Ailurophilia

YellowGyrinx1

“Steeljaw” the yellow psychic space cat (gyrinx) above is todays new model.  It was sitting 90% complete on my painting table for the last year or so.  I finally got inspired to add some stripes and finish its pelt last week while I had some off white on the palette.  That makes four of the little space scamps that I have painted to date (including Mister Darcy, my DreadBall Offensive Coach who I forgot to picture here for some reason).

Steeljaw

I should hopefully have some more substantial figures finished over the next few days, but ill health is scuppering my schedule at the moment.  Ho hum.

14 Responses

  1. Lovely, he turned out nice in his stripes. The rare lesser spotted yellow Gyrinx – yellow being one of the least spotted colours you paint anyway ;).

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    • I dont tend to paint many lemon or even orangey yellows, its true. Mushrööm Klöwd and ever increasing numbers of the Bigdogz feature yellow as part of their scheme actually, but its always a browner colour than this little cat has.

      I couldnt decide whether to gor for more contrasting stripes on the models actually, which is why it stayed almost but not quite finished for a year. The off white was a bit of a cop out, but it looks perfectly fine all the same.

      Thanks for the feedback.

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  2. Beautiful paint job. Nice, rich colours and the different fur patterns of the cats look stunning. My favourite is , however, the rich green you painted the robe with. Really makes all the details pop.

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    • Thank you daggerandbrush. The yellow cat is the only new model shown here, but he looked a bit lost when photographed alone, so he had some other older miniatures put in for the photo.

      You are not the only person to have commented on the greens on that Astropath actually, many liked it. I have since picked up another pair of Astropaths from different GW eras and I intend to paint them in identical colours (green being the accepted colour for Astropaths in the canon anyway). Having a small choir (the correct collective term for Astropaths IIRC), each distinct in terms of design buut unified by colour appeals. I will see if I can get them done before 2015 🙂

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      • That should look dashing when completed! I assumed there would be a connection between cat and man…40K equivalent of a crazy cat lady (guy)?

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        • I actually have a “Mad Cat Lady” model that I picked up from Black Cat Bases a few years ago. She has a homeless look, with cats in her pockets and around her shoulders etc.

          Cat Lady

          I had planned to paint her like a slightly deranged superhero with cat powers (furniture destruction, increased agility, spontaneous hairball expulsion, etc. Weakness: gets tired easily, requires 18 hours sleep per day), called – unsurprisingly – “Cat Lady” but maybe its time to paint her as some form of scruffy Wyrd Beastmaster instead.

          I think that I/you have convinced me/myself 😉

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  3. Those are beautiful. The array of colors somehow just makes that bunch more sinister to me…especially with how they contrast with the pallid flesh on the ‘path.

    May I ask where you got the cat minis? They’d make great familiars for fantasy gaming too…

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    • Thanks very much Mattias. I have found Familiars (in general, not always cats) to be fun and satisfying palette cleansers in between other projects over the last few years. Because each is a one-off I tend to experiment a little with them, which can be rewarding.

      The bad news is that all of the cat models shown have gone OOP over the last twelve months or so. The yellow, blue and purple cats are all from a nice range of about eight or so cats that Mega Miniatures made for a few years. Mega Miniatures closed business last year and sold off most of their ranges, but I dont currently know who – if anyone – bought the moulds with the cats.

      The red cat is one of a range of peculiar cats that Black Cat Bases stock. They have a lot of weird looking “normal” cats, plus a Halloween Cat, Dragon Cat and some others. The bad news is that while BCB are still open online, they have been having a lot of trouble. I wouldnt recommend ordering from them as a result (I am waiting on a small order that I made last August, almost ten months ago). There are numerous threads about it on various forums. Its a pity as they have a large range of all sorts of interesting and weird miniatures.

      Reaper make some cats as part of their ranges of Familiars. They might be your best bet. In the meantime I will have a look and see if I have any spare cats to send you, but I think that I traded away my last duplicate cat miniatures about a month ago. Ill look, but dont hold your breath Im afraid.

      If you find any other 28mm miniature cat manufacturers then drop me a line please. Im always in the market for a few 🙂

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  4. Very nice set… the Mega cats will probably be sold somewhere else by now, but I’m not sure where. I bought a set at the last minute, fortunately 🙂

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    • Life with cats, miniature or otherwise > life without cats.

      I picked up as many of Megaminis oddball sci-fi ranges as I possibly could over the time that they were closing down, but I still miss them. They were my first stop during the research part of a project. Im glad to hear that you got your hands on the cat set before they closed down, they are fun little models.

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      • Really like your cats. I looked into buying some from the links but was sad to see the main supplier of them has gone out of business, and his sculpts scatted to the four winds – making picking up a bunch of unique cats way more hassle and cost than I can be bothered with. 😦

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  5. […] in my real life prepping miniature space cats for my imaginary life, as can be seen here, here, here, here, here, here and here.  A photo of the first one that I worked on, the imaginatively named […]

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