Return to Fenris with Phil Kelly
Some of you may recall that a while back we showed off Phil Kelly's fledgling Space Wolves army on the blog. Well, in a recent flurry of paintbrushes, Phil has added a whole host of new miniatures to his collection, as you can see above. Here's Phil to tell you a bit more about what he's been up to:
Phil: My one and only Space Marines army, the Company of the Lightning Wolf, has recently burst into life with the last set of releases for the Space Wolves. My initial plan for this army was to tackle it in two waves - get a fairly elite 1,500 point army together first, and then, when the Thunderwolf Cavalry and Fenrisian Wolves loped onto the scene, use the impetus of their release to revisit the army with another 1,000 points of lupine goodness.
I've really enjoyed painting the lupine component of this army (well, OK, the most lupine component), as I think the arctic colours really fits for creatures that hail from an ice world. The colour scheme was also very easy to achieve - I sprayed all of the wolves with Chaos Black, then dusted them with Skull White, concentrating the paint on the upper half and face of the model so that the paint settled on the raised areas. Once this was done I painted the mouths, eyes and claws Chaos Black before detailing the eyes and teeth with Averland Sunset, highlighted up to Ushabti Bone in the case of their long pointy teeth.
The last stage was a bit unusual. After painting all the teeth and eyes, my paint water was a murky yellow colour so I tried an experiment with it and wet-brushed some discolouration onto each wolf's fur. There was so much pigment in the new paints that it paid off - arctic animals are rarely pure white, but instead have a cream or even yellowish tint to their fur. I liked the result so much that I carried the same technique across the army.
Transferable Skills
Way back when I first started this army I'd not decided what Great Company I wanted them to be. I've always liked deep lustrous red, so I painted the shoulder pads that colour and left them blank for years, thinking I could always come back to it. I'm really glad I put off the decision, actually. This month some funky new transfer sheets came out, one of which was made specifically for Harald Deathwolf's Great Company. Before using the new transfer sheets, I repainted the shoulder pads using Mephiston Red and Evil Sunz Scarlet - I needed a really vibrant red to make the transfers stand out - and began to apply the transfers. It took me a few tries to get the hang of it, but before long I was churning through them and getting really great and consistent results.
To find out more about applying transfers, check out the How to Paint Citadel Miniatures book (pages 44 and 45 if I recall correctly) for more information. Once they were dry, I applied a couple of coats of Lahmian Medium from the Technical Paints range, which sealed the transfers to the model and took away the shininess factor of a fresh transfer. The shoulder pads now look as if they were lovingly painted one by one, giving the impression that I'm a master of the freehand technique! Casual observers will never know the truth...
