I’m not normally a man who has dead lead lying around the place. If I haven’t bothered to paint something, chances are I haven’t bothered to play something, and if I haven’t bothered to play something, chances are I’ve sold it on for something I do want to play. Thing is, every now and then, I score a bargain, like this Imperial shitload of Cryx, to which I just can’t say no.

Of course, I do have to paint the damn stuff, and considering how much I pissed and moaned about painting up a dozen Retribution infantry at a time, there could be something of an issue here: which is why, not putting too fine a point on it, I intend to cheat like buggery.

My usual painting method involves a good hearty daub of grey gesso primer (I find it more accurate than spray paint, plus I don’t need to find the key to the garden door, tie the cat up to prevent escapes, and coat the back of a cardboard box in precious paint with my piss-poor aiming skills), then a lashing of black Windsor and Newton ink to bring the details back. The result is something that’s got quite a nice tooth to it and takes paint well, and also comes ready-shaded in a way; if I’m careful and apply thin layers they end up darker on the deeper bits than otherwise. It also looks a bit like a Mark Gibbons illustration, which is always a plus in my book.

This monochromatic style is something I’ve wanted to mess around with for a while now, inspired by Dave G and his Punk Art approach (the thing I’d be going for is the Sin City look). I suspect I’d endure a fair amount of pissing and moaning over it, but it’d still be more painted than a good half of the Warmachine armies out there, it’d be quick, and I’d know I’d planned it. It would also tie in nicely with the extremely cheap 4′ x 2′ gaming boards I knocked up over half term. Not sure where the spot colour would be going on this fellow; Hark reckons a lighter grey for his face and weapon, I sort of want to try for a glowy green effect because I like glowy green effects.

Another option, since a not insignificant number of my Cryxmans are primed white, is to try a few different inky stains and glazes, maybe try to get some mileage out of my ‘orrible Citadel Flesh Wash (I’ve had this gunk for nineteen years and still haven’t found a way to make it actually produce flesh tones) and some purple or green blending for some nice undead bruises and rot and stuff. That might look like I’d made a bit more effort while still conforming to my “sit down and get ’em done in an hour” approach to painting.

One thing I’ve considered doing for a while is ripping off Coop’s idea for the Achilleos Sepia Army, in which the commanders are vividly detailed “I made an effort on this” pieces and the rest of the army are background to the centrally ‘illustrated’ figure. That doesn’t seem incompatible with this project, although the urge is to go for something else in there somewhere, maybe a suitably ghastly green.

Choosing colours and verifying my choices, for me, tends to mean a trip through the colour theory tag at The Back 40K. Since I’m visually illiterate and prone to mess stuff up at the best of times, I generally stick to DARK AND BORING on everything unless I have some sort of guidance on how else I might go about doing things. In this case I’ve had a dekko at their handy colour-wheel-with-Citadel-Colours (since I still use predominantly Citadel paints, though I’m gradually phasing them out as they run dry). Looking at that, it seems that the grobbly luminous green that my Deathjack’s already painted in (and which I quite like) would form an eye-catching complementary harmony (if I understand the artjargonspeak) with a rather bright shade of purple, a little down on the pink-o-meter from Citadel Warlock. I bet I can do that with Purple Ink and Ork Flesh Wash…

As far as the rotting, godforsaken old-school Flesh Wash goes, the general idea I pick up from Sandwyrm is that you can just about scrape a wide analogous harmony between purple and baby-sick brown. If I save that old-school Flesh Wash for the Cephalyx, they’ll use one of the same colours (the purple) and one that I don’t use anywhere else (the fleshy mank/manky flesh), and so they should half tie in and half not tie in; they’ll look weird and alien and, well, Allied without looking totally out of place.

One thing that worries me a little about the last two is that they might be creating the strong harmonies, but they’re not really using them for anything. My instinct is to go for greyscale; I did try another model, black Windsor and Newton ink over the white they’d already been primed with, only to discover that whatever it was, it wasn’t primer…

So, whatever happens, they’ll all be spending some time in the Power Spray – assuming I can find anywhere that sells the ruddy stuff.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=l-WmqC_lAJc