Ravaella Lightfoot, Grisban The Thirsty, Ulma Grimstone & Logan Lashley

Not a catchy post title, but an accurate one. Our gaming group plays Descent: Journeys in the Dark every few weeks, and as we start into the second half of the campaign I thought it was time our noble heroes were painted. Considering we started playing this 14 years ago, it's overdue ...

Skipping over my decade of procrastination, from top left to bottom right: Ravaella Lightfoot, Grisban The Thirsty, Ulma Grimstone & Logan Lashley.

These are small models, so here's my faithful penny for size comparison again. That's approximately 20mm high ... or something like one and a half croutons for my American friends who will use any unit of measurement other than metric for simple activities.

As the sculpts are old and not great, it helps to ensure the deepest recesses are a consistent colour across the model and act as the darkest colour on the model, so I took the unusual approach after priming white of applying a heavy wash of colour. Notionally it's a match to the primary colour of the character's stats sheet, with a change to brown for Grisban rather than red. More importantly, it hides my painting crimes, because these are quick paintjobs.

The paints used on this? Many. Too many. Usually I'd try and provide a step by step, but really it was a bit more chaotic than that on this project. I don't think the photos below cover all the paints used! The leather straps on Logan's chest were a mix of African Shadow, Ochre, White and Sunny Skintone for example.

• Faces received the most time, with Sunny Skintone at the base of everything, using Dark Vermillion for shading and eye recesses. Definitely the best part of the sculpts, apart from Ravaella whose face isn't a great sculpt.
• Boots and shoes were mostly ignored as low interest items, so received only a cursory paint to highlight metal toecaps. Legs were the same, and just painted to match the main colour of the model.
• Metals. My old friend Dark Sea Blue is at it again, but I opted for an Ice Yellow rather than Greenish White I've used on other projects, which adds a nice green touch to the highlights.

Onto the tabletop with them!

Sigvald the Terrible

Brilliant little Chaos Dwarf from Diehard (https://diehardminiatures.com/product/sigvald-the-terrible-fantasy-chaos-dwarf/) and a joy to paint from start to finish. I wanted him to feel proud, but a touch dishevelled, dragging himself through a forest and getting dirty, but doing his best to keep his beautiful axe in good condition. 

• Axe. The star of the show for me, and I'm ridiculously pleased with it. Armour Brown basecoat then a lot of highlighting up with a combination of Ochre and Ice Yellow. In a couple of places there's a bit of the Vermillion Red from the cloak added to the Ochre to give a gentle orange reflection from the cloak, and provide visual interest.
• Horns. Leather Brown with some Deck Tan added for edge highlights. Very simple. Not much to say here other than I don't enjoy painting horns.
• Metallics. Dark Sea Blue highlighted with Greenish White. Yes, I quite like this colour on projects this year! Darkest areas have some of the Vermillion Red or Black added just to add variety of colour.
• Cloak. Vermillion Red and exaggerated shadow with the Dark Sea Blue, and some Sunny Skin Tone mixed in for the edges. There's a lot of Wyldwood brown dabbed on for mud, then nearer the bottom I've stippled some Leather Brown to read as dried mud.

This is a WIP shot of the axe blade but I'm so pleased with it that I wanted to show it off with a little more magnification. Thanks for indulging me. Iit also shows off the gloves a little better where the range of colours is more evident.

It's bigger than the old Warhammer model that clearly inspired the sculpt, Khazek Doomlord, and that's quite helpful because all the features get that little bit more space to paint detail. So the gloves can have edges to sell the NMM effect, and the revised axe blade was a great improvement.

 

Abandoned Listening Post

Something a little different, it's a scratch build.

But before jumping in on the images, let's have a little story.

My son builds Gundam and wanted to make a few pieces of his own from scratch, so it was a lovely opportunity to pull out a classic book from my painting shelf, the How To Make Wargames Terrain book that got all my nerd synapses firing as a child myself. Frankly it still does.

