WIP painting dwarves including khazad guard - beards and skin

Huzzah!

Finally finished the first layer of paint on all these dwarves. The Khazad Guard were easier, with face masks blocking, well, their faces. 


They actually look a bit like dwarves now. Yesterday and today I finished off the grey on the pants, the beards in a variety of colours, and the skin.


I used foundation paints for the grey and the skin to make it go over the black undercoat a little easier. I've gotta say, I remembered a few things from the last lot of batch painting I did at this stage.


I did the beards first before the skin, it's easy to slip with beards. They're so big that sometimes you lose a little concentration and some beard colour strays. Because I'm using foundation paints for the skin, it's no problem to do it secondly as it covers up everything.


Speaking of which, I water my foundation paints down A LOT. They really gunk up brushes if you don't water them down and rinse your brush really regularly. They'd be considered a huge pain if they weren't so awesomely good at covering up the black, which was always a problem for me when putting a skin tone on top.


Anyway, here are a couple of happy snaps.

If you click on the pics you might notice on the larger version that although the first coat is done, it's a bit sloppy in places. There are always slips of the brush or dogs barking nearby you that cause accidents to occur. Still, now I can neaten them up a bit and start the process of highlighting. 


I love this stage, because now it looks like I have a nice little squad of dwarves! It's absolutely amazing how much personality and finishedness you gain when that last bit of black undercoat is gone!


For anybody else out there who struggles with batch painting, this is the moment where it suddenly feels worthwhile!


Although I still haven't done the eyes yet. *shudder* I remember that from last time =(


The keen eyed followers of the blog may notice a little turquoise on some of the rank and file. An arm here, a shoulderpad there. I wanted to make sure that the army as a whole still blended together, so there's just a little showing. Will have to wait and see how it looks when they're all mixed in with my last batch of troops. I left all of their trousers grey, they look so bright at the moment, can't remember how many washes I did last time, but there's only one way to find out I guess.


Well, there are many ways, but barring a time machine or some sort of memory device I think I'll just go for one wash at a time until they look similar.


Thanks for all the kind words on the forums, hopefully they'll start looking better soon as more detail emerges =)