Warriors Batch #2

Last 2 nights work:

About 2 hours a night.

Two dipped Dwarfs, and eight more with 3 colours - tin bitz, skin and beards (well, I have two more beards to go).

I've been trying some different colours, to compare the new gw paints with the old. I'm a lazy painter, I just want them to be the same...
Now, the two dwarfs in the front have just been dipped, so it's hard to see the differences in colour while they're so glossy.

Left Dwarf v Right Dwarf:

Ratskin flesh (left), which is the new version of dwarf flesh (right) but is actually a good deal more tan coloured. :(
Auric armour gold (left) which is the new version of burnished gold, and seems pretty much the same, with the same low pigment level and inability to cover (read: requires 3 coats to look any good).

One of the things I'm going to try and do is vary the painting scheme somewhat. From afar these dwarfs will look like approximate copies of each other, but up close I'm going to change up helmet, horn, axe haft decoration colours using different colours from the same scheme.

Get your beard on:

I'm also going to try and vary the beard shades just a smidge. I used Cassandra Yellow shade on the left dwarf above, which lightened it up a lot. Unfortunately army builder dark tone deepended it again, and it looks almost the same as the dwarf on the right.

Next time I'll try much more of the Cassandra Yellow (I only used a touch the first time) and try and hit some highlights with it which will show through the dip. I know, it's a shade and is supposed to run into the lower areas, but we'll see.

I can also try the soft-tone dip on the beard instead, which gives a much browner shade to the models.

ratskin flesh base vs old dwarf flesh

Ratskin flesh base vs Dwarf flesh. GW conversion chart says These are close. I'd rather they were closer. That is all.

Update: brown rose from Vallejo might be a better match. I haven't tried it though.

Warrior Painting #2

My first painted banner!

After dipping last night, I've applied matt varnish and a gloss varnish to the helmet and axe gems. Looking pretty tasty if I do say so myself!

The warrior with the brown base on the end is a tester for green grass & snow style base, I think that's what I'll be going with except that I'll keep the bases black underneath. I also need to grass & snow up the movement tray.

I'm loving the colours of the shields, and the musicians horn. I need to be a little tidier with some of those shields on the next batch.

These chaps took far too long to paint, I definitely need to figure out how to get my time down with them. Be less neat on the rear ranks? More neat in the front? Maybe, but if I'm spending the time I like to do a half decent job (relative to my ability that is).

warrior painting

It's been a while since I've done anything warhammer related, and last weekend I got my paint on big time. 

Spent some more time yesterday on them, finishing off two more warriors and the musician and banner. The musician and banner took a good deal of time more than the warriors - a chunk more detail on each.

I'm really happy with them. I was going for a slightly darker orange on the banner than I used on the beards. It's not as different as I'd hoped, but any darker and it just looked brown. I think the banners orange goes well with burnished gold. Also, it was my first freehand attempt. Not too bad eh!

Now I just have to matt varnish then and base them up properly.

K.Flay : this evenings painting music

Here's her latest EP, it's rather fantastic (make sure you listen past the first song 10th Ave which imho is the least bestest).
http://eyesshut.kflay.com/

Hammerer paint stripping

I'm a duplicate of the next pic,
I'm just here so the blogroll has
a pretty picture when displayed
on other blogs.

<Vincent Price voiceover> LOOK AT THEM...THEY'RE HIDEOUS!
Come visit our travelling circus of Ebay purchases! Cheap (if you're lucky), but more work.
</Vincent Price voiceover>

 

That's right boys, into the Dettol with you!

My favourite way to deal with these is a bath in 60% Dettol + 40% water (the ratio doesn't matter too much, just don't drink it) for a day or two. In this case I got lazy and left them in there for 2 weeks.

Generally speaking it strips super-glue(after 2 weeks it does!), so you'll have to re-glue bases and shields and what not.

And away we go.

The dettol turns the paint somewhat gloopy, and very sticky. Wear rubber gloves and do your best to wash that stuff off, it sticks to everything so an outside tap is preferable. An old toothbrush will help a lot if you have one.

The Hammerers emerged from their ordeal absolutely stinking of dettol, but perfectly usable.

That's right my luvlies, you rest up. We'll get you painted and as good 
as new in no time. Well, probably quite some time.

Joining the Ginger Dwarf Revolution

Read on, there are much
better paint jobs & photos below...

This is the news.
Paint scheme decided!
Gentleman of the year award awarded!
Hammerers painted!

I purchased a bunch (20 if I remember correctly) of Hammerers a while back. I've since stripped them of their paint with Dettol and completed a few test jobs. I also had that painting day with Mr.Saturday a while back.

Read all about the source for the paint scheme, decisions & adventures abound after the jump. There's some awesome pics for the lazy reader, I'm a considerate host.

dedicated paint time

early progress

Last weekend I made a trip to hang out with Mr.Saturday so that we could get some productive painting time under our belts.  I've been spending no time on it of late, and I reckon Sat's been the same, so making an event of it made sure neither could back down. :)
His Fimir are coming along nicely, I can't wait to see the first finished unit.

We started with some pinning. Never having done any pinning before, I was quite scared of irrevocably damaging any models by drilling into them. Or perhaps misaligning the pin on one side of the join, causing an arm to go be misaligned with the body and ruining the entire model.
My fears were unfounded, under careful tutelage we got the three Golem models all pinned up, and one pinned to it's base.

After that, I got 3 Hammerers done, which I'll post photos of later. I made a good start on 3 more, then based up a bunch of trees (they still need painted).

Golem pinning

Undercoat colours

image from TGN.com

I used to be a black under-coater. I recently switched to white, to see if it brought out the lighter colours, it does - but I found that grey was suggested on one or two of the innumerable painting tutorials / websites so I've been giving that a go. It works quite well I think.

The main reason I'm switching around the base coat colour is citadel paints oranges & yellows.

Painting: Warmaster Gyro

Oh-arr I 'ave been paintin'.
It's taken me a while to get back on the horse. It's the usual excuses, work etc. etc.  I painted this up for use as an army banner in the long term campaign I'm playing in.


Have a look see after the jump for some more photos.

Nice paint job

It's not mine, I was browsing around seeing what there is to see.
I can't link to the photo in place as the author has turned off sharing.
You'll have to go clicky:

• Longbeards
• Lord with Shieldbearers in a unit of Ironbreakers
• Grudge Thrower on a custom base

I like how the painter hasn't used too much (any?) gold on his Dwarves.
Also, the black & silver on the longbeards looks quite good. I think I saw a unit in the Dwarf rulebook with the black / silver colour scheme.
In the Longbeards again, I notice he's used a darkened blood red / gore red as the main uniform colour. Looks quite well.

Army Colour Schemes

I've got a lot of unpainted models which I'm going to start painting - so I'd like to decide on a colour scheme with a set of main colour elements that I can use across all of the units.

These are the two schemes I've decided I like so far, currently I'm favouring the Catchan Green & White combo.
I've done up some tester models to see what the colours look like together, let me know what you think.

Catchan Green & White
Try and ignore the unfinished parts eh?
I like this one, I'm just concerned the green will coming out too dark once it's been 'army paintered'. The only model with army painter applied is the one on the very right, with the hand weapon & shield. You can see him best in the third picture.

Gore Red

I'd also use White as a primary colour like I've done with the Warriors above, I just didn't do it for the Miners - there weren't enough distinct parts on the clothes to use two separate colours and I didn't want the white parts to be too large. I find white an awkward colour to paint with consistency on the models, smaller stripes like on the warriors above are fine, I just wouldn't do a whole arm in white.