From there, we raised my bits box, took some plastic shot glasses, straws, cardboard lollipop sticks and other assorted elements. Throw in some PVA glue, clippers, superglue That's right, this is oldschool model making!

You can see a general idea coming together. A couple of towers, a pathway, some pipes inbetween. Simple, because there's no value overcomplicating ... but obviously I'm stupid and opted to complicate my life by sticking lots of things onto my building. Some lessons were learned here. I'd go back and scratch up the plastic surface to aid materials sticking to it. I'd think more about how to use the rounded surface better and break up the surface more with thin cardboard. If it's white, then it's 220gsm card, if it's yellow then it's straw, and if it's light brown it's parts of toothpick or lollipop stick. I found some old plastic beads for putting in paint bottles as mixers, so popped a few of those on the roof. Here's a better photograph of the various elements stuck on.

At this point we had a small change of plan. My son wanted to change his scene around, so instead of two buildings, there needed to be space for a Gundam. This did give me leeway to take my building away and make a separate scene, but first we needed to understand what my son's scene would be. After consultation, we decided on a Gundam sat on the floor, as though it had been punched backwards across the ground, and come to a halt in the ground. So the base would be mostly grass, but mud and soil where  the robot was sitting. We marked it out, applied mud texture paint, waited for that to dry, then applied static grass elsewhere et voila! 

My son's very pleased with his first scene, and I'm delighted he did something different. There's still a lot he can add, like weathering the tower and the pipes, but the fact he opted to create it from nothing is a reward in itself. He's already planning his second diorama, which will be a Gundam building factory, and might even take it to model shows this year, which would be fantastic.

I went a little further with mine, aiming for a Tales from the Loop feel to the piece.

Decals are Space Marine transfers I had. Some big tufts of grass, more static grass of different lengths and enamel washes to give the feeling of a corroded building. You don't need a list of paints for this one. Just build, have fun, do something you don't usually, and enjoy the process.

Valerio Valeri

This is a pilot from my son's Gundam Astray Red model. He took one look at it and said "yeah, you can paint that one" and I'll build the Gundam. It's quite a small model, comparable to 1/144 scale or N-gauge (maybe?) if you're a railway nerd.

• Jacket. Violet Red, highlighted with Sunny Skintone and a touch of Greenish White.
• Metals. Dark Sea Blue and Greenish White. I gave the hand a wash of Akhelian Green just to differentiate it a little from the buckles and ankle bracelet.
• Hair. Ochre with Greenish White.
• Face. Sunny Skintone and a little Greenish White.
• Trousers. Violet Red with Black, then added Dark Sea Blue and  Greenish White for the brighter areas.

Why yes, I do like Dark Sea Blue and Greenish White. Thanks for noticing. 

Small fellow, isn't he! I don't usually do size comparison shots, but I felt it was required to explain why it's lacking in places. Quite a challenge to get any face detail painted in when it was lacking on the sculpt but I gave it a good go. Let's not discuss the lack of nose. Not much I can do with the hair other than some gentle shading then just accept it's a mass of yellow.

 I found this reference image from a fan wiki, and checked it was the right pilot. Mission accomplished.

Shtomm Tal, Barbarian Warlord

Lovely warlord from Heresy Miniatures (https://heresyminiatures.com/shop/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=127&products_id=208), although the sculpt is originally from Spyglass before they closed down 15(?) years ago. I wonder what that Steve Buddle fellow ever did after that ...

My goal here was quite a cool feel, perhaps a little sicky or evil, but set it in quite a nice forest environment.

