After a few weeks away from painting it seems like it’s a good time to get my teeth in the first of this years projects! The main inspiration for this (as always) is the excuse to paint up some of the figures I missed out on as a kidling. Other inspiration comes in the form of the amazing artwork that was around during the late 80’s and early 90’s, in particular, this amazing piece by Dave Gallagher.
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| You don't know how disappointed I was to find the vouchers were out of date. |
This was the cover to issue 147 of White Dwarf and I remember coming across this at a car-boot sale. The cover image instantly affixed itself one of the cannon Eldar visuals in my head (which was helped by my innate love of red-heads and the fact that one of the troopers looks a bit like Sweet Dreams era Annie Lennox!) I still love the vibrancy of the colour scheme and little details such as the banner/sash squad markings and the power-fist giving the horns gesture. I think this must be the only artwork that makes guardians look hard too. I never got around to painting an Alaitoc army as I was all about painting Ulthewe black as a baby bat. However, looking back over their fluff as a Craftworld full of wistful, potential rangers, it seems odd that I never went down the path of painting blue (i think it was my loathing of Ultramarines). A year or so ago when this project first came to mind, I decided to do some test models to see what they’d be like.
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| Primary colour camo schemes! |
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| Still an amazing and iconic design after nearly 30 years. |
The guardian was a fun paint job, although I’m not looking forward to all the yellow! The aim of this was to try and make it as vibrant and clean as possible, just so I knew it could be done without it being a chore. The Dreadnought was super easy as all the components could be painted as sub-assemblies, reducing the danger of secondary colours. It's not going to be a huge force, but will definitely have a heavy Craftworld feel to it as I'm not too fussed on painting up any Aspect warriors right now.
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| Project times! |
So here’s the first batch of trimmed and based figures ready for undercoating. It’s going to be a predominantly ranger force with a small squad of guardians and a large troupe of Harlequin allies. I’ve also got a Warlock and Farseer on the way soon, but still need to snag a couple of the more dynamic Harlequins as I reckon I'll need about ten in order to brake up all the blue and yellow. I'm also considering putting the effort in to track down around five of the original guardian jet bikes, but they seem to be well expensive at present. Will give it a few months and see how the army is looking then. So incredible to think these were all sculpted by Jes Goodwin over twenty five years ago and they still look amazing.
