Monday 20 April 2020

Hobby from confinement

Hi everybody!

It has been a few months since my last update and of course the world has become a different place since then. I sincerely hope that everyone reading is doing well and safe.
In these weird times I am particularly happy to have an indoor hobby to keep me busy and allow me to pour some creativity into something.
I know I have been silent for some time but I did take advantage of the confinement to progress with my projects, in particular Mordheim and can now post some of the results:

First, my Sigmarite Sisters warbadn is close to the finish line, only a couple of models left to convert and paint to be able to field them. Here is a group shot of where I am with them at the moment:


Bad picture but it's the best I can do in the current situation. You will notice some additions to the warband, in particular the leader, Mother Romhilda Von Steinhardt.






Converted starting from the Sister Dialogus and the special edition Canoness and a number of other kits for small bits like the hammers (Stormcast Vanguard) and the right leg and feet from th Cypher Lords.

Then we have the Augur, Sister Adelheide Von Sehlig.




Converted from a number of kits, Sister Repentia, Warcry Cypher Lords and the dove from the battle sisters squad.

The second Sister Superior, Sister Algrund






Converted from the female Kairic Acolyte from Wh Underworld with the head form a Stormcast hero white name I cannot remember.

After working exclusively on my Sisters for a few months I felt the need to change slightly and I decided to convert a heretical adversary for my warband: a chaos cultist for my next warband project.





Converted from Blackstone Fortress Pious Vorne, sculpted hood and a arms from the 40k battle sisters. The sword is from the war cry Splintered Fangs.



That's it for now. I am planning to join Instagram one of these days to share my work in a quicker way and possibly reach a wider audience. We'll see.

Stay safe and keep lobbying!






Sunday 16 February 2020

The Matriarch

Hello guys!

I spent some time sculpting today and managed to finish the conversion of the Matriarch for my warband!





It was a very fun project to work on, I enjoyed planning the conversion carefully, collecting all the bits and re-imagining this very iconic warrior from 1999 Mordheim.
Since she will be equipped with the very best the temple can offer I decided to give her a suit of heavy armour, so she is much ore heavily equipped than the rest of the warband. I will have to see how I pull this one out with the paint scheme.
In terms of the conversion I was after an ecstatic effect, similar to what can be seen on some religious baroque art, like the Ecstasy of Saint Teresa by Bernini:


I wanted the model to reflect this in her pose, taken in a rapturous vision during the battle, as if she is looking at Sigmar himself about to descend from the Heavens to give her a big hug :)

I sketched quite a lot with the bits before starting, here you can see some of the stages of the conversion process:


Here you can see phase 1: where I was just testing the pose and the interaction of the bits. I used  legs from the new Sisters of Battlekit, the torso is from Saint Celestine, head from a Stormcast Sequitor with the helmet of a bretonnian man at arms. The axes are just there to test the effect of the pose with the double weapon.


Then I moved to Phase 2, shaving off the boob armour, re-sculpting the waist and adding the hammers from the Excelsior Warpriest kit (the tiny one on his belt). I added a small reliquary hanging from her rosary for when I will be able to buy her a holy relic.


And finally Part 3, the sculpture completed. The spiked crown on top of her helmet is from the Electro Priests with the 40k bits shaved off. The tiny rivets on the armour are glass balls 0.5mm diameter. 

And there she is, I hope to start painting it tomorrow afternoon if I can.


Monday 3 February 2020

Mad Juditta

Hi All,

I painted another sister!






