Deathwatch Watch Captain Artemis

So I'm still one update behind schedule. I do have several models in the works at the moment, but considering my schedule for next week, it remains to be seen if I'll have the time to finish two of them by next Sunday. I do have high hopes, though.

Artemis is one of those characters I never really cared that much about. That's not a bad thing, though, because now I can use the default GW model without feeling lazy about not having made one from standard parts and Green Stuff.

 Though he's now included in the Start Collecting Deathwatch box, originally, Watch Captain Artemis was only available in the Death Masque box, and that's where I got my model from. I like the model, but since my Deathwatch army isn't stationed at Talasa Prime in my headcanon (I'm not that interested in defending Smurfville), I don't know how much use I'll get out of him.

Unlike on the illustrations in the Codex, I painted his shoulder pad in the established Mortifactors colours, ie. with a yellow trim and bone coloured skull. I also added a couple of skulls on the base, one human(oid) and one ork.

Mostly, however, the model was painted fairly unsurprisingly. I noticed that my satin varnish can is probably starting to go empty, judging by how glossy the models turn out now. Will have to fix that soon.

Ahzek Ahriman and one of his little friends

Though I'm generally partial to the Space Wolves chapter/legion, and though in the larger scale they clearly are the good guys and the loyalists as opposed to the Thousand Sons, there really is little question that in the case of burning of Prospero, the VI legion were the bad guys and the barely literate invaders, who attacked the homeworld of the Legion focused on learning and answering questions, killed the world's defenders and committed a genocide. Of course, they were misled, and it wasn't long after that Leman Russ swore off following orders unquestioningly, but that wasn't much comfort to the now crippled legion of Thousand Sons, who only were attacked in the first place because their Primarch had tried to warn the Emperor of the archtraitor.

I recently bought a copy of the Burning of Prospero as a birthday present for myself. I really wanted to use the Forgeworld's colour scheme for my Thousand Sons, as they are not supposed to look like Blood Angels, but I neither have an airbrush nor their Angron Red, so I had to make do with Citadel colours and Lahmian Medium. For that reason, I wanted to try out the colour scheme on an expendable miniature before moving on to Ahriman. There's a fairly decent chance I'll end up buying another Burning of Prospero in the future, so if I decide to try this again with a different execution of the colour scheme, it will be an option.

 The Forgeworld's colour scheme is done by airbrushing the transparent Angron Red over a metal basecoat. I tried to replicate it by painting Mephiston Red thinned down with Lahmian medium over Leadbelcher base. I then proceeded to shade the model with Nuln Oil and to add some similarly thinned down Evil Sunz Scarlet to some of the most raised areas. I then highlighted the edges of the model's plate with Runefang Steel. The end result is more weathered than main GW's overtly clean look, and I like this that way. Confident I could get reasonably pleasing results, I proceeded to get to work with Ahriman.

 As usual, I painted the model in smaller pieces. I first painted most of the base, knowing it would be trickier to paint the slain Space Wolf with the main model standing over it. I also didn't attach the backpack until the very end, once the model was nearly completely painted. The Blood for the Blood God around the Space Wolf's corpse was only added after varnishing.
I also painted some eldritch glow on the model's extended arm's palm. I did that by drybrushing from lighter to darker colours, sort of the opposite it's done when highlighting.

Unlike on the one painted by the 'Eavy Metal team, I painted my Ahriman's cloak and loincloth purple, as he has on the box set. Bone or papyrus coloured fabric might have suited the Space Egyptian look better, but I think the purple somewhat foreshadows Ahriman's future, as if transitioning from red armour to blue.

I will have plenty of models to assemble and paint in the box in the future. I suspect this individual Thousand Sons legionnary will be an exception, and most of them won't be assembled with standard parts. At least not with the Space Wolves, who would not really look the part without at least some pelts and tooth amulets. Similarly, I can give the Thousand Sons some scarabs and other thematic decorations, though I will have to do some research to know what is appropriate for which models.

Ulrik the Slayer, the Wolf High Priest

Back when I started my Space Wolves army, I considered just buying GW's official Ulrik model. Though old, the model's pose was far better than the original Ragnar Blackmane model's (I wonder if they're actually ever going to remake him), and Ulrik looked like he could handle himself in a fight.
Then GW remade him. Now, I do think the new model looks more impressive and probably has higher level of detail than the previous one, but the pose could only look more static if he was modelled taking a nap. This is unacceptable of any Sky Warrior, nevermind one fierce enough to earn a salute from Angron himself.
So, as with Ragnar and Logan before him, I eventually started working on my own version of the Wolf High Priest.

