Tale of Warmaster painters [November]

[Swordmaster]

Greetings!

Azrael, you are a star! Not only you accomplished more than almost all of us combined but you also kept the tale going. Even if in reality it might be that there is you and your 70 clones painting that army (hence azrael 71  ).

I expected I might have a break due to real life duties, although I am still ashamed it was for so long. I am going back though and you can expect some updates this week.

So, don't give up and let the tale spin again!

Cheers! 

[pw]

While I slowly work on my crossbowmen, I'm wondering if the TOWM Painters fancy sharing their painting tips and strategies? Having been inspired by azrael71's chaos ideas I'd like to know more about how everyone paints. Or any other tips. My two tips of the day are for products I lile using.
1) Vallejo grey pumice for basing which I find easier to manage than sand and glue.
2) Superglue gel, which solved the problem of how to apply 'clump foliage' which refused to stick with PVA or regular watery superglue. If you've ever suffered with clump foliage attaching itself to everything but your bases then you might like this stuff.

Anyone else got any tips? Stomm, I'd love to hear your recipe for painting flesh...

[Stomm]

I actually use several different techniques for painting flesh, all dependant upon the figure I'm painting, whether it's a character or not, the colour scheme and painting techniques used for the rest of the model and so on. I'll give you a run down from simplest, to most complext I guess...

The simplest is the old Flesh Wash over a black undercoated, Bestial Brown and then Skull white 'gunk brush', followed by an Elf Flesh highlight. I use this for my most of my Empire army, as I paint the Reiklanders white first, and then sort out the details afterwards.

Then the scheme I've been using for my romans is to paint Tallarn Flesh over the black undercoat, very carefully so as to ensure that eyes, etc... aren't painted. Then highlight with Elf Flesh. For the Legate, same thing, except IIRC I either added the new Flesh Wash (whatever its called) after the Tallarn Flesh, or possibly after the whole process, and then re-highlighted with Elf Flesh. I've tried using Bronzed Flesh with the new Tallarn Flesh, but it just doesn't work, completely different hue of colour. So I'm afraid that my Romans are a little bit pasty skinned for Italians...


And then of course the most complex or long-winded skin painting system I use is to go through from Chaos Black, Dark Flesh, 50/50 Dark Flesh and Bronzed Flesh mix, then 25/75 mix, then Bronzed Flesh, then a series of watered down Elf Flesh top-glaze highlights (using heavily watered down paints saves on mixing and blending when used for final highlights), with some final point highlights of Skull White. I've only used this system so far on IIRC my yellow Empire Wizard, the Averland Halberdier strip and the Nuln unit of Halberdiers. The reason obviously being that it takes a bloody long time to do, and also happens to be the same skin system I use for WH and 40K, well until Tallarn Flesh came out anyway...

[Stomm]

Incidentally I finished all the shield designs on the unit I'm working on last night. So now all I need do is re-touch the metal areas, especially the shield edging and boss, then glue the figures back onto the base and its all done. Then I'll be moving on to other projects, probably until January.

I might see about basing the figures I have finished though, and maybe finishing off the 7/12ths fininished other unit of legion that I was working on earlier on in the year. I'll have to take a look at that pumice stuff, I don't suppose you know anyone in London that stocks it? I would rather not order something that will double in price with postage...

[pw]

Not sure about suppliers in London (I'd guess anywhere that sells Vallejo paint might have it). I've just run out and will be ordering mine from Maelstrom Games (free postage if you spend over £10).

Thanks for the flesh walk through. Your 'Legate-level' one is similar to mine with the exception that I haven't tried not painting the eyes with and all of my guys get a flesh wash. I the highlight with a pre-mixed pot of (I think) Dwarf Flesh+Bleached Bone which is probably very similar to Elf flesh. If I left the eyes black I might be able to skip the wash but I expect that'd delay things as slapping the Tallarn Flesh on is one of my early 'messy' stages. The last one sounds very much too involved for my WM stuff but having seen the Wizard it certainly works a treat.

[Stomm]

Well the face on the legate itself happens to have a mould line running right through it, so it was nigh on impossible to paint the face as well as could have been the case had it not been there. So the legate's eyes did get filled with Tallarn Flesh. But the legionnaries themselves have fairly well defined eyes and mouths, so it's comparatively simple to avoid painting those.


IIRC your Empire army is the Talebheim one right? IoW Red and White? If so, then you could use the same technique that I use to paint my Reiklanders, but then obviously adding a stage for painting the red quarters, halves or however you do the red parts of the uniforms (varying quartered, halved and so on patterns between brigades is a neat trick BTW in case you hadn't figured that out yet). Here is my step-by-step for quickly and relatively effectively painting white cloth (and skin) on Warmaster figures.

