Parkhammer Painting Competition: Tzeentch Sorceror

     A few months ago I remembered a feature that I'd seen in an old White Dwarf. GW had released a limited edition SM Captain with a power axe, and had given everyone in the design studio a copy to convert and/or paint. Rolling with that idea, I thought it would be a great idea for all the authors of the blog to try their hand at something similar. After a little bit of discussion, we decided that we should open it up to anyone who wanted to give it a try, and make it an event for Parkhammer.

    We put up suggestions on our forums, and after voting we went with this guy: 

    At the Parkhammer event, votes were cast and Grubnards came out on top by a handful of votes. I'll have picture of all the models, and some thoughts from their creators below the fold.

     Grubnards - I was really glad that the Tzeentch sorcerer model was selected for the Parkhammer painting competition because I run Chaos armies in both Warhammer Fantasy and 40k (CSM and Daemons). The first thing I wanted to do was to magnetize the feet so that I could switch the model between a square or round base as needed.

     Since I knew I was going to be up against some stiff competition, I wanted this model to stand out a little by doing some minor conversions. I swapped out the sword for a short sword from the Dark Elf Corsairs kit. Next, I wanted to make it look like the sorcerer was about to cast a spell (or psychic power). To pull this, off I grabbed a necromancer head from the Vampire Counts Corpse Cart sprue ( the one that looks like the wind is blowing his hair out), shaved off the facial details, and then added some green stuff to enhance the flame look.

     As for painting, I wanted to try a few different things with the skin tone. I started with dark brown and worked up multiple layers to an off-white color. I washed the skin tone multiple times with a brown wash to make sure that there was no sharp contrasts between the different layers of paint. Once I had the skin tone where I wanted, I added spots to the back of the head, neck, upper arms, and thighs. This was done by adding tiny drops of a brown wash with a fine detail brush. This part took awhile as I had to repeat this process multiple times to get the dots to stand out but not overpower the model. For the staff and "globe" in the head of the staff, I tried to make it look like marble. The base color was a turquoise blue, heavily inked with a blue wash and then highlighted in lighter shades of blue, working up to fine white lines.

     I wanted to give the impression that this guy was in total control of his environment, thus the floating base. The base was made out of air-hardening clay. Once the clay had dried for 2 days, I drilled in a hole at the bottom and inserted a metal rod. This way I could paint it without getting my fingers all over the paint and I could give the impression that the rock is floating above the ground. At the top of the rock I carved in symbols and runes to make it look like the rock was torn from a shrine or summoning portal. Once painted, I went in with the same blues that I used for the staff and applied it to the runes and various cracks to give the impression that his power is flowing throughout the rock itself.

 

     Overall this was a fun competition and would like to see this carried over into next year's ParkHammer event and hopefully other major GTs as it allows players to paint up models to showcase their skills without having to enter in their whole army.

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Hyv3mynd came in a close second.

     For my competition model, I wanted to be able to use him as a herald of tzeentch while maintaining the same color scheme as my "Maggot Legion" CSM army in the works.  As such, I would have to make his skin green with white and NMM gold armor.  The base colors are airbrushed with shading and highlighting done with "glazes" or very light, controlled washes.

     I wanted the option of a disc of tzeentch so the model is pinned and magnetized to the "disc".  I wanted something different than the standard disc (as well as avoiding finecast like the plague) so I used the vortex from the Mutalith Vortex Beast sprue.  The disc is also airbrushed with shading and highlights hand painted with more "glazes".

 

     The full WIP thread can be found here: http://thegrandstrategery.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=hobby&action=display&thread=49&page=1

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With a substantial gap after the top 2, I managed to round out the top 3.

     There were a couple of things that I wanted to do with this model. 1) I knew I wanted to convert it to suit one of my armies. My friend Bill suggested a Genestealer hybrid conversion, and I ran with it. I like how the feeder tendrils turned out, and there is a 4th arm tucked back on the right side. The armor is still fantasy oriented, but I can live with that. 2) I hate painting gold with metallic paint, so I wanted to try my hand at non-metal metallics. I got out one of the new gold paints, started painting, and within minutes hated how it looked. For my first try, I think this was a success.

     While I really like how the model turned out, there are a few things that I could see improving. 1) the hood for the cape was taken from a night goblin model and doesn't look quite right. I think next time I'll just sculpt one that is thinner. 2) Looking at Hyv3mynd's NMM, I think that I could have gone darker with the paints to create more contrast. 3) I wanted to do more with the cape, but time was running short. All that said, I'm still really proud of the model. He'll be used as a Genestealer BroodLord/Magos. 

Honorable Mentions - What I particularly liked was that every entrant got a handful of votes.

Craig Bigham's Winged Nightmare

 

Christine's entry was a favorite of many because it was the only entry outlining a story. The Herald chasing a Gnoblar, burning a tree, while trying to get him was a great idea. 

 

Let us know what you think of the models. I can't wait to see what we do next year.

-Crispy