I finished Work-in-Progress (Nurgle Alert!) Poxwalker #18 the other day so MAGPPXWLKER-XVII has a special friend now.* Despite my glacial pace, I’m currently in real danger of actually finishing up the Dark Imperium contagion-zombie mob.** Whatever happens, I’ve completed a little “crap I already own” for the April painting challenge and I’m feeling pretty good about that!
Toad and I sort of like how this picture came out.
I started work on this poxwalker a long time ago and managed to drop it on the floor during one of my painting sessions. This broke the tip off the large, overhead tentacle. I set the miniature aside, possibly in disgust, and forgot about it for a year or so. When I got back to work on it again, I had completely forgotten about the broken tentacle tip until I chanced to notice it once more. As unpleasant surprises go, it was the gift that kept on giving!
I thought about maybe trying to whittle the offending appendage down a bit or repairing it with green stuff. In the end I decided to rummage through my bits and see if I could make lemonade out of rotten lemons. After several false tries (I really wish the hook had worked out) I ended up cutting a spear point-looking thing off the end of a chain bit from an old chaos space marine biker sprue and affixing it as you see here.
Hanging out, comparing mechanical arms probably, with #17.
I forget exactly how I painted the tentacles on #18, but I think I started out as I usually do with some Agrax Earthshade and maybe some Athonian Camoshade and/or thinned down Nuln Oil. What I did do differently was after the washes I applied several layers of Skeletal Horde Contrast. Then I went to do some tentacle highlight work, like I did on #17, when I realized that I didn’t really need to. I could have but the washes in conjunction with the contrast paint brought the brown tentacles to a state that I was satisfied with for some random zombie. As a final step, I used some Basilicanum Grey Contrast in the recesses between the tentacles.
The lighter red ventral tentacles were painted with Blood Angels Red Contrast and then highlighted with various shades of red up through Wild Rider Red. Then I tied them together with a mix of Blood for the Blood God, Lahmian Medium and old Baal Red I still have hanging around.
The darker ventral tentacle was painted with Flesh Tearers Red Contrast and then washed with Glossy Nuln Oil. For the ventral area in general I used more Glossy Nuln Oil to impart some shine to the recessed areas and Minitaire Satin Coat where I wanted shine but didn’t want to add more color.
Might have to try Wudugast’s blue maggots on Poxwalker #20 perhaps.
I haven’t quite decided what else I want to finish this month. I could go for broke and perhaps finish Poxwalker #19, though I also have a trio of Etsy bugbears with maces and shields that I quite favor too. So many choices and the challenge deadline of May 3rd will be here before you know it. I’ll have to decide soon.
* Perhaps a good, Death Guard name for the latest addition to my Indolent Forces might be Mechanical Arm that Works Kind of Crappily Somewhat Orange Poxwalker #18 or (MAWKCSOPXWLKR-XVIII)? What it lacks in clarity I think it makes up for in pedantry.
** I put the Dark Imperium primaris space marines versus Death Guard boxed set on pre-order and picked it up the day it released in mid-2017. I then immediately put together and started painting the poxwalkers, but got distracted by plaguebearers. (I was assured by several people this can happen to anyone.) I finished the first two poxwalkers in early September 2017. Given that I’ve not only finished #18 but have actually started eyeing #19, there is a real chance I might actually finish the full mob of 20 within the next three years! Not too shabby.
I’ll probably paint the six easy-to-build poxwalkers too at some point (I love the idea of a grenade flail!), but I wonder if I should even bother with the 150 or so more I have that people have given me over the years or sold to me for a nominal sum like, “Here’s 20 of these useless dudes I’ll never use; buy me a Coke or something?”
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Nice work Ann! The guts on this one seem very fresh compared to the other. They both have great coloring, and I’m not sure I can pick a fave. Luckily you don’t have to, and can use them both!
