Time continues to speed by with its usual unseemly haste and, even though I’m pretty sure Christmas was just last week, we’re striding into February already, which means it’s also time for Fembruary. By now the annual Fembruary challenge will be well established in a lot of hobbyists calendars but that’s no reason not to give it another mention, to remind anyone who might have been planning to take part and to alert anyone who’s not come across it in previous years.
To quote the man behind the challenge, Alex of Leadballoony, Fembruary works like this;
“…the deal is ‘Paint at least one Female miniature’ – it’s that simple! I’m not bothered what genre, game, manufacturer, painting style or material you go with. It can be a squad, a single mini, a diorama, or whatever takes your fancy… I’m just looking for awesome portrayals of the feminine in miniature form, as part of an ongoing conversation about how women are presented within our hobby.”
Originally I was just going to post something brief aimed at directing people towards the challenge and encouraging anyone who read it to take part, however I actually ended up writing quite a long post all about the representation of women in miniatures. In the end however I pushed it onto the back burner for now and went back to my original plan. At some stage however I’ll tidy it up and post it – after all it was both erudite and witty, and contained a number of well-structured and intelligent arguments without ever becoming rambling or preachy. You should try to imagine it – it was really something! In the meantime here’s a few of my favourite female models that I’ve painted in recent years.
Speaking of female miniatures, a recent release that stuck a particular chord with me is Fecula Flyblown of the Wurmspat, the Nurgle worshippers who’ve oozed their way into the latest expansion for Warhammer Underworlds. Allow me to pretentiously quote myself when I reviewed the Maggotkin of Nurgle in January of 2018.
“Disease affects all living things so here was a chance to show what happens when Nurgle’s ailments are contracted by someone other than a well-built male barbarian. We could have seen a sickly elf, twisted with bitterness as his immortality became a curse. We could have had a disease ravaged dwarf in a rust-caked suit of armour, great vats of toxin on his hunched back whilst intestinal pipes, throbbing with peristaltic action, spew jets of filth ahead of him? We could even have had a woman. Of course Nurgle isn’t all that interested in high heels and boob-armour but this is an age of equal opportunities and girls can worship an unglamorous god of disease and putrefaction just as well as boys.”
And what do you know, two years on here she is. What a joy to discover sometimes they do listen to me after all! And thank goodness they didn’t give her a chainmail bikini…
I’ve got a few ideas in mind for things to paint this year, although time is going to be very pressing this month so I suspect I may not manage very much. At the very least I’d like to tackle some more of my unpainted Warcry collection, and I know there’s a lady amongst the ranks of the Iron Legionaries, as well as the awesome Beastspeaker amongst the Untamed Beasts so if I manage nothing else I’ll at least take a shot at painting those two. Maybe, if I’m very lucky and clever with my time management I might even find the time to tackle Nayam Shai Murad from Blackstone Fortress, and Severina Raine (the lead character in my favourite Black Library novel of 2019).
In the meantime I implore you to take a look through the unpainted pile of shame and join in the challenge, as well as spreading the word on your social medias or down the local gaming club. The days in which female miniatures were thin on the ground are thankfully receding (although there’s still plenty more ground to make up – GW, if you’re reading this, female Orlocks stat!) so you should have plenty to choose from. Anyone who treated themselves to a new Sisters of Battle army last month for example now has no excuse to let them gather dust…
February 6th, 2020 at 11:12 am
Yusss!!!
February 6th, 2020 at 11:55 am
😀
February 6th, 2020 at 12:54 pm
Nice post and nice to see a bunch of your female minis in one place. Some great work there mate.
February 6th, 2020 at 9:44 pm
Cheers dude! Yeah, it was fun looking through old posts and finding them all. Got to paint more though!
February 6th, 2020 at 4:27 pm
All signed up for the challenge and raring to go. Nice to see some of your figures again and in some cases for the first time. All very nice indeed.
February 6th, 2020 at 9:50 pm
Looking forward to seeing what you do mate 🙂 Thank you, it was actually your Tim Gone By posts that put me in mind to dig out some stuff from the archive that people haven’t seen for a while. Of course there’s also plenty of stuff in my archive that should probably doesn’t bear revisiting…
February 6th, 2020 at 8:43 pm
You’re a masterful painter! Great collection of figures.
February 6th, 2020 at 9:51 pm
High praise – thank you very much! 🙂
February 6th, 2020 at 9:18 pm
Cool showcase of minis. I really liked #2 and #4. I especially want to know where #4 is from, as it’s a model I’d just like to paint for fun. Even if I end up having no use for her.
February 6th, 2020 at 9:55 pm
Thank you! #4 is a plainsrunner from the Untamed Beasts warband for Warcry. You can see more pictures of her (and some of her pals) here; https://convertordie.wordpress.com/2020/01/20/untamed-beasts-part-1/
The Warcry models have all been great to paint so far, and the game seems like a lot of fun as well. I’ve only had a quick go at it so far but I’ve really enjoyed what I’ve seen of it.
February 7th, 2020 at 4:25 am
Thanks Wudugast, sweet paint jobs on those and I can see why you like those minis for sure.
February 7th, 2020 at 12:07 am
Some cracking work there.
Cheers,
Pete.
February 7th, 2020 at 8:12 am
Thanks Pete 🙂
February 7th, 2020 at 4:31 pm
Yep, got an Escher gang primed up I was already planning on getting painted anyway.
February 7th, 2020 at 10:40 pm
Good to hear it, we need more Escher gangers in the world! 🙂
February 27th, 2020 at 2:02 pm
Sadly I’ve been too distracted by Adeptus Titanicus to do any work on them! Where did the time go?
February 29th, 2020 at 7:18 pm
Well Adeptus Titanicus is a fine thing to be distracted by so I’ll let you off this once 😉 Honestly I’m in the same place but the opposite way around, I keep planning to work on some tiny titans and then getting dragged back into the Underhive again.
February 22nd, 2020 at 9:57 am
[…] Check out Wudugast’s astonishing range of some of the fantastical female models he’s painted over the years. – https://convertordie.wordpress.com/2020/02/06/fembruary-2020/ […]
February 26th, 2020 at 2:54 pm
That is quite the nice rogues gallery you’ve painted. Quite an impressive offering for the painting challenge, I must say. I particularly like that chemist-looking woman with the flask.
February 26th, 2020 at 3:09 pm
Thank you! This year’s final Fembruary model should be up tomorrow (fingers and toes crossed and all that!). Haven’t managed as much this year as I have in the past but hopefully I’ll correct that next year. The lady with the flask is from the Anvil Industries, Sisters of the Burning Rose range (totally not Sisters of Battle – honest guv’).
February 26th, 2020 at 5:37 pm
Neat, thank you for the information. I think I might see if I can grab one myself.
February 27th, 2020 at 2:02 pm
Beautiful stuff
February 29th, 2020 at 7:17 pm
Thank you 🙂
April 3rd, 2020 at 10:33 am
Sadly I missed Fembruary this year. I’ll have to paint (at least) one female mini this year to make up for it!
April 4th, 2020 at 9:46 am
I reckon that should be easily achievable – the range of options is growing all the time. 🙂
April 4th, 2020 at 10:21 am
Yep, it was a tongue-in-cheek comment, though as I look across the half-apinted stuff on my desk the number of female figures is still rather disappointing. I guess it’s also because my collection skews older in a lot of ways.