The following page are ideas I had for the non-Imperial powered armour for the Spyrers. It had to have recording devices, various ways it could upgrade itself according to the performance of the wearer and also look both high-tech but also as if it was very old. I imagined a baroque, almost 17th Century suit of armour look with servo motors, fibre bundles, cameras and also an engraved list of notable previous users. The larger, snooty-looking chap is my version of an Orrus Spyrer. (Necromunda Spyre hunters)

Back to my Necromunda sketchbook for the next few pages:
Here I’m planning a conversion of a Mike Perry Ratskin miniature followed by some character ideas for a Pit Slave gang.

I’ve settled on the design of my Scavvy, with some more sketches for a whole bunch of them. On the opposite page are some thumbnails of the other Outlander gang portraits, a Scaly, a Nomad and another Pit Slave.

Ratskin portrait and the Redemptionists are progressing on these pages.

Here are more crazy plans for scratch-building an entire Scavvy gang and the pose I chose for the Enforcer portrait.

Though I’ve scanned the entire Underhive-themed sketchbook I may post something a bit different next time!

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I’m in the middle of moving house at the moment so I haven’t had much time to add images to my website. In a break from frantically packing I’ve uploaded some more of my Necromunda sketchbook as I promised. The next pages are me working how to make the Necromunda Enforcers have a more hive world look but still keep the Adeptus Arbites/Judge Dredd feel to them. The quilted jacket was a medieval reference from Jes Goodwin’s early Arbites drawings (from White Dwarf 130, way back in October 1990!).

The next page has some refinements of the Necromunda Enforcer design taking elements from John Blanche’s Inquisitor Sketchbook with his slightly Fifth Element inspired Arbites. ((Wikipedia entry for The Fifth Element) (IMDb entry for The Fifth Element)). On the opposite page there are some early plans for the Scavvy gang member portrait.

The next pages are me working out the hairstyle and scene for the Scavvy and a pose for the Ratskin too. Ratskins are rumoured to be descendants of the original colonists of Necromunda who have adapted their existence over the millenia to make use of the utterly polluted hyper-populated world.

I’m still not sure the Scavvy is scary or mutated enough on the next page but I’m refining the look of the Ratskin portrait.

And the last pages for today are a sketch of a Pit Slave woman, some tracked feet for the boss Pit Slave, a sketch of an 28mm Inquisitor conversion, a floating fat Daemonhost (more of him later!) and some ideas for what would become my Scavvy portrait.

As always with my Games Workshop sketches they’re fan art and not intended to breach copyright.

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These next pages are me working on the hulking Goliath ganger, followed by some early Outlander sketches. I was wondering which of the Spyrer classes to portray and also working on the Redemptionist Deacon, a deliberate homage to Pat Mills and Kevin O’Neill Nemesis The Warlock’s arch-foe Torquemada (and his Terminators). (Wikipedia entry for Nemesis the Warlock)

Here’s how I took a self-portrait photo (on the left!) and used it as reference for the crazed mutant preacher who wanders the lower levels of the Underhive. I didn’t just paint over it, I like to draw from it rather than ‘tracing’.

On these pages I was considering a BioShock Big Daddy look for the Pit Slave image, there are some doodles of Necromunda scenery too. (Wikipedia entry for Big Daddy)

Some more outlander sketches and an entire Pit Slave gang, including a robo-gimp(I don’t want to know if this is a ‘thing’) a Ned Kelly axe head chap, various cyborgs and a creepy tech to repair them.

All of this is fan art. More very soon.

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As promised here are some more of my sketchbook pages. These are a selection of pages from my Necromunda Sketchbook from 2008 (it’s 120mm 148mm, so smaller than my usual A5 one). I really like to look at other people’s sketchbooks and the one’s I had of mine when I was at the Hysterical Games Stand at Salute this year really got visitors interested in the miniatures.

This got me thinking ‘What’s a project I got really into?’ Well there are a few ongoing ones but the Necromunda Underhive one was a real labour of love for me and as I’d scanned in the sketchbooks a while back I would just need to arrange them into the order I had drawn them and upload them here.

It’s no coincidence that Necromunda was a really popular game; it required just the box with its rules, plastic miniatures, multi-levelled plastic and cardboard buildings inside and was a fairly simple, easy to learn ruleset which encouraged campaign play as part of the game itself. (Wikipedia entry for Necromunda)

In fact it’s still going strong online and Games Workshop have very belatedly cottoned on to this by dipping their toes in the water with their Shadow War:Armageddon game.

I was asked by Major Gilbear (not his real name, he’s a character from Dan Abnett’s Gaunt’s Ghosts series (Wikipedia entry for Gaunt’s Ghosts) by to produce a banner for the Underhive forum website (this site is now defunct though YakTribe Gaming are still using many of these images. Yak Tribe gaming site)

These first eight pages depict my initial ideas for the Underhive Houses of Hive Primus on the Hive World of Necromunda. I looked at as much of the original artwork from White Dwarf magazine, the game itself, it’s precursor Confrontation, the miniatures for inspiration and also threw some of my own ideas into the mix.

More on this tomorrow!

All fan art and not intended to breach Games Workshop’s copyright.

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