A Warhammer Bestiary: Fimir

Its the Easter Holiday here in the United Kingdom. That means a four day weekend for most, and the tail end of a two week break for us teachers. Subsequently, all the 'jobs' required by the 'non-leadhead' have by now been accomplished and sometime can be invested in getting some painting done. 

As you will be aware, after a bit of a hiatus I am back on my task of painting a model for each of the entries of the Warhammer Third Edition Bestiary. This time, it was the enigmatic Fimir that were see the attentions of my paintbrush. 

Few races are as iconic as the Fimir, and Third Edition was their moment of triumph, despite a rather dodgy rules/model mix up in regards of the boys in the Design Studio. Immortality would be achieved due to their inclusion in Heroquest. If you are interested in reading more about their story I would suggest having a read of Zhu's short post on the matter here, before moving on to Luke Maciak's recent account here. 

Fimir Art by Gary Chalk

Now, Fimir miniatures have a reputation for being expensive. They are also quite popular with collectors which is probably why there are several companies producing their own 'versions' of them to this day. I managed to source mine from eBay for about £7, which I feel is a reasonable amount for a larger metal model. 

The model was sculpted by Nick Bibby and represents would the elite Fimm warriors. Its a two part piece with the tail being detachable and it was an easy job to stick this on with a little bit of superglue. I used greenstuff to plug the gaps. 

I mixed up a suitably swampy green to act as the basecoat and used a contrasting brown for the leather 'coat' that the armour pieces seem to be attached to. A second, more earthy, brown was selected for the haft of the axe and the head of the weapon base coated in chainmail.

I then washed the whole model with a brown/chestnut/green ink was (diluted with a few tiny drops of water) and waited for the ink to dry overnight. This is my own version of devlan mud and has a much darker result, similar to Army Painter's Strong Tone. 

The it was a simple case of just working up the green skin to the original basecoat. Once this was achieved I highlighted further by adding Bleached Bone and Skull White to the original mix. The teeth and claws were done in exactly the same way, only with a turgid (rather turdy, actually) brown before being edged with some browny/black ink. 

Returning to the basecoat colour for the leather I worked that up back to the original base before adding Bleached Bone to the mix. I have found that using a khaki or beige to highlight reduces the 'washed out' look I was getting on some of my other models. The gold was based coated in a gold/yellow/chestnut ink base and then washed over with brown (this was allowed to dry) and then orange ink. It was a simple job to highlight this up with the base colour and then use a final highlight using the base and added silver. 

Job done! 

Oh, and I added red to the eye to contrast with the green and suggest evil. The base was completed using my usual method this morning though I found it hard to locate some natural light in the house, as typically for a holiday in England, its rather overcast! hence these shots have been taken in the playroom rather than on my board. 

Right, from big to small. The next model in the project is another race that has disappeared from modern Warhammer. A gnome. 

Orlygg