WIP painting dwarves including khazad guard - Washes

Well, the Lord of the Rings may be dark and scary and the Strategy Battle Game might have (mostly) clean cut rules, but my dwarves all look dirty and manky now!


That's right, they've had their washes done and always look a little dirty afterwards. Fortunately, they also regain a lot of their miniature detail!


You can now see their fingers, definition on the face, cracks between armour plates, different parts of hair etc.


I used Badab Black on all the armour, rocks and pillars, Devlan Mud on the boots and other brown bits, Leviathan Purple on the, duh, purple, Asurman Blue on the turquoise and Ogryn Flesh on the skin. The beards got miscellaneous brown, black and Sepia washes depending on my mood =)

You can really see how dulled down the metallics are, great if that's what you're going for (which I do with goblins) but not so much for my well polished and oiled dwarves, obviously they get a second paint coat next.

For comparisons, here are the three Kings before and after. The skin and beards are the most noticeable I think.

 So now it's almost back to the drawing board =) Second coats of paint go on now, but not in the recesses. I leave the washed areas in the deeper folds of beards, cloaks, armour and skin and paint the original colour on the higher areas. That gives me a nice two-layered effect.


Mostly that's even enough to make them look really good, but I usually then put a further highlight layer on that (and sometimes yet another on the special characters).


I'm only spending a few hours a day on it and, as you can see, there will be 35 more dwarves ready to go in another week or so (if I keep at it). If you were a keen painter, had the time and a back and neck that didn't ache as much as mine does, you could knock this whole process off much, MUCH more quickly, obviously.


At the same time as I paint I watch DVDs, at the moment the History Channel's series on Barbarians (borrowed from the library) interspersed with Star Trek Voyager (borrowed from my brother). It's a great way to pass the time when painting easy bits, like slapping on washes.


Still not sure what to do on the dwarf king trimming bits yet, but had better come up with something soon! 

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 =)

WIP painting dwarves including khazad guard - blues

Well, my lotr sbg dwarven ebay force now has a layer of turquoise also. Most of the warriors don't have any, they all had grey trousers in the original batch I painted. The Khazads and heroes all have turquoise as highlights (as do the dwarves on their shields). So now I'm not sure if I want to go back and repaint my warriors to change their trousers to turquoise as well. It's such a small amount, but adds quite a "pop".


Then again, it's nice to have even more difference between the warriors and the elite guards...


Decisions, decisions!


Here's what I'm talking about:

So on the left are some of my original batch. The trousers are grey, with brown washes added so that they don't just look like the ground. On the right are some of my Khazads (only a couple of them actually have visible pants). They have the blue on them.


I do like the blue, but not sure I can be bothered re-painting all my other dwarves =)


Anyway, here are the current mob all blued up (remember you can click for a bigger version)...

As you can see, the new camera takes, imho, a pretty good shot =) Can't wait to use it in battle, so to speak!


I guess I should go and do beards now, for some reason I don't like doing beards, but they'd look pretty silly with all black ones =)


Oh, and thanks for the nice comments on the forums, these are, so far, just all using paint straight out of the tub, though watered down a little. The purple is just Liche Purple, the blue is Hawk Turquoise, the brown is Scorched Brown, the metal is Boltgun Metal.


Any nice smooth shading effects you're seeing are just the natural lighting on them, not any paint shading. I won't do any of that until all of them have a full base-coat.

WIP painting dwarves including khazad guard - brown

Been pretty busy this last week, so haven't really done any painting, finished the brown layer off this morning.
Did some beards brown, will do others blonde, grey, red etc. so that's why some are beard painted and others aren't.
Looks like we'll probably fork out for a new camera soon, so hopefully that will mean better shots in the future!

And with the new camera =)

I don't know if you can actually tell from these size images, but the new camera is fantastic! It's roughly a bazillion times better =)

Anyway, slow but steady progress (made slower by all the cheap games on Steam at the moment!)

WIP painting dwarves including khazad guard - Purple

Had an afternoon off, so did the purple today, must be getting old, 'cos it's hard to sit and paint, sore shoulders and neck! Should organise to get a higher desk and chair, but instead I just paint one row at a time before having a bit of a break

I start up at the back right hand corner, since I use my left hand to pick up and put back the miniatures. That minimises any chance of bumping already painted ones.

The paint on the king cloaks is still a little wet, I took the photo just after doing them, so it's not shading you see, just wet paint!

Will probably do the brown next, but not today!

WIP painting dwarves including khazad guard - Metallics

Well, it took a couple of days doing a bit here and a bit there, but have done the metallic first coat now.


You may notice that it's a different order to last time. With the chainmail sections of armour I tend to do a sort of drybrushing, which always intrudes a little into adjacent areas. Last time I saved this until later in the process, not having done it before, and bits of metal got onto other bits.


I know this happens when batch painting, but want to minimise it without adding to the total time taken. I was also a little less careful than last time, knowing now that the badab black wash does a great job of separating out the armour plates. 

As before I've used Boltgun metal to paint the armour on my snazzy new collection of dwarven warriors, archers, khazad guard and kings. On top of the rank and file this will be topped with chainmail and highlighted with mithril on some plates, bronze on others. The kings will get chainmail, mithril and gold.


I find the chainmail armour the hardest, getting the link definition without blobbing into the little holes is tricky and I don't think I get it right very often. Fortunately from a gaming distance it's no problem!


Not sure what colour I'll do next. Probably purple or brown.


Will keep plugging away a little at a time before cracking and doing at least one by itself. =)

WIP painting dwarves including khazad guard

Well, I bid on a couple of ebay auctions and accidentally won all of them!
They're all metals and include:
12 dwarven warrior archers
6 dwarven warriors with shields
3 dwarven warriors with two handed axes
11 khazad guard
2 dwarven kings
Dain
a couple of Balins and four sprues of scenery.


I will be following pretty much the same order as last time, so far I have assembled them and spray painted them black as a base (though I didn't do a great job and will have to touch them up or just spend a bit more time on the metal bits that are showing (not an issue really if it's armour!)


My wife picked out some beads from a jewellry making shop that look a little like bits of columns or something, so I've popped them on a few bases, which I've done a Codex Grey drybrush (heavy) followed by a light Fortress Grey one. Can't really tell in the pictures, but the second brushing really helps!

The kings and heroes are standing on some bits of gravel I found outside, one of them is on a bit of balsa wood that I scratched up a bit. A few of the other dwarves are also randomly angled by putting one foot on a small pebble.


The neat thing is that once these are all done I'll be able to field 20 archers (2 volleys of strength 3 bows), have 10 2-handed warriors (after converting one previously to a banner), 20 khazad guard (I love those guys)  and some miscellaneous heroes to come up with stories for =)


Also I quite enjoy painting the shield guys, so more of those is always good!


If my brother and I ever decide to have a crack at war of the ring it'll be easier now with the selections I have.


And I think after these are painted up I may even have as many points of dwarves as goblins!


No ETA on finishing, what with Christmas, New Years and a baby due soon, but I'll update when I can