The Dead Will Walk My Blog
Continuing to upload some old (2021) photographs of even older (circa 1986-1988) miniatures – more Night Horrors for my collection, which I’ve been working on – in an on-and-off way – for about 20 years. I have about half of them, and they’re getting harder to find. Like my Chaos Beastmen, Hippogryph and Zoat from a couple of weeks ago, I painted these about a year ago, then completely forgot to upload them.
Read MoreAnd My Axe
If you’re one of my handful of regular readers you’ll know that I mostly blog about old-school fantasy and sci fi miniatures, interspersed with very occasional pen-and-ink drawings of creatures from folklore and mythology. It’s probably no major surprise that someone who’s into dragons, drawing, and dwarfs would also be interested in traditional crafts, though – and that’s my topic for today.
Read MoreThe Hippogryph
Begin, my flute, with me Maenalian lays.
Virgil, Eclogue VIII
Nysa to Mopsus given! what may not then
We lovers look for? soon shall we see mate
Griffins with mares, and in the coming age
Shy deer and hounds together come to drink
With the head and wings of an eagle, forequarters of a lion, and hindquarters and tail of a horse, the hippogryph is (perhaps surprisingly) not a creature from myth or heraldry, but a somewhat more modern creation. Rather, the Italian poet Ludovico Ariosto was the first to describe the hippogriff, in his 1516 epic poem Orlando Furioso.
Read MoreForest Guardian
After a few days of uncharacteristically consistent posting I find myself coming more-or-less back onto the main topic of this blog: collecting and painting old lead fantasy miniatures. Today’s offering is something I’d been keen to do for a long time; one of Games Workshop’s mostly original creations, the ‘forest guardian’, a Warhammer Fantasy zoat.
Read MoreThe Shin High Terror
I suppose today is as good a day as any to take this on. About a year ago I did some work on the overall design of this blog, including (some of you regular readers may have noticed at the time) a hand-drawn banner at the top. That banner features none other than the ‘Shin High Terror’ himself, my beloved dachshund Loki.
Read MoreWee Free Folk
Over the past few years I’ve bought a lot of miniatures, from a lot of different sources. I try to support small or new companies, because I want them to do well (and I like having a variety of different things to paint). And sometimes, they’ll throw in a freebie – often something small; possibly something miscast, overstock, or just to encourage me to start a new collection. Here’s a couple (and one that I bought, that kind of fits with the group).
Read MoreReturn to the Blinded Halfling
While I was living overseas – I’m not sure if this was in 2018 or 2019 but I think mostly the latter – I whiled away the evenings planning a return to my D&D campaign ‘The Blinded Halfling’. I drew maps using pen and ink and digital tools, sketched out character motivations, and chronicled world events. Since then things have fizzled – a lot of my friends have had kids recently, little halflings of their own. So here’s some maps from a campaign that might never be finished – you’re welcome to use them in your own.
Horns and Cloven Feet
When the flowery hands of spring
C. S. Lewis, The Satyr, 1919
Forth their woodland riches fling,
Through the meadows, through the valleys
Goes the satyr carolling.
While rearranging some shelves last week, I realised that I’d painted quite a few miniatures last year (and indeed, done some other arts and crafts) that I’d never uploaded anywhere. I’ll aim to start putting that right over the next few days, starting with a handful of Citadel ‘Beastmen’ from the ’80s and ’90s. I’m not sure at what point I picked these up, or where, or whether I was planning anything specific.
Read MoreNecron-omicon
“Beyond life there are” – his face grew ashen with terror -“things that I cannot distinguish. They move slowly through angles. They have no bodies, and they move slowly through outrageous angles…God, they are breaking through! They are breaking through! “
Frank Belknap Long, The Hounds Of Tindalos
There’s more than a few Lovecraftian allusions in Rogue Trader and the wider Warhammer 40K universe, so I suppose it was only a matter of time before my xenofauna side project spawned its own side project. A few models that I’ve picked up over the past few weeks don’t quite fit in either my growing genestealer cult or my alien bestiary. But what if I was to start a small collection of space age horror mininatures…?
Read MoreNew Members in the Cult
I’m on something of a roll painting genestealers (and their proxies) for the Cult of the Third Party Emperor. I think the last two posts were a bit too photo-heavy, so here’s a third with just a few new (and old) miniatures from the last couple of weeks.
Read More
Shin High Terror! 