New Keeper, new paints, and some thoughts.

I finally got my new Keeper of Secrets finished! There are so many gems on this thing that looking on the box you can see where GW's official painter lost the will to live and just did some as metal bumps. I did more than they did, but on the other hand my gems suck.

When the new Keeper came out I was presented with a bit of a problem. Since I already have not one, but two models that I use as Keepers (and which are finally about the right size!) there didn't seem a lot of point making another stock one. On the other hand the variant Keeper, Shalaxi Hellbane, didn't appeal to me visually (though 'it' has nice rules. More on 'it' in a moment.)

The solution, I decided, was to go full-on with magnets, allowing the regular Keeper to have Shalaxi's weapon options. This also allows me to field a Keeper with options like the Ritual Knife and Shimmering Aegis which I don't have on the older models.

More gems than an animated pop-group with an inexplicable movie

The Mammarian Heresy
Now, there was one area in which the new Keeper was, to my eyes, a bit deficient. For reasons known only to them, GW persist in making Slaanesh models with only one breast. Not only that, they've doubled down recently by referring to Keepers and Heralds as 'it', rather than 'she'. I find this a bit irritating, since the other Greater Daemons are all still unambiguously male. Not only that, but only Arnold J. Rimmer is ever going to be pleased with having just one of the things and that's not an example I want my legions of excess following.

As an aside, I entirely take the point that as physical manifestations of warp entities Daemons don't really have a gender at all, but again, all the 'male' daemons apparently do. I personally think that Slaanesh daemons manifest as whatever those watching find most alluring- basically a glamour- so for me that means two dumplings on the plate. I do plan to make some oiled-up Chippendale-style Noise Marines in future, but I'm hoping we'll see a new Emperor's Children book and Noise Marine models soon.

Anyway, the upshot of all this is that I ended up sculpting in her left (as she would view it) breast, as well as the corset-thing that goes over it. I made it with Green Stuff, and as usual with this sort of project I did it in two stages, the first being the 'structural' stage where I got the basic shape about right, and then, once this had set, the 'detail' stage where I smoothed it out and added the clothing. Trying to do the whole thing in one go tends to lead to pushing the thing out of shape whilst trying to detail it.

Other than that, the only real modelling work that needed doing was adding magnets to the wrists and hands for swapping the weapons, which I did by drilling out a small recess for the magnets and then filling the gaps. As always, there's a thin layer of Green Stuff preventing the magnets making direct contact, which makes the options much easier to remove and lessens the chance of the magnets ripping free. In the end, I left the head and cloak off for painting as well as leaving the Shining Aegis in two parts (hand/ shield) for ease of access.

Someone needs to do one with Daemonette train-bearers

Which cloak to use was a matter of some debate. The cloak for Shalaxi represents 'its' (named character so I've got to) Cloak of Constriction, but I preferred the way the other cloak looked and hung off the wrists. Those hands which are meant to be used with it have a little hole for the cloak but test-fitting showed it didn't cause any serious issues. Likewise the arms are different for Shalaxi but I found the default Keeper arms worked fine and didn't cause a problem with the spear- in fact I prefer it levelled at it is here, rather than point-up as it is on Shalaxi.

Adventures in Contrast
Painting was a bit of an adventure since I waited until the release of the new Contrast paints to do it. The model was undercoated with Wraithbone (the brighter Contrast undercoat) and then painted with Apothecary white for the flesh, Skeleton Horde for the horns, and Volupus Pink, Magos Purple and Shyish Purple for the claws and robes/ clothes. I forgot to get a Black Templar for the black, but a couple of coats of Vallejo Air black did the deed. The metals were painted with conventional metals, over the air black on the claws and weapons, since painting them over Wraithbone really doesn't look good.

It's fair to say I had the odd.. issue with the Contrasts. On the flesh, the Apothecary white was great, giving a bluish-grey tint just as I like for my Slaanesh Daemons. On the larger, sweeping areas like the cloaks, though, I ran in to a lot of pooling issues and had some bother finding the right highlights. Nevertheless, the model responded well to my usual Nuln Oil Gloss wash and we got there in the end!

The other worry with Contrast is durability. I think Wraithbone is designed to allow the paints to 'slide off' a bit, to give the effect of making raised areas lighter in colour. However, it seems that makes the paint itself more vulnerable to chipping. I've transported this model once so far and whilst the model itself was chip-free, the Caliban Green around the base came off in a couple of places. I think the oil wash and the highlights have made the paint on the model resilient enough to cope with handling, but since the base edge got neither of those it might need a coat of Stormshield or similar.