Ann's Immaterium

Mostly physical culture but also writing, gaming, and other dark procrastinations

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Spiny Back Poxwalker

I’ve been at it hammer and tongs continuing work on my poxwalkers.  I completed another one a few days ago, so I now have only five left to finish off the Dark Imperium mob of twenty.  If I pull it off, then I can put the stamp of completion on them for the complete-a-squad portion of Azazel’s March painting challenge.

We continue the tradition of orange pants/green skin.

I decided this time to go with a weapon that is fairly “fresh” in that it was freshly yanked out of some hapless rhino or perhaps an unfortunate daemon engine’s pulsing maw.  (“Open wide and say, ‘Arrraghh!’”)

I finished off the spikes with a little bright silver because I envisioned that they were freshly driven through the flamer as an afterthought, right before the random plague-marine-in-charge-of-the-group-of-poxwalkers-in-the-yellow-and/or-orange-pants sent them wandering off in search of trouble.*

I originally went for black boils because I wanted this poxwalker to be a bit muted, not quite as polychromatic as some of the others.  But I found this didn’t show up very well (or at all) so I tried gradually lighter shades of gray until I was more or less satisfied with the results.

Tried a little subtle heat shading on the flamer.

Shiny Back sort of reminds me a bit of a tyranid with its chitinous right arm, and the spines makes me think of a kroot’s spiny crest.  I hope to get the yellow-and-red twin done this weekend.  I’ve made a good start so my chances of success are pretty high.  I’ve also done a little batch work on the remaining four poxwalkers with the idea of at least vaguely threatening success at completing the squad by the end of March.

I have also gotten a little more paint on one of the Blood Bowl rotters, and I dug out an old, metal miniature that I have had sitting around for a pretty long time now.  It was a bit box find at my local Santa Cruz game store, and originally came in the same Fantasy Lords box as this guy.

Apparently my unpainted white-primed worthy below left is/was Mxomycetes, Duke of the Mire, according to the good people at Grenadier Models.  Shouldn’t be too hard to knock out and if I am able to do so, then I’ll submit our royal friend for Azazel’s genderless/gender ambiguous portion of his March painting challenge.  It’ll mostly come down to when my game store gets a pot of Dechala Lilac into my hot little hands, so we’ll see.

Still on the bench but all saying, “Put me in coach!”

I wanted to put Dave’s Blood Bowl dwarf pictures in this time and talk about the game we played, but when I downloaded the pictures from my camera and messed about with them, I found they had too many shadows and in general I didn’t like them.  We agreed to take some more the next time we got together.  So I’m not sure what the next post will bring, but with what I’m working on there is a good possibility it’ll involve more Death Guard fodder.  As for the dwarves they are currently on neglected-but-not-forgotten status. **

On a personal/non-Death Guard note, I started school this week and am working on a master’s degree in creative writing.  It is proving fun so far and I hope to learn a lot over the next couple of years.

 

*  I sent the pictures of Spiny Back to my friend, Dave, who said, “OK, so basically he has the vertical exhaust pipe from a Peterbuilt truck with spikes stuck through it.”  I like the way he thinks!  That is way more fun than saying it is “a flamer.”

** I also have a number of nature pictures, that I’ve taken in my travels, I’d like to post.  I’ve been saving them for when I’m busy with school and work and don’t have anything to post of my painting or games.

Nurgle image 125 wide

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33 responses to “Spiny Back Poxwalker”

    • Thank you. I have another done that I really need to get some pictures up of. Sadly, since I started my MFA program my painting has evaporated faster than a dab of Nurgling Green left on a dry palette. I only write this while taking a short break having just completed one of three assignments I need to get done in the next two days. One down, two to go.

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        • I’m in a creative writing MFA program. I’m currently taking a required literary criticism course. I’ve been trying to figure out a way to develop a variant of Russian Formalism based on Nurgle-based tropes to use for my close readings of two assigned texts I’m working through right now: Melissa Bank’s _The Girls’ Guide to Hunting and Fishing_ (great read) and E.M. Forster’s _A Room with a View_ (very elegantly and wonderfully written but I find I’m not getting into that one as much).*

          ______________________

          * There is a 97.357% chance that I’m joking about the Nurgle part, which also happens to be the exact statistical probability of catching the Russian Pox, when engaging in Nurgle Formalism, where your spirit becomes trapped in a rotting corpse and you helplessly watch yourself from the inside as you critique Imperial-based texts autonomously, ignoring such heresies as historical context, authorial intent, etc. until one’s head falls off.

          p.s. Thank you! May the Grandfather’s Pus be with you as well, my friend!

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            • Heh, yes, that is a good plan. If you stay away from practicing too much Nurgle Formalism, you’ll probably be fine, but with your book reviews in general and your recent critiques of Lovecraft-based items, I shudder to think what nameless, shocking, cosmic horrors will be coming your way. I hope that it doesn’t happen that one day I log on only to see that the-book-review-guy-who-has-an-interesting-blog-but-scares-me-a-little-because-he-looks-a-lot-like-one-of-the-drill-sergeants-from-the-1980’s-I-tried-not-to-get-noticed-by-who-was-kind-of-scary-thank-god-I-wasn’t-in-his-platoon has (along with his blog) disappeared in a polychromatic blaze of outraged tropes and tentacles. Hey, you know, I think “Tropes and Tentacles” might be a great name for an anthology. I wonder if I should start a Kickstarter and try to make it happen?

