Rune's Slow-grow Cogfort Army

[RuneBrush]

After painting up my third army this year for Blackout, I decided that I was going to take the next year continuing to push my brush work and doing one-off and skirmish sized projects.  That sort of went out the window when I went to Warhammer Achievements 🤦‍♂️  The sheer amount of hobby inspiration you get from attending an event where people have really heavily themed armies is amazing and since then I've come away pondering creating an army themed around a Cogfort.

One appeal of doing this is that it will actually tick off a huge number of things that are on my hobby bucketlist.  First and foremost it will finally give me a Duardin army.  I've wanted to have a heavily Dwarf themed army almost since I got into the hobby - even my username is Dwarf themed, yet I've barely a dozen painted bearded folk to my name...  It will also give me an Order army, leaving me Destruction to go.

At the present time, very little has been written about Cogforts which makes it a rich environment for conversions and weird off the wall ideas (to the point Realms at War are now themeing their 2020 event around the idea).

So, the other day I picked up the Cities of Sigmar battletome and then a Start Collecting Greywater Fastness box...

Here's my first test going for a NMM effect on the beard

[RuneBrush]

I did a couple of other tests (I'll update the initial post with them when I take a picture) and decided to stick with purple, but going for a more classic 'Eavy Metal style highlighting.  This has the added benefit that I'm not trying to learn where to place NMM highlights - plus I also underestimated how small the models are to do NMM...

So here's the first batch started.  I've still got to put some white highlights on and push the shadows with some black, but overall fairly happy with it.  I may need to mix up a batch of the initial highlight colour as it does have a tenancy to dry out fairly quickly (the disadvantage of having a lot of white in), but that depends on what else I end up doing purple across the army.

[Rhivan]

I'm really enjoying the far right helmet it almost looks like a Crystal. 

[Fulcanelli]

I love your purple, shiny and intense.
A side question: do you'll paint heads separately from the bodies, for this unit?

[RuneBrush]

19 hours ago, Rhivan said:

I'm really enjoying the far right helmet it almost looks like a Crystal. 

Thanks - that's the finish they'll all end up with (providing it works out OK!), the effect should be a bit more pronounced too as I've still some shading and white highlights to add.

2 hours ago, Fulcanelli said:

I love your purple, shiny and intense.
A side question: do you'll paint heads separately from the bodies, for this unit?

Thank you!

Keeping the head separate tends to vary depending upon a couple of things - primarily how awkward it is to get access to everything and secondly if the head is vastly a different colour.  On these models, the beards will be partly obscured by the hand cannons they're holding, so it makes it a little easier to keep them separate.  I tend to do this if I'm painting a display piece too, unless that model's head is molded into the body (quite often you get this with Nurgle models).

[RuneBrush]

The last weekend before Christmas tends to be either fairly busy (thus no hobby achieved), or quiet (and loads crammed in).  Sadly mine was the former, super busy on Saturday and out for lunch on Sunday.  Thankfully I managed to squeeze in a Hobby Hangout on Friday evening and a little bit when I got back yesterday, which allowed me to finish the initial purple blends and start on the shading.

Five of the heads have been shaded using a 50/50 mix of Black and Naggaroth Night.  This step really helps to neaten up the shadows and define the beard structure.

And I've another six heads to go with the shading.  I've done six as I'm not 100% sure that the champion head is going to work using this style as it has little "bead" bits on the beard, which make it really awkward to achieve a smooth blend.  I grabbed a spare head and quickly got that to the same stage as the others so that I have the option to change my mind!

All of the heads will receive an extreme edge highlight in pure white, however I'm going to leave that until the rest of the body has been painted up to this level too as it will allow me to ensure the highlights are all in the right location as the heads all look off to one site.

Unless something happens, I have the whole of this evening to myself, so the intention is to shade the remaining heads and then start doing the gold filigree.  I'll probably test it out on one of the test heads first as that'd be a nightmare if it went wrong!

[Fulcanelli]

You have achieved a beautiful result. I'm always scared to put pure white highlight, but you'll do it right
I also think this scheme works well, trembling to see the whole unit complete.

[RuneBrush]

1 hour ago, Fulcanelli said:

You have achieved a beautiful result. I'm always scared to put pure white highlight, but you'll do it right
I also think this scheme works well, trembling to see the whole unit complete.

Thanks!  I know what you mean about white highlights, so many things that can go wrong.  I tend to use an artist white acrylic for painting them nowadays as that seems to behave a lot better than most miniature white paints - although I used P3 Morrow White for lightening the highlights above.

I somehow managed to dodge the rain yesterday evening and have undercoated 8 of the bodies - so fingers crossed it won't be too long before I can get the unit up together!