Painting And Modelling

[Mead]

One thing I've been missing on these forums is a painting section. I'm more into the hobby for the creative aspect of it than anything else, so I thought I'd get a little discussion going.

I play Bretonnians, and I'm a stupidly slow painter. My philosophy is that I've spent a small fortune on little plastic dolls, so I want to get as much out of the wargaming experience as I can.

To extrapolate, this christmas I lucked out and got the release army deal early. As I write I've finished painting 13 bowmen, two characters and 5 knights. In my defense though, they look pretty good.

I'm not a big fan of the paladin blisters, so I convert all my characters. Having collected bretonnians for several years, I have a pretty respectable bit collection.

My battle standard bearer is the Odo l'Outremer model, with the flail removed and replaced with a banner pole. On this I've placed the men-at-arms banner, since it's larger and more imposing than the knight's banner is.

My general has the body and legs of Repanse de Lyonesse, with the butt-ugly head replaced with that of a mordheim Sigmarite model (seriously, the other one looks like it's from an inflatable love doll). Her left hand is a m@a shield hand instead of the banner hand of the model... meh, fluff.

I've used the old mounted sorceress model for my damsel, removing the silly moon thing on her staff and replacing it with the holy icon from the m@a sprue.

As for painting, I use a scheme of red and white, with horses, belts, straps etc in neutral greys and browns.

I hate metallic paint! So, and here's the kicker, I've decided to forego metallics entirely. Instead, I paint all metal in a non-metallic-metal (nmm) style. From a black undercoat, I build up from shadow grey through space wolves grey to white, all taking into account the way light reflects off metal.

I think this looks much better than simple flat metallics, and it's certainly teaching me a thing or two about patience and painting. I always mix paints, I never make the transition from one color to the next without mixing the two in at least one in-between layer.

All my barding, and knight's tunics, are on a white undercoat. I start with Scab red => red gore =>blood red =>a 50/50 blood red/ blazing orange mix.

Whites are made from a 25/75 mix of shadow grey and space wolves grey on a white coat. Just keeping the basecoat is flat and disinteresting, so I build it up through =>space wolves grey=>skull white. Getting a nice white is difficult, and I'm still trying out new things with it.

One thing I've recently started using extensively is Windsor and Newtons Acrylic Flow Improver. It binds the pigment of the paint to the water, making it dry much more evenly than mixing it with plain water does. This is particularely helpful when washing with diluted paint. All professional painters use a paint extender like this. However if the W&N solution is too costly for you, you could use an alternative - Future Floow Wax! It's an acrylic based floor wax that works much in the same way and is very popular. It's even been dubbed "magic wash" by serious painters.

Oh, while I'm ranting, here painting lesson #1: Dilude your paint, goddammit! This is alpha omega, the ten commandments and the trials of hercules all rolled into one. If you don't, I'll personally come around your place and smack you upside your fool head, fool.

Anyway, I intend to base my entire army with a winter setting. I first glue perfectly normal sand to the bases, paint it black, drybrush it with bestial brown, then glue on several layers of snow - baking soda works good.

A tip for basing with sand: when the initial layer of sand has dried properly, soak it using a PVA mix diluded to the viviscosity of milk. This will cement the sand in place, making it much more resistant to wear.

My bowmen are another challenge. To really make them special, I've strung their bows using very thin copper thread cut from inside a length of electrical wire. In addition, all the wood in my army - lances, banner poles and bows primarily - has freehand wood grain painted on them. It takes a while, but the end result is well worth it, I think.

Okay, this is, in brief, how I paint my army. How do you paint yours?

[InvictusVis]

Actually, there is a painting section under general stuff. And to answer your question I usually stick to codex colors on whatever army I am working on.

[WiCkEdRock]

For my goblins i use blue as the maincolor, then red, then yellow. I think the army will be pretty heavily converted. things to do:

Homebuilt pirate snotling pump wagon (WIP)
LO Trui Raiders wolf riders, see conversion thread

Ok, wasnt that much, i'll come up with some more later :/

[King Ulrik Flamebeard]

Wow!! Mead if you really do paint like that well done, I would love to see pics of any of your finished units. NMM, I doubt I'll ever attempt that. I've not always the paitience, though it is improving ^_^

I don't think I'm as slow a painter as you are mead but I do take my time, and now have started to go into deeper areas of shading and highlighting. Here's a quick run through of painting my dwarven warrior unit, which was finished about two days ago.

First off, I only assemble the body and legs. The rest stays on the frames, makes it alot easier IMO. Oh and they're undercoated black.

First things first, the body.

