Nysse's Saga project (27.1. More Norse Gaels)

[nikephorous]

Great work - especially on the WF figures. These are so easy to get wrong (experience talking...) but you have achieved realistic poses and a great overall appearance.

[Nysse]

Thanks nikephorous!

Finally got around to painting the other half of the starter box. With all my Saxons I now have 7pts Saga done so should be able to play fine without resorting to some other club members minis

I used Battle Flag decals on some of the shields. Would have loved to use them on all of these guys, but they are a bit thick so didn't go well on the curved shields. Also as they are meant for the plastic Vikings from GP I had some issues with the fit and had to cut them up a bit to make them fit well. The Warlord has some of the undercoat shoving next to the shield boss that I didn't notice until from the close-ups.

Some more pics and my other projects on my blog if you guys are interested!












Argonor: The basic way how I do my basecoating can be seen here. I start with a black undercoat to make sure that everything is covered and there are no bright spots left. It helps if I can't get to some hard to reach (and see) spot when painting as there's black there and it works sort of as a shadow. After this I do a light grey coat at a 45 degree angle from the top all around. This still leaves the black in all the shadowy areas as preshading. If you use really thinned down colors or washes you can get quite a good result by just painting over this. Otherwise it helps see the detail and adds a good basecoat on which to paint on as I don't fancy painting over black that much. If I would be painting with washes I'd finish this of by doing a quick burst of white straight from above the mini.

Finally I spray dark brown on the base to speed up the whole thing. Saves you paint and brushes when you airbrush stuff like this. On these guys I also made sure that all the shields were even light grey as I was going to use shield decals and they needed to be applied onto a white/light grey base.

[Mitch K]

Lovely! Looking forward to seeing more.

[Argonor]

OK, thanks.

I'm going to apply the actual colours of my Mantic zombies in a similar manner: Army Painter Leather Brown basecoat, AP Skeleton Bone or AP Necrotic Flesh (for variation i may use a light grey on some, too) 45 degrees from above, paint the shrouds different colours, apply a dark brown wash, then pick out details and add gore before finisheing the bases.

Back to prepping zeds... 

[Nysse]

Thanks Mitch!

I'm going to apply the actual colours of my Mantic zombies in a similar manner: Army Painter Leather Brown basecoat, AP Skeleton Bone or AP Necrotic Flesh (for variation i may use a light grey on some, too) 45 degrees from above, paint the shrouds different colours, apply a dark brown wash, then pick out details and add gore before finisheing the bases.

I actually painted a bunch of Kroot with the exact same colors a few years back Nice and fast especially coupled with army painter dips and some flashy colors for armor and hair/feathers.

[Axtklinge]

Another very cool bunch, congrats!
And those transfers on the shields do look quite nice!

Just out of curiosity, doesn't the surface of the decal stays somehow "shiny" compared to the rest of the miniature painting (at least in certain angles when direct light reflects on them)?

[Nysse]

Another very cool bunch, congrats!
And those transfers on the shields do look quite nice!

Just out of curiosity, doesn't the surface of the decal stays somehow "shiny" compared to the rest of the miniature painting (at least in certain angles when direct light reflects on them)?

Thanks!

It doesn't shine any more than any other part of the mini after applying matt varnish. For decals I usually paint the underside with gloss varnish to help the decal set. After putting on the decal I apply another layer of gloss over it to seal the edges and blend it to the rest of the model so that the edge isn't visible. Finally a matt varnish over the whole mini to take away all the shininess everywhere.

[Axtklinge]

@Nysse: Thanks for clearing that up!
I tend to like (as in "enjoy") to paint details freehand, but those shield decals end up looking so good I could be tempted to give it a try.