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  8. Lovely work Ann – if such a word can be used in relation to such a plague-ravaged monstrosity! I reckon you’ll get the squad done – go girl!
    Congrats on starting the Masters as well – what a hugely challenging but rewarding thing to take on! I wonder if your writing will inspire your painting, or vice versa? Looking forward to finding out 🙂

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    • I’m not sure about the painting/writing inspiration, but it seems not completely out of the bounds of possibility. Perhaps for my genre class down the road I’ll write a sweeping romance between two young poxwalkers, but there are complications from the plague-marine-in-charge-of-the-group-of-poxwalkers-in-the-yellow-and/or-orange-pants, who is jealous, and an unfortunate love triangle forms. Meanwhile, they know their love is doomed because the latest Black Legion shenanigans are heating up because of the upcoming boxed set release, and Mortarion is supporting this by sending hordes of poxwalker reinforcements knowing (being the highly intelligent primarch that he is) that the only way to make sure your rules continue to be good and that you get regular model refreshes is to always have your factor in the current storyline.

      Thank you, I’m still picking away at the squad though work/school has slowed me down somewhat. I do hope to have Spiny Back’s twin done soon if all goes well.

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    • Many thanks. I know I’ll eventually get them done. So far as getting them done by the end of March, I think that is sadly off the table, though I do almost have Spiny Back’s twin almost done. Grad school is turning out to be a lot of work, which of course I expected. I should probably get my priorities straight and get the painting done and only then work on my schoolwork, but it seems that I have a procrastinating nature and sadly have been doing it the other way around!

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      • Yeah, there’s something about poxwalkers that just makes them slow to paint. Dunno what it is but the number of times I’ve decided to bash through mine and get them done, and I know I could do it with similar models but somehow those ones just end up back on the desk not making any progress. As you say, we’ll get them done in the end (and be all the more proud to have succeeded!). Hope your course is going well 🙂

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  10. “Here we see a typical example of the Western, or Common, Spiny Back Poxwalker. It is easily distinguished from the rarer Eastern Spiny Back Poxwalker by it’s primarily green skin/chitin colouration, compared to the reddish tones of the Eastern variety.”

    The title just sounded too much like a bird name, and I couldn’t resist 😉 It looks great, adding a bit more variation in via the less rusted metal, and having some nice variety on the Model itself between the pants, skin, spines, boils, and fluids.

    “plague-marine-in-charge-of-the-group-of-poxwalkers-in-the-yellow-or-orange-pants” Is a technical term, and his official title. The Tallymen hate him, because he makes their reports take so much longer to write up.

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    • Haha, perfect! I like how you think. Perhaps there are people who go out and “poxwalk” and call themselves “poxwalkers” in the sense that they take pictures of, catalog, and otherwise document zombies and poxwalkers with all of their multivarious diseases, mutations, and varieties of pants? If “birders” can do it with “birds” why not? Certainly seems like it would be a favored activity with plaguebearers, and I’m sure it has lost the Death Guard no end of battles when their cunningly summoned mob of daemons says, “Screw battle, I’m going poxwalking!”

      As for our marine friend with the long-winded and somewhat officiously pedantic name, he (no gender ambiguity here, thank you very much, Ma’am and/or Sir!) told me that his title is really “plague-marine-in-charge-of-the-group-of-poxwalkers-in-the-yellow-and/or-orange-pants,” if I would prefer not to condescend to getting it right in the future that he might condescend to … well, I blush to say what exactly but let’s just say it involves blight grenades and tentacles. So I made the edit to the blog post. Those Death Guard can be awfully touchy and morose for people who are supposed to be happily enjoying the blessings of the merry Grandfather.

      Yes, I’m sure you are right about the Tallymen. Especially because our plague-marine-in-charge-of-the-group-of-poxwalkers-in-the-yellow-and/or-orange-pants will not brook people mucking about and shortening his title or turning it into an acronym like PMICOGOPITYAOOP or POOP. When the tallyemen are letting their tentacles down and getting drunk, I wonder if they watch re-runs of Monty Python and make allusions?

      “He has a wife you know.”

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        • … and furthermore, now that I think about it, I’d say given your obvious lexical, grammatical, etc. etc. talents I’m sure that my friends the plaguebearers would offer you the rusty sword of command over a mob at the very least. Maybe even an internship working for that daemon with the old-timey quill and the the enormous scroll! Heck, who am I kidding? I bet within a week you’d be running the place! 🙂

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    • Thanks, Pete. That was what I was shooting for, dirty but without a bunch of obscured detail. I have noticed on some of my poxwalkers and some of the plaguebearers that I scooped the grim and blood on so strong in places some of the detail was lost or it just seemed like too much of a good thing. So for the last few I’ve been trying a somewhat more restrained approach.

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    • Thank you, John. The degree is something I’ve wanted to do for a couple of decades now. It was the eventual plan when I got my B.A. back in the mid-90’s. I slowly saved up over the years, because I didn’t think going into debt for a creative writing degree was a good idea for me, and finally after all of this time I realized I was in a position both financially and with my other responsibilities to make it happen.

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