Happy New Year and some progress

First of all, happy new year. We have made it to 2023 now...

I see so many people show off how many minis they have built, painted and so on at the end of a year or the beginning of a new one. So this year I have deided I want to try and track what I do. I don't think my numbers will be nearly as high as the people usually posting about this, but that doesn't matter. It is just to see how much I actually manage to do. I have also decided that a mini is a mini no matter the size or type.

Today has been the first day of painting in the new year, and I have started to work on my Sons of Behemat army that is all built but not painted, and also my Gloomspite Gitz army because I just love them.

First off is the Mega Gargant I had completed and put on a high base. Since Games Workshop released a King for the Sons of Behemat I needed the high base for him, so I had to put the finished one on a new lower base. This base is completely flat with a fence on it. The fence is from an ancient Warhammer Fantasy scenery set, and I have used parts of that for many of my bases. The new base needs to be drybrushed, and I need to paint the rim but this is what it looks like so far...

I will make a dedicated post about this one when all the work is done. I hope to get to finish the base tomorrow if nothing happens that will keep me from painting.

The next model I have started to paint for this army is a Mancrusher. I have decided on what colors to use on my Sons of Behemat after trying a few alternatives on my already painted models. One of the things I have found a way to paint is skin, and another is wood where I have one color for things like clubs and another preferred color for barrels. But one thing that I love to do is to try out new colors on the pants of my Mancrushers. I feel that is where I can make the army colorful and differenciate between the various models. For this Mancrusher I used a new Contrast paint I found called Sigvald Burgundy. I expected a dark redish color so I was quite suprised when it turned out it was purple. Still I like it a lot, and I am sure I will use it for other projects. This is what he looks like so far...

I also added a closeup showing how the wood looks. I will have to see what it looks like tomorrow, but right now I am thinking that with the Contrast paint I will not need to drybrush with other colors to make it look like actual wood like I need when using the tradtional paints.

The final model I am working on right now is for the Gloomspite Gitz and it is a Loonboss on Mangler Squig. I really like squigs, and while painting the first of my Boingrot Bounderz I decided on a lot of the colors I want to use on the army. I know there is a chance my army will look quite unison, but I hope I will find ways to work against that, and even if I don't it is a kind of army that would look weird if the colors were too different from unit to unit. There will be some differences in skintones as I have no intention of re-painting what already is done, but for my new models this is the way i intend to do it. The only thing I feel I might chnge is repinting squigs, as I want all of them to be red and I think I painted some blue back in the days. But that won't be a problem as those were squigs being herded so they do not have a rider.I think I also need to put them on new bases as I think they were made while bases was supposed to be square. One of the things I have done over time to break up the monotony of this army is to paint their hoods brown instead of black. Things I will do in the future is to add details on bases where there is room for that, like on the Squig hoppers and Boingrot Bounderz where I add a lot of plants that I plan to paint in bright colors and also details that is special for some characters. 

For this model I need to go over and do some touch-ups on some of the colors as I had some "accidents" when painting smaller areas. And there are a few more colors to add as well as making the base and doing some drybrushing.

The bottom mangler squig stands steady on his base with some smaller goblins trying to get out of the way. I need to decide on colors to use on the mushrooms on the base, that is one place where I can add some variation. Apart from that I have the colors pretty much decided. 

The top squig with the Loonboss riding on top of him will be glued in place when the painting is done. I still havent decided what color to use to paint the saliva from the tongue, I was thinking maybe nugle rot as that is sort of slimy, but I think I will need a ground color before I apply that.

I love the gobbo hanging on by his hands, as he is looking a bit like the Batman of the Goblins

As always when working on detailed projects things that is not supposed to happen, happens anyway. In this project a small goblin trying to jump away from the top mangler squig broke off. He looked really cool, so I plan to paint him up and then try to glue him back on somehow. Maybe I will have to try and add a pin to get him to stay on, but I'm not sure it will be possible to get a pin in to his thin leg. But i will see when he is painted up.

A separate post will be added for all the three projects I have shown here when they are done, showing them off with all their details. When it comes to the Mancrusher gargant I might show them off in pairs as I have quite a lot of them and they all have a lot of common details. And I work on many of them at the same time. I think I have 6 of them in various stages of painting not including the one in this post, and I have 7 more that is still only primed, making it 15 in total with the one who is finished.