40k: Painting a Blanchitsu-Style Warband

We all have an artist, scientist, or engineer we can’t stop talking about if someone makes the mistake of prompting us. Tesla. Lovcraft. Marcus Aurelius (I have friends who can’t stop talking about Marcus Aurelius). For me, the person I’m most inspired by these days is John Blanche. His art, and even more than that, his approach to art and lore-building.

Blanche’s 40k art is particularly mad. Here are some examples of his work:

You might have wondered why such mad art leads to Ultramarines… why doesn’t it, instead, lead to more mad art?

A lot of other people have thought this, too. Not content to sit on their brushes, they used them instead to create the art style known as Blanchitsu.

Desaturation. A jaundiced palette. Warhammer Squalor. Here are some examples:

Picture Credits: DeathZap.Co.Uk , SpyGlassAsylum.blogspot.com , PuttyAndPaint.com , and the incredible Nicky Grillet at NickyGrillet.com .

Now, you can imagine we don’t get a lot of requests to paint this way. We have no pictures like this on our site to invite this sort of work. GW does nothing to invite it either; its official art shows clean, clear painting depicting miniatures as realistically as possible.

So naturally, I had have it done on my own minis. Below are shots of an Inquisition warband done in a Blanchitsu style. It’s a mix old and new minis (1st edition Chaos Obliterators as servitors. New Sisters of Battle Arcoflagellants). Also, GW and non-GW figures - three are from Battle for Antares.

They’re so different from what we normally do, I feel like I’m looking at an art crime. I utterly love them.

These were done, as far as that makes sense given the art style, to Exhibition Quality.

Shameless tags: miniature painting service, warhammer painting service, warhammer 40k painting service, miniature painting services, miniature painting commission, professional miniature painting, miniatures painting service

Paintedfigs is a miniature painting service. You can send us your figurines to paint, and we also have painted miniatures for sale. We paint mainly Games Workshop (Warhammer 40k, Warhammer Fantasy, Age of Sigmar, Necromunda, Space Hulk, Bloodbowl, and so on), Star Wars, Warmachine and Hordes, and pretty much every Kickstarter and board game under the sun.

And we do so at the lowest rates on Earth (we’ve checked).