Ragnar Blackmane, finished (this time for real)

I'm starting to understand George Lucas. This is the third time I replaced a head on my Ragnar Blackmane miniature, instead of just making a new model and leaving the old one as it was. In my defense, sculpting big chainswords is really fiddly, and this one has a Frostfang I'm reasonably satisfied with.

 When I started sculpting this head, I wanted to pay special attention to making the character's brow. The main problem I had with Ragnar's previous head was that he looked too calm. To make facial expressions visible in this scale, they need to be seriously exaggarated.
Another thing to pay attention to was how clean the sculpt was. It's very easy to leave some areas a little rough, but they become painfully apparent in the painting stage.

I recently learned to use a fairly limited palette when painting flesh. Too wild changes in tone make the model look like it needs to see a dermatologist, and drybrushing is very risky. The character ended up looking much more like a person than many of my earlier models.

 The new head fits the model IMO much better than the previous one, and the Allslayer actually looks more furious than surprised.

I should be done now swapping this guy's head. If I find that I still don't like it, I will just make a new model instead of sculpting a fourth head for the same one, and I don't think I'll be doing that any time soon.
See the first version of the model before painting
See the first attempt at the painted model

Ragnar Blackmane, the Young King, painted and partially resculpted

As I mentioned previously, Ragnar Blackmane was one of the first models I started making. I finished his head early on, and then left the model half-done for a long, long time, until I recently finished modelling and started painting. Now, while it's fairly obvious that skills improve by using them, what is easy to forget that your expectations of yourself tend to rise more or less at the same pace. So, what had represented the best of my abilities a couple of years earlier, now looked unacceptable.

 Specifically, the part I wasn't satisfied with was the face. Mostly, his nose was the issue, being just a misformed lump on his face, but the general shape of his head was none too pleasing, either. So, I decided to redo the head. I went with Ragnar's trademark howl for his expression on the new head, and added a couple of braids on him. I wasn't sure if he canonically has any facial hair after rising to a Wolf Lord, but I had always imagined Ragnar with sideburns, so that's what I decided to sculpt. His high top knot is what marks him out as who he is, but I also added a couple of thin braids on the model, just because.

Having painted him, I'm still not sure if I like his facial expression, as his eyebrows seem a little too high, and his skull shape could have used some more depth, but I decided this will be good enough for now. This new head is just glued on with superglue, so if I so choose, I can yet again change his head without doing any significant damage to this one.

I felt secure enough with my brushwork to freehand the army badge on his left kneepad (white, fanged skull with crossbones on a black background). Turned out pretty well, actually. Probably because I kept it simple.

  Frostfang turned out well, considering how tough it is to sculpt chainswords by hand. There's probably a trick to it that I don't know, or maybe I should just use different material for weapons.

 His backpack may be my personal favourite part of the finished model. I'm particularly happy with the freehand design on his helmet crest, but the gemstone and the patinated wolf heads worked out well, too.
 See the first version of the model
See the actually finished model

Ragnar Blackmane

This is an old project and one of the first conversions I started on when I got back in WH40k a couple of years back. It was always obvious to me that even though I chose Ragnar Blackmane's Great Company to be the backbone of my army, I wouldn't be using the official GW model. A classic it may be, but it just doesn't sit well with the more modern pieces.

 The Frostfang conversion visible here is actually the second version of the weapon I sculpted, the first one ending up being far too clunky-looking to my liking. The version I ended up with was finished just slightly before GW released the Space Wolf upgrade sprue with a nearly identical chainsword.

The piece shows its age in the ProCreate/Green Stuff mix I used to originally sculpt the wolf head on his left pauldron, as well as his pelt, though I did enhance the pelt with some better Green Stuff details later on.
The model is now nearly ready to be painted. Soon enough my army will have a living leader and Bjorn can get back to sleep. About time, too, he was getting a little cranky.
See the first attempt at painting the model
See the model as it eventually turned out