A Return to Life Drawing

Unfortunately, I've been away from life drawing classes for a year or two, which has left me quite rusty not just in sketching but in imaginative work.

I joined my Dad for a session on Thursday and was rather pleased by the results.

These are soft pencil pieces on A3 / A2 sized paper, so far too big to scan.  Had to take a picture of them and edit the levels in GIMP to make them a bit more presentable.

Model was a lovely lady who was a gymnast in her youth in Russia, so had a good sense of pose and positioning.

Warmaster: Church Ruin

Painted up my Hovels ruined church!

I got some little N Gauge tombstones for a graveyard but they're tiny and you don't get much for your money. Going to try a different make and see if I can get something a bit more substantial looking for a spooky graveyard.

Warmaster: Hovels Bridges

I've been looking for the right kind of bridges to use in Warmaster for a while now.

Forge World used to sell quite large ones but they haven't been available for many years now.

Warmaster is an abstract game where a unit represents dozens or hundreds of warriors, so bridges are meant to only accomodate the smaller end of the base (20mm), not the facing that most infantry use (40mm).  This represents the difficulty in maintaining cohesion marching a lot of men and beasts across a medieval crossing point.

Eventually I found the Hovels bridges, which were the right width and length, without any restricting earth or river parts attached which would demand you buy a river system to match.

A judicious application of drybrushing and now they're ready for use making up the battlefield!

Warmaster: Elven Obelisks

Some scenery or objective markers for Warmaster!

Unfortunately these were never widely available and the caster has moved on to other things, although I believe the 3D prints are available on Shapeways.

I've had these sitting about for a year or so.  I dug up my bridges to paint and thought I might as well finish these for a quick hit of the "I finished something!" feeling which encourages us all to keep painting and modelling.

Warhammer Art

I am resolving to draw more and learn about digital art, to make that something I can pursue as a career and not just as a hobby.

To that end as I draw things, even partial illustrations like this - I will be adding them to my blog as I attempt to break out of the trappings of the amateur.


When Dark Angels were redesigned for 40k, relics were a recurring theme. They appear on the Landspeeder Vengeance, on the Nephilim fighter, on the Ravenwing Command Squad... But there is no reliquary retinue, as you sometimes see in Space Marine official art.

In the 2009 and 2014 Space Hulk re-issues, one of the Blood Angel objectives is a beautiful model of a dead marine in Terminator armour on a throne. I always thought that would be a wonderful base for a conversion of a beatified Space Marine, mummified in his armour, surrounded by chapter serfs and thralls, swinging incense and lighting black candles, providing a morale boost or a force field save to nearby rank-and-file troops.

I liked the image of a Space Marine with candles burning across the back of his armour so I quickly sketched it:

Chaos Space Marines have an aesthetic that is mutable as Tzeentch, and I think the best examples of it are found in the Forge World conversion sets and the "Dark Vengeance" Chosen models.  It's something I never quite get right but occasionally I do an ink sketch I really like:

An older Vampire Counts sketch - I had a strong mental image of a very dark, skeletal Dire Wolf,  and half decayed steeds for Black Knights:

Illustration for a BBC Radio 4 adaption of Neil Gaiman's excellent "The Truth is a Cave in the Black Mountains".  They hosted the pictures on their websie for a while.  Some were very simple, by school children doing a class project, others were by very talented illustrators: