Tale of Warmaster Painters... [SEPTEMBER THREAD]

[Rolgan]

My week three contribution:

The "Half-Trolls" of Far Harad.

There was no sunshine, until this morning of course and my camera has been behaving wonky.  I'll retake the photos soon.

First Base:



Second Base:



Third Base:



Sorry for the over-exposure, I just the best I could with the tools at hand.

I tried green and then blue for a skin tone and preferred the blue.

Now to get week 4 based...

[pw]

Rolgan, those are superb. I really like the rocks on the bases, are they slate? I wonder if they might benefit from a small amount of either static grass or some 'clump foliage' to give them a little more vibrancy? I'd imagine that a little pale green grass on the bases would set off the darker skin tones really nicely.

[Rolgan]

The figures have not been varnished, I'll add both grass and clump foliage after as the varnishing "Ruins it!"

~C

Oh and the rocks are simply more "wine cork".

[jchaos79]

Rolgan those Far harad Trolls looks good!

In my opinion I like the green one (first stand), but that does not mean that the blue one is bad at all.

So, your Orc army is build to be used in Middle Earth games?

[pw]

Cork! Well I'll eat my hat. I had a feeling you'd be foliaging them up a bit. I got caught out by the awful weather this week which is why my Crossbows haven't been up yet. A bit of sneaky (and unadvisable) 'kitchen-varnishing' and I'm hoping they'll be good to go tomorrow!

[azrael71]

I love those trolls, not too keen on the 2nd base, but other than that great work.

Got to say the weather has been great here this week, might even manage another 4 units of gobbos

[pw]

Here's my new stuff. I guess I'm 'banking' a few extra units here for when I get stuck painting more Halberdiers but I'm in the mood for sharing!

Crossbows:


General:


Steamtank:


The army so far:


My two questions:
1. Should I repaint the red hats brown?
2. Would Crossbowmen look better with more men per stand? Say ten?
In both cases I doubt that I can be bothered but these two things have been niggling at me for the last couple of days. Having seen Rolgan’s bases I’m also thinking I might try a little harder with the bases of the next unit.

[azrael71]

I think the colours look good.
As for the crossbowmen, it is personal choice, but I like 8 to a satnd.

[jchaos79]

I like the steamtank!

I do not repaint the hats, they look very nice. And for the xbowmen, I think 8 per stand is good, well I base that in my GW crossbowmen, because the figures have different pose. When I base pendraken (only 1 or 2 poses) I try to put 10 per base.

[Stomm]

My two questions:
1. Should I repaint the red hats brown?
2. Would Crossbowmen look better with more men per stand? Say ten?
In both cases I doubt that I can be bothered but these two things have been niggling at me for the last couple of days. Having seen Rolgan’s bases I’m also thinking I might try a little harder with the bases of the next unit.

First of all, nice job there on that thar painting...

Ok firstly, interesting choice of general, I use the very same figure as a hero. Do you not like the guys drinking around the map table and pointing etc?... Personally I think that it's one of the best bits in the Empire character pack...


Ok, now on to your questions:

1. Maybe, but not all. Whilst painting my Reiklanders, when confronted with hats, etc... I would paint them either brown, black (both leather or felt I guess), white (the reikland colour), or the brigade colour (so far just red or blue, although I'm sure eventually I'll start work on a third brigade of infantry...). So my suggestion would be to go for black, white, red, brown, and really I think you could do with some contrasting unit id colours. Maybe just painting the feathers white, then a small stripe of say black, blue or green in the middle would do the job without clashing or alternating from the overall red and white theme?


Anyway, I've got some photos to post. They're only a work-in-progress of the character I've been working on these last two or three nights. Just brought Mia back from the hospital as she had a nasty bump on her head on Tuesday and my wife finally entered 'take her to the hospital' panic mode. Needless to say after waiting for a few hours, seeing a nurse and a doctor they told us that her bump on the head was nothing to worry about, but they gave us some calpol for the nasty cold she's also got...

