Inspiring Sculpts

Inspiration and distraction can also come in the form of a spectacular sculpt. A miniature I just have to paint. New figures are coming out all the time, and the quality these days just keeps getting better. Werner Klocke's figures, for instance, are just paint-a-licious. Most of the Warmachine and Hordes lines (with a few truly ugly exceptions) are fantastic and great fun to lay a brush on.

I bought up a huge Menoth force, and managed to get a few jacks painted. The Repenter jack is almost universally panned for playability, but it's one of the nicest sculpts in the line, in my opinion. Flamethrower, huge flail and a linebacker's hunch? Come on! Awesome in a carapace.





The local game store has a "bits bin." They buy up used figures cheap from people who can't be bothered to sell them on-line, then sell them at a discount. The discount is great, but really it's occasional access to long out-of-print miniatures that keeps my diving this particular dumpster.

Jes Goodwin is one of my favorite sculptors. I bought a huge army of old metal Skaven mainly because he sculpted them, and because of an article in an ancient White Dwarf showing his dirty, ragged, dare I say "ratty" Skaven army. It was a rare breath of "reality" during a time when every army coming out of the Citadel studios seemed to be bright red with danger stripes or checkers all over it. I was inspired by that article, and jumped at the chance to scoop up his Skaven sculpts years later. I even painted up three whole units of Slaves for that army! Farther than I ever got with any other Warhammer army.

But as nice as his Skaven are, my favorites are his Wood Elves. A couple of them showed up in the bits bin a couple of years ago, and promptly sidelined a WWII 15mm project as I painted them up.





Along the same lines, the Everqueen model (sculpted by Trish Morrison, I think) is just a joy to paint. The fine details and flowing lines make this model love the brush. I haven't had more fun painting a figure in a long time.



I love to paint miniatures, and there's nothing better than painting a really fine sculpt. Except, maybe, finishing an army. Wish I knew what that felt like :-)