Koyote's SAGA Britons, Irish,Late Romans, and Saxons

[Koyote]

That's it?  You make it sound so... doable.

Yes, it's really quite easy. 

One of the not-so-secret secrets to highlighting is to use paint that you've thinned with water or a thinning agent (I use water).  In general, whether you are painting base colors or highlights, thinner paint gives you more control and produces smoother surfaces.  I rarely paint directly out of the pot. Thinner paint is semi-translucent, so if you use it to paint highlight colors, you will find that it produces a more gradual blend of colors.

Below is an illustration that may help you visualize the basic process of highlighting and how to cheat-blend.  In this example you are highlighting an oval shaped raised area.  Let's call it a 'bump'.  The bump's surface is broad and its rise gradual, kind of like the leather vest on my test model.  If the part of the model to be highlighted is narrow and sharp, like a sword blade, the area covered by your lightest (topmost) highlight will be much smaller and the the area covered by shading and basecoat much larger.

You begin by painting the entire bump with your base color.  Once dry you wash the bump with an ink/wash.  This color is your shading.  The shading will run around the circumference of the bump, framing it and setting it apart from adjacent features.

Next, you apply your basecoat again, but you leave a ring of the shading unpainted. 

Next you add your first layer of highlight.  A highlight is a lighter version of the color that lies beneath it.  You can buy highlight colors (GW sells separate basecoat and highlight colors) or you can make your own by adding a bit of white* or off-white* to the basecoat. As in the previous step, you leave a small ring of previous color beneath the the highlight color. 

* Please note that white doesn't work with every color.  If you mix red with white you get pink, not a lighter shade of red, so you want to mix red with yellow or orange.

Next, you mix and apply another layer/level of highlight that is a lighter shade than the one before it.  You can add as many layers/levels of highlight as you wish.  I tend to stop at two or three.  Each time you add a highlight, you paint a slightly smaller area.  As I mentioned before, if the shape of the rise is broad and flat(sih), the last highlight will cover a relatively large area.  If the highest point of the rise is small and sharp, the last highlight will cover a very small area.

When you blend, you apply a thin highlight color and draw some of that color over a portion of the color that came before it.  This overlapping of a semi-translucent highlight color creates a gradual blend of color -hence the name, blending.   Blending takes practice and it's certainly not for everyone.  As for myself,  prefer to do what I call cheat-blending.  When I cheat-bend, I paint my highlights as normal, and once my paint is dry, I mix water and ink to create a very thin wash.  Rather than apply this wash to the entire bump, I carefully apply this wash to the rings where my colors transitions.  The top of the bump is not washed. 

Alternatively, if you'd like to darken the shade of the topmost highlight, you can apply your cheat-blend mix to the entire bump. If, after it dries you decide that it's too dark, you can always add another layer of highlight to the topmost level.  Painting is all about trial and error, so don't think that you have to get it right the first time.  If you don't like how something looks, you can wash it again, add another highlight, or paint over it with a base color and start again.

[ErikB]

Great tutorial!  Thanks heaps for writing it!

I try doing that kind of highlighting, sometimes using base + white, and, for the life of me, I cannot physically see the edges so it's hard to know how small/large to make that next surface as I work up.

I have managed to do this and the effect looks nice but, I swear it, I cannot really discern the edges, only get a sense of "oh, that looks nice."

I'll have to keep practicing. 

[Unlucky General]

I'm enjoying your project very much. Thanks and keep it coming.

[Koyote]

And so it begins.
. . . Man your painting stations!

[Koyote]

I've (mostly) completed my first 10 Briton warriors. 

I need to do some experimentation with basing materials and I'm still waiting for my Ammo Autumn leaves to arrive, so I haven't added any static grass and/or tufts to the bases.  Once I figure out what I'm doing, I'll post another photo of the completed models.

Their shields are so large that getting and angle that shows more than just shields is difficult.  I suppose I should include shots from the side and the rear. 

I will need to take their shield size into account when determining how to arrange the models on my army display base.  The Briton warriors will need to be angled so that a viewer looking at the display from directly in front of the display will see the models' bodies and not just their shields and heads.



I've been complaining about this for years, but I really need to buy a better camera and get myself a decent backdrop.

[Ray Rivers]

Very nice work!

Fantastic, in fact. 

BTW, you don't have to have all the dudes looking the same way for your photos. The guys on the wings can be looking off to the flanks, for example. That way you will see the backs on a couple on the left of the photo and the front on a couple on the right.

You seem to be quite a resourceful person, I'm sure you'll work it out. 

Keep up the good work.

[Captain Blood]

Brillig!
They look the business 

[Breazer]

They look really cool. I like the lancelot model for a leader.

[rumacara]

Very good.
Keep it coming.

[tancrede]

Really nice work ! 
Hope to see more of them soon....

[Larry R]

I'm really enjoying your modeling work! Thanks for sharing. This may push me over the edge to try SAGA.

[Hupp n at em]

I don't need another period! You're making me want to do Arthurians with these conversions and paintjobs. 

[Koyote]

Thanks, everyone.


From time to time, Jim Graham, the proprietor of Worldsmith Industries gives me some of his miscasts and other resin terrain goodies.  One such gift was a circular 6-inch diameter area terrain base.  He plays Wood Elves, so I suspect that he made the original to serve as the 'free-forest terrain' that Wood Elves get to bring to the table. 

The Aetius Arthur mercenary unit, Guides, have a mechanic similar to the WFB/9th Age Wood Elves, except that the owning player may remove or move an existing piece of terrain or add a M x M element of uneven ground to the table.  I've used Guides in my last three games and they've been nothing but win, so it was certainly worth my time to paint a purpose-built piece of terrain for them. 

The Celtic swirls work great for my Britain based warband.  Also, I decided at the outset of my Briton project that my Guides are Cymry mercenaries, so the swirls symbolize these largely, non-Romanized Britons.

The modular nature of the terrain lets me decide between terrain types.  The photos below depict Rocky Ground, which doesn't block LOS, but it does give my Guides hard cover.  If I need terrain to block LOS, then I replace the rocks with trees and voilà, it's a Wood.

The rocky outcrops are made by Worldsmith Industries.  The gnarled tree comes from GW's, Citadel Woods kit.  The GW trees work great with the Worldsmith area terrain because the diameter of the GW tree bases match that of the Worldsmith Industries' spotface recesses. 

[ErikB]

That's a miscast?  Looks pretty good to me.

[Utgaard]

Fantastic painting  - and many thanks for the tutorial about your way of highlighting!