 The torso piece originally came from a Space Marine Apotechary, and I specifically saved it for a Wolf Priest. I find that the vials hanging from it are appropriate for a character doing the double duty of an Apotechary and a Chaplain, and while Wolf Priests don't use the same exact methods and medicines as codex Apotecharies, I imagine there would necessarily be a lot of overlap, as Space Wolves still are Astartes, and there are only so many ways to provide medical care for barely understood physiologies.

The backpack, as well as the arms, came from the Mk.II Power Armour. I decided the ancient model would be appropriate for the oldest non-Dreadnought, non-Wulfen Space Wolf still in the galaxy.
I also decided to custom-sculpt the wolftail talisman hanging from the plasma pistol, since I no longer had any of the smaller ones from the Wulfen kit handy.

The Crozius was originally (and technically still is) a Power Maul. I cut off two of the flanges and expanded the other two into stylized wings, finally sculpting a wolf skull on top of that.

The black armour made painting considerably faster than with most Space Wolves.
I decided to paint the gemstones on Ulrik's shoulders and on the forehead of his helmet red, and the vials on his belt in colder colours, specifically green and blue. The overall effect turned out great, with the few spots of colour standing out well in the midst of the black armour

I hadn't originally left any space for Ulrik's personal sigil, the stylized wolf paw print, but decided to paint it below/on the model's left knee. A kneepad would have worked better, but still, I'm reasonably happy with the way it looks.

The model's cloak was painted in three layers, with Khorne Red base, shaded with Nuln Oil, and Mephiston Red and Evil Sunz Scarlet highlights. It ended up looking appropriately deep red without compromising too much on highlighting.

Arjac Rockfist, work in progress

Arjac was one of the first special characters I started working on when I returned to 40k hobby a couple of years ago. In the fluff, he is described as a huge man, even by Astartes standards, which gave me the interesting challenge of trying to make a model in Terminator armour look bigger than a Terminator. While I managed to clear that hurdle, the relatively crude sculpting I did at the time discouraged me from continuing to work on the model, until now. Rather than just redoing what I don't like, I decided to take a moment to show what I did back then, before going on to redo the parts I'm unsatisfied with.

 The head of the model isn't actually too bad, though the sculpt could definitely be a lot cleaner. It remains to be seen if the head needs to be replaced, or if it will be enough to just fix the eyes and the brow. The blacksmith's apron will need to be redone, but the pelt on his left shoulder looks actually pretty good and may stay as it is. Foehammer's head definitely needs to be redone.
One of the methods I used to give the model more height was adding extra material to the soles of his boots. Arjac used to be an Iron Priest, so I gave the boots Mechanicum's cogtooth pattern decoration.
Another method I used was adding material to the top of the legs piece, lengthening his torso. I also added plenty of ProCreate to the sides of the model's torso, in addition to the guitar strings to emulate extra cabling.

 Anvil Shield needs to be redone, as well. In addition to looking crude, the shield's decoration just isn't great conceptually. I added the shield boss as something of an afterthought. Contrary to GW's official model, I think the shield should be more or less flat, as it's described as routinely being used offensively, which just doesn't work as well with a domed shield. While the final shield may well end up having a picture of an anvil on it, it'll have to be a lot more stylized.
Speaking of anvils, the anvil decoration on top of the torso needs some touching up, as well. Probably just some decoration, though.

The base was one of the first where I thought of putting something under the foot of the bent leg. It probably won't need much improvement.

Remains to be seen how long it takes to get the model to my liking.

Logan Grimnar, the High King of Fenris, painted

Painting my older sculpts is scary. Often a fault may be small enough to be nearly unnoticeable when sculpting, but painting brings it to a painfully clear focus. One example would be the first head I sculpted for my Ragnar Blackmane model, that had perfectly serviceable-looking nose when the whole head was still bright green, but once painted, poor Ragnar looked like he had taken a savage left hook to his nose.
Nothing too bad happened with my Logan Grimnar, though his eyes are somewhat asymmetrical and he could afford to have a little more ferocious look on his face. All that said, there's something that makes up for all this. In my eyes, at least, he looks a little like Christopher Lee. It certainly wasn't something I planned, as I don't think I currently could sculpt portraits in this scale if I tried, but now that it has happened, I can't think of a more appropriate Old Wolf. Rest in peace, Sir Lee.

