Working with the Mess

Make the most of mistakes--even when they aren't on Plague Marines.

A brief overview of some troubles with Brokkr models.

Though my experience is currently rather limited, I have to say, I love painting Plague Marines (Games Workshop, 40K). They're meant to be grungy, you can prime them in their base armor color, and any slip-ups are easily explained away simply by the fact that it's a Plague. Mistakes just tend to make Plague look better than you ever intended.

From time to time, other models yield happy mistakes as well. Take, for instance, my Brokkrs (Deadzone, from Mantic Games). As is often the case with PVC models, some of the parts were warped; it took me almost three sessions of fiddling to get a set of arms on one model. Not to mention the fact that they came in a bag off the sprues, so I had no idea which arms went to which model...

Even after fiddling, there were gaps between the shoulders and the arms with all but one of the models. I stuffed the first with Green Stuff, wondering, "How am I supposed to make this look natural?!" I was about ready to drop everything and scour tutorials on sculpting Green Stuff in the hopes of being able to replicate the muscles of the model; an indeterminable break of doing everything except actually work on the models sounded amazing. Thankfully, I didn't have to.

It just looked...natural. All I had to do was add Green Stuff to the shoulders of the other models for a uniform look! Another mistake that led to what I would label a unique outfit scheme happened during touch-up. The base color of the uniforms is Screamer Pink, overlaid with very thinned out Khronos Red. So, touching up involved going over spots of Abbaddon Black or Citadel Gold in the pink. Since a few of the Brokkrs already looked positively rabid from some splotchy white paint, the dappled bits in their uniform fit well!

Now all I need to do is base them, but that's a beast for another day...

And I'll close with a close up of my favorite Brokkr. Because RABIES. Or too much to drink. His first game ended rather unfortunately; he was devoured by a Nameless Ogre (the crab-like monsters on the top tier of the picture). But, it was better than the fate of one of his Steel Warrior teammates, who was charbroiled in his armor and then eaten like a taco.

What happy mistakes have you run into when painting? Let me know in the comments!