• Skin. Dark Sea Blue, highlighted with Sunny Skintone and Greenish White. Deepest shadows are Dark Sea Blue and a little Black.
• Cloth. Violet Red, highlighted with Sunny Skintone. Shadows are Violet Red and a little Dark Sea Blue and Black. Stripes on the leg are just Greenish White with a touch of the Violet so it's not too stark.
• Leather. Just a Leather Brown with some Sunny Skintone added for edge highlights. Very simple.
• Metallics. Dark Sea Blue (spotting a theme?) highlighted with Greenish White. There's a little of the Violet Red in the shadows on either reflection points i.e. next to the cloak.
• Rust. Stippled with Martian Orange, then more stippling with Ochre but in a smaller area. I used the same colours on the torc around his waist, but added Greenish White to push the final highlights.

I wanted to paint a more sickly skintone to contrast with a warmer environment, but perhaps the armour and weapons should have been warmer to boost that contrast further. Overall, quite a unified scheme with a lot of the same colours used. With hindsight, I'd add more variety here, such as repainting a darker loincloth, but I don't want to spend time revisiting projects and overthinking it.

Doc Salvage

I painted this because a wonderful friend wanted it for his Cyberpunk Red RPG campaign, and while I usually find it easy to say good things about most models, this is an exception. But first let's do the painting ...

• Armour. Dark Sea Blue is the base for body of the armour, with Greenish White to highlight up. 
• Undersuit. Black and Dark Sea Blue, washed with thinned down Wyldwood contrast paint.
• Panels. The white panels start with Greenish White, then were glazed down with Akhelian Green which is really more blue than green.
• Blue strips. Magic Blue, shaded with Akhelian Green, and highlighted with Greenish White, then a final glaze of Akhelian to make it a little blue even in the brightest points.
• Lights. Medium Orange, shaded with Vermillion then a couple of very small highlights with Greenish White.

It's reminiscent of early Kickstarter tabletop game project models. I'm sure the sculpt looked fine in a 3D package, but the model in hand is bad. Depressingly bad. The mould lines are a mess, and evident everywhere but the plastic material is so soft and pliable you can't correct it without making it worse. The pose is poor as it hides the chest, the most interesting part of the model, behind a weapon of mediocrity. Detail is lossy, rounded, lacking crisp definition and no interesting detail.

An exercise in frustration, and I'm glad it's finished. The fact this was sold with eight Vallejo paints for ~£25 is an indicator of it being a cash-in on the Cyberpunk name rather than a model selling for its quality. Here's a midway shot where you could see model before the stupid gun hid everything.

With the legs already in a moving forward pose, it would have been nice if the gun was lower, to show off the torso. But it's done and we move on to the next!

Dwarf Militia

Dwarf militia unit for Kings of War. Hard to believe I started this project three years ago then let it languish, but that's very me. One benefit of the KoW system is not having to remove casualties from a unit, so creating dioramas for units is viable and that really appealed to me.

I wanted it to feel ragtag, as though they're throwing armour on to protect their village, so it's deliberately a mix of various companies' models. There's old GW dwarfs and a ton of the Mantic ones, and some resin scenery from a terrain kit. There's no unifying paint scheme, with different shields and patterns on display, and even painting approaches differ, with NMM used on shields and smaller details, and metallic paints on weapons and helmets. With that said, cream and blue are the overall army colours, and present here in greater quantity than others, which would make sense for smaller family houses in a larger kingdom.

There's a limited number of poses with the Mantic dwarfs, and they're oft maligned as a result. I think the kits are well made but it definitely takes a little imagination to create sufficient differentation to avoid monotony. That will be an ongoing challenge through the army, but I welcome the challenge ... or at least I do at this point.

You can see multiple dwarf casualties propped up on the floor, with their fellow militia protecting them. There's a couple of dwarfs at the back ready to leap into the fray, or just looking after their stalls!

Dwarf Cannons

Another project lurking on my desk is my Dwarf army for Kings of War. The cannons are fun models, but the wood housing for the guns is very flat has almost no detail or grain pattern.

I painted up the three cannons and tried to make them a little more interesting by painting it as though it was a heavier wood grain on the front panel and wheels. While the cannons are all identical, the centre gun has some foliage atop it, as it though it was rushed out of a barn to defend the town. Affectionately known as Ol' Mossy now, it's my favourite of the three.