On to the paintwork. I usually use bronze for the yellow/brown metal parts, but because Having just one part gold-coloured would have looked out of place and I wanted Fellclaw's head to be painted gold, I also decided to repeat the colour on his Belt of Russ, as well as the Imperial Eagle on the base.

 Grimnar has used the Axe Morkai since the first war for Armageddon, which is around 600 years, if I remember correctly, and I think that would be more than enough time to form a patina on the bronze parts. More importantly, the green hue accentuates the red blade nicely. I decided against painting patina on most pieces of his armour, though, since I feel like many of those parts would often require servicing by the Iron Priests and therefore be swapped for other compatible pieces of Terminator armour.

I'm fairly satisfied with my Logan Grimnar model overall. Sure, the sculpt could have been cleaner, but that's the problem with improving your skills; your newer work ends up putting your older work to shame.
 See the model before painting

The Redmaw, Wulfen-kind

I have to say, I enjoyed this project a lot. Sculpting monstrous creatures is, in a sense,  much easier than sculpting human faces. We generally speaking don't have an intuitive understanding of how a post-human that has succumbed to a condition brought on by a flaw in his genhancements should look, and therefore, there's no standard to compare to. I went for a werewolfy look that bears some similarity to dogs and wolves, but not enough to look off, as it does if I had try and fail to sculpt a human visage.

 I wanted to tie the Redmaw form in with the character's human form, and the simplest way to do that was to simply sculpt them to have similar hairstyles (as well as the wolftooth necklace). I actually sculpted most of the Redmaw before the human form and decided to give it braids, because they fit well with the pose of the model. I also felt like they made it clear it was, or at least had once been, a sapient creature.

The tail ended up curving to the left, which gives the impression that the Bloodied Hunter is wagging his tail while hunting. This amuses me to no end.
His hindlegs ended up being on slightly different levels, so I placed some cork under the right paw. I find the pose works better this way. I also decided that even though I'm running low on resin skulls, which is nothing sort of a disaster in 40k modelling terms, the Redmaw if anyone/-thing needed a skull on the base.

The character currently is in a little weird situation rules-wise because the Imperial Armour book 11 refers to the 5th edition Space Wolves codex, but the Curs'd Lord is at his best in narrative games, anyway. I can easily imagine a scenario where both an Inquisitorial warband and a group of Space Wolves try to capture Bran Redmaw and bring him back to study or to put him to his kennel for a time out, respectively.
Speaking of rules, this project again made me sorry that the 7th Edition codex did away with Mark of the Wulfen as a wargear option. It made for some very interesting modelling projects. The Wulfen Stone is a poor substitute.
See the finished model

Bran Redmaw, the Curs'd Lord

As I have written previously, this character took two attempts (so far, knock on wood) to get right. The first one was waaay too pompous to look like a Wolf Lord known to leave the execution of his battle plans to the Wolf Guard, while hunting alone himself.
For the second attempt, the most challengin part proved to be the modelling of the Runic Armour. There is a precedent for just slapping a few Space Wolf pieces with runes in them together and calling that a runic armour, but I felt like the armour should look like it's more protective than the standard power armour.
To achieve this, I used the thicker pauldrons from the Command Squad kit, extra Mk. IV arms I had around and sculpted faulds to give the upper thighs some extra protection. The decorative backpack from the Space Wolves upgrade kit helps give the impression of higher quality armour, too.

 I gave him the Phobos pattern bolt pistol, just because I felt like a Wolf Lord, even one with a sinister reputation, would have access to more revered relic weapons of the Chapter.

The Axe of Langnvast started out as a Mk. IV Thunder Hammer. I cut off the hammerhead and replaced it with an axe blade (made of plasticard) with a wolf's head hammer as a secondary striking surface, with the ears elongated to a stabbing point. I generally speaking prefer to give the Wolves single-headed axes, because I think they look much more agile and dangerous as weapons than the double-headed ones Games Workshop seems so keen on.

I may not be entirely finished with the modelling phase. At the very least, I'm probably going to add a mag-locked battle helmet somewhere on his body, and am considering to add some extra decoration to his faulds. However, the overall shape will be more or less like it is now.

Of course, the (mostly) human form of Bran Redmaw is far from being the most interesting side of the character. The real reason people use the character is coming up later.

