Another poxwalker enters the painted ranks, this one being number sixteen of twenty.  A classic example of the Red or Eastern Spiny Backed Poxwalker as coined/pointed out by that Perspicacious Poxwalkerer and Taxonomist, Alexis West.  As she points out in the comments appearing with the post here, this worthy is the “rarer Eastern Spiny Poxwalker … [with its] reddish tones.”

The trend of yellow clothes/red skin continues.

I was originally going for something where the spines/horns/pointy bits were a bit more set off from the rest of the hide, color-wise, but decided that perhaps I was happy with how it turned out more or less.  I find that once they are done, poxwalkers sort of grow on me, and my energies turn toward the next experiment and it is best to close the book and let events take their unnatural course.  After all, what is another soulless minion in a horde of the damned, even if its horns are or aren’t heavily contrasted with the skin in a way satisfying to even the most discriminating warmaster with a eye for color?*

I might add some color to that tan on tan plant…

A funny thing about the yellow pants (and it somehow keeps happening with this mob) … I put quite a bit of effort into the pants and by the end I’m covering up all of my hard work with goop, gore and brown ink.  Then I resolve to not put so much work in to the next poxwalker’s yellow clothes and then I do!

… but probably not!

Another view of the formerly yellow pants.  I got particularly carried away here with the ink, blood, toner, sand, and who knows what else.  Oh well, it is all good though because the next time I paint one of the red/yellow poxwalkers I won’t put so much work into the clothes.  Did the weapon pretty much the same as before, though I went for a slightly darker effect with more black with a little brown ink as opposed to the converse, which is what I did on the other Spiny Back.  A pretty subtle difference, I think.

So I’m in the last month of my second MFA class.  I plan on getting another poxwalker done in the interregnum between the end of this class and the start of the next one.**  Also sent some stuff I recently wrote to a few magazines, as well as a poem I wrote over 20 years ago to the school magazine, which made the mistake of telling me that consider previously published work.

* One is of course aware that poxwalkers, strictly speaking are not ‘soulless.’  As stated in the heretical Lexicanum, “The jolly humour of Nurgle is such that they’ve remain cruelly conscious and aware of all that occurs with them, souls of victims trapped in their dead bodies and with a rictus grin they stagger out in search of living meat to feast on.”

Always good (for a Chaos God) to have a sense of humor, I guess, even (or perhaps especially?) at the expense of others.  Better than dour old Khorne, incomprehensible Tzeentch, and most especially the Dark Prince, who seems really great at first, sort of like getting to eat your favorite food and then you find out you are in hell and all you will be doing for eternity is eating your favorite food.  Makes Happy Grandfather seem pretty good by comparison.

** I was going to say “or maybe two!” but that would be sheer hubris.  Of course any good Chaos Lady would just go for it and say “It’s only hubris if you fail,” and upon failing execute any and all involved or who witnessed it, including any star systems where the populations may or may not have heard someone allude to it in a redacted transmission.  But who has time for that?  So I’ll just stick with the one.

Works Cited

“Poxwalker.”  wh40k.lexicanum.com.  Lexicanum, 1 March 2018.  Web.  12 July 2019.

West, Alexis. A Taxonomic Discussion of Poxwalkers Common to the Fourteenth Legion After the Death of Pertinax up to the Ascension of Regalianus the Usurper: A Short Study. [REDACTED], 2018 CE

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.