Friday 30 November 2012

New Life into Old Lead Pt III

As part of my current Death Company project, I had another opportunity to conduct a renovation on one of the old painted miniatures in my collection. A chance to right the wrongs as it were, of a heretical (as far as the Codex Astartes is concerned) colour scheme, with the added benefit of a few years improvement in my painting skills; how much improvement is debatable!


This is Chaplain Samael 'Mortifier of the Evocati' my counts as Lemartes, as you can see he was decidedly white; a good contrast, I thought at the time, with the black armour of the Death Company he would lead. What was I thinking?

Still I love the miniature and there was no way I was going to retire him due to some dodgy paint job . He's an early 90's Blood Angel Death Company Chaplain with a minor conversion to his Crozius, inspired by one I saw in a Howling Griffons army painted by Fred Reed and featured in White Dwarf, again many years ago; I still have the page somewhere.

So with a little reverence and a 'sorry old chap, it's for the best', he was dunked in a bath of green detergent, left for a few days, then the gunk cleaned off with a thorough scrub using a toothbrush. Primed and base coated black, I then set about bringing him in line with the rest of my Blood Drinkers Death Company who, as the Codex dictates, follow the scheme as set down by the Blood Angels.



I've gone for a much simpler effect on my power weapons, the lightning effects were just causing me too many botched attempts and thus slowing down my already plodding painting progress, I've gone back and painted the others on my completed miniatures for uniformity.



Once again I'm very happy with the final outcome, he's much improved in my humble opinion and now fits in perfectly with my ongoing efforts for a Codex adherent army. The addition of the skull from the old plastic skeletons set added a little extra character to the base and you can't have too many skulls now can you? Just ask GW.

3 comments:

Mordian7th said...

That looks great! It's fun to go back and re-paint old miniatures, though there's always that twinge of regret when dropping them in the paint stripper...

Good stuff, Bix!

Admiral Drax said...

Hooray for you, mate: it was the best thing you could've done. And let's face it - you did it justice!

Always great to see the old 'Space Marine Assault Weapons' sprue power axe: I love that that sprue also included a laspistol and an autopistol!

Bix said...

Much appreciated chaps, always nice to get positive encouragement on a paint job, lets you know you're heading (slowly) in the right direction. :)

@Mordian7th, exactly; you're going to be washing away a little piece of your hobby history and that tugs on the sentiments. In this case though, thankfully the result trumped any misgivings.

@Admiral Drax, well spotted sir; yes a great sprue, which I still have remnants of floating around my Bits Box (no pistols sadly, I just had a rummage to check).

It was lucky I did, as the original axe came away in the stripping phase (I hadn't pinned it back then) and was a little short, so a used another.

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