The Book

Recently I've spent handful of hours with my nose inside Emperor's Will, an awe-inspiring compilation book of Warhammer 40.000 artwork. This book is one that every enthusiastic 40k hobbyist should check out if they wish to dwell deeper in to the dark universe. The book is full of amazing, mind-opening images of paintings and illustrations made by Games Workshop's art department.

I'm not going to write another review of this tome, but if you're interested of one, I'd then recommend checking out Tears of Envy's blog.

The reason for me mentioning this book is that it has been inspiring me a lot lately, especially in my latest hobby related activity. The book also works as a proxy, reminding me of that moment I experienced the enlightenment and started re-organizing my thoughts regarding my creative side.

Speaking of creativity, here's the latest of my drawings, another member of the Imperial Inquisition...

Water colours, W&N inks, white acrylic paint and black ink pencil

Rifleman, veteran, devotee, religious fanatic, scum. These strong words shall tell his story for now. There's more to follow, I just need to finish Captain Gaga first, the one that has been lying in my drawer for too long...

O'yeah, I happened to visit my town's framing shop couple of weeks ago and for my delight they had a nice collection of painting stuff there too, one of them being nice collection of Winsor & Newton's inks. Of course I had to grab couple of them pots to take home with me so that I could finally try 'em out. I must say, they worked out pretty well, definitely something I'll try out in some of my next miniature projects...

The Last Tour On Earth

World's at end... or is it really?
I sure hope those Inca indians were just shitting with us back in the day ;)
2011 was a wonderful year, but 2012 will definitely also be (spiky) Rats year!

So, as this year is taking its last breath, I like to leave you with this WIP shot.
(too drunk to write any more text x)

 May you all have a Spiky New Year!!!

-okkiW

Jolly Christmas MMXI

It's a bit dark Christmas in Finland this year. Usually we have lots of snow by this time of year but not today.

Never the less, we from Spiky Rat Pack would like to wish merry and peaceful Christmas to all of you our trusty trackers. And what a Christmas it would be without traditional Finnish Christmas special...

Part I

Part II

- izeColt

Elijah

Let's continue with 40k watercolour paintings...

Elijah (Watercolours, white acrylic paint and black ink pencil)

This is Elijah, Imperial Inquisition's huntsman. He's armed with a massive greatsword, Daemon Cleaver, and an ancient, xenos-origin handgun. Elijah's body has not been physically adepted and he needs a special powerglove to wield his huge sword.

Elijah is a possessor of a rare gift, the Sight of Chaos, also known as the Warpsight. With this power Elijah has gained certain reputation amongst Inquisition; His skill to wade - dream - in the Warpstreams makes him very talented hunter of daemons and personalities carrying ruinous powers. Of course Inquisition has learned to use this edge in their course.

How Elijah got blessed by the skill, Inquisition falls silent...

Stone Grey Soil

The model is now primed and assembled for photoshoot. I used zenithal  priming for this project. Basicly it means, that I first primed the whole model with black primer, that was then followed by thin white layer from 45 degree angle with airbrush. This technigue is nicely described in Massive Voodoo's blog here.

The scenic base was also inspired from the bases that you can see in that wonderful blog, just please check it out. Lots of good tutorials and nicely painted miniatures there!

If you wonder about that little rabbit out there, it's a thing that got there because I wanted to add something into that combosition and Ian is always sending me these cryptic and funny little poems about dogs and rabbits when we chat through e-mail, so I felt that little rabbit was a perfect thing to add there=) It balances the things nicely now.

I first coloured that wooden blog with some paint but wasn't happy with the result until i figured out to use black shoe polish for colouring! Gives nice deep colour with waxy feel. Perfect! ;)

and little music to go with...

Floating Bedrocks

The Miller-Project has again taken big steps ahead, as the winter grows darker here in the Northlands. Im now 80% finished with the sculpting, so I think I'l be moving into painting phase next week.

I don't want to spoil everything yet, so I just leave you with one WIP shot from the scenic base I just finished.

Here's some really good music to go with this update.

Akvarelli III

Here's my third drawing made with watercolours, white acrylic paint and black ink pen, inspired by the grim and dark Warhammer 40k Universe. This piece is influenced by Jakob Rune Nielsen's servo-skull collector seen in one of mr. Nielsen's 40k wizpimp sketches on his wonderful blog miniaTEXTures. There's some obvious hints from William Shakespeare's play Hamlet too. I won't bother quoting the famous phrase and instead will leave you with the drawing...

(watercolors, white acrylic paint and black ink pen)

The scheme follows the two previous painings. This crook-backed oldster is inspecting his latest finding, wondering in his twisted mind what'd be the perfect price for such a fine piece...