The Mantic studio paintjob (below) demonstrates how boring the housing is as a sculpt. I'm surprised they opted for brown and more brown as a colour scheme as it does nothing for the model, which is a shame as it's quite nice. How brown? I feel like I've loaded up Age of Conan again after all these years.

Kovach The Devoured

This handsome fellow from Die Hard (https://diehardminiatures.com/product/kovach-the-devoured-chaos-champion/) started as a one-hour speedpaint (last image on this post). While I was happy with the overall colour choices, I felt the model deserved more, and had the idea to improve the OSL with a lava(?) sword, because that would be fun, albeit ridiculous.

Adding lots of yellow and orange atop the armour helped make it more interesting to look at, as it was a little flat beforehand with just the blue and green metals.

As mentioned earlier, it started as a one hour paint. Quite a bit changed after this, as I realised the glow should come from the base of the sword, and the shiny armour wasn't working.

 

Orc shields

There's tens of thousands of painting tutorials. Almost all of them will be better than this, but I was asked by a couple of people for a step-by-step on how I've painted my shields, and was happy to oblige. It's also a useful way to track what I'm doing as a repeatable process on my army.

We're going to cover brushes, paints, process and future changes I might make. 

Let's start with the brushes because they're important. You don't need small brushes for the majority of detail, and it will slow you down to use small ones! While I have a 00 Series 7 for the final details, the majority of the work is done by these two horror show brushes to the right of it. They have not been loved, but are fantastic for this sort of project.

 Paints

• Vallejo Leather Brown 
• GW Wyldwood Contrast 
• AK Dark Sea Blue
• Kimera Magenta
• AK Ochre 
• AK Greenish White 

Process

Basecoat shields in Leather Brown, metal elements in Dark Sea Blue, and suns in Magenta. All you want is a consistent coat of paint as a starting point.

Wash everything in thinned down Wyldwood Contrast paint, except the suns. I applied it a little heavier on some shields than others just for variety. Don't forget that the symbols will be glued to them later so they don't have to be perfect. The goal is hitting any recess area that the paintbrush won't reach in later stages.

Take a big flat brush, and a 1:1 mix of Greenish White & Dark Sea Blue with almost no water added, and drag and stab it across the dark blue areas. The idea being I have my light source top left so the darker areas will be bottom right. Ensure you run the brush along every edge in a rough fashion. This isn't drybrushing, or stippling per se, it's just ensuring paint goes on the surface to create rough texture and start to build a sense of battered metal.

Using my round brush, I now add a very messy glaze dragging the brush upward to the top left corner ensuring I'm only catching raised surfaces and not going in the recess. This just helps to ensure the finish isn't chalky. 

Same process again but 2:1 mix of Greenish White & Dark Sea Blue this time. I swapped to a round brush and focused more on the upper left quarter of the pieces for most of the paint, but then ensured I brightened up areas like tusks, any edge facing upwards. Still a very ugly stabbing and dragging motion and not a lot of water.

As before, then a glaze of this over the top again. 

Now the fun part! I swap to the small brush and just using Greenish White, edge highlight the upper edges. Add a few random drags, stabs and then we're done.

At this point I move to the suns and using the Ochre apply the same approach with a lot of heavy stabbing and dragging from the top left. One nice feature of any yellow is that there's a bit more transparency than other colours, and over a pink or magenta it creates a nice warm tone. 

Now onto a 1:1 mix of Ochre and Greenish White and the same again, but a smaller area. Really focus on that upper left corner. By this point you should have more reds in the bottom right, then moving into an orange tone where the magenta and ochre overlap, up to a fuller yellow ochre, and now some whiter highlights.

Finally add a few touches of just Greenish White on the edge of tusks, horns and such. You don't need a lot of paint, just a stroke or two to catch an edge and make an interesting angle.