The chainmail is drybrushed in... chainmail, then again with Mithril Silver. The cloth and clothing are painted bestial brown, after borwn ink is applies quite heavily and left to seek home in the folds of the clothing. Once dry I once more use bestial brown, but watered down. This is applied to the entire cloth area, just leaving the ink in the folds and such. A highlight of snakebite leather is then applied, this will cover all the bestial brown areas. Any buttons are then painted mithril silver. The trim running around the base of the armour is painted with dark angels green.

The hair is a different matter, it'll depend. Mainly black, brown or grey but sometimes orange, blonde and various shades I can make. These will be the same colour as the beard, or will dictate the colour my beards will be.

The arms, will depend on which way I arm them (Hand weapons, Great weapons or crossbows). I'll do hand weapons and shields, with nothing extra.

The first thing is again the armour, but this time I have to do the weapon heads and helmets too. So it's chainmail followed by mithril silver for the chainmail armour, but the weapon heads are different. They're chainmail followed by a heavy wash of black ink, the reason will come clear later.

The cloth once again done the same was as before, but I do the flesh before I do the snakebite leather part. The flesh is done with dwarf flesh as the base colour, then inked with flesh wash. Then dwarf flesh to highlight, followed by a mix of dwarf and elf flesh. Then the snakebite leather is applied to the cloth.

The trim around the armour is dark angels green, the beards vary. Thus they are any colour I previously said and have pointed out the hair on the body will dictate the colours of my beards.

The weapons are the last to be done, the whole thing (bar the balde/head) is painted bestial brown and inked (brown ink). The main haft is left this way, but the handles are done the same way as the cloth (bestial brown, highlighted by snakebite leather). The metal (both weapons and helmets) is highlighted with chainmail, this is done so that the ink is left in corners, crevases and around bolts etc. Then hightlighted with mithril silver (surprise, surprise). The helmets get a bit extra, the two that are quartered are painted beaten copper and highlighted with dwarf bronze. All the metal are then given an extremely heavily watered down black ink wash (7:3 ratio of water to ink) and just applied to all the weapon head and helmet, just to dull them slightly.

Well that's a basic dwarven warrior how I paint them, I hope it wasn't too boring for you all. This way is used on all my warriors/x-bowmen, the command is done a bit differently (due to the horn and banner etc).

Thanks, KU

[Slai]

I paint slower than a weed-toting snail. Even slower than mead. Though my ***** look slike, well, *****, and his stuff looks really good =P .

Started collecting High Elves 5 years ago. Didnt paint anything (nearly) until like 4 months ago. Now I have about 10 Silver Helms, and 5 Shadow Warriors completely done =P . Out of like 5-6k pts worth of models.

How I paint my Skaven models:

I undercoat them white, then I paint black over all metal/wood/leather areas. I use mithril over the metal areas, bestial brown/snakebite leather on the wooden/leather sections, and then dot their eyes red. Their cloth is also painted black then i paint scab red over it (Scab Red kicks Red Gore ass any day of the week!) .

So: i paint crappy AND slow =P .

[WiCkEdRock]

Sorry Slai, but that sounds.. crappy.
See, if you paint their furs just white, its gonna look like ass. This is what you should do: undercoat them with codex grey or some other grey, then drybrush skull white over it. Think it will look alot better

[Slai]

Originally posted by WiCkEdRock@Jul 12 2004, 13:45
Sorry Slai, but that sounds.. crappy.
See, if you paint their furs just white, its gonna look like ass. This is what you should do: undercoat them with codex grey or some other grey, then drybrush skull white over it. Think it will look alot better

[snapback]181157[/snapback]

It looks like its white, which is all i care about. If i wanted it to look better, id build it up from dark grey to white, but since im not interested in making small masterpieces, but an army, i do it that way =) .

[WiCkEdRock]

Lots of small masterpieces=army anyway, mister gamerman! Your wolf rider is done, btw

I paint my goblins' skin first dark angels green, then drybrush that with goblin green and do a light drybrush of sunburst yellow. Looks pretty nice i must say.

[Fallen Angel]

I used to almost never paint but now its the summer holidays and there is nothing to do I sat down at my desk and realized how many models I have to paint. I have so many, but nowadays I can normally churn out one based and painted model a day.

My high elves are from saphery so I play a very magick heavy army, they are painted with bright whites (skull white) and dark blues (storm blue). This may shock you guys but ....*looks around*.... I don't undercoat. [insert evil laugh] Yet I still get good results.

[Zora Blade]

When I paint my army *40k or fantasy* I use half of a box of guys just exparementing... though with my dark elves I just painted... and they turned out weird...

*note to everyone* don't paint dark elves with blue skin... bleh!!

-Jenn