Bloodletters

My painting rules for 2017 have been bent a little (see New Year post here), in that I’ve been painting a load of Antares stuff for Rowan, that isn’t in the tray.  But I have also finished this unit which was in the tray at New Year. They too belong to Rowan and were a combined effort in that he did three and I did the rest, and to his credit, it’s not easy to spot which his three were, even close up.

Bloodletter Unit

These are from the current Games Workshop kit, which was an impulse buy from a little toy and gift shop called Dizzyware in Bingham (I’m sure they could do with your custom if you live that side of Nottingham). I’m not keen on a lot of the current GW ranges, but there’s a lot to like about these, specifically:

• They aren’t burdened with enormous guns, massive helmets, skull ornaments etc etc.
• They aren’t hugely over-muscled, but lithe and swift looking.
• They have a standard bearer and musician (that one on the right is carrying a big wiggly horn – it doesn’t seem to have any valves, so I don’t think he produces music in the normal sense of the word).

Bloodletter Command Group

The banner is based on the Donnie Darko rabbit – after a sarcastic suggestion that I should paint a ‘bunny’ on it. Well, will a Satanic rabbit do? The film one has characters making up the face, which I replaced with generic faces and a skull, otherwise it’s more or less a direct copy, although I wasn’t as successful as making the faces part of the head as I wanted. Probably a lot easier in Photoshop…

More Bloodletters

They are quite similar models, so to give them some variety and stop a Chaos unit looking too orderly, they were painted in a good range of skin tones, from the almost black one at the front to the brighter reds at the back. Their upper body is covered in small lumps, and these were painted in different colours on different models, some bright red, some the same tone as the surrounded skin and some in a sort of bone colour. The glistening red which you can see on some of the hands and weapons is translucent red paint for glass, which is conveniently water based and gives a much more realistic blood look than ordinary red paint. I’ve tried not to go to mad, with just a few dribbles on the weapon blades etc.