Conan - painting up the "Kings pledge" and a lot of expansions 2023-09-15

[Anatoli]

wow the stone-guy is epic ... can't remember which story that's from now ... superb paint job!

have you any kind of detail /instruction about your oil-wash technique posted anywhere btw?

Thanks, the stone fellow is from the story "Black Colossus", in that story the god Mitra is described as a stone carved figure on a throne. I suppose that this is a concept of the stone statue coming alive.

About the oil wash and the enamel paints I use. I love this stuff, and would use it on everything if I could just not be so impatient. It takes roughly overnight for both the oil wash and the enamel wash to  try. I have purchased a medium to mix with the oil paints to make them dry quicker but have not used in properly yet so I can't tell what impact you can expect in waiting time.

Anyway,  I mix both enamel paints and oils with mineral spirits. You can get it cheap in a large bottle, or pay extra for a small odorless bottle at an arts and crafts store.  I would recommend the odorless (still have to ventilate the room as you work though!) since it does not give you the smell and headache while using it.
 
I have a dropper bottle with a roughly 50-50 mixture of AK interactive paint and mineral spirits so that it is ready for use. I apply this to a painting palette and use a synthetic brush for application on the miniature. The wash spreads evenly and runs down crevices. The more spirits you add, the more runny it becomes. I usually stick to my 50-50 mix as the whole idea is to "dirty down" the surface, leave it to dry for some 20 minutes and then use a Q-tip of makeup sponge dipped in mineral spirit and go over the miniature removing the wash where you don't want it, soften up patches to make the paint underneath the wash pop up and generally make the wash settle in corners, folds, crevices and nooks on the mini to simulate heavy dirty. It does darken and desaturate the surface color onto which it was applied. The longer you leave it sitting ,the more dark and desaturated colors you will get. If you apply it, in wipe it clean with mineral spirits you can get your original colors back easily.

I used streaking grim on a bunch of stuff, such as the mummies, and alien monsters on page 1 and 2 in this thread. The general rule is that you should use bright colors to get the best effect and bang for your buck when using the AK interactive streaking grime.

Great video showcasing what can be done with AK Interactive "Streaking grime" enamel wash


Oil washes are somewhat the same, but you have to mix them yourself to a greater degree than the enamel wash. You need only to buy a couple of colors so that you can mix your own stuff according to the color wheel. Oil washes create a very nice and smooth "filter" effect if you apply a very thinned down oil wash with a little paint and lots of mineral spirits. You can also get a similar effect to the Streaking Grime by applying a more concentrated wash and then use Q-tips or makeup sponges tipped in mineral spirits to re-activate and wipe away paint.

Best use for oil washes is to use them for pin-washes as the oil naturally spreads and runs into every little hole and dent on the miniature with almost no effort (even without using gloss varnish on the surface beforehand). And also to use them for filters to give surface colors as specific and soft tint by painting on a very thinned down color.

It is a bit awkward, messy and smelly and also time consuming to use the enamel and oil colors compared to the instant drying acrylic paints. But I have found them to be a great addition that can be used both in the middle of your painting as one of the steps - or as a final step when your painting is all complete.

I always go over the miniature with paper towels after a few hours to wipe of any excess paint that has still not fully dried, and then hit the miniature with Vallejo Acrylic Matt Varnish spray to seal the enamel/oil paint which allows you to continue painting additional layers with acrylic paint. If you don't seal the enamel/oils your paint will have a very hard time to stick, and may end up mixing with the oily residue and get discolored.

You really need to experiment a little. My first attempt was a complete failure as I used too much enamel wash, and also too much oil paint and the test minis never dried despite waiting 3 full days... The key is using mineral spirits and really thin them down, it accelerates drying time as the mineral spirits evaporate and leave behind the pigments.

Don't know if this was helpful - if I still had my blog I would do a proper tutorial. There are youtube videos on how you can use oil paints for miniature paining such as this guy:


One thing that the Conan project has got me doing, is to consume lots of painting videos and trying out new techniques

[Bloggard]

my goodness, Anatoli - thanks so much for such an extensive reply.

Now - just when I thought I was getting set to go with a certain 'new' (for me) approach to painting, should I experiment with this .. 

[Anatoli]

Manifestation of Yog from the story "Shadows in Zamboula" and Conan the pirate painted up. Conan the pirate may be my favorite alternate Conan so far, love the look and the pose. Both minis were lots of fun to paint up.

[nickdives]

Really lovely stuff, wonderful figures, but I will stick with my 70s stuff!

[mellis1644]

You just continue to wow with the quality of the paint jobs.

[Bloggard]

You just continue to wow with the quality of the paint jobs.

+1

[Anatoli]

Not much painting being done this week, but with the wife and kid away over the weekend I spent most of Saturday painting up N'Yaga and Zenobia.
I think the models are nice, but the 3d artist went completely mad adding the amount of details that the N'Yaga sculpt is covered in.

[Anatoli]

Conan the conqueror painted up, which means all 8 alternate versions of Conan from the base game, stretch goals and "the Conqueror" expansion are done. I sadly do not own any of the small box expansions by Brom and Xavier Colette and they are a bit too expensive to buy off ebay for my taste so this will probably be it for now regarding Conan sculpts.