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

Lukas the Trickster & a return to the drawing board with Bran Redmaw

Imperial Armour 11 may need some updating as far as the rules go, but I have always liked the backstory of Bran Redmaw, and since the book had at least some sort of rules for him, I started working on my model of The Curs'd Lord to lead one of the three Great Companies in my army. However, what I found myself working on would have been fine for some other Wolf Lord, but not for someone about to give in to his inner beast and turn into a monster at any moment.

 I mean, come on, most Ultramarine captains would call that posturing a little excessive.
I expect the torso will make a return in the form of a Wolf Guard pack leader or possibly a Deathwatch Captain, if I feel like thinking outside the box. The arms will probably be used for the final Bran Redmaw model, and someone else was glad to receive the legs...

 Lukas the Trickster, aka the Jackalwolf, is an interesting character, but once again, I didn't really like the way GW's model is posed. Pointing a wolf claw at the sky behind one's head doesn't make a lot of sense. I also thought the doppelgangrel pelt doesn't cover enough of him to be of any use, especially in a challenge. I chose to model and give him an older model of lightning/wolf claw, which I then posed in a way that suggests issuing a challenge. I imagine him saying "May I have this dance?" and then laughing mockingly.

The dramatic pose of the legs works well when the character is canonically arrogant.
I'm still planning to add a battle helm somewhere on his armour, where he can put it on if necessary, and may make his pelt a little longer and more dramatic.

Bjorn the Fell-Handed

 Bjorn is probably my least converted special character by a fair margin. Not only did I use hardly any green stuff, it's actually built using mostly the original, official kit's parts. The biggest change I made was in the base, where I added a few layers of thin plasticard under his left foot to make the pose a little more dynamic. I also added the banner from the Space Wolves Pack kit and attach a couple of Wolf Tail Talismans using fine chain, instead of the larger pelt in the original kit.

 I'm fairly satisfied with the overall paint job. I kept him it pretty clean, to represent the amount of care the Iron Priests would put to upkeeping a Dreadnought of his status. I may paint Murderfang to look more worn down to contrast this, assuming I come up with a way to make the kit look good. I'm not a huge fan of the way that model looks. Of course, this also presents an interesting challenge. We'll see.

 I do like the way his claw turned out. Drybrushing paler from blue works well for frost weapons, especially with the red gems giving it contrast.

Logan Grimnar, the High King of Fenris

Logan Grimnar is one of those cases where GW's own model looked alright, but I still had to make my own, no matter how ambitious the project would become. After all, it couldn't really be my Space Wolves army, if the Chapter Master was a standard model (hmm, I may have just condemned myself to sculpting my own version of Leman Russ).
One of the inspiring thoughts behind the model was the persistent rumour that Logan has turned renegade. I could have gone the obvious route and try to make a model to deny this, but instead, I wanted to intentionally make things a little ambiguous. I attached no purity seals anywhere on the model, and I added a broken Imperial Eagle at his feet, leaving it up to the viewer to decide if he's about to trample over it or if he's defending it to his last breath.

 Since Logan Grimnar is repeatedly mentioned to be the biggest, tallest Space Wolf in the Chapter after Arjac, I wanted the model to reflect this. I added a little bit of green stuff to the bottoms of his armoured boots. The Belt of Russ helps conceal that I also made his midsection a little longer for the same purpose. I also sculpted Grimnar's personal badge on his left leg, and cut off the head from the pelt-apron, since the only wolf's head decoration his armour is mentioned to have is Fellclaw's gilded head, pulling the double duty of a crown and a trophy.

Fellclaw's head was fun to sculpt, as wolf's head generally are. I decided to leave the eye sockets empty to give it a little more sinister look.
The Axe of Morkai is built of a custom-sculpted blade attached to a thunder hammer's haft. To make the weapon look large enough to be two-handed (compared to the one-handed thunder hammers), I also made the haft a little longer by covering a short length of steel wire with green stuff and sculpting a small figure of Morkai to its end. I also replaced the cable with a length of guitar string.

I really wanted his storm bolter to be belt-fed. Fortunately, the Wolf Guard Terminator set provides a belt-fed model, so all that was left was to attach it to the side of the weapon, slap in on his wrist and fill in the gaps with putty (again, a mix of ProCreate and Green Stuff -- I did this part early on).

I'm generally pretty satisfied with how he turned out and hope it will still look good once painted.
See the painted 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