For a little while now Games Workshop have been offering a free miniature in store, as part of their Miniature of the Month promotion. This article we’re not painting one, but two of these free miniatures.
Thanks to distribution issues and schedules we weren’t all able to get February’s Jade Obelisk Cultist, but we’ve now had a chance to get our hands on those, as well as some of March’s World Eaters Jackals as well.
If you’ve seen our regular friendly challenge, before then you’ll know the drill. We each painted the models to compare our different approaches.
Arron (AKA @ajb_minis)
I liked the idea of the Jade Obelisk Warcry warband as soon as I saw them, but never pulled the trigger. Being one of the free models, I knew I had to pick it up. I knew from the start that I wanted to use a bright glowing colour for them somehow, something I’ve done on a few of my painting projects lately. I really enjoy using Nihilakh Oxide as a bright ghostly glowing colour, and figured this would be a really fun shade for the weapon and mask. I paired this up with a much darker blue colour for the armour, opting to use the Leviadon Blue contrast paint with a few highlights, and Retributor Armour for the studs and details, which stood out really well.
The Jakhal was a fun one. I went into this with very little plan apart from some sort of glowing tubes, so just experimented a little. I ended up playing around with a deep green for the trousers which evolved into trying out a camo pattern. From there I decided to lean into a very industrial vibe, featuring bright yellow warning lines on the weapons. A shade of Coelia Greenshade gave everything some definition as well as making the skin feel sickly from all of the chemicals that this junkie had been pumping into himself. I finished up the tubes, canisters and veins with some Tesseract Glow for the bright neon liquid that this guy’s dosing up on.
Ben (AKA @manyotterminis)
The Jade Obelisk was one of those rare minis where I knew what I wanted to do with it as soon as I saw it. If you’re following our escalation league or my Instagram you’ll know I’ve been painting a lot of Slaanesh recently and wanted to bring that opulent excess to this model with gemstone leathers and bright pink/purple metals.
While I knew I wasn’t going to go for true NMM I wanted to get a clear pink to purple gradient going down the armour panels. I started with a thin coat of Volupus Pink, avoiding any of the pooling that would normally be the reason to use contrast paints, then shaded the bottom of the panels with a more generous Leviathan Purple.
The gems, being so small don’t have a lot of detail. First I use contrast paints to lay some colour on them, not caring particularly what way the paint pooled or didn’t. Some variation would be good but the zenithal highlight I started with would handle that and nobody would see any subtle details from a tabletop. Then I went over all of them adding white lines to all the sharp edges, and a little dot somewhere on the dark underside of each gem. It’s not a perfect gem recipe but it didn’t take too long, and I didn’t need this to be a show piece.
The Jakhal was a surprise hit for me. In contrast with the Jade Obelisk I had no plans for this but developed one as I went.
I decided pretty early I wanted the backpack and tubes to be the focal points. The weapons I was less concerned about since there so far away from the centre of the model so I didn’t want them to draw focus… I also wanted to paint this quickly so less details there meant less to do.
I wish I could tell you all the techniques and paints I used, but honestly this was more a “go with the flow” experience. I ended up with most of my paints off their racks and scattered over my desk before I was done. The skin has given me a few things to think about, it’s not something I think contrast paints do well, but the rest turned out pretty good.
Matt (AKA @howes_the_painting)
When I saw the Jackhal I knew I had to paint this model! I wanted to try out a different skin technique to my usual “plop on a skin tone and cover it in a contrast paint” method. I started off with Bugman’s Glow, added a highlight of 50/50 Bugman’s Glow and Cadian Fleshtone before hitting the whole lot with a Berserker Bloodshade (after all, he is a berserker!) I then went back in with a couple more highlights of progressively more Cadian Fleshtone.
I wanted the backpack to stand out, so used a flourescent pink paint from Vallejo that really makes him pop!
With a little more time I would have loved to highlight the skin up a little more, and give a bit more contrast to the tubes and bottles, but I’m happy with the results for a little over an hour of painting.
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