Hobby: Sculpting with Fimo over Cork

It's been another busy week working on my Guardsmen, though I did manage to fit in my first 2000pt battle in about 2 years. Having previously played Orks exclusively, I'm no stranger to large numbers of models but it was still impressive actually pulling out all the 'painted' models I own here, having only started with a Blood Angels Battleforce in August 2011.

2000pts Blood Angels + Imperial Guard Allies

Man of the match goes to my Ratlings, actually, as they weathered the entire first turn's worth of shooting by going to ground and surviving, thus preventing the 'First Blood' victory condition (which went to the Death Company Dreadnought, jumping out of his Drop Pod and turning an enemy Dreadnought into molten slag), and preventing a single I.G. casualty, who in turn let rip with everything and brought the enemy to his knees! At least that's how I saw it, in reality his commander was 1" short of denying an objective and the game ended at turn 5. Booya!
My heavy weapons teams proved so successful that I have started to wash and layer them up a bit. Once I was happy with the basics I jumped at the opportunity to try out some weathering techniques courtesy of  Tale of Painters. Not quite a vehicle as such, but man-portable heavy weapons would certainly see their fair share of battle damage.

Rust, Chips and Soot add some 'realism'

Work-In-Progress, this guy has been on the sauce and is totally unprepared for a dawn assault!

Aside from playing with and painting my I.G. I have started a new (for me) novel by my favourite Warhammer author, Dan Abnett. His Eisenhorn trilogy was very popular in 2004-5. I am barely 50 pages into it and absolutely hooked, however every chapter begs for a diorama to be made of a key scene or two. I have begun sketching out some ideas and creating a few 'proof-of concepts' using Fimo as it is much cheaper than making an entire scene out of 'green stuff'. Alas, I need to scuplt in smaller sections as I discovered the oven-hardening causes the Fimo to crack if spread too thin.

This was to be a steam-punk like column, or inside of a spiral staircase,

An example of the details possible with Fimo, very rough paint scheme to illustrate.

By comparison, I have included a couple of photos from my last 'Cork' column from my first ever diorama:

By using cork and other materials the cost and weight can be kept to a minimum.

AAA battery for size reference. Small sections sculpted at a time.

The final column, the detail probably wasn't even noticed when the entry was judged!

Needless to say, it's back to the drawing board with Fimo for the moment! Any guesses for the inspiration for the last photo? It's from a familiar book. I am certainly not shy about copying while I am still learning to sculpt, but by using Eisenhorn as inspiration I hope to create detailed dioramas without resorting to pre-built scenery and previously created imagery. Watch this space!

Cheers,

Matthew