Four Chaos Spawn Built & Painted in 3 Days!

Well, maybe a little more than three days.  LOL.  You see, I built the bodies with the left and right arms and heads sometime in January or February so that I could try them out in my Chaos Space Marine lists.  I run 5 Spawn with the Mark of Nurgle in a pack with a Nurgle Biker Lord, and this unit shoots out to 1) draw a lot of fire, and 2) try to get stuck in with something that needs to either be taken out, or stop shooting.

Once I finished painting my 2 Heldrakes, the only things left in my CSM army that needed to be painted were (are) my 12 Havocs (7 Autocannon, 3 Missile Launchers and 2 Aspiring Champions), and the 5 Spawn.  The four Spawn you see in the photos in this post came from two box sets.  The fifth Spawn was custom built for me by a friend of mine, Josh Howery, who got his degree in video game design, specializing in 3D modeling; so that fifth Spawn is special, and will get a post of his own once I finish painting him up, which will hopefully be tomorrow.

But back the these four fine fellows.  With just the bodies, legs, main arms and heads, they needed some extra attention in the form of the many and varied wonderful bits that come in the (way too expensive) Chaos Spawn box.  So last Friday I was able to sit down and finish getting these four built (#5 is already complete, just needs to be painted), and got all five of my Spawn primed white; and that's all that I did with the Spawn last Friday, and then didn't get any work done on anything last Saturday, as that we spent the day and evening celebrating my wife's birthday.  So, I started in working on painting these four Spawn this past Tuesday evening, and got them finished, based, varnished and flocked by the end of Wednesday evening.  So, given that it really didn't take much to build the bodies, arms and heads a few months back, I'm calling the whole process "three days" to get these four gribbly guys done.

In fact, the total time spent from final assembly to completely finished was just 11 hours over those three days.  That was much faster than I'd anticipated, but on the other hand, being "just" Spawn, they didn't require the same attention to details that something like a Plague Marine or even a Plagubearer would require.  Once again, washes came to my rescue, as I used very little paint after I primed them white, and relied on the flexibility and awesome way in which certain washes lend themselves to a Nurgly look to crank these guys out fast and (finally) get them checked off my master list.

That's not to say that there isn't some attention to detail, as you'll see on several of these guys, but on the whole, combinations of a few different colors of washes and a little paint to tie some sections together, plus a lot of love given to the various eyes on all of the models, worked out better than I'd expected.  Most of the eyes are Flash Gitz Yellow (several coats) with a Kantor Blue pupil slit, 'Ard Coat varnish after the matte varnishing of the entire model, and then a touch of Casandora Yellow shade (wash).  I used this technique on most of these Spawn, except for "Bug Boy", who got some special treatment.  I did his eyes by mixing two "drops" of the modern equivalent of Mithril Silver (don't recall what it's called off the top of my head) with three "drops" of Kantor Blue, thinned with about four or five "drops" of water, and mixed thoroughly.  I applied several coats of this mixture to Bug Boys bulbous eyes, and used a fair amount of 'Ard Coat gloss varnish over them after I'd matte varnished all of these models.

Getting these guys done this fast is a great thing, actually, because it allowed me to gain a little ground on my schedule, which I promptly lost by having to have one of my rear molars extracted Thursday morning, a process that became too much for my dentist to handle, and so after trotting across the hall to the oral surgeon's office, I was left with a whole lot more hurt in my mouth than I'd expected when I got up Thursday morning.  In fact, it's Friday night now, and I've been pretty much out of commission since I got home from the oral surgeon's office Thursday morning, which means I've lost two evenings that could've been spent finishing up the fifth Spawn and getting started on the Night Lords Havocs. 

Ah, well, hopefully tomorrow will be a better day, and armed with the appropriate legal medications and a kitchen pass from the missus, I should be able to get an early start on Saturday and get Spawn #5 finished and a Havoc test model completed without too much discomfort or difficulty. 

And that's pretty much all I'll be able to accomplish until I get back from vacation on the Fourth of July.  We leave next Wednesday, but I'm not likely to get any hobby work done Monday or Tuesday evenings; Monday is a possibility, but Tuesday is definitely out, as I'll need to pack and get ready for the early Wednesday morning flight.  Then we're gone until we fly home July 3rd.  Fortunately that will be the last big chunk of time taken away from my ability to get any painting done, at least that I know of, and I'm still on track to get everything I want to finished up in time to leave for Valhalla on August 25th.

That's a lot more than I'd originally intended to write on this post; mostly, I just wanted to get some pictures of the Spawn up for you all to look at.  At the suggestion of another friend, I tried using my iPad's camera to take the pictures that you see on this post.  Problem is, while I was trying to time the setting sun so that I would get good natural light without too much glare or shadows, I waited just a little to long for the ibuprofen to kick in, and with it being the first time using the iPad's camera, and being in a bit of a hurry to get front and back pictures of each guy while I still had what I hoped would be sufficient daylight, some of the pictures came out a bit fuzzy.  But, these pics should be good enough to give you an idea of how these guys turned out.  As always, please feel free to leave a comment and let me know what you think of these 4 Chaos Spawn!

This guy's "The Lookout".

"Bug Boy"

This picture came out particularly fuzzy; sorry about that.  :-(

Thanks for taking the time to read this, and please do leave a comment.  All feedback is welcome, and whether you like how these guys came out or think they're terrible, I'd love to hear about it!