I find it truly great that Monolith went as far as doing 8 versions of Conan. Listening to all the short stories and longer books while painting both broadens my understanding and knowledge of Conan as a character and as such it is great to be able to play with him at various points of his adventures.

With that said, I have some clear favorites, and least favorites with my list going:

Conan the barbarian - the standard hero from the core box still is my favorite. The pose is imposing and I love his bulky appearance.
Conan the pirate - my second favorite sculpt
Conan the mercenary - something very Warhammer Fantasy battles Chaos Marauder about this version
Conan the conqueror - initially not interesting, but once painted I love this dynamic full swing action pose
Conan the warlord - huge two-handed axe and a power stance, looks like he means business
Conan the wanderer - I love the look of Conan, but the limp pose is a bit strange and thus brings it town a notch
Conan the general - not really a fan of the hunched pose which hides the many nice details of the armor
Conan the king / Amra the lion - my very least favorite sculpt and the only one I dislike. I think the sculpt is half OK, and if the axe arm was raised above his head and he would be shouting or doing something more dynamic it would have worked. He also appears to be the smallest out of the Conan versions which makes him feel to be from another collection/game.

I do confess that I am a late bloomer when it comes to Conan. Up until last summer my knowledge was limited to the Schwarzenegger movie and the crappy version with Jason Mamoa. But since last summer I've had an increasing Conan craze where pretty much all spare time revolves around painting minis, listening to audiobook and recently I got into the PC game Conan Exiles LOL!

I just wish I was able to play the board game more, but will play through the single player campaign once I finish all mins from this expansion.

[DivisMal]

They look great! I was introduced to Conan, too, via the fantastic Schwarzenegger movie — arguably the best movie ever made.
The novels have some mediocre stories, but some are a real blast and very entertaining.

[Bloggard]

fantastic work.

[Anatoli]

Today I'm sharing something a bit different. I began working on the 10 Khitan Acolytes from the Conqueror expansion earlier this week. I had an idea of how I wanted the end result to be - yellow-green robed cultists. I also thought that these particular sculpts would make an ideal testing ground for "liquid masking" which I had purchased a while back but never tested.

As I finished a prototype model this evening, save for matt varnishing, I thought I would share my ups and downs and some thoughts about a few things.

First of all, I wanted to cut corners as much as possible, so that was where my idea of using the liquid masking came in. I thought I would undercoat the models in a yellow tone, then mask the top robe and undercoat a green on the lower robe. If all went well, I would have a major part of the mini half finished.

The liquid masking was a pain in the ass though. My particular version is from GreenStuffWorld and comes with a synthetic "nail polish brush" attached to the cap. The brush was a bit too large and unwieldy for this job and it took more time (about 1,5 hours) to mask the minis properly. I was also slightly nervous about how well the result would be because I had no idea how thick you need to apply the liquid masking. Once I had undercoated with the green color it was time to remove the masking, which is done very easily as the dried masking fluid has a rubbery texture and peels off easily.

The masking was 95% successful. I did notice that two or three models had slightly "chipped" yellow paint showing the red basecoat. I think the fault was that the paint which was masked had been applied in too thin a layer. It is possible, but should not be required, that you varnish the surface first.

I was decently happy with the result, and thought I would cut more corners by doing some oil washes over the entire models. This is when things did not work out - I fumbled and made the wash too dark, and even after I had used mineral spirits to clean most of the wash away once it had become semi-dry it had unfortunately stained the green and yellow paint to a dull finish. I admit I was at a loss on how to proceed and not sure my imagined end result would be possible.

Nothing to do but to matt varnish the miniatures and begin painting with acrylics. Beginning with the yellow which I really wanted to be very bright I used one of my old "Base" colors which is a decently thick dark yellow paint with good coverage. Thinning it down some I began sketching away on the robes, while keeping the shadows. Working my way around the yellow robe in two layers I then mixed in what started to pop the paintjob - AK interactive "Radiant Yellow". I had read that this yellow paint worked wonders, and I had purchased it on a whim last time I was doing some paint shopping. This was the first time I tried it out.

I mixed it 50-50 with the dark yellow paint to get a layer for transition, then added 1 layer of pure Radiant Yellow, and it looked fantastic. Probably the best yellow paint I have ever used. Finishing off with some white adding extreme highlights to parts of the yellow robe I was very happy with the end result.

The green robe was painted using an old Flames of War "German Camo Bright Green" color as my base, then mixing in "Escorpena Green" from the Vallejo Game Air series. Final layer was a mix of Escarpena Green and Radiant Yellow, and pure white for extreme highlights. And the end result was exactly as I had imagined it from the beginning - but the way to get to this stage was not as straight as I had planned.

The whole process of finishing the miniature beginning from the airbrushed and oil washed stage was about 1 hour which is great. I will do the remaining ones in a split batch of 5/4 miniatures and share the whole gang once they are finished, varnished and based properly.

[Bloggard]

whatever the ups and downs of that approach with regards to these first efforts, the end result is great.

[Anatoli]

After a two week break from painting I finished the 10 Khitan acolytes this evening. Will be painting some more characters and monsters before I push through the 10 pirate archers and 5 pirate ballistas.

[Anatoli]

I know I said I would paint characters first, but as I was undercoating a bunch of stuff this morning I ended up doing all the base work on the Deep Ones as well. Layered colors with airbrush, