was painted in green to contrast with the orc's head at the top of the banner pole and was just a longer variant of the chaos head. I used red and brown ink to create the weeping lips and eyes which I again highlighted by adding a little of the light green.
A quick top down view to show of the colours on the banner. The shields were taken from the Gripping Beast plastic viking range and the orc head is, of course, from Warhammer Plastic Regiments.
By adding the new miniatures to those that I painted a couple of years ago for the Realm of Chaos campaign I have my first completed unit for Adolphus' new army. These beastmen will act as his bodyguard and I intend to paint an additional beastman for the unit to ensure that he can be replaced if I decide to field him as an independent character!
So far, so good!
Orlygg.