Money's been a bit tight lately, so I painted a few models for friends' Christmas presents. I really hope that they're happy with how they turned out.
First, up is this C'tan shard. My buddy wanted it painted up as if it were glowing green, with the chest being the brightest part and the extremities darker. His Necron army has purple accents, so I went with purple for the cloth streaming from the model. Gives him kind of a Joker look, I think. The horns on the right side of the model's head were missing, so I sculpted some on. I think they look fairly symmetrical.
The base was one of my first attempts at object source lighting. I suppose that it should be no surprise that it doesn't look as smooth as many of the examples that you see from competition level painters. I suspect that the layering techniques that I prefer aren't as appropriate of OSL as more subtle blending, but it does have the cartoonish quality that a lot of my work has.
I even tried to create a shadowed area on the base where the rising Necron Warriors should block the light from the C'tan, though it kind of looks like I just missed a spot.
The second gift was for a friend that plays Tyranids. His army has been featured on this blog a few times as he's been my partner in several team tournaments. His new Toxicrene comes with a dead Terminator on the base. He asked me to paint it up as an Executioner.
Quite a few people that I've told about this present seemed to think that it was a weird idea, basically suggesting that I was helping him to insult my army. I see it differently. First, it seems like a compliment to my Executioners paint scheme that he wants it to be part of his army. Second, our armies spend a lot of time on the table together, so I think it advances our personal narrative to have them visually linked.
