Experiment: Paint a miniature just by washing...

...and one drybrush for highlights.

So jep that is exactly what I wanted to do today. "Painting" a miniature with only washes and one drybrush step. Why? Because I did read quite a lot of fast painting tutorials who exactly did that for armies like Skaven, Goblins or Tyranids. And as you might know, I still have more than 200 Skaven uncounted numbers of Orcs & Goblins and much much more flying around.
Therefore I just wanted to give it a try. Another reason was, that I hadn't painted for half a year now and just wanted to get a feeling for paints again (and find my brushes, paints etc. pp. after the pimping of our office). Excuse the shabby pictures, I just made them with my smartphone to underline the "do as fast as possible" character of this test :)

The model is a custom made one, I don't even know anymore from which models the body and the arm was, I think from a Monk and a Beasthandler. MAybe I am wrong with that, I just grabbed me something in reach.

First step was priming the model with my trusted Vallejo Primer. I saw here some mold lines but really didn't care about them. The complete thing was more a test than wanting to achive some good results. And since tis is rank & file, noone will have a too close look. At least that is what I am hoping for :)

Then I washed it with Army Painter washes (which I reviewed some time ago). Green for the robe, Soft Tone for the fur, Dark Tone for the metal and Strong Tone for the rope and grip. A bit of Red for the tongue finished that step up.
After waiting some minutes to dry the miniature, I continued with washing, exactly the same order exactly the same tones, to strengthen the colors a bit. This time I checked that I put more color into the recesses.
One thing I did see now, is that the old GW Sepia Ink had a bit more orange/redish tone to it, the Soft Tone is much more brown.

After first wash

After second wash

As you can see the second layer of washes has a quite strong effect. I was really surprised.

I then saw, that the miniature lacked highlights which I couldn't change by just washing more. Thus I did "break the rules" and gave the miniature a fast drybrush with Vallejo Elfic Flesh. After that I gave it the third and last wash.
This time I broke up the washes a bit and mixed some blue into the Dark Tone and some Red into the Browns to introduce a bit of variation, e.g. for the metals and the tail
Then I glued it to a selfmade base and was done.


Is this the best paint job ever done? Well surely not! But it was super fast and had a surprising effect. With some short investment (doing the metals with metallic paint, putting some highlights) this could be ok as a rank & file.

Have to test a bit more with this heavy washing over just a primer. Up until now I only used washes for creating shadows, not for creating base colors.

Experiment succesfull! And I painted finally something!


So long,
Paradox0n

Blood Red & Sunburst Yellow: My two arch enemies

Motivation is somehow back and I am starting to paint again. And having to face my two arch enemies: The (very) old paints from Games Workshop, Blood Red and Sunburst Yellow. Those two paints just will not create some reasonable layers, the pigments in them just flow around and give a uneven, semi-transparent, blotchy layer. Even doing multiple coats will not work with them. And painting them on anything else than a white (or light gray) primer gives you headaches. With the airbrush the colors work OK but I can't use my airbrush on all those small parts of the miniatures.
Either I am too stupid do use those correctly or these colors are really a pain.

The problem is, that I still have to use them, because my Chaos Dwarves will use the red, and my Skaven Slaves have yellow clothing...

So if anyone of you has a good tip how I can get those two colors to work I would be happy... Or is there a nice basecoat red and yellow color from other manufacturers like Vallejo? So that I can only use the GW ones for highlighting. I know that there are some basecoat colors from GW but I switched all new colors I own to the Vallejo ones and I am more than happy with them.

And to complete this post, a bad shot WIP picture of the thingy I am working atm: The Ramshackle Drill I got a looooong time ago as present from Labschi. The brown parts will later be covered with a brass/gold paint and the metal parts will be weathered and be more metal (its just the first drybrushed coat). The red parts will stay, I like the dirty look of that, the first time that its OK that the red didn't cover so good :)

This thingy will either be a proxy for a Skaven Doomwheel (if I ever need a third on in a game) or most likely be used as a Chaos Dwarf war machine. I am thinking of the Iron Daemon since I don't want to buy the Forgeworld one and all my Chaos Dwarf models so far are the Mantic Abyssal Breeds or proxy models from other companies.


So long,
Paradox0n

Hobby Magazines - Skavenblight Gazette #14

Skavenblight Gazette #14

Since a few days Issue No. 14 of Skavenblight Gazette is published, therefore time to have a look at the sneaky-plaguish Skaven magazine.

This issue pretty much is under the sign of the plague. It has some pretty pictures of Skaven miniatures a article how diseases spread and a HowTo "fire your Plageclaw Catapult" which shows you how you can make the model "fire" (by adding some springs). Pretty geeky :)

The most interesting article this time is for beginning Skaven players: Building an army. It contains the thoughts behind an army project and how the author plans to build up his host. He also explains some of the units and how he sees their usefullness.
Not sure if I as Skaven player myself would agree with him in every point but it is a nice start nonetheless.

Pretty short issue this time. But since this stuff is completely fanmade I will surely not moan but thank the guys for writing this issue.

So long,
Paradox0n

Rebasing some of my old models

Perhaps you have seen some of my old models in my review of the Feldherr XL and wondered: What the *** are those ugly based miniatures. And you are propably right. But before you judge them I will tell you something about those poor Skaven :-)

Old Clanrats

[Update] Battlereport - Skaven gainst The Empire

I will try the first time to give a short battlereport of a 2400 points game of warhammer fantasy battle. It was held at my place following the actual ETC (European Team Championship) draft at this moment. The opposing armies where my Skaven Warhost and The Empire Army from Talabheim (with the rules of the old Empire book). Since the game was held some time ago, I can only recapture the match and will therefore sum up the battle. I only shot a few pictures because my camera went insane on this day and messed the pictures.

The battle begins

[Update]: I just found my played Skaven List and put it in the post down below. Perhaps this makes the battle a bit clearer than before.

WIP - Plague Furnace

After some terrain making and a big motivation leak while painting my Verminlord, I switched to painting my Plague Furnace. Only bad thing about this modell: I bought it used and everything is glued together which makes it not as easy to paint as it should be.
Nonetheless I will give it a try since I want to use it in one of my next battles :)

Primed and ready to paint

Damn this thing is so big, its even too big for my photo bucket! I will try some things and will look how it will turn out in the end.

So long,
Paradox0n

Out of the bucket

Again I did some shooting.
The first victim is a skaven clanrat I did shortly before my last warhammer game. I followed the paint scheme most of the army I bought had.

Skaven clanrat from the front

Skaven clanrat from the back

The second victim is a Cawdor Heavy from Necromunda. Yes this is a very old modell, I think I painted it somewhere in the 90's when Necromunda was a big issue here in Germany.

Cawdor Heavy from the front

Cawdor Heavy from the back

And yes I'm still experimenting with the photobucket. I'm not completely satisfied with the results. But luckily they are WAY better then the old pictures.


So long,
Paradox0n

Skaven warhost - sneak peak

Here is a quick peak on my skaven warhost. Just three shelves in my display cabinet. The rest of the army is in deep slumber in my Feldherr XL miniature case (sharing it with big parts of my dark elf army).

Most of the army in its display case