Draconis: Spring Clean 2025 and Onward

6th April 2025

First up is some old school (or Oldhammer as the cool kids say nowadays) C23 Ogres.

I have quite a few of these scattered around, but for now I will just be selecting two to work on. The two I chose are (based on my old Citadel catalogue) ‘Pit Fighter’ and ‘Berserker’ (first and second on the top row).

First up they had a bath in brown Dettol, followed by a good scrubbing and a repeat bath, until they came up pretty clean. Then they were based on 40mm round (as I plan to use them for some skirmish games) and given a prme. Ended up priming Army Painter bone over black, as I had no Wraithbone left. I was going to try Barbarian Flesh over black, but as I went to spray it was just spitting out… ☹ (luckily I always start off the minis)

For the flesh I started with a wash over of Darkoath flesh. This was followed by two shades of my Foundry Flesh paints, first lightly drybrushed on, then highlighted. This was then followed by selective washing with Carroburg Crimson and Magos Purple into various recesses. Then additional highlighting with light flesh and a few more placements of the red/purple washes.

At this point I focussed on just the Pit Fighter Ogre. For the armour areas I used Vallejo gunmetal, washed with nuln oil, then highlighted up. On the metal leg (Yeah, you could say he is a bit more like a Pirate really) I applied some brown and orange washes, and a touch of green, just to change the tone up, followed by bright edge highlights.

For the cloth I decided to paint it in red, like I had it before. This was Flesh tearers Red, followed by Mephiston then Evil Sunz as the final highlight.

Quite happy with how this came out on the rear.

The leather parts were painted using my old Foundry leather triad, with Agrax washes to blend it in.

10th April 2025

This fine chap had the same start out as the Pit Fighter Ogre, in terms of prime and skin work.

I decided to paint his loin cloth in a halved red/blue, reminiscent of the colours for Altdorf. Part way through I also decided that I would paint green stripes on the trousers.

The colour wasn’t popping enough, so I thought I would highlight up an extra stage.

I am trying to highlight things more than I usually do, to make them stand out more – I tend to be a touch conservative on the highlighting, but some of my recent Silver Bayonet work has given me the push to take them higher.

So the red and blue both had four colour stages, and the green stripes had three colour stages.

For the boots I went for a black and white pattern to represent Frisian cow hide. I think this came out pretty well. However, it did give me a little issue with the toe claws that are poking out of the fabric. I tried both black and white, but neither worked due to the boot colours. In the end I went with a yellow brown at the base, highlighting up to ivory. That colour separation at the boot helped, but I’m still not sure on it.

The hair was painted with a wash of gryph hound orange, followed by a thinned agrax. Picked out various other details, (spent a good amount of time on the horn) and he was finished.

14th April 2025

This is the item that I didn’t want to mention in my project summary.

However, as can be seen from below, and my project image update, I have found it.

I have had this ‘mini’ for over 30 years now, having purchased it in ‘Truro Micro’ (which was where the GW Truro store is now. I assembled the main frame and sprayed it black, but I think I ran out of spray then put it away again.

This is an expensive model now, but I feel that this year’s spring clean needs me to get through some old school minis from my youth – and this is one of the oldest I have.

So, out came the black and white sprays for a zentihal prime.

The paint is down, I’m committed to it now……

21st April 2025

Again I have not had much time for hobby this week, but just wanted to share an update of the progress.

I mixed up a batch of paint for the wood, using contrast grey and contrast brown, as I wanted the wood to look weathered.

This was applied to all of the wood on the ram frame, and on to the roof panels.

The roof panels lacked wood texture, and to try to enhance the look I coloured several of the planks in different shades. I used grey, light beige and a warm brown on various planks. This was then followed with thin brown lines on some of them to imply wood grain

I have eight roof panels, in two designs. One set of four has monstrous faces on them, so I decided that I would theme each panel to one of the four main chaos gods.

After an agrax wash over the wood to tie it together I started to paint the faces. These had several highlight stages to make them pop a touch more. Then I added grime to the Nurgle one, and fluids (themed to the pantheon) coming out of the fleshy barnacle things. The Tzeentch one had some ‘magic’ fluids added using colour shift paint, with a scattering sponged on to the wood itself as well. Not sure if that works yet tbh though.

