Giant Squig

You can't have night goblins without a giant squig, right?

I have five regular-size squigs that are painted and ready to be posted, but I thought I'd kick off with this whopper first. He's almost three inches tall and has bags of detail on him, and for $12 I snapped him up.

He's also one of the monsters I was hoping to get done for this year's Monster May(hem) but he didn't show up in the mail until June 5.

After spraying him with grey primer, it was a case of slapping on reds until I got the look I wanted. I started with a basecoat of Khorne Red and then a heavy overbrush of 50/50 Khorne and Flat reds. After that came a lighter overbrush with pure Flat Red, then a heavy drybrush with 50/50 Flat Red and Vermilion, then a light drybrush with pure Vermilion.

To add some orange tones I mixed Vermilion with some Trollslayer Orange and drybrushed it over the model, and followed that up with successive drybrushes of pure Trollsayer Orange and Fire Dragon Bright. The final highlight (yay!) of Light Orange finished off his skin.

I thinned some Purple Shadow and ran it into the creases in his skin to add some shadows, and painted the huge gouges in his left side Khorne Red and stippled in more Purple Shadow to darken them a bit.

For his cavernous maw I used Royal Purple and hit it with a highlight of Hexed Lichen. I added some Warlord Purple, which is basically magenta, and layered it on, then added Pink to do the lighter highlights over his lips.

The huge tongue was painted with pure Warlord Purple and highlighted with a mix of Sunset Red and Pink.

And now his teeth, which are just awesome. After a basecoat of Burnt Umber I started layering on Flat Earth, Buff, Beige and Off-White, painting up towards the tip of his gnashers. I used the same colours on his claws and spikes. 

I don't know why there are holes in his bum, and of course it's at this point — two days after finishing him — that I remember I meant to fill them. Oops.

His underside got a coat of Warpfiend Grey and then some basic layering with Slaanesh Grey. I didn't think the highlights worked too well, so I added some Pink and kind of swirled a makeup brush of it over the bumps on his belly. I thought the transition from the reds to the greys needed something else, so I dipped the end of a toothpick in German Grey and put a ton of little dots on to break up the line a bit. I also added dots to the sole of his foot as there isn't any detail printed on it, but I think I overdid them a bit.

With the basic colours done it was time for details. The patches on his legs were painted Averland Sunset and Yriel Yellow, with a highlight of Dorn Yellow. All the metal bits are the usual Iron Warriors, Nuln Oil and Plate Metal, and the dwarf shield that's basically stapled to his back has a rim painted Brass.

I was really, really hoping to be able to do a black-and-white checkered pattern on the metal plate nailed to his head, but my skills at freehanding that pattern haven't improved since I tried doing it on my Terminators' power fists back in 1989. So I painted it black and somehow did a pretty decent bad moon logo on it instead.

The mushrooms growing from his back are separate ones I got in a different order. I just painted their caps with Screamer Pink and Pink, and the stems with Green Ochre and Beige. 

The spear sticking out of his right leg in the photo above was an addition forced on me when I somehow got a large blob of matte varnish onto his leg without noticing. By the time I did it had dried into a thick layer of waxy crap, and in getting it off I damaged the paint. Instead of trying to match all the reds, I repainted the section Khorne Red and made a spear from a toothpick. After gluing it on, I plastered the area with a generous helping of Blood for the Blood God. 

Here he is next to an almost-finished gobbo squig herder/snack. The base is just sand painted with greys to match the rest of my goblins, and once I'd done that and sat back with a well-deserved sense of satisfaction, I realised I'd forgotten to do his eyes. As they're so large I went with a chibi look, using Off-White, Scorpy Green and Black, and they came out looking really good.

Overall I'm well happy with this model even with the emergency spear fix. It was well worth the money and despite being one of those minis with tons of detail it wasn't a pain to paint; I enjoyed getting it done and he'll make a great addition to my goblin army.