Painting some festive miniatures

After Skitarii Claus last year, this November I dug out a couple of ‘officially’ festive miniatures from Games Workshop: two of the annual Red Gobbo limited releases.

In a bout of festive feeling last year, I bought the 2024 Red Gobbo release: Da Red Gobbo’s A-Bomb-Inable Snowman and then went looking on ebay for some previous options. I ended up adding the Grotmas Gitz and Da Red Gobbo’s Surprise minis by year end but didn’t get around to actually building or painting them (this is the way).

As another year rolls round however, encouraged by painting the slightly wintery Skrorg Snowpelt star player mini for Blood Bowl, I had a burst of enthusiasm and got two of the three built and primed, ready to paint.

A-Bomb-inable

First up for actual painting — as mentioned in my November painting update — I worked on Da Red Gobbo’s A-Bomb-Inable Snowman.

This is a really fun miniature with a few things going on, and a rare Games Workshop miniature intended to keep one part removable: the snowman’s head pops off to reveal a bomb underneath.

With so much going on, I kept things in sub-assemblies until the end to make painting much easier. The grot was pinned to a cork, Da Red Gobbo himself got tacked to a small wood block and the snowman’s head got tacked on a crocodile-clip stalk that came with my airbrush booth. For the snowman body, the detail was lower and I largely hand-held it while drybrushing the texture, or simply sat it in place on the base and held with friction.

I really enjoyed painting this miniature. There are, as always, bits I’d like to better next time but that’s fine as I’m very much still learning.

Overall though, I’m proud of this one.

With each piece painted well enough, I eventually glued them all together (except that snowman head!) and the completed mini looks great.

Grotmas Gitz

With one Christmas (sorry, Grotmas) mini coming together so nicely, I decided to start on the next: Gromtas Gitz. This one involves Da Red Gobbo riding a crazed squig.

With the first, I hadn’t really painted many Orc/Ork minis since the ’90s — basically just my incredibly slow progress on Varag Ghoul-Chewer and a base coat on a 2nd edition Space Ork — so getting the green skin right was a fun new challenge.

The same went for squigs but again I was happy with the early progress I was able to make getting the red based and highlighted.

Again, I painted in sub-assemblies to make sure I could reach all the details involved. The base for this one has a lot more to get at, with a grot lying in the snow under the squig as well as some fallen presents and decorations.

Keeping Da Red Gobbo separate for painting was a little fiddly. That section includes a bunch of the reigns for the squig, as well as a grot hanging off the side, which is all thin and spindly and fragile while also being incredibly awkward to mount on anything. I started with it blu-tacked to the corner of a wood block but ended up just hand-holding dry bits I wasn’t painting at each stage.

I lost steam a little on this one with Da Red Gobbo himself, although I did still get a decent amount of detail onto him. I left some details rather basic though, such as the fur trim on his coat, a sin which I later mostly hid under snow texture paint!

Speaking of… while the previous sculpted base had a lovely dimpled snow texture that painted up really nicely, this one has a smooth surface that didn’t look quite so good using just paint (and my level of skill with painting no doubt).

As a result, I broke out the Valhallan Blizzard texture paint which brought it all back together really nicely. Adding some splodges here and there on the characters too, it hopefully adds a little more of the feel of them crashing through the snow in manic fashion. 

The grot hanging on to the left side of the squig got a whole load of snow covering as if he’s just been pulled through a snowy bush or something.

The finished miniature is another one I’m very happy with. It has a great presence on the table and will sit with pride alongside the A-Bomb-Inable Snowman on my shelf.

Plans for a Christmas kitbash

Late-breaking in mid-December but I did feel the need to at least think about a festive kitbash for this year and I think I may have struck upon a plan.

On a lunchtime walk this week, I started to think about how a space marine could be made festive. My first thought went to the Phobos Librarian as it has a cool cloak and hood that could look Santa-esque, but I’ve only got one of those and they’re relatively expensive.

Thanks to picking up two of the battleforce boxes for the Space Wolves earlier this year though, my next thought went to the new Wolf Priest and so I’m going to investigate that when I get some time.

I’ve already used the most Santa-like head on this model: I used the bearded head for my terminator captain wolfy kitbash earlier this year.

I’m not keen on going with the wolf-skull head, even though it has a hood. There is though another possibility — from the battle leader model — that I might try to get covered in a hood to look a bit more ‘grimdark St Nick’. I’ll also have a rummage in the bits boxes to see if I’ve got any better options elsewhere too.

In my head, it’d be nice to swap the pistol for a candy cane and the crozius for a sack of toys but I’m highly unconvinced my green stuff skills are up to that just yet.

I’ll have to see whether I get the time to sit down and try a few things though time before Christmas is rapidly running out and I’m working right up until Christmas Eve this year.