Undercoat Chaos Black (yes black)
Gunk Brush* Bestial Brown (Calthan Brown might work better now, it didn't exist the last time I did this, and it basically seems to be the same colour)
Gunk Brush Snakebite Leather (you can skip this part if you really want)
Gunk Brush Skull White
Touch up the Skull white, usually just neatening things up a bit
Flesh Wash the skin areas (the new flesh wash isn't strong enough, so maybe a wash of Scorched Brown might do the trick instead)
Highlight skin areas with Elf Flesh
Pick out other details in Chaos Black, and paint and highlight as necissary...

You could if you really wanted even paint pretty much the whole of the rest of the model with just a series of dark washes, browns for leather and so on. I've never really been happy with this though, I much prefer to work up than work down. But skin tones seem to be the one big exception to this, flesh was over dry or gunk brushed white works really well IMHO, just so long as you then highlight with Elf Flesh.


As an aside, when I add the sand, etc.. to my bases prior to undercoating, I also gunk brush the bases up to the snakebite leather stage. Then I go back over with some bleached bone, and if the white has spilled over then I'll add a brown wash first to tone things down again.



*Gunk brushing is like drybrushing, but with still a lot of almost half dry paint on the brush. It results in much quicker, if messier coverage than drybrushing and gives much more pronounced contrast. You can achieve the same, or neater effects with drybrushing, but it will take so much longer that you may as well be line or layer highlighting rather than trying a more rapid technique.

[Stomm]

Finished the Legion unit, just waiting until tomorrow (well later on today, I really ought to get to bed) to get the camera and take a decent photo of them.

[Stomm]

And here we go:










I hope that you like them, and needless to say as you all know it took bloody agest to get all 34 of those shield designs painted, never mind the rest of the parts of the models.

Now I've got RL things occupying the next two weeks, but I should be able to fit in a bit of Space Hulk modelling, and maybe some test painting on one of the Terminators that came free with White Dwarf when 40K was released. I think that I'd like to get a 2nd unit of Legionaries finished off before xmas though, and ideally the two units I've finished, plus the half finished unit of legionaries and the Legate based up and tabletop ready if I can...

[Stomm]

Hmm, just noticed that the shield boss on the Centurion needs to be touched up. It's funny that you don't notice these things 'in the flesh', probably as the photos are blown up far bigger than RL...

BTW, if anyone can edit these photos together and email them to me that would be great. I'd like to post them on 'coolminiornot', but lack even basic image editing software. Well anything that can splice things together, I've just got the cropping and red eye reduction stuff in iPhoto...

[azrael71]

Very, very, very nice work on these.
May have took a while, but they certainly show the quality of the work.

[Stomm]

Cheers, it seems like I'm taking a break from painting etc... this week. I have prepped the rest of already part-finished Legion unit and part of a 3rd unit by temporarily gluing between four and six of the individual models to coffee stirrers. I've found that cramming twelve (a whole stand's worth) onto a coffee stirrer is a little too crowded to paint well, and is too many to paint a couple of stages in the usual hour or so of painting that I can cram into an evening after the kids are in bed.


Anyway, got the first evening at the club tonight. Luckily I popped to the doctors just around the corner to get myself some antibiotics (recurring bronchitis), so I just popped by on the way home. They were still decorating the room we are going to use. It's not going to be perfect, but at least we can use it, and I'm looking forward to playing something, be it Space Hulk, 40K or whatever... I'll probably plumb for SH as it takes up less space and I can stop as needed to help people find us, etc...

[pw]

They look great Stomm. And I think you've overtaken me for speed as I've come to a near standstill. I've got two bases of a unit of Crossbows painted but it'll be the weekend before they're done. That said, my reason for not painting tonight is that I was playing WM  . My plucky empire got thoroughly spanked by some dwarfs. Not knowing what Slayers and Rangers do led to a suicidal charge by some knights who discovered that their terror causing mount was a liability and then found themselves carrying hits when they advanced into the 'we can chase horses' Rangers. (I take it we did this right, we maintained hits from the round against the massacred slayers (I'd taken 4) when we calculated the results of the 'advance' combat). The only thing I can say in my defence is that my army is prettier than his! (It's silver).

[pw]

Just to show that I'm still in the game, here's a unit of crossbows finished bar the basing (I'm waiting for some more basing pumice to arrive):



Once these are based I'll finally have a legal army painted.
General, Hero, Wizard, 2 Halberd, 2 Crossbow, 2 Knights, Cannons, Helblaster, Steamtank. By my reckoning that's 925 points... Perhaps not the hardest army around but I'm pretty pleased nonetheless.

[jchaos79]

pw, looks good. I realize you have separate a pair of crossbowman to displace them in the base. What a good ida. I should do the same!

Last week I finish a chariot undead unit, and when I have time I will take the shot and uploaded here. (I am still in the game, but hard times for me and the hobby, I expect in january to came back with more time to dedicate to warmaster).

regards

[jchaos79]

Here is the chariot unit that I call "the twin serpents". I do not really know why to call it this way, but I paint a double head serpent in the banner. To sum up, more nasty bones on the road.