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Warhammer – Hey Buddy, Go Flagellate Yourself!

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My apologies for the aggressive but fun title this time around. It was too tempting not to go for! A while back when I was visiting my Dad, he presented me with a box of old metal Flagellants from Warhammer Fantasy he found in the basement. Some inside were painted and some were not. My first thought was, wouldn’t it be fun if I painted one up to compare how I’ve grown as a painter? Of course, its not a fair fight because I knew very little about painting back when I worked on these. I had been painting for a year or two and I had trouble getting any kind of brush control back then because I painted standing up a lot because all of the table surfaces in our basement were too high to sit in a chair and lean against. Who knew that sitting down while painting makes such a big difference?! Anyway, here’s a look at the two.

While prepping this model was a pain because the old metal minis have pokey bits everywhere that are often hard to spot, I was pleasantly surprised how well the face is sculpted. That made it easy to paint and it serves as a nice focal point on the mini. I attempted to make the robes look like a dirty white which worked as well I could have hoped. Its hard because there isn’t much room to smooth the colors out like I would have preferred. On the upside, it does make the mini quicker to paint. This took less than a week in total and I tried to paint it about as well as I could in that time. Lastly, the weapon on this mini is a great example of something that is much easier to paint in TMM than NMM. The spikey balls and chains are so small that its not easy to get the transitions from light to dark that you need for NMM. I went for it but I think doing TMM might have been just as effective and easy. You won’t hear me say that often!

This was a fun little diversion and I hope those of you who like old Warhammer sculpts enjoy this one. I probably painted this fairly close to the end of my time painting Warhammer Fantasy. I went on to work on Lord of the Rings minis for a while and then I stopped painting for roughly 10 years. It will be nice to keep these two minis side by side to remember my painting journey.

I did want to give a shout out to a cool sculpt I saw revealed this week. Black Crow Miniatures, who specialize in busts have released a pretty cool new one. It is Sigrun, a Valkyrie. While it isn’t a miniature I would likely tackle, I think someone out there might so it was worth sharing. I also want to acknowledge that Arnau Lazaro painted this one and he is extremely adept at painting lighter skin tones. I don’t think there is a better place to have pasty skin than in miniature painting right now! He’s single handedly making it cool to not tan.

That’s just about it for me this week. I think I’m likely to get back to work on the Fallout barricade this upcoming week but I also will buy some spray primer so that I can get some of my display projects ready in the coming weeks as the weather permits. I’m also starting to think about future projects and how I might go about improving my skills further. I’m starting to get inspired and to want to improve again but I’m not sure exactly what direction I can and should go in. It should be an interesting problem to work through and when I figure out what I’m doing, I’ll be sure to share it here.

25 thoughts on “Warhammer – Hey Buddy, Go Flagellate Yourself!”

    1. I’m sure I could whip something up! 😉 We’ve come such a long way on basing materials. Using flock to represent dirt just isn’t as good as basing paste and tufts look better than most static grass too. It makes me wonder what the next big innovation will be.

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      2. I can believe it! I have an irrational fear that most natural materials will decompose in my miniatures and dioramas so I avoid them. I need to get over that and use them more because they can work nicely. The tree bark and slate I’ve used in the past are still working just fine too 🙂

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  2. Looks great! Always fun looking back at how you painted at the start, or even just a few years back. It’s amazing how much you can learn given time.

    So will you start an empire army now? 😉

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    1. Thanks, Nic and I completely agree. You don’t always see the growth happening because its slow and steady over time. I had a fairly decent sized Empire “army”, if you can believe it. Whatever the old Warhammer Fantasy Starter was that came with Orcs and Empire. I think I had most of that done on the Empire side. These flagellants were quite possibly the only thing I got done beyond that. I never used them in a game either :/

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      2. We’re probably around the same age then, I would guess 🙂 I had a lot of free time back then is all I can say haha! It was a nice accomplishment in hindsight.

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      4. That is good that you got to do a lot of gaming and that you’re still getting painting done. I mostly paint and never game it feels like. Though part of that is from playing too many video games 🙂

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  4. Great to see the comparison from where you started to where you are now, I think the fact you couldn’t blend so much on the robes helps give a dirty look befitting the model.
    Great looking bust, and paler skin tone.

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    1. And what an inglorious beginning it was! I do agree with you that the lack of blending works here though I think the subject (dingy religious fanatics) bailed me out too. Glad to hear you like the bust too. The sculpt and the painting are impressive!

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  5. Well, I’ve taken a screen shot of the page so that, when you need reminding of it, I can point out that you said “I think doing TMM might have been just as effective and easy”! 🙂 It’s really good to see how your painting has developed with time! 🙂 Of course, time spent painting the model is a factor, so if the original model had taken the same time to paint as the new one then that’s a direct comparison, but I’d guess that you spent less time on the older figure (on the basis of that’s what I’d have done)!

    I’m not a fan of busts but that is very well done!

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    1. Haha, you’re welcome to it, John! Smaller scale minis (these are 28mm unless I’m mistaken) are easier to get a good result with in TMM. I would think that is especially true at the scales you’re painting.

      Part of the reason the old model looks so bad is that I used some horrible techniques and put way to heavy of paint on the mini. A lot of the original detail has been lost as a result. I’m sure I spent way less time on it but I had such flawed techniques which are fundamental to good painting so the mini never had a chance!

      I think busts are an acquired taste that I’ve finally acquired. Having said that, it must be good if it gets a Just Needs Varnish approval! 🙂

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  6. Interesting that you were trying to paint eyes and also text on a page. Both can be tricky for beginners. But that’s the thing about beginners, they often don’t know what not to do. Looks like you hadn’t discovered washes yet either?
    I like the skin tones on the face and the wood sign on his back on the new one. That is definitely a fun exercise. I have a mini that is close to the earliest mini I own, which I keep thinking I’ll tackle someday.
    That bust is really nice. The artist did a great job of capturing the pink tones of the pale flesh. I’m curious to see how they paint other skin tones as well.

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      1. I did some thinking on this and research on this. I started back into the hobby painting Mansions of Madness minis which are absolutely awful sculpts. I sold my copy of MoM to a friend that I used to work with so I don’t own any of those any longer. I do have some Warhammer minis I painted in that era though. The main one being a TMM Stormcast, if you can believe it!

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    2. You’re not going to be believe this but I wasn’t even using paintbrushes much back then. I applied paint using toothpicks… I had no brush control so using those helped me apply the paint more “precisely” if you can believe it. That is also why I never progressed to washes and things like that. It was like the Dark Ages of painting for me, truly!

      I think you should definitely give this exercise a try one day. Its fun and pretty much a guaranteed pick me up. There’s no way you won’t outshine or improve upon the old mini 🙂

      Glad to hear you like the bust too. If you want to see more of Arnau Lazaro’s work, you can see it here: https://www.puttyandpaint.com/Arnau_Lazaro. He would certainly be amongst the top painters in the hobby in my book and many others. Your employer, AK Interactive, has published a book on painting by him and I want it. It happens to be $125ish and I’m on a tight budget so it isn’t likely to happen in the near term though.

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    1. Thanks, mate! I want people to know that you can start terrible and end up somewhere much better if you keep at it. The 10 year break probably didn’t help all that much truthfully 🙂

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