Done! Total time taken was 70 minutes for these, including pausing for notes and photos, and drying time. I plan to sit and do all the others in a single batch after this, and think the process will only take a few hours in total for everything. These aren't painted to win competitions, it's just to add character to an army, in a way that's fast to replicate across dozens of shields. So many shields. What on earth was I thinking.

What Would I Change?

There are two possible changes for the future.

• Making the dark areas darker. My colours aren't very dark so there's scope to go back in places and push up the contrast by using more Wyldwood to darken areas.
• Weathering. I plan to do a lot of rusted and weathered armour and weaponry, and could bring some of the oranges from those elements into the symbols on the shield in the darker areas.

Orcs & Goblins begin

Another army for The Old World? I know, I know. However, to get table time with my Chaos Warriors, they need opposition, so I started picking up models last year. This is another of those old armies I've always fancied but couldn't face painting due to the numbers required but somehow here we are, with a Orcs & Goblins battalion box assembled over the break between Christmas and New Year. I'm an idiot.

 

And a work-in-progress on my first test model! 

 

New Recruit (https://www.newrecruit.eu/app), has fast become my favourite army list builder, and I used it to write up a basic list based on the Orcs & Goblins battalion box. It's not a legal force yet but it's helpful to gauge the mix of models I'll need to add through the year to round out the force. My interest is rule of cool rather than whatever the current tournament meta is, as I play infrequently enough to make that a non-requirement.

Speaking of cool, I also have the awesome shaman sculpted by Brian Nelson.

 

(Not my paintjob, but the first reference photo I could find) 

 # ++ Main Force ++ [706 pts]
## Characters [65 pts]
Orc Weirdboy [65 pts]: Hand Weapon, General, Wizard Level 1, Battle Magic

## Core [461 pts]
Goblin Mobs [117 pts]:
• 20x Goblin [5 pts]: Hand Weapon, Thrusting Spear [1 pts], Shield, Light Armour [1 pts]
• 1x Boss [7 pts]
• 1x Standard Bearer [5 pts]
• 1x Musician [5 pts]
Goblin Mobs [117 pts]:
• 20x Goblin [5 pts]: Hand Weapon, Shortbow [1 pts], Light Armour [1 pts]
• 1x Boss [7 pts]
• 1x Standard Bearer [5 pts]
• 1x Musician [5 pts]
Orc Mobs [227 pts]: Boss [7 pts], Musician [5 pts]
• 30x Orc Boy [7 pts]: Hand Weapon, Light Armour, Big Un's [2 pts]
  Standard Bearer [5 pts] (Magic Standard)

## Special [180 pts]
Orc Boar Chariots [90 pts]:
• 1x Orc Boar Chariot [90 pts]: 2x Orc Crew (Hand Weapon, Cavalry Spear), 2x War Boar (Tusks)
Orc Boar Chariots [90 pts]:
• 1x Orc Boar Chariot [90 pts]: 2x Orc Crew (Hand Weapon, Cavalry Spear), 2x War Boar (Tusks)

Wardancers, Wood Elves

I don't elf as a rule. I can Eldar, but that's totally different because they're from space. However, this year on a Secret Santa, I drew a name of someone who is very much into elves, figuratively speaking. Trying to determine what people have and don't have on their armies, and what you can add as a guest painter, is a challenge.

Unsurprisingly, there's quite a bit of green present. I added a few different hues for variety, but the palette is essentially green, blue and a little yellow.

There's a little elephant in the room, or rather a normal elf among the dancing lads. Trying to track down the original wardancers was a real pain, but I wanted a selection of older, metal models and found this beauty from the very early elf range in 1987.

While I enjoyed the challenge of trying to paint it in a more modern fashion, the sculpt itself will not be remembered fondly in time. The hands and feet are oversized, the sword lacks definition, and the face and hair are awkward. But it's another of those projects where it's oaky to say "it's fine, we're done" and move on.

The sculptor? Jes Goodwin. I wonder if he ever did anything of note ...