Sister Juditta Rosenkrantz was born in Pfeildorf the second daughter of Mattheus Rosenkrantz, a wealthy wool merchant and Ludmilla Von Leitdorf, disgraced daughter of the Seneschal of Averland. Having inherited much of her mother’s troublesome character, Juditta’s unruliness and savage manners plagued her family reputation since her most tender age. Her cruel childish pranks against the household servitude and her violent tempers became the subject of many tavern stories in the province, and neither her parents nor her tutors could put an end to her vicious rampages. At the age of seven she drowned her cousin’s pet dog and then asked the cook to serve it to the inconsolable boy for supper. On her thirteenth birthday she stole the prayer’s book from Sigmar’s temple and scribbled prophanities all over it. When she was later confronted by the furious priest she defended her actions declaring that Sigmar was a warrior, not a scholar and that He did not waste His time with books and prayers.
Always her family wealth and position shielded her from the consequences of her wrongdoing and she grew spoilt and ill mannered to the point of local dignitaries avoiding visiting her father’s shops for fear of becoming entangled in one of her cruel amusements.
Though her behaviour always troubled her parents, the last straw came when, at the age of fifteen, Juditta fell for a bretonnian troubadour and fled with him. When her father’s men reached the two fugitives in Helmgart they were about to cross the Axe Bite Pass and reach Montfort.
She was not returned home to her family this time. Her father, tired of her abuses, had decided that Juditta was to become somebody else’s problem. She was delivered, screaming and biting, to the gates of the Rock in Mordheim, where she was forced to take her vows as a Novice of the order of the Sisters of Sigmar.
Countless nights of vigil, ritual purifications and corporeal punishments followed but with every crack of the whip Juditta seemed to grow more spiteful and unruly. Her escape attempts were all thwarted but she never gave up and kept taking every opportunity she could to plant seeds of discord and rebellion amongst the sisterhood, a terrible influence on the other novices on whom she seemed to have a strong ascendancy.
When the comet appeared above the city, burning brighter and brighter every day, Juditta had been in Mordheim for almost two years but still showed no sign of repentance. While the population of the city gathered to celebrate the return of the God-King and abandoning themselves to all sort of decadent indulgement, the Sisterhood was called to pray in the temple as the prophet Cassandora had forseen a terrible calamity.
Seeing her chance of evasion Juditta took advantage of her sisters distraction and slip past their surveillance and out of the walls of the convent. Once in the city, free from her pious jailers, Juditta joined the wild celebrations, dancing for hours, embracing strangers of every rank and laughing like she never laughed in her life. Finally, for the first time in her life, she was free to be herself. That was the best night of her life.
Then the comet struck.
What followed the impact is shrouded in the myth and has already been confined to the darkest pages in the Empire's history books. After three days of fire and madness finally the whole city fell quiet, a chilling silence as cold as a witch grave. That night a naked and bloody figured knocked at the gates of the Rock. Impossibly, against all odds, Juditta had survived. She was not the same though, as her sisters soon discovered. Whatever she saw amongst the ruins had left a deep scar and the girl was now haunted by feverish visions of unspeakable doom. As soon as she recovered the power of speech she asked the Matriarchs to accept her within the ranks. Though initially reticent, they eventually acknowledged her survival as a sign from Sigmar: surely the God-King had some plans for the young woman.
While madness swathed the Empire and hordes of treasure seekers reached the infamous City of the Damned, the Sisterhood got busy: cleaning the ruins from evil and corruption was a near impossible task but one Sister Juditta threw herself in with wild abandonment. Her Sisters, initially unsettled by her constant mumbling and wild eyes, grew to admire her fervour in battle. Juditta blossomed from a young and spoilt noblewoman to a hard warrior who was also capable of inspiring her Sisters to acts of reckless heroism. While some of the Matriarchs still see her as a dangerous influence on younger minds, Mother Romhilda has decided to invite Juditta to join her ranks and even promoted her above her sisters a a Superior.
In the eyes of Romhilda, Juditta has the potential of a great martyr as the lines that separates faith and madness is often very thin.

Here she is, an ancestor of Count Marius Leitdorf suffering from a similar affection. She is essentially mad as a box of frogs.

While painting her I tried to stick to the same colour scheme I chose for my warband but pushing the details a bit more: the robes are painted with a slight stippling and the use of some Contrast (Wyldwood) for the first time on this warband.
Work has already started on the Matriarch, Romhilda Wasserlosen, and I hope to share some progress with you in the ext days.

Hagen

Friday 24 January 2020

Sister Superior

Hi guys!

I managed to find the time to convert another warrior for my Sisters of Sigmar warband.

  



This one is a Sister Superior, one of my heroins, therefore she got a bit more attention than my two Novices.
The conversion was pretty extensive, starting from mixing the new 40k Battle Sisters with the Warcry Cypher Lords. In particular the legs were a bit challenging, I wanted the lower legs and the feet to look the same throughout my warband, so they needed to come from the Cypher Lords. I cut the legs at the knee and fit them onto the top part of the Battle Sisters kit. Then I closed the gap with green stuff... Took a while.
The rest involved sculpting the chainmail, leather hood and converting the head with one from the Battle Sisters kit and the helmet from a Bretonnian man at arm.
The hammers are from the kit of the white wolf templars with plasticard rods as handles.

I am pretty happy with how she turned up and cannot wait to start painting her!

Let me know what you guys think.

Hagen



Friday 17 January 2020

Sister Agatha and some terrain building

Hi All!

I am hard at work on my Mordheim 2020 project, I finally managed to recruit a proper crew and we are going to play a campaign this summer!

This means that not only I have to prepare a warband in time for the event but also a second gaming board as the one I made last year is now too small to accomodate all of the participants.

Therefore I am dividing my free time between building terrains and slowly progressing on my next warband: the glorious Sisters of Sigmar.

Here goes my second warrior: Sister Agatha, my second and last (for now) Novice.






As for my previous Novice, the model is converted from the Warcry Cypher Lords kit, very versatile kit offering great opportunities to make dynamic female warriors finally not from some naked elf!

Not too much to say about the painting, I am enjoining painting a lot of skin areas and female faces are an interesting challenge as the transitions between light and shadow areas must be smoother than on their male counterparts. 

On the terrain side, I bought quite a few of the Warcry terrain kits to use as a base to convert my new Mordheim board, which is supposed to represent the Noble/Merchant quarter of the city, where the wealthy and cultured used to live before the catastrophe.

The first building I worked on is a portion of the Justice Palace, where the prisoners awaiting judgement were kept in cells and exposed to the public to scare potential wrongdoers into complying with the law.









This was modified almost exclusively from Warcry kits and was a pleasure to assemble and paint.

Once I familiarised myself with the kits I moved on to another smaller building project, a simple townhouse for a wealthy merchant, which this time was created mixing the Warcry scenery with quite a lot of plasticard bits:










This was actually way easier than I imagined to build  (although more time consuming than the previous one) and I will follow a similar method for the rest of my board from now on.

This terrain and warband project has just started, and it will take me quite some time to complete it, but I feel like I am heading in the right direction with it.

See you hopefully soon with another update!