“Blowing off the dust”

The human mind is a strange thing when you think about it, if you remember I stated last week that I had run out of zombies to paint and was going to have to resort to painting a survivor for this week’s posting. Well as I was at work last Saturday morning (got to do overtime when it’s available right?), the radio was “blaring” away in the background with some pre-premier league match day show, and this in some strange roundabout and convoluted way got me thinking about “Bloodbowl”, the old GW fantasy American football game. Now way back in the early nineties in one of Games Workshops then legendary sales I picked up the original boxgame and about eight additional teams for a ridiculous price (no I can’t remember what it was, but it was cheap), I painted up five or six of these and the others went (you guessed it) up into the loft to be forgotten. Now you’re saying “where is he going with this?”, but bear with me I’ll get there, now on the way home I suddenly thought “Hang on there was an undead team in amongst that lot in the loft, there might be some zombies in that”. So Sunday morning it was up the ladder and, yes there was the “Champions of Death” box perched up on the shelf where I’d left them all those years ago. Better yet not only does it contain three zombies, but as the entire team consists of twelve figures I can paint up six this week as my last Zomtober post and six next week to fill the gap between the end of Zomtober and the start of Mo’vember (As I post on a Saturday but Zomtober runs from Sunday to Sunday this is my last Zomtober post but not my last October past, I hope that makes sense).

Now as you can probably imagine with these being GW figures from the nineties they required quite a bit of cleaning up with the file and knife before I could glue them into they’re “slotta” bases and fill around their feet, now as some of you know normally I find these things an abomination, but as all my other Bloodbowl teams are based this way it seemed the way to go. Then it was out for an undercoat of matt black and we were underway. A guide coat of chainmail was then dry-brushed over the figures, as some bits would actually end up this way and it also brought out some of the detail that was difficult to see in just the black. Next to add a little contrast I painted some of the metallic areas in bronze highlighted with copper, and the “flames” sculpted behind the skulls on some of the pieces of armour were added in bright red and lemon yellow, then to “dirty” the metallic areas down a bit they were given another dry-bushing with rust. I could now move onto the uniforms so an undercoat of royal purple was laid down and then this was highlighted with lupin. The exposed lower portion of the wight’s face, the number tags and the bandaged right hands on a couple of the zombies were then painted coffee that was then highlighted with cream. The flesh on the zombies and the ghouls was then added using colours and techniques as detailed in previous posts. Eyes, teeth, numbers etcetera were added next and then it was out with the gore in the shape of a dry-brushing of bright red, now I nearly didn’t do this as none of my other teams are “bloodied” but it is “Zomtober” after all so what the heck! Finally I added the odd piece of exposed bone in cream and it was Quickshade time. Next day the bases were painted in earth brown that was then heavily dry-brushed with scenic green and the tops of the “slotta’s” were then liberally covered with “pasture green” flock to again match the rest of my teams. A spray coat of matt varnish took away the shine and sealed everything together.

Well that brings my last official “Zomtober” posting to a close, though as I said I do intend to paint up the other six members of this team this week (and there are two Mummies in that batch which I guess count as a type of zombie!). Zomtober hasn’t exactly gone to the plan I had in my head at the start of the month, and if someone had said that I’d be painting up a “Bloodbowl” team I bought twenty odd years ago as part of it I’d have laughed out loud, but sometimes it’s fun making things up as you go along (but it’s not something I want to do all the time believe me!). So if I had to sum up Zomtober 2015 in one line, I think I’d plagiarize Tolkien and say…”Zomtober an unexpected journey”.

Sweet dreams dear reader, sweet dreams…..

Cheers Roger.