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Tuesday 19 November 2013

A Warhammer Bestiary: Beastman


Those of you with short memories, or coming to this post at a much later date, will need reminding about my current project. I intend to paint one miniature for every entry in the Warhammer Third Edition's Bestiary. For more information about the 'whys' and the 'what fors', have a look at this entry. What follows is the first painted example in the sequence, the humble BEASTMAN. Or BEESTMAN as this one is tagged.


As discussed previously, this is the miniature I selected to paint first. I am sure that many of you will recognise this model from the 1987 (?) range of beastmen, as published in the famous 1988 catalogue. At this time, the nature of what a 'beastman' was not really defined and all kinds of wacky combinations left the studio over the later part of the '80s. Hence the rhino head in this example. However, I am not sure who sculpted this particular example, so if you know, please drop me a line in the comment box below. 


A here is the finished result. What do you think? The miniature didn't take me long as I was highly motivated and, as with other things, work seems to fly by when you feel this way. I opted for a grey skin, which related to the rhino head, and a brown loin cloth dangling around his beastly bits. I used gold to pick out the metallic objects scattered about his body, as it had a distinct 'African' feel to the model. Perhaps this beastman lurks in some steamy jungle somewhere, scavenging among the ruins of ancient civilizations? It was fairly obvious to use a bone shade on the horns and claws and a nice pink for the unpleasant tail that sprouts from the model's back. Finally, the cleaver was treated to a new rusty metal painting I am trialing, and seemed fairly successful I am pleased to say. 

The base was handled my usual way, only this time I add a few 'chaos fungi' with a colour scheme inspired by that Realm of Chaos scenery Jamie Sims made and Evo has safe in his collection. These were made very simply for greenstuff and are one of the first things I have actually 'sculpted' if such a word could be used to describe them. nice time, I will try and be a little more creative and make proper 'chaos toadstools' for the base. But for now, I felt that this was enough to keep the model consistent with the others I have painted for my Retro-Collection. 

I always paint the inside of the shield black (as do I the rims) to match with the black bases. I took this from the Arcane Armorials packaging as it suggested this was the best way to showcase a freehand design on a small shield. 


For the shield, I opted to continue the 'Jungle' theme. Inspired by an old Dave Andrews miniature in White Dwarf, I took the 'Paper Tiger' symbol from inside 'Heroes for Wargames' and developed it into a painted freehand design. I borrowed heavily from the source material and learnt a huge deal about painting different freehand designs with inks and acrylic paints. Small silver dots were added to the studs to compliment the back shield rim. 


The shield didn't take that long to paint, perhaps thirty minutes, and most of that was faffing around with the orange background. I used Old School Hobgoblin Orange as a base, and blended in yellow around the tiger's forehead, nose and mouth. Once I was happy, which took a while, I blended in a little white to create the 'eyebrows' and 'lips' - I am sorry, I do not know the terms to describe these parts of a big cat's face, can anyone help me out?

The rest of the detailing of the tiger's face was carried out with black ink straight from the pot. I learnt quickly to avoid pooling the ink by brushing the tip of my brush across the back of my hand before placing the tip on the shield. This gave me a great deal more control about where the ink went and stopped the stuff spreading across the shield. I played very close attention to my source material and tried to capture every line that I saw on the 'Paper Tiger' design. I was extremely impressed by the realism this promoted and I shall be using source material a lot more in the future. 

All in all, I have got my first miniature completed and I am keen to start the next. In fact, as I type that model is already sitting on my desk ready to be cleaned up and based. As I have already said, I am going to play around with the greenstuff as I am prepping this model to see if I cannot make some little toadstools or something similar. In case you are wondering what the next model is, its going to be a Chaos Centaur.

I'll post it up as soon as I complete it!

Orlygg

15 comments:

  1. Top, top job on the shield, you're right to be proud of him. Paper Tiger being a very important publisher of the period, it's hugely evocative. Looking forward to the centaur.

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    1. Amazing shield. Interesting and unusual figure. I'll be watching this bestiary progress with interest. Zhu, what else did Paper Tiger publish apart from Heroes for Wargames?

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    2. Thanks guys... I am pretty sure that Paper Tiger printed 'The Prince and the Woodcutter' by Henry Wolfe (?) and illustrated by John Blanche in the later 70s. I may be wrong though.

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    3. Paper Tiger did a lot - as James notes 'The Prince and the Woodcutter' - and also "Flight of Icarus" has a couple of JB pieces. They also did lovely volumes of Achilleos (responsible for lots of 80s White Dwarf covers), Rodney Matthews and of course Roger Dean - both very influential on Jes Goodwins work.

      James - you might like Roger Deans "Owl Face" logo for Psygnosis as a similar theme...

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  2. The rhinoman himself is a very nice piece of painting, the shield though is outstanding.

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    1. Thanks Paul. The shield was quite simple to do. Far easier than the ogre faces I was doing last year. I'd do a 'tiger face' tutorial if there was interest.

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  3. Top job here, you started with a bang!
    Definitely interested in a tiger tutorial.

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  4. Brilliant painting, he looks really good.
    Love the African feel for the Rhinoman, it's cool idea and would be a great idea for a themed army. By the way, perhaps that is why he is labelled BEESTMAN, it might written in a South African accent? ;)

    I love the tiger shield, and would be very interested in a tutorial. Shields are not really my strong point.

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  5. Very nice work on the Beastman, but I agree with others - the shield is outstanding. Well done!

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  6. Not much to add, jaw dropping work on the shield. The rust on the cleaver looks good too.

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  7. I'm pretty sure it's a Kevin Adams sculpt.

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  8. Nice paintjob on the little bugger - I have a couple of variants on this sculpt in a box somewhere and he is pretty small beside most beastman. I really like your colour choices here.

    Great idea for a project. Do you have a model for every beastie? Some of them have gotta be seriously hard to get your hands on these days like Jabberwock, Coatl, Giant Frog etc. Are you planning to use any proxy models if you can't get a particular model (probably there was not a model for one or two of them - I can't remember now). I will be a great wee article series to have on the web!

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  9. Nevermind, you already answered my questions in the previous posting!

    Coatl is gonna be hard. The wings were common enough - used in an eagle model and a chimera model.

    I saw the other day that Goblin Lee has a full Coatl:

    http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-a0Qaz6Gt36c/Uajq30IVzeI/AAAAAAAABTw/y0tR4DTZL-4/s1600/all+of+the+Slann+part+2+049.JPG

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  10. Thanks for the feedback guys. I think I have secured a Citadel Coatl model for later on in the series. And I intend on doing a tiger tutorial in the near future too!

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  11. wow that Tiger on the shield is some of the best freehand shield design I have seen yet on your miniatures, well done.

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