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I detect a certain gut “freshness” as well. One thing I’ve learned doing these guys is to try and make judicious use of satin gloss. Don’t slather it everywhere (and don’t slather blood everywhere either; I have a strong tendency to want to over do that and the Typhus Corrosion) and remember that less can often be more but only keep going when it is good enough. However, even though I’ve done 19 of these guys now (I finished #19 for the April painting challenge) I have to admit that while I have a few recipes, I don’t have much of a method for doing the guts. Mostly I just tinker around until it seems like that whatever I’m doing is either not making the miniature better or even making it worse. If there is one thing that I’ve perhaps learned with poxwalkers, maybe, is to better tell when I’ve reached that point. I don’t know if it is true but I’d like to think so.
Another thing I’ve learned is that no matter how much I tell myself to not put a bunch of work making their clothes perfect and then muck them up so you can’t really tell that I put effort into keeping their rags neat when I was base coating, I still seem to do it every time and then say, “I won’t do it again next time!” and then I do. I guess at this point given that I’m an old Chaos Lady set in her ways (though still possessing almost all of my teeth and both pairs of gums including the inner, movable ones!) I should probably just accept that is how it is going to be and not worry about it.
I don’t know if I have a favorite. I think maybe it is the orange one simply because I like the novelty (for my guys) of the orange skin — I think I might try and do something similar for #20 — and I like its ventral guts better than on the green one. I am fond of the juxtaposition of the purple and green skin though so it isn’t like I don’t like him.
Thank you for the nice words. It is getting late here so I should probably sign off for now. Plan on continuing work on the painting round-up with the idea of getting it out by sometime on Monday at the latest if at all possible.
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Ooh, he’s grim! Not my favourite poxwalker model of the set but I really like what you’ve done with him. The finish line is in sight!
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Thank you. 🙂 Yep, I’m thinking that I’m going to finish the mob in June. I’m still undecided what to do with the plague marines and their armor. I’ve debated various things, but so far I haven’t figured out what I want to do yet.
Hmm … you know, the funny thing about these poxwalkers, is while I don’t dislike the sculpts, none of them exactly wow me either, including this one. They aren’t horrible but they aren’t great either; sort of what one might expect (including the two sets of ten with the same poses) for minions in the boxed sets. Still, I don’t think it would have cost them anything to make the poses a little more dynamic, perhaps. I do like what they did, for the most part, with the boxed set plague marines though.
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I don’t own any of them, but I have liked what I saw. Then someone kindly reminds me how many dupes there are. Still, I feel like I could make decent use of them as bits.
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Yes, I do agree they could be useful for bits. They do have a lot of interesting tidbits; in some ways I think the parts are worth more than the sum but for something that is supposed to be chaff in games I guess the sculpts are ok. I’m glad to be done with poxwalkers for awhile though. Eventually I’ll probably get to that Easy to Build pack of 6 (I already have them built and sitting with a bunch of other crap in a blue bin somewhere) but so far as Death Guard goes, I think I probably should work on the plague marines — both the Dark Imperium ones plus some ancient ones that the owner of the pig demon gave me.
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Nice work Ann, it must be Pox walker day for me as I have been looking at Wudugast’s earlier on !!
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Thank you, Pat. Yes, I’ve noticed it too; there does seem to be a lot of poxwalker painting going on out there lately. I really like Wudugast’s poxwalkers too, especially the conversions, head swaps and the like.
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I am sure Nurgle approves. Some “sick” painting skills you have Ann.
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Thank you. I certainly hope the Grandfather approves of my humble efforts. Of the Chaos gods, he does seem the easiest to genuinely please. I’d hate to be the poor person, for example, who thinks they can make Khorne happy. He seems the type who is always “happy” by being angry, sort of like that cartoon dog, Ren Hoek. (“I don’t think you’re happy enough!”) Then you have Tzeentch, who has so many plans within plans, I’m not even sure he (“his” gender is probably plan-based so who really knows?) has any idea if he is happy or not (probably can’t figure it out), and as for Slaanesh, if the Dark Prince seems happy (he mostly seems brooding to me) then it is probably best to run for it. Yep, give me good, old uncomplicated Nurgle any day. 🙂
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Papa surely is easy to please🙂matched against the others.
