Model Gallery: Fenris

Whew, what a month for Team Waynedale!  Between international globetrotting, surprise moves, newborn humans, genocidal campaigns against mice, and leaving for priest school, the world’s been pulling the team in different directions.  As summer draws to a close, though, TW is hoping the foot can come off the throttle a bit and return us to a somewhat normal posting schedule.  Thanks to anyone reading this for hanging in there with us!

Earlier this summer, I went through the horrendously long and not-too-cheap process of assembling all of my loose minis, getting them stored in foam and stacked into bins for easy storage instead of being sprawled all over my garage.  Once this was done and my workstation cleaned up, I was itching to start painting something.  I had been working on the Heldrake and Chaos Terminators for some time, but I wanted to try my hand at getting one of my Khador models painted.  Naturally, I went all-in with one of the most awesome models in the range:  Fenris, the Doom Reaver Dragoon with not one but TWO crazy-swords.  Unfortunately, the model would end up giving me a few more headaches than I bargained for.

For starters, painting Privateer Pewter is a little bit of a different animal than Citadel’s plastic kits.  It’s been fashionable to throw a lot of shade at GW lately (justifiably so, at least in most cases), but make no mistake, their plastic kits lately have been killer.

Case in point…

Poseable to some extent, easily convertible in several cases, and the plastic is well-defined and easy to cut, glue, and paint.  Pewter, on the other hand, while easier to work with than finecast/resin, takes a little more TLC than plastic.  Parts need a bath in simple green to get a powder called release compound off before any painting can be done (this stuff is necessary to get the cooled pewter from the mold during casting, but is the sworn nemesis of primer).  Primer is also prone to chipping at the corners of a pewter model, so using a clear sealer is a must.  As far as conversions, customizations, and posing goes, you’re usually stuck with the pose the model was cast in unless you’re a whiz at sculpting and using 2-part epoxy.  While Privateer has gotten better about having more dynamic poses with their new kits, I’d still like to see more personalization in their models, or at least some alternate sculpts for their solos.  I’d love to see a Fenris model that looks like the drawing in the Khador “Forces” book, which I’m pretty sure I saw on the side of a van owned by some roadie for an Icelandic speed metal band.

Appearing at the Reykjavík Coliseum, June of 8, 2015

As it stands, though, Fenris is a pretty cool model.  He kinda looks like a coked-up manic who thinks he’s riding the penny mechanical pony at your local Meijer instead of a monster steed made out of the nightmares of other horses.

He’s literally held together with glue

Let’s get down to business.

First off, for reference purposes, I primarily use Citadel Paints.  You’ll see some of the paint names listed in the description.

I assembled Fenris and used him in a few games before priming him.  Since I used spray primer, there were a few areas that needed touch-ups with hand primer, particularly under the cape and on the belly of the horse.  Once that dried completely, I began with the base coats.

The skulls hanging off his belt are of people who called him a brony

Yes, his armor and cape are very pink.  I prime in black for better coverage and because I don’t have a white hand primer comparable to Citadel’s black Imperial Primer for touch-ups.  As a consequence, I have to base coat shades of prominent colors in their base color mixed with some white, so red gets a pink initial base coat, blue with sky blue, etc, etc.  The follow-up base coat is the natural color (Khorne Red, Maccrage Blue, etc.).

Here’s where the first challenge in the model came up.  Flesh tones are very finicky and getting them right takes some doing.  I tend to avoid this by painting models in power armor, but in a fantasy world where everything is powered by steam (or souls), this really isn’t an option.  I tried several methods, basing, repainting, and washing in ink, but it never looked quite right.  I eventually settled on basing the skin gray, then white, then layering in Pallid Wytch Flesh and Ungor Flesh and washing it with a slightly diluted mix of Carroburg Crimson and Agrax Earthshade.  The white base coating held the color integrity of the layer coats a bit better. The result was, well...passable.  It gives off a sense of a warm, but dirty and battle-bludgeoned skin tone.  I still need a lot of practice in blending flesh tones and getting the color palates right, though.

Basecoating flesh tones looks easy enough…

But stark contrasts in layering look really bad up close

And excessive washes can make the skin tones look dirty.

The other trouble spot came in the edge highlighting of the model’s armor and horse barding.  While the studio color scheme shows that the yellow-orange edge highlighting is used and toned down with a glaze, I decided to break up the onslaught of red with a little brass.  While I wasn’t expecting perfection, I kept having to repaint the rivets in brass or the armor in red because of the size of the detailing.  Brass kept spilling into the armor or the red/orange armor layer coats would keep covering the rivets.  This also came up in the edges of the horse barding where the edges of some of the armor plates were not clearly defined.  This racked up the hours on a model I had hoped would not take very long.

Even now some of the rivets still don’t look right…

The last bone of contention I had with this model was with the horse’s body.  Basing and highlighting in a very dark blue gave it the nightmare steed feel I had envisioned, but washing it in Drakenhoff Blue made it a little too shiny.  Granted, it was an easy fix by applying a little brush-on matte finish, but still annoying when trying to evaluate shading depending on your light source.

“This kid doesn’t know lighting source from a horse’s behind!"

Some things went surprisingly well though.  I was really pleased with the brush work on the fellblades.  The interior of the sword only required a base of Death World Forest, a shade of Anthonian Camoshade, some light overbrush layers of Nurgling Green and a final light overbrush of a mix of Warpstone Glow and Yriel Yellow to give off a creepy lime-green vibe.

Spooky!

The cape was another bright spot.  Bloodletter glaze tends to blend and correct red hues pretty well when applied to bright highlights and, save for a few spots, I was pleased with how it turned out.

Just like Batman’s, right?

Lastly the mane for the horse and hair for Fenris came out pretty well too.  Basing them in black and then overbrushing gray and drybrushing very light blue before inking down with Nuln Oil produced a nice layered effect.

My highlights look fabulous!

For basing, I just used standard sandbag sand, glued down, primed black and overbrushed with gray (Dawnstone) and drybrushed with light gray (Longbeard Gray), before a last wash of Nuln Oil to tone down starker contrasts.  I topped it off with Dead Static Grass and Snow basing from Gale Force Nine.  Snow basing is a little odd.  Unlike grass where you can sprinkle a little on a patch of glue and gently blow or shake off what doesn’t stick, snow just kinda gets into every crevasse and doesn’t shake out.  Instead, you need to mix a bit of Elmer’s School Glue, water, and snow into a paste and then glue it down in clumps.  Wash it down with a little more watered down glue, then sprinkle some snow on it for a more natural look.  Not bad for a first try…

And now I’m going to go party my nose clean off my face.

In all, the model turned out OK, maybe just above tabletop quality. 

It sure beats the original concept sculpt

The flesh tones are going to bother me for awhile, though, and I wouldn’t be surprised if I went back to it once I’ve tried some new techniques.  Glad I can get my mind off this model and on to something else though.

Oh, right…..Dragoon model

What about our readers out there?  Any models you’ve worked on that gave you fits or techniques you’d like to develop/improve?  What about a model you’d like to see a new variant sculpt of?  Drop it in the comments below and thanks for reading!

Currently Playing…Mario Kart 8 (still)

Currently Watching—The Every Simpsons Ever Marathon

Currently Painting—Chaos Terminators and Chaos Heldrake (again…still)

Wanna see something funny?  Football season’s coming up, so if you’re not really into sports, just look at these NFL logos redesigned by hipsters for a few chuckles.