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The Lizardmen army book doesn’t really include anything other than different types of blue, and searches on the net only seem to bring up blue and green. I was thinking green just to be different from blue, however after painting a test model I thought to myself “I might as well just be painting orcs!”. The next try was turqoise, which turned out too dark and too complicated to paint lots of troops. I’ve been contemplating white, red, orange, yellow… even black!

Today though I had a change of heart. I think I’ve realised why I didn’t like any of my ideas – I like blue Lizardmen. There are a few key points I’ve been considering for the scheme and blue seems to tick them all – easy to paint, they’ll look coherent and I wanted a bright army without being garish. Blue has always been easy for me to paint and do well, maybe its my painting style or maybe its just the amount of blue things I’ve painted in the past – who knows. But I think I’m settled now, having painted a test model and happy with it!

I have been experimenting with inks and drybrushing and sprays, all in search of speeding things up, forgetting one thing – why change what’s broken? I have a technique for painting blue flesh, so I’ll stick to it. And because its a technique I already know, its not really that much slower. The whole model took just under 2 hours to complete, and if I’m batch painting 3 or 4 at a time that’ll be reduced even more as most of the time was spent letting things dry.

So for now here’s the test model, I still need to decide on bases, however I’ll paint those in bulk anyway. I’ll also get up a guide to how I’ve done these at some point.

As I’m in a festive mood, here’s a picture of santa… enjoy!

What you need:
White Spray
Gryphonne Sepia
Bleached Bone
White
Black
Blood Red
Fiery Orange
Gloss Varnish

First off spray the whole thing white, then give it a Gryphonne Sepia wash. Back in the day I used Chestnut Ink, but Sepia seems to be Chestnut Ink in disguise, and it dries nicer – so it’s all good! Once this is dry drybrush it with Bleached Bone, followed by a light drybrush of pure white. Now comes the lengthy but ultimately satisfying part. All the carapace and talons etc are painted black. Then, Blood Red is used to paint the edges in a “line” method. Five coats of Blood Red are done, getting progressively closer to the edge. This gives a blending effect towards the edge of all of the carapace. Finally a spot of Fiery orange is painted on some of the very edges – only a very small amount! To finish it off the red is given a gloss varnish, which gives it a deeper and more solid look.

Here are some WIP shots as it stands right now, I’ll put finished pics up once it’s done!

Front

Rear

Unfortunately, as it turned out, the competition in question was cancelled (I’m a bit late posting this up) but, not to worry, it’s good to be painting properly again, and I think I’m working towards my old standard again! He’ll just have to sit on the shelf until the next competition.

How exciting, a week ago I returned home after the regular tuesday night of gaming to find that there was a gas leak in my house. A few days previous we had a new boiler installed, and it turns out the engineer who fit the appliance neglected to weld one of the pipes, and to quote the emergency engineer we had “a significant leak”.

The actions of British Gas over the past few months have lowered my opinion of them again and again. Let’s backtrack even further to why we needed a new boiler in the first place. It was a regular check up being done by a young whipper snapper of an engineer who looked like he was fresh out of boot camp. For around 18 months the boiler had a slight fault, but it was one we could live with. The engineer insisted that he tried to fix the broken part, and suprise suprise whilst trying to do so broken something else which is irreplacable.

Now I’m sure he was only trying to do the right thing, be helpful and give a good service to a customer, an this isn’t a personal attack on him. But his insistence caused us to be without hot water or heating for around 2 months, and in a time where money is tight, a new boiler is one thing you don’t want to have to be spending money on.

Shortly after this a manger visited and offered a measly £200 voucher as compensation for a new boiler. A £200 voucher isn’t going to make much of a dent in a new boiler!

Maybe it’s my view on things, but the suspicion is there that British Gas are not particularly bothered about keeping an existing boiler running, when they can break it and sell us a new one, making a tidy profit.

Fast forward a month or so and we managed to take advantage of a deal on a boiler with British Gas, and this whole new sharade has begun. Right now a letter of complaint is being directed to them, along with Ofgem and anywhere else we can think of. These actions are not acceptable, and could have resulted in disaster.