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Oh yes, that is so true! He’s the only one who seems to always look on the bright side of life! 🙂
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Nearly lost my breakfast looking at this – so therefore you’ve definitely done great! 🙂 I really like how you’ve managed the blend between the mechanical and the organic.
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Excellent. A breakfast almost lost is another minor victory won, a pawn push for Nurgle, if you will, in the Great Game. Thank you for the kind words. I hope to get #19 done before the end of the challenge, along with an Etsy bugbear.
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Nicely disgusting – and so close to the finish line now, too!
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Thanks, Azazel. Yep, I’m crawling toward the finish line … not much further now … *loses another fingernail* …
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These look great, Ann.
I think that not painting the rim of the base in the usual black was a great idea here. I find it draws the eye down the figure, and then inevitably you end up staring at those lovely ‘guts!’
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Thank you. I started out painting my daemons with that painted ring and continue doing so out of a sense of wanting base continuity for my forces. I’m glad to read that not painting the rim in this case ended up being a good thing artistically as well.
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I love the richness and range of colour and tone that you’ve managed on all of your ‘PXWLKRs’, and this one is no exception – really nice work Ann!
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Thank you, Alex. I’m glad you like good, old MAWKCSOPXWLKR-XVIII. I found it kind of fun to paint and I like how it turned out for some reason better than the other one. Maybe it was something to do with the unplanned orange bits, I don’t know.
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The frog is scary enough but those poxwalkers! Great work my friend!
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Thank you. Toad will be glad to know you were slightly frightened by his vert visage. One effect, I’ve noticed, of hanging out with the powerful is it makes you feel powerful yourself, by reflection perhaps, and it makes him sad when people are duly frightened of his amphibian awesomeness. 🙂
I’ve also noticed this too with the bits box skeletal snake, for what it is worth.
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Very nice- can never have too many poxwalkers imo….
Cheers,
Pete.
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Thanks, Pete. That is too true; especially back in the days when you didn’t need reinforcement points to create more poxwalkers, eh?
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This seems to me a most gruesome combination of colours! Others would maybe have written “well done” 🙂 Good progress though! Bugbears next – no point in hurrying the poxwalkers!
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Hi John. Thank you. I’m working now on the green one with the big mallet and sporting a back-and-orange great coat. I’m not quite sure yet what I want to do with the other colors. The coat obscures a lot of the zombie so mostly it is the tentacles. I have some ideas but mostly I am stalling and fiddling around with the great coat and the mallet.
Yes, you are right, no point in hurrying the poxwalkers now after all this time. I’m thinking that since I started them in June 2017, finishing them in June 2020 might be the thing. So for now in addition to the mallet walker, I added a bugbear with a mace and shield (actually all three of them have maces and shields come to think of it) to the mix.
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Wow, you’re making terrific progress here. It’s quite fitting that it has taken a global pandemic to get you to finish off these minions of the lord of contagion.
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Heh, yeah, I agree that there is a certain irony though in my defense I’ve been “making progress” aka “maybe working on a poxwalker five minutes a month” even before the pandemic, but it is true the stay-at-home thing has caused me to start doing a lot of things differently and picking up threads that I’ve dropped along the way. Been working more on writing lately too or rather, taking advantage of the increased free time to study writing more and read some interesting books beyond just my usual hour or so a night for reading before I go to sleep.
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Just goes to show how you can make two figures look very different. Nicely done Ann and well done on making such good progress with your challenge! 😊
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Thank you. Heh, yeah, I set the bar pretty high didn’t I getting one figure done. 🙂 I hope to finish a second poxwalker before the end of the challenge, though I’m thinking I’m going to save #20 for June since I started the 20 zombie mob in June 2017. There seems a certain rightness and symmetry in getting them done in June, 2020. I wonder how long it’ll take me to get the rest of the Chaos portion of Dark Imperium done? I think I might work on the bloat drone next, since it has been sitting about 60-70% done for a year or so now. I’m hoping to have the box done (not counting the Primaris guys of course, which I’m debating either getting rid of or painting them as Heresy-era Death Guard) by June, 2050.
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