Inquisitor Lord Solar Macharius

I've had a Solar Macharius mini sitting around in my box for some time. Recently, my son decided he needed Inquisitorial allies to add a little punch to his IG force. I found some Grey Knights which are coming along nicely but still currently Painting in Progress (PIP). He also wanted to have an Assassin, and I happened to have a figure that made a good Callidus stand-in. Trouble with adding assassins is, you need to have an Inquisitor Lord in order to field them. Out of the box came Solar Macharius.

Lord Macharius, a great looking mini, came to us as part of an E-Bay purchase made a while back. He was poorly painted and became a victim in my how to strip minis experiments long ago. On that matter, I use Simple Green to start, for the really tough metal minis I use undiluted citrus cleaner. The citrus cleaner proved to soften plastics, and I never got around to trying it diluted. Regardless, Solar was put back together (minus the cape) and took on his new Inquisitor Lord responsibilities with gusto. A couple weeks ago, before I started Skulltaker, I decided he was ready for a fresh coat of paint. So the the workbench he went. The cape was painted separate from the mini, and glued on when all was finished.

This is my most significant use of red, white, and gold on a mini so far. Not a bad experience, and I am actually more happy with the whites. I started with a light grey primer and the white turned out very easy. One thinned coat of white followed by a light grey wash in the crevices, then a heavy white dry brush. Gold is Shining Gold with a Gryphonne Sepia wash and a Burnished Gold dry brush. The red is Red Gore with a Baal Red wash. Not much to drybrush on the red, as there aren't significant red edges thanks to the gold trim. He's not been clear coated yet either, but that will definitely happen before the next game. The right toe sticks out from the base enough to be a problem with the paint rubbing off.

I am impressed with the level of detail on many of GW's old metal minis, and this is no exception. My only issue with the mini is the huge hands. Also, either the face lacks detail, or I was just unable to pull it out with my painting technique. I know I applied more paint than I would have liked trying to make it look good, and admit I need more practice there. I was talking to a guy at my FLGS who had invested quite a bit in Forgeworld DKOK. A comment he made that stuck with me was that he enjoyed painting them because their faces were mostly covered up and he hated painting faces. I'm not there yet, and still think practice will bring me around at some point.

I think he makes a great Inquisitor Lord, so he'll be filling that role for quite some time. He has quite the impressive record on the table already, so far victorious over the forces of Chaos he's faced upon the field of battle.

Skulltaker

So, as some of you know, I enjoy building more than painting, and actually don't play though I do enjoy watching a game now and again. Getting a solid block of time where I could play would be a challenge. I build and paint an hour or two at a time, mainly in the evenings and never without interruption. My oldest son does like to play though, so most of my work does get time on the table. His birthday was a couple weeks ago, and there was food and fun for all. He and three of his friends were joined by my youngest and one of his friends for a 2v2v2 game. I don't think they finished the game, but the party was a success.

So now there are at least three birthday parties following his, one of which was yesterday, and all of them have or will involve playing Warhammer 40K. My son wanted to give one of his friends a painted figure, and asked me if I would paint one up. I said I would, providing I got to pick the figure. He agreed, and I chose Skulltaker.

For the base, I borrowed the idea given by Ron over at ++ From the Warp ++. In his post on Bloodthirster base painting, step by step, he showed how he makes bases so they look like they have marble tile. I liked this, and decided to try it out for myself. About the only thing different I did was to not thin the washes as much as he recommended, and I followed up with a thin wash of Gryphonne Sepia toward the end of the painting to tie it all together. Also, painting Skulltaker was not completely done when I attached him to the base. I needed him attached to the base because I used the base to hold the model while I finished painting. You can see in this picture the rubbed-off primer on the sword, which is what I had been holding on to most to this point.

Not having a lot of time to get it painted before the party, and not having much experience with painting red, I also decided to borrow the ideas of another blogger. In this case, I followed pretty closely the Painted Skulltaker tutorial posted by Master Darksol. I like the way he lays out his tutorials, which include a picture a most every step, including the paint used.

The main difference in my effort was that I used light grey primer instead of black. Can't really tell in the finished product. Some other differences are from not having the recommended colors, so I substituted. I also combined a couple of the Heavy Devlan Mud wash steps. There was a point where my way of painting would have painted over a wash, then reapplied the same color wash, so I combined the two wash steps after painting the two areas. When I took these pictures, I noticed I had not done the eyes or teeth yet, and I forgot to take a picture of the finished piece.

Two great tutorials helped a lot here, with a resulting success. He received it yesterday, and was very happy with it.