"Holy Moses! What's That?"

"They seem to be springing out all over the place."

These two 28mm metal models are produced by "Black Tree Design" and are available as DW336 - Gell Guard and DW347 - Gell Guard II from their "Doctor Who" miniatures range. "Blob-like creatures which Omega made while trapped in a Black Hole domain made of anti-matter", these figures are clearly based upon the "shapeless lumpy-globule-like creatures" seen in Bob Baker and Dave Martin's 1972 television story "The Three Doctors".

Primed using a couple of coats of "Vallejo" Heavy Orange, the duo were washed in "Citadel" Agrax Earthshade and sporadically dry-brushed using a little "Vallejo" Gold and Gunmetal. They were then treated to some watered-down "Citadel" Flesh Tearers Red in an effort to capture their somewhat metallic-looking blistered costume. Unfortunately, a single layer of the Contrast paint didn't provide enough of an even coverage over the details though, so I eventually ended up giving the renegade Time Lord's minions a second 'going over.'

"Fire at will!"

This did make the monsters a little more red than I had intended. But at least seemed to have gotten the job done - at least until I applied some "Vallejo" Matt Varnish to each model, and disconcertingly watched much of the "Citadel" Flesh Tearers Red evaporate under my brush..!?! In an effort to thwart this problem, I combined a quantity of the "Citadel" Contrast colour with some "Vallejo" Matt Varnish, and tried to seal my paint-job a second time. Sadly, this didn't really either...

As a result I slapped some 'pure' "Citadel" Flesh Tearers Red over each Gell Guard, and only when that was well and truly dry, did I carefully apply a tiny amount of "Vallejo" Matt Varnish to the figures blob by blob. After a fair few touch-ups, this process finally seemed to work, and despite having some Doctor Who creatures which were far rosier than I had anticipated, I was subsequently able to apply some "Vallejo" Gloss Varnish to them without any further problems.

"Games Workshop" WIPs - These three Space Marines are at various stages of completion

Lastly, I gave each large cyclopean eye a lick or two of "Vallejo" Dark Vermillion, and later shaded them all with a splash of "Citadel" Carroburg Crimson. This combination worked so well that I decided to then use "Vallejo" Heavy Red and "Citadel" Carroburg Crimson on the underlings' pincer-clawed hands too - simply so the fearsome limb which can shoot explosives, stood out a bit more from the rest of Omega's simple servants.

Alongside my Jon Pertwee era monsters I have some slight in-roads on the last of my "Games Workshop" Sons of Horus traitor space marines. I've let myself get a little distracted from this month's goal to complete these "Horus Heresy" traitors, so have plonked the trio 'front-and-centre' in my painting queue and hope to get at least a couple of them completed within the next week or so...