The Legion of Shame

[Gluteus Maximus]

That's the Stones in a couple of years  

[Argonor]

I wonder how many of us have a similar amount of 'hidden' figures..?

I have a Foundry Celtic (Brits) army, bought just after the release of WAB. It has never been unpacked (still lying around in the original plastic bags)...

I'm positively never going to paint it. I also have several old GW blister racks (from my days as a games shop manager) fillled with blisters of all kinds... and several (large) cardboard boxes filled with the same motley crew. Guess at one point I'll have to make some decisions 'bout what will have to go, and what to keep  :freak:

[Ironworker]

Ok I've not finished any legion of shame lately so here's another unit.  Some Necromundia Redemptionist from Game Workshop.  these guys really represent the legion.  Figures I've had in this state for over 10 years and to top that off I think I used the cheapest flat black spray paint I could  find to basecoat them.  Strip them?  NEVER!  We don't strip Legion of Shame minis.  We get them the funk painted.  Here they be in all their nasty crappy primed form.


I plan to paint them using a limmited palette and since they are Legion of Shame I must use only craft paint brands.  To further add to the insanity of the project I'm going to attempt to use nothing by drybrushing for shading and highlighting.  MU HA HA HA, MU HA HA HA, MU HA HA HA.....

[Ironworker]

The most common thing people do when painting a miniature is to paint from the skin out.  While this has it's advantages it can be problematic for speed painting and in particular drybrushing.  I gernerally prefer to paint largest to smallest when drybrushing instead of skin out.  So with these guys I started with the robes.  I wanted some faded brown robes so naturally I drybrushed on a heavy coat of dark blue first.  I did the whole unit.  Then in another break from convention I did the brown all the way up to the final highlight on each mini before proceeding to the next.  This gave me some wet blending.  Why yes you can wetblend and drybrush at the same time.


Here is a step by step though somehow I skipped a step because I did four layers.  


note I left a lot of blue showing for shadow.  





The whole group with their robes done.  



Very messy at this point and quite impressionistic.  Of course Impressionist paintings continue to break sales records to this day.   :devil:

Oh I almost forgot to mention.  I'm logging my time.  Started the robes at 12:30 pm and finished them at 2:17 including taking time to do several photos some of which ended up here and a few other breaks, phone calls, and distractions.

[Ironworker]

Ok so next I did the hoods and tabbards since this was the next largest area of color.  I chose to make the hoods look like slightly faded red so naturally I started with a layer of green.  I don't use tube green in this pallet which is similar to my canvas painting pallet minus the metalics so I had to mix it up.  



Then I used a cool red drybrushed fairly heavily over that.  Oh and this time I found a better way to keep track of my layers.



I mixed in my warm red about 50%.



Then I did a layer of warm red only.



Then to get the faded look I mixed some warm red, yellow ocre, and just a slight dab of white.  



The whole group with hoods and tabards.  



Time log was 3:00 pm to 5:08 pm.  I think I had more distractions but these smaller areas take a bit more carefuly drybrushing as well so it goes a bit slower.  I'll get back on this later tonight but it may be a few hours before I am able to update and I'll probably do a few steps at a time but now you can get the jist of what I'm doing here.

[Ironworker]

Ok I basically worked on the smaller details from 7:30 to 10:30 minus about 10 minutes while I made myself a roast beef sandwitch and had a beer.  It's far harder to dry brush on smaller details than largers surfaces and I'll admit that on their skin tones it's really more of a quick highlighting than drybrushing but the 10 year old wally world spray paint primer job was really nasty so after struggling with the leather bits I decided to be more careful with the skin tones.  Those skin tones where mixed with my pallet colors.  No bottled flesh tones were used.  Same for the faded purples and greens used so far.  

[Ironworker]

Sorry about the update spam.  I have another legion of shame thread on the Reaper forums and I forgot to update this one as I updated that one.  The reason I'm using so much drybrushing is due to a minor skirmish that's been going on between the army/game painters and the contest/display painters over on that forum.

[P_Clapham]

I find your choice of basecoat colors to be a very interesting tecinique.  

[Ironworker]

I'm trying to push some color theory and basic canvas painting techniques like mixing flesh tones from regular colors and stuff to be a bit extra cheesy for the miniature artista 40+ hours per miniature crowd.   ::

[Ironworker]

I didn't have a big enough block of time to work on the Redemptionist during the week due to work and other projects but tonight I managed to speed paint a Gargoyle in the Legion.  I think I have about an hour in him tops as he's pretty much all drybrushing and washes.  





Sorry about the back shot.  It's really out of focus but I'll post better pics when I finish the base.  The glowing eyes effect is only my seccond real attempt at object light source.  Still a long way from mastering it but I think I have the basic idea down.