Colour change paints on the Tzeentch panel…

22nd April 2025

The wood element of these was laid down in the same way as for the first four roof plates. (And was started at the same time).

Since this was another matching set of four, I chose to again theme them to the four Chaos Honchos.

I picked out the colour on the section surrounding the animal skull in the middle. Also I tried to theme the furs to each of the pantheon in some way. For the spider creature things I started with them black, then added small dots to the Nurgle and Tzeentch ones. Added an hourglass shape to the Khorne one. For the Slaanesh panel I repainted the spider creature in a flesh colour. And noticed (alongside some flash I cleaned up afterwards) that it looked to have a face on the spider bum area.

Next up will be the end panels on the main frame….

25th April 2025

Next up was the chassis. The base of the wood had been laid down using the same mix that I had made for the roof panels already.

Where there was woodgrain available I drybrushed over with various greys to add the weathered look that I wanted. Metallic details were picked out and washed, including lots of nails 😊

The end pieces, depicting some sort of monster or totem gave me my usual indecision for a while, with me finally plumping for flesh colours for them.

This was using flesh contrast to start with, followed by drybrushing lighter flesh shades, with red and purple washes in between.

There are various small trophies and such over the rear of the end panels. I painted these up as best I could, sometimes finding paintbrush access a little awkward though. Then I went back in and worked on the end panels. I tried to give the flesh a slightly different tone for each end, so one end had a touch of yellow added into the flesh highlights.

Added a few more flesh highlights, then picking out the eyes, bone spurs, tusks and spots/sores.

For these last ones I added more red wash to make the areas look inflamed, then added some yellow to the tops to imply pus or such.

Putting it all together (I’m sure I forgot to mention something…) and the chassis was finished. Its not top tier, but its pretty good for me, and the end panels capture the feel that I wanted.

Next up, the ram.

26th April 2025

So, onto the ram itself. This is a heavy piece of metal from the old days 😊 It was zenith primed with the rest, then given an all over green contrast.

Then I used two further shades of green and two of yellow to drybrush up, then placed some highlights. This gave it a bit of a pop to the colour (the contrast only was looking a touch cold)

Next up it was the detailing of bones, teeth, horns, eyes etc.

I spent extra time focussing on these, carefully laying down multiple thin highlight stages to create an apparent growth pattern texture to the teeth and horns.

Pretty happy with how they came out, and it reminds me that I need to take my highlights up more than I used to.

Once I finished the ram, the metal attachments etc (and gloss varnish added to the eyes) I then used some old chain and cotton to hang it from the chassis……. Things are getting closer, but I still need to sort a nice base yet….

1st May 2025

Onto the crew now. Again, these had all had the same prime as the frame, ram etc. I started out on the wheel demon. Initially I was going to paint this in a flesh colour, but I thought that it may not work so well since the frame section it would be pushing against would also be flesh coloured. So, in true demon style I went for red.

Started out with dark red contrast, followed up with an Agrax wash. Next up I drybrushed and then highlighted using four shades of red to orange (from Khorne red through to Fire Dragon).

Then I picked out the metal areas (except wheel rims) with a brass colour, then gave it a sepia wash to warm it up. Picked out some cable/pipe detailing in shades of blue and green which were then also highlighted.

For the hair I was (as usual) debating colours. I tried white, then an orange, but neither worked. The orange was close, so I overbrushed in several shades of ochre and came up with a sort of blond colour that I was happy with.

Finally I picked out eyes, teeth, chains etc and the Wheel Demon was done.

Onto the rest of the crew. These all had contrast paints to block out their core colours. Flesh on the whip dude was Guilliman flesh, whereas for the pushers I went with a grey tone, Space wolf grey. This was followed with magos purple to give some warmth to the grey.

I didn’t get many pics through this process tbh, but will chuck some up later.

All the models had a shoulder pad, so I painted them all in green, with gold trim.

The pushers had their skull faces picked out, got different coloured trousers and sores painted onto their swollen left legs.

Whip dude had his waist covering painted in cow hide style to tie in with some of the roof plates.

Some washes, pale sand drybrush and they were done.

And the finished crew….

8th May 2025

For the basing I started marking out the wheel locations on the ‘wooden’ (turned out to be MDF) plinth base I bought on Amazon. Then I marked locations for the crew.

Next up I used my rotary tool to make small dips for the wheels and carve out slots for the base tabs on the crew.

Then I drilled a number of shallow holes across the base area to be covered, to give the Milliput something more to key to.

This was followed by mixing up a lot of Milliput and laying it out across the middle of the base area, being careful not to fill in the base slots I had created. Then I added texture to the surface by using a small stone I found in the garden, and pressing it into the surface all over.

Once cured I got out a number of brown paints and painted all of the surface area, giving it a brown wash at the end to tie it in – even though I would cover most of it in the next stage.

Next up was flocking. I laid down several different flock types before gluing the ram and most of the crew in place. After marking up the position for the wheel demon I used my rotary tool to grind some flat area. Then it was more Milliput – filling the gaps around the slotta bases and creating the setting for the wheels.

All the bare Milliput was painted up, then more flock was laid down. This was followed by a few different types of tufts, clump foliage and finally some old parsley sprinkled in places.

8th May 2025

Last up was to glue on the roof plates now that the basing was complete.

This ancient (and heavy!) beast from 1985 is now complete, after being started well over 30 years ago (then just put away).

Not a perfect paint job by any means, but it is together and has paint applied, so is finally where it should be.

This was my main focus for the Spring Clean Challenge, and I am glad that I was able to do it.

Hope you like it.

12th May 2025

This is another mini that was on my mind when it came to the spring clean challenge.

After seeking it out among my old stuff I gave it a clean up, found a shield and primed him black.

The shield was plain on the back, so I marked out some plank and woodgrain lines then scored them in with a hobby knife, and painted the back brown followed by a wash.

The dwarf was drybrushed with an off white so that I could better pick out the details on it.

I decided that I wanted to paint the shield like the one found at Sutton Hoo (I know, Anglo Saxon) so found an image online I tried to replicate it.

I used a few different metallics to paint the dwarf’s mail and helm. For the clothing I chose to go with an earthy yellow, so built up the colour using my foundry Ochre triad finishing off by adding white for the final highlights.

The large pouch at the rear was painted green, highlighted up in several stages.

For the boots I initially went with a contrast but wasn’t happy with the result. So I went back in with my foundry spearshaft triad, with a Nuln oil wash after the first layer so that I could better see where to lay down the highlights.

Skin and other sundry bits were painted and highlighted, and then it was done.

Didn’t come out quite how I had wanted, and the shield does cover a lot of him from the front (doing it’s job then I guess), but I am happy to have got him done.

13th May 2025

Another even older mini here, this time from 1984. I probably purchased it around 1986 I would guess, and painted it around then.

He had the brown Dettol bath, a scrub and clean up, then got based onto a 20mm square, milliput’ed in, some gravel on the base and then primed white.

I wanted a lighter skin tone for him, so went with the same method I used on my Ork Madboyz in a previous project. Contrast Plaguebearer Flesh, followed up with a green wash.

I also wanted to give him a pink(ish) nose, lip and inner ears. I started out by drybrushing on pink horror, followed by layering it on towards the tip of the nose, and a line for the lip. Then I mixed in increasing amounts of ivory and took the end of the nose up a couple of stages. Also put down some brown on the base.

At this stage I wanted to get some colour down on the rest of the mini, so laid down some contrast Snakebite leather for his fur clothing, and Wyldwood for his club. Also picked out the teeth and eyes with black, followed by ivory.

Following this I did a light drybrush on the fur clothing, then gave it an agrax wash. Highlighted the wood pattern on the club and added metal studs.

I also added a thin glaze of yellow over the ear tips (a few layers here) and on the fingers and knees.

A bit of basing and he was done. (I may risk a varnish though since he is metal).