So anyway, if I can muster the energy between drinking my 'wind down' beer, and eating my very nice home grown edemame (even if some are a little too ripe), then I'll upload a pic or two. If not then tomorrow, being Friday I should be able to paint until quite late without the wife moaning too much...

[Stomm]

Well, it's taken longer to wind down than I thought, so here are two rather bad photos of my character in-progress. So far I've only done the metal and highlights on the horse on the mounted, and therefore 'character' on the base. The legionary is however complete, except perhaps some minor touching up required on the metallic areas.


So really, this should give some impression of how I intend to eventually paint the elite Legion units, with the inverse black on white shield designs, as opposed to the white on black of the rest of the legions...

[pw]

@Everyone: thanks for the comments. Following Stomm's suggestion about hats I like the idea of using hat colour to differntiate between brigades and feather colour between units. I was planning to give each unit a different feather colour (red, white, white with red stripe, red with white stripe) but I hadn't thought about linking the brigades with colours too. My difficulty there is knowing which units I'd be likely to brigade with each other. Do people tend to brigade all of their Crossbows together or to mix unit types in brigades?

@Stomm:  I guess that hero is my general at the moment mainly because he's the only character figure I've got painted. I'm in two minds about the diorama of the general with his table. On the one hand it's so obvious that it's the general that it makes gaming sense and it is a fun piece too. On the other hand, no matter how often I tell myself the model is just there to represent the general I find it slightly disturbing that he moves his table around the battlefield! I think I might paint it up soon and see ho it looks. Certainly it'd save me explaining who the general is and I guess that's worth quite a bit in game.

I like the Romans. I kind of wish you weren't doing them as each time I see them I want to buy myself an army and while I know that I've no time to paint them, and no-one to play against, my willpower on these things is notoriously weak. Maybe I can have some as a treat for finishing the Empire!

[Carrington]

@Stomm:  I guess that hero is my general at the moment mainly because he's the only character figure I've got painted. I'm in two minds about the diorama of the general with his table. On the one hand it's so obvious that it's the general that it makes gaming sense and it is a fun piece too. On the other hand, no matter how often I tell myself the model is just there to represent the general I find it slightly disturbing that he moves his table around the battlefield! I think I might paint it up soon and see ho it looks. Certainly it'd save me explaining who the general is and I guess that's worth quite a bit in game.

Well, you could mount the table on wheels.  Say an altar-less war altar.

[m4jumbo]

Stomm: I like that inverse black/ white shield scheme for the elite units.  That will stand out nicely.  And again your hand painted shield designs are great.

Rolgan:  Those half trolls are cool.  The figures look like D&D Bugbears to me.

pw: More very nicely done Empire.  The army is really looking good.  I noticed you mixed flock clumps and static grass on your bases, I may have to use that idea.  Looks good.

[Swordmaster]

Greetings!

Apologies for the week long silence. 

@jchaos79 - the banner is just a piece of paper I glued to the pole and simply painted it. It is simple but works for me. I am tempted though to add something on them seeing how effective are Araby banners.

@steel rabit - Thanks! Actually I either add some wash or use 3 different shades of gold, which might not be that visible due to poor quality of pictures.

@pugwash - Indeed I started to think about this gradient background as I remember I saw it somwhere so hopefully for the next week photo I will have new backgroubd too.

@stomm - I try to take my photos in day light and after your suggestion I tried to position the camera so it has the window directly behind it. I am not sure though if it worked the way it should.

@azrael71 - Thanks! As anybody else here I am jealous that you are painting so fast and so nice at the same time. Somebody asked how long does it take others to paint a unit. I have to spend at least 6 hours per one as I am a slow painter. It is still much faster than I need for 28mm miniatures.

@pw - I like the look of the small army. Looking forward to see some more!

Ok, this week I have a second unit of reavers. To distinguish them better I used different variant of stripes (I know they look like clones then, but for game purposes it really helps), painted horses white (which I am not satisfied as they look kind of dirty) and used purple wash for feathers (which I should have painted in purple instead of white before I did that). So in general I am glad to have two of them painted, but I am not satisfied with the result I obtained for the second one. Let me know what you think.



This week I am painting another unit of archers.