Reichbusters - German Shepherds

Outside of a dog, a book is a mans best friend

inside of a dog it's too dark to read!

- Groucho Marx

TGIF and welcome back to The Art of Caesura!

Well it has been an eventful start to 2021. With COVID rates here in Ireland the highest in the world this past week and my wife developing symptoms (we're both negative, and she's starting to improve - hallelujah!) the world is a scary place at present. So lets spend today looking at doggies!

Rage

I would never really have considered myself a dog person. I had a fantastic cat ("Molly Malone") growing up and she was everything a great pet can be. But my wife has always loved dogs and has made it clear that there is a dog in our future, so I'm coming around to the idea. You can see more of her family dog, Oscar, here.

My favorite dogs are Great Irish Wolfhounds and German Shepherds. They both still look quite primal. 

As a kid, our local video store, Pic-a-Flic, had a big, lovely, long-haired German Shepherd that would kind of just lie beside the checkout desk or pace the aisles...doggedly. So I never really had the imprinting of German Shepherds as dangerous dogs as they were cast in the 80s (and then Rottweilers in the 90s and Pitbulls in the 00s). 

A few years ago I took an animal cognition course and read the book "The Genius of Dogs" and they really opened my eyes to how incredible dogs really are. By having smell as a much more dominant sense than us, dogs experience the world in a very different manner. Dogs may be able to smell something long before they, or we, can see it; in this way, time almost works different for them because their awareness about the world can extend to things earlier and out of direct line of sight than for us (predominantly sight-based) animals. 

So anyway...yeah...dogs are pretty cool after all. 

Which brings us to the first miniatures that I painted for Reichbusters: Projekt Vril. 

I started with the Nazi dogs as a nice, quick start into the miniatures of Reichbusters. 

From a black undercoat, I started with base of Skrag Brown before sketching out the light areas with 1:1 Skrag Brown + Ushabti Bone. I then painted the black areas diluted Abaddon Black. 

I decided to paint each of their collars a different primary colour (plus green); "why?" you ask "why not!" is my resounding reply - we all need a bit of whimsy in our lives, even Nazi's German Shepherds. 

Once the collars were painted, I coated the whole thing in Agrax Earthshade. 

I then ended with a light drybrush of Ushabti Bone on all the brown fur areas. 

I'll go into detail on how I am doing my Reichbusters bases in a later post. These dogs were a fun quick start into Reichbusters; lets take a look at a few moody shots of them. 

Serenity

Rage

Envy

Colonel Mustard

For those returning for another year of The Art of Caesura, it's great to see you again! For those just joining us, welcome; I hope you find something you enjoy!

Watching: Song of the Sea

Next Week:

Happy 5th birthday to the blog!