Three day weekend I hadn’t been expecting, so I’m painting. This is what I’m working on at the moment:
A bunch of Warsenal Taugak bases for my Combined Army minis, as well as some Jaguars and Intruders.
Infinity, in other words.
I’ve been pretty self-satisfied about my faces lately, so I figured I’d knock out a quick walkthrough of how I paint Caucasian faces while wrapping up my Blood & Plunder minis over the weekend.
I did have a couple of issues putting this together:
It’s kinda hard to tell the difference with some of these steps (which is why I accidentally deleted some of them), which is why I’ve supplemented the mini photos with a photoshopped face (source for the original image). I’ve kept the strokes rough because I’m just paintin’ with a mouse, but also because frankly on a 28mm figure, that’s what brushstrokes are actually going to look like.
I normally basecoat grey or, more recently, black with white zenithal highlights. This was a spur of the moment thing, so I ended up just basecoating white. Won’t matter much.
Paint everything GW Bugman’s Glow.
When dry, paint everything GW Cadian Fleshtone.
The goal is Cadian Fleshtone, but the coverage with it is poor enough that it’s just simpler to basecoat with the base paint.
Block in shapes with GW Kislev Flesh. Get the nose, eyebrows, cheeks, chin and jawline, lips, forehead, ears.
Wash the whole thing with GW Reikland Fleshshade.
Now’s the time to be precise. Pick out details with a fine-tipped brush and GW Kislev Flesh. Target the nose, chin, eyebrows, lower lip, ear tops and lobes, and the tops of the cheekbones.
(Of course I kept all of these.)
With as fine a brush as you can manage, fill in the eyes with GW Rhinox Hide. I’ve seen other people do this with black, but I think it’s too strong: you want to draw attention to the eyes, but you don’t want your figure wearing mascara (unless you do).
Go over the brown ovals with P3 Menoth White Highlight. I prefer this because it’s a bright ivory… but it’s not actually white. Leave some brown around the edges, though, to help the eye stand out.
If you screw up: just go back and touch up with more Rhinox Hide.
Take a pointed toothpick. Sharpen the point. Dab it into the GW Rhinox Hide you used above. Wipe off the excess. Pick a direction and poke it into the eyes. I used to do straight-ahead, but it’s just easier to do the eyes looking off to the side and maybe more dynamic? I’m using brown here because, again, I think black is too strong.
I did blue on the Frostgrave Barbarians last month, and thought it was really effective. I might pursue this: do color, do the dot larger, and then maybe go in with a black dot as a pupile.
Mix about 50:50 GW Wazdaka Red : GW Emperor’s Children: looking for a nice rose color here.
UPDATE: GW Volupous Pink is the way to go here!
Then thin that sucker out with a lot of water and a drop or two of matte medium, until it’s at about this level of transparency:
Better to be too thin and require multiple passes than not thin enough and ruin everything. If you need to do multiple passes: just make sure it’s dry before the next one.
Carefully apply it to the cheeks and tip of the nose. Maybe the ears if you feel like it.
Take some GW Dark Reaper, and thin it out as much as you did the rose.
UPDATE: GW Gryph-Charger Grey is the way to go now!
Now apply it to the beard area. In this example, I think I went too dark: you can do that, but I’m generally not trying to do stubble, just to give some color to the face.
Finish painting the other details on the head. Teeth, if you can see ’em. I like to draw a little line of GW Agrax Earthshade between the lips (if the mouth is closed) or just in the mouth (if it’s open).
Here are a couple of practice heads I’ve been working with.
And some Frostgrave faces I think came out well and photographed OK. This is where this approach has really clicked for me.
Hopefully this helps someone out.
The confluence of two holidays prompted me to take the days in between off: giving me a staycation and the quiet downtime I’ve needed for months.
Of course, me staying home and barely leaving the house means that this is the real winner:
Down time meant painting time. I’d lost my momentum after burning through getting everything ready for Black Ops. I’ve started a bunch of Pike & Shotte minis… but took on too many at once and stalled out.
A palette cleanser was called for.
First, I finished off some half-done Mantic sci-fi zombies. These are nothing to get excited about. The models are adequate. The paintjob no better.
The right sized project to take on when needing Something Different: a Frostgrave warband. Over the first few days, I built my baseline set of models from the Barbarian kit, then ordered an appropriate Wizard and Apprentice from Red Box Games. I’d forgotten how charming and characterful those models are: I need to order a few more and give them some real attention.
Then, bam: just ground out a Frostgrave warband, like you do.
While I was at it, I knocked out the tokens that came with the Barbarians, as well as some rats (War Dogs) and a Raven) I’d based for my Cultists a while back.
A good use of some much needed quiet time.
Finally got around to finishing Demogorgon. No, no hyena heads. This is the other one. Nothing amazing, but I like the blunt color scheme.
I also finished a couple final Frostgrave Cultists a while back (back when I finished my first batch of cultists for Black Ops) and neglected to photograph them. I love those grotty Cultist faces.
Although a bajillion other scenarios have popped off (Stormtroopers assaulting a Kroot encampment! Cultists infiltrating a Militarum base! Goddamn Space Marine! Just one!), my initial plan was to do Stormtroopers vs. Cultists.
I got a bunch of cultists back in the Dark Vengeance box and, even when I traded away the rest of the Chaos models, I hung onto them because they’re cool and they’re the sort of model I’d like to have around painted. Obviously, it took me a bit to get to them.
They’re definitely Chaos-y, but maybe not so specific I can’t use them for whatever.
I was really excited about painting up some Stormtroopers. I’ve been into the models since they came out, but haven’t had an excuse to paint them up. Because they’re supposed to be stealthy, I used the same paint scheme for them that I used on the Deadzone Pathfinders I painted up a few months ago, and I’m nuts for it. It’s black without being black, which is always the problem with painting things black, you know?
I also used some of the Mantic Peacekeeper shields because, well, I thought they deserved some riot shields.
It is accomplished. I’ve finished my (minor) contribution to this weekend’s Arnhem game.
This is a hair more than we’ll actually be using, I think, but it’s a substantial step down from the original plan. I’ve got another 5 squads’ worth of minis prepped for painting, but I’m glad this is all I needed to do in the end. Having painted a bunch of these, I’ve decided that I hate this scale. 1/72 combines the drawbacks of 15mm (poor/difficult to paint detail, requires volume) and 28mm (sufficient detail to require attention) with none of their respective benefits (seriously who cares about detail, they’re 15mms and interesting detail enough to merit the effort), hitting a sour spot between hassle and payoff. That’s why I won’t be sticking these bastards into the lightbox.
I’m sure I’ll finish off the rest of them at some point. It’s a shame that they’re Paras, and so likely don’t need much in the way of vehicles, which I gather is the point of the scale.
The table, however, is going to be magnificent.
Well, I tried.
I made tracks wrapping up the Wrath of Kings Goritisi Saturday morning, so I decided to push ahead and try to paint up this 28mm Trenchworx A7V for NOVA. I ordered it a while back, after having such a good time painting those 15mm A7Vs a few months ago. I quickly basecoated it but then got sidelined with other stuff.
I wanted to paint it up like 563 – Wotan or 561 – Nixe: I like the way the cool grey tones of the armor contrast with the warm brown of the weathering (which is fun, especially since the armor itself is actually painted with some greenish browns, highlighting up to khaki).
I made speedy progress on it, getting pretty much done by bedtime on Saturday. There are definitely some problems with it: had I been a little more deliberate, I’d have been able to fix the skirts: they’re the wrong make for 561 (compare this to this to see what I mean). I also had a lot of trouble with the decals I’d gotten; they were quite a bit more fragile than I’m used to and broke apart: those side crosses had backups but the ones that go on the front of the tank didn’t… just as well, since I don’t think it would have handled the rivets well, but I didn’t think I had time to fight with free-handing them on. So I left them off.
Would you notice either of those things if hadn’t mentioned it? Maybe not… but what’s the point of it if you’re not going to try to get it right?
Failures, but acceptable ones. This thing wasn’t going to win any awards, literal or metaphorical, but then disaster struck: Continue reading
I’m banging away at painting for Wrath of Kings at NOVA, and finally wrapped up the first batch of models yesterday: Ravenscar Mercenaries.
These guys are actually one of my favorite WoK sculpts, despite the decision to give them capri pants, which doesn’t exactly strike terror into the hearts of one’s enemies.
Now that I’m actually posting them, I think they look not so good. I think I need to make peace with that: they’re kinda-sorta speed painted for me. I’m pleased with their faces, if little else.
The Sergeant is just about done, but needed a few more details, so he’ll get varnished with the Zeti.
This is the finalized painting list.
| Ravenscar Mercenary | Infantry | 6 |
| Ravenscar Sergeant | Leader | 1 |
| Lord Hob | Leader | 1 |
| Zeti War Dancer | Infantry | 6 |
| Zeti Dancing Master | Leader | 1 |
| Skorza Skirmisher | Infantry | 5 |
| Skorza Alpha | Leader | 1 |
| Scourge Hound | Specialist | 2 |
| Blood Engine | Specialist | 1 |
Lord Hob shouldn’t be in there, but he is, and he’s done.
I’m doing 6 each of the Rank 1 Infantry (so I can make a Zeti/Ravenscar leader and do 6/4/4) and 5 of the Rank 2 Infantry (so I can make a Skorza leader and do 5/5/5/). My list isn’t in that much flux, but by painting 1-2 extra minis in a batch, I buy myself a lot more flexibility.
I’m working on the Zeti now: I might get pretty close to having them done tonight, which gives me most of the weekend to work on werewolves.
I’ve got ~100 1:72 scaled British paratroopers to paint up for our Arnhem game. Now that FoW WWI is in the can, it’s time to start spinning up on them.
What I’ll be working with is probably 1/3 Eureka AB and the rest Plastic Soldier Company: the AB stuff is vastly nicer than the PSC stuff, but when one’s $1.50 a model and the other $.30… I’ll have the AB for photographs and leaven them out with PSC for gameplay.
Also, it means I can experiment with paint schemes pretty much guilt-free.
Hadn’t realized until it was pointed out that the British infantry helmet != British paratrooper helmet, but at this scale clipping and scraping the brim off works out just fine.
This is pretty much what I’ve settled on:
We’ve had some debate about how light or dark the Denison smock should be: I think this hits the right spot between the extremes, and I think will be even better once I get the correct pattern down. I’m happier with the pants than with earlier experiments, which universally just came out brown.
I’m shooting for something very easy, specifically the traditional (this’ll be my first time with it) base color + highlight then hit everything with AP Soft Tone. For the LOE, I’m more than satisfied. Pleased, even. I’ve done better looking minis, for sure, but this is no effort at all.
Got to spend some time over the weekend wrapping up some A7Vs: more than could ever practically be run at once. They’re not quite done – after taking and assembling these photos, I decided to take some weathering powders to them, loved the result, varnished them, and therefore need to weather them again. But they’re close.
This is my first spin with oil washes. I think they worked quite well; I’ll have to play around with them some more at a larger scale, but this is definitely going in the toolbox.
Also, these weren’t taken in the lightbox; just in front of some paper under the arch. When I take their final photos, I probably should throw in a penny or something for reference for my family members who don’t know what (“Flames of War” or “1:100” actually means in terms of scale).
503-506 Before
503-506 After
563-561 Before
563-561 After
The rough freehand on 503 is a big part of why I decided to go ahead and do transfers wherever possible. There are also some shoddy Vs on the front of 561 – the decals provided were too large and would have run afoul of rivets (certainly more afoul than my brush did).
Not perfect, not by a long shot, but pretty good for a small scale tank. I’ll have to grab one of the 28mm ones from Trenchworx at Historicon.