Draconis: Spring Clean 2025 (Oldhammer) and Onward

19th June 2025

My main goal for this year’s spring clean was to build and paint my ancient ‘Giant Chaos Battering Ram’. It did take me a bit of time to get it out of ‘the vault’, but once I had it progressed quite well. I am pleased that I got this painted after all these years.

The rest of the clean was focussed on other ‘Oldhammer’ era minis.

I had fun painting these minis from my youth, trying to go a bit further with highlights etc than I usually would. Overall I am reasonably happy with the results.

I will keep this project open for any other smaller hobby work that aren’t enough for their own project. However, for now I sense a return to my Silver Bayonet project…..

19th June 2025

Probably the last mini for the Spring clean part of this project, here is a venerable Space Skeleton, from 1986 I think.
Started off stripping the old paint job and priming again. Decided that I wanted to emulate the orange suit of my old paintjob though.

The orange was painted with Fire Dragon Bright, washed Crimson. Then highlighted with FDB followed by a couple of stages of FDB and ivory.

The bones were initially blocked in with skeleton contrast, then highlighted with Ushabti Bone followed by bone and ivory then ivory.

I painted the wrench as slightly rusted old gunmetal.

Added some colour interest by painting the gas cylinders in green (going from Castellan Green up to Moot Green) and some of the pipes in blue.

Happy with how the orange came out.

17th June 2025

Just a quick one.

Here we find our plucky diminutive hero Thorimbo facing off against a porridge loving giant in the jungle terrain of G’Arden….

13th June 2025

I wasn’t sure about doing this mini. Firstly I thought it may be too new, but 1990 is still 35 years ago 😊

Secondly I was a little off put by all the slashed clothing, but clearly I did go for it…..

Started out by laying down the red and blue, to see if I was happy with the choice of split. Then I painted in the undercloth behind the slashes in the opposite colour, followed by repainting and tidying the overcloth.

Then I went through several highlights stages on the red and the blue – again, like on recent work, I also planned to push the highlight a stage or so further than I normally would.

I also added some further colour by painting the socks and the hat band in a yellow.

I washed my socks (😊) then highlighted them up in two stages of Ochre, and added more highlights to the red and blue clothing. Also started to work on the sword.

Then it was finishing off, painting the hilt, pouch, bag, cuffs, hat pistol, feather, teeth and giving the skin a further highlight. I left the eye patch in a plain full black – but may do something different with it in the future.

Tried a slightly different green for the base rim, an old foundation Knarloc green.

9th June 2025

Continuing with my Oldhammer repaints the next up was an old giant from around 1986. Back then they cost £3.50 😊

I wanted to do a more pale skin tone for the giant, so started out with a mix of flesh contrast and medium.

I then added thinned crimson wash over the whole thing, followed by some thinned yellow contrast in and around the joint areas. Then I gave it all a drybrush with a mix of my palest flesh and ivory roughly 50:50. After that I repeated some thinned washes, and also applied a thinned turquoise to the prominent veins. The hair was also blocked in at this stage.

Next up it was on to the kilt.

I wanted to make him look a bit like the Porridge Oats man (red kilt, white shirt). The kilt was painted Mephiston red, then washed agrax. This was followed by a grid of an earthy brown, with thin ochre lines painted in the centre of that grid. After this I painted two vertical lines on the red areas in a lighter red, and horizontal green lines also in the red areas. After another wash of agrax to tie it together I needed to redo the lighter red and the green lines as they got lost a little. (Neglected to take pics during this as I was winging it a bit).

To give some more life to the face I also painted him as having a very snotty and dribbly nose, using some fluo green paint and a touch of yellow.

The shirt was painted white, washed with a contrast and given a few minor highlights.

From there it was finishing off by painting the pouch, shield, weapon etc, picking out finger and toe nails and suchlike.

5th June 2025

Ever onward, next up was another classic 80’s Ogre, the executioner (also known as Gutlagg).

The basic flesh colour was laid down with contrast at the same time as the chaos dwarf. I added purple and red washes to give it some more depth.

Then it was onto the larger areas of the hood, jacket and boots. I went with a dark grey black for the hood, which was then drybrushed up and highlighted with a final light grey. The jacket was painted in a mid leather colour, studs in metal. Boots were washed with a grey/brown.

I decided to add a bit of colour with the trousers. To harken to my previous ogre (and perhaps imply Altdorf affiliation if ever inclined) I went with a split red blue. Red was a base of mephiston, washed agrax then highlighted up through to orange. The blue was Kantor again washed agrax, then highlighted up through to a pale blue.

I again pushed myself to go an extra highlight stage compared to what I would normally do, and find that I like the extra pop it gives it.

The hood was looking a touch too grey, so I gave it a nuln oil wash, followed by re highlighting it with grey. In places I tried to make the edges look a little frayed.

The pouches were painted in an off white (doesn’t show the shading too well in the pics), axe and other bits were painted up.

After picking out the teeth and eyes as best I could I also added an extra highlight to the face and knuckles, plus painted the hair white.

3rd June 2025

Finally back at it after our short break.

I stripped, cleaned a prepped a few more Oldhammer minis, and the next in line for paint was this old Chaos Dwarf.

Known as Stunty Sven on the catalogue page and Thorimbo on the base he is clearly based on an iconic 1980’s era character.

Started out with the skin tone. Blocking in with contrast flesh, followed with washes of crimson and a thinned purple contrast. Then it was a drybrush of foundry flesh and some thinned higlhlights of the same.

The rest of it rolled out quite quickly tbh.

The iconic black hair and red headband began to bring the very characterful mini to life 80’s style.

The chest straps were picked out with my foundry leather triad. Chainmail painted up, boots picked out in foundry spearshaft.

Many areas given an Agrax or Nuln wash, then the boots were highlighted up with all three of the spearshaft triad.

The crossbow was painted with Peaty Brown, then given some strong edge highlights (and some hatching on the crossbow limb) in the lightest Peaty brown. Ropes were painted ivory then this was followed by a wash over the whole crossbow to tie it together.

The scabbard was painted blue grey, washed and drybrushed. Sword hilt picked out in silver, black wrapping, then washed. The shield was rimmed in brass, front painted in Mephiston red. All washed Agrax, then the red was given a stippled highlight.

Finally I painted in the eyes, trying to capture a Stallone-esque look (think it works).

Some basing work and he was finished. Ready to get revenge for First Blood….

Continuation…..

That’s it for their journeys,  thanks for looking.

27th May 2025

This year I took the two small chaps away with us. Last year the ‘story’ with ‘Tom’ Sellork took quite a bit of effort, and I don’t think anyone really saw it.

So I thought I would keep it simpler, and just have the pics themselves really, so here they come…

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).

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.

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.

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.

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….

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.

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….

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.

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….

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…

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……