Tuesday Update 1

Happy Tuesday!

Here is a little update about what I have been working on last week! Most of my time went into painting this Mandrake, some of you saw me do parts of it on the livestream. It's done in the pictures already except for the base and I am working on the video guide that will release here soon! Next up I will probably work on some Kroot - mainly focusing on Volumetric highlighting on organic minis/creatures.

Another thing I have been working on is finding minis I want to paint up for Golden Demon. Preparing for golden demon starts wayyyyy before you even put the first layers of paint on. And even before you cut the mini out of the sprue. It's actually crazy how much time goes into preparing. First of all we need a good idea – and that doesn't just mean figuring out which mini you want to paint, ideally you also have a really great idea. Alex' diorama showed that.

So I am looking at all kinds of artworks...thinking of iconic scenes from codexes, books or other sources of lore. Once you have the general idea down, it's time to find a proper plinth that will fit the proportions of your entry and present it in the best light possible. I got to admit I did not have a great idea yet for something that would remotely come close to the creativity of some of the slayersword winners in the past few years, but I decided on three categories that I want to do entries for.

Two of them will be the prestigious single mini categories, that are traditionally entered a lot and produce a tons of great entries each year, so that will be interesting and a hard competition that should be a great way to gauge where my competition painting abilities stand an where I need to up my game.

And one category will be more relaxed, at least I hope so, especially since it is a newer category and noone knows quite what to exect yet, which is the necromunda category and I plan to enter a squad.

So, I have decided on the minis I want to enter, which is the Herald of Decay that I will convert to carry a giant bell instead of the scythe and my 40k single entry will be Azrael, because I absolutely love the pose of the character and in combination with the watcher in the dark that comes with it can be composed into a really nice scene on a fitting base. The idea is to minimally alter the figure, make it more sleek and dropping a lot of the cluttered folds on his upper body and make the banner longer and more wavy...and most of all sand it flat so I can put my own version of a freehand on. And finally, I want to enter a squad of Van Saar, not converted, just painted to the best of my ability.

As you can see, none of the crazy over the top ideas that dominate the top ranks of the golden demons lately, but I want to see how far subtle changes can go in the competition these days and I also don't have the energy to pour a ton of hours into coming up with something unique that has never been there – ultimately I just want to paint and not have it feel like „hard work“.

Last but not least I thought about painting up a Night Lord from the Nightmares Box Set, but I decided against it – I will rather use the bits to build a squad around my winged Night Lords champion from a while ago (and if I still have the time to paint that up I will also enter it into golden demon!)