Tlaxtlan army to show off

Warhammer is a funny pursuit for me. I spend hours almost every evening alone in my "man cave" surrounded by bits of wire and putty. I only play about once a month in a regular campaign, so my main source of feedback is right here. I can't tell you how great it is when another lizardman sculptor comes along.

I'm really enjoying the colors on your skinks - the blended bands on each tail must have taken forever - how many did you paint? I have about 40 more skinks to finish, and most of my time right now is taken up by sculpting/converting just so I have the figures I need to play with, so actually having my whole army painted seems years away (hopefully it will take less...)

The Tetto Ekko sculpt looks promising. I have to admit, we don't use special characters in my group, so I have no idea what his background fluff is supposed to be. A skink priest on a plannequin with skink temply guard is awfully cool though - I personally play without a Slann, so I'm really interested in this. If I ever get one of my S.Priests advanced to level 4 in my campaign this would be the perfect model, no doubt!

Hard to comment on the sculpting generally form this range (again, you need some closer up photographs), but I do see where the hands might be a shade too big. Never used GW's grey "greenstuff" - weird that they are getting their own formulation now. I have strong reservations about how good it might be. At any rate, your feathers and that dragonfly are top notch!

Kudos to the help you are giving to your little brother, btw. I am teaching my son to sculpt and paint and it's quite rewarding to see his progress and know that I am passing on some of my skills. I wonder what sort of stuff he'll be turning out in 5 years if he sticks with the hobby

 

You aren't by chance using an airbrush to paint you Lizardmen, are you?

 

It's all hand blending. I bought the Citadel Spray Gun a while back, but I just could'nt get it to work right. Besides, I would'nt actually have painted with it, that would be cheating!

It's not just the tails, but the underbelly and crests too. Depending on the spawning, that's 3 different colour blends. Let's see, there's 16 skinks in the Kroxigor unit, 10 skirmishers, the 5 on the Stegadon and a handful of Chiefs and Priests - That's not counting the incomplete units I'm currently working on. Each skink is painted with the same amount of care.
I do sometimes cut corners with the Saurus, but I don't really care so much about them. I love my Skinky-dinks!

My workspace is a mattress with a plank of wood on top. It's worked for me for years!

I just saw it as a challenge. A bit like the Tetto Eko thing; "You won't provide a model for me GW? Fine! I'll make one. Ha!"

Now this I gotta see! Can you provide a picture?

Today's pictures are some close-ups, as requested;
These 2 pictures are to display the tiny scale texture. The Carnosaur has it all over too, but I could'nt get a good photo.



I'm currently using this one as my desktop background;


Also, I'm not sure if I'm allowed to say this, but I'm selling a practice painted Carnosaur on eBay.

 

Holy Sh*t....those mini scales....I am officially floored!

I have to say though, I have 94 skinks in my army (not counting chameleons), and as it is I am cursing myself for the amount of detail I chose to give them.

As for sculpting in using a board on a bed...I have a hard time picturing that. However, I don't think my fiance' would approve of the bits of putty, wire and other junk that typically hits the floor all around my workbench being on the mattress

P.S., I don't see how using an airbrush is cheating at all, but minds differ on this.

 

Wow, I'm awestruck! That's what you call details!

 

I made a blog entry about your army on my blog. Go check it out by clicking here or the link in my signature. If you want me to change anything or add your real name to the blog entry, feel free to let me know!

 

Wow, that is very impressive! Nice work.

Imotekh, see the bubbles at the bottom of his cloak? They aren't meant to be there even though they seem to have been highlighted for some reason. Also, if you rotate the 360 picture, you can see that the staff is quite bent. I enjoyed it when they first started 'showing off' resin models on the site and a bunch of them had big flaws. Casting slips, bits of weapon missing, one model had half a foot missing.

 

The carnosaur has this all over, too?! Mate, those are some exceptional models. Do you do the same for your regular skinks, or just the diorama one? If so, do you have carpal tunnel yet? Brilliant work, at any rate.

 

Not every skink, just the special ones. Now that you mention it my wrists have been hurting lately...

Crazy. It's like the painter only noticed the flaw halfway through the job, then just went with it.

No new pictures taken yet, but I'll get hold of the camera at the weekend. In the meantime let's look at some more cropped pics;



The skink chief on the left is my first try at non-metallic metal painting. I don't really like the result, I prefer just using metallics. It's also the first model I tried the tiny scale texture on, though you can't really see it here. His base has a magnet on the underside so he can attatch to my (in-progress) modular stegadon's howdah.



I like the way the temple guard jawbone gives the impression of serpent fangs on this one.



The one on the tree is the Brave of the unit "Xochicua", a slightly mashed-up Nahua name meaning Flower-eater (xoch - flower and cua - eat). He's the first model in the army that I painted.

Lastly, here's a fun one taken with a camera-phone while we cleared up after the last battle;

 

i can see what technique you used for the skink tails now. very smart

your slann really looks good on its own. lovely skin

 

Mate your painting and sculpting is amazing which i was that good at both like the idea you used for the pait scheme and using it from the city of the moon

 

What I just noticed now is your black eyes, they look very natural.

 

I paint the eyes blue with a pupil, then put a heavy black wash over them. From a distance they look black, giving a cold-blooded look, but when you get closer you can see the detail.

Just finished a Skink Chief on a Terradon last night, pictures to come...

 

Oh I see, you are right it gives them a very cold blooded look. Nice job.
Btw, what's your recipe for the purple?

 

I just tried to copy Keith Robertson's somewhat famous model. Seemed like a good way to learn the style.

For the skinks, it's liche purple lightened up in stages with tentacle pink - a discontinued colour (you can mix something similar with warlock purple + skull white).
The saurus were painted hormagaunt purple, washed with leviathan purple, then lightened up in stages with dwarf flesh, then highlighted with bleached bone.
The temple guard was just dheneb stone washed with leviathan purple, then highlighted with dheneb stone.

Here's the painted army so far;



It's character heavy at the moment. I've never had a game over 1500 points, so I haven't used it all in one go.

My new Skink Chief has the Staff of the Lost Sun. I like the way the Lizardmen culture was established by extraterrestrials, the flavour text of the magic item hints at it being an alien weapon, so I used part of a Tau pulse rifle.

I originally wanted to paint the Terradon like one of the big flying things from Avatar. I discarded the idea halfway through (it's been done), and was left with an orange basecoat and no idea what to do next. So I took a look at some books on insects, hoping to find a picture of a colourful dragonfly or something for inspiration. What I found was a moth in a similar colour to my basecoat that was just perfect. I later found out it was known as a moon moth. Not only that, in our campaign's story the Empire explorers are drawn to Lustria after the sighting of a twin-tailed comet. This particular subspecies (Argema mittrei
), is known as the comet moth. Spooky.

His chest tattoo (used as a a Talisman of Protection), was taken from the Oddworld games. It's Abe's tattoo he get's in the second one.


Temple Guard detail pic;

The standard is the Totem of Prophecy. Seeing the severed and shrunken heads of your former comrades should cause fear after all.

More photos later, I'm getting back to painting the skink horde...

 

WOW, that is all i can say... you sire are very good at detail... wish i was that good.

 

What a lovely terradon! So rich and full of color. I'm not sure if I like the tau bit, it's kinda look out of place but I get your idea and that's a nice detail.

Thanks for the recipe, that's almost the same how I did it (except for the pink). I find kind of annoying that they have discounted that color and several others. Mixing white (or bone) with warlock purple is just fine, but I tend to like to have my highlights in a bottle so I can get a coherent look throughout the army.
Maybe I'll have to look in to valejos range and see if they got something.

The army is looking very fine btw!

 

Thanks! It was a bit depressing to see the majority of models in the cabinets at Games Day so grey and brown. I remember how colourful the models in the 90's were. They haven't aged well, but it's a shame to see people downplay colour so much. It pays to be a bit bold. Maybe it's the paint range? It's so small now, and there's only so much you can mix before you have grey.
But to be hypocritical, I think I went too far with the Terradon. It's a bit too orange!

It's been a while, too busy working on sculptures for Christmas presents. Time for more pics;

When I last left Warhammer, Skinks were only skirmishers and now they rank up. However there's no available command group (of the modern Skinks at least), so it calls for converting and kitbashing.
I went for Incan-style panpipes for the musician.


Here's a shot of the cavalry in full. I'm still not sure if I trust them in battle again.


My Skink priest was my general for our first batch of games and served me well. Until a tactical SNAFU left him in the open to be charged by my opponent's knights. Oops. I'm currently working on a replacement.
He carries the Blood Statuette Of Spite, which killed the enemy general on turn 1 of our first game!

I remember when this was the best painted model in my army.

So much more to do. I was hoping to finish the army by the end of the year but it just keeps growing. I have a Skaven army waiting on their sprues...

 

I absolutely love this scheme, and it gave me the inspiration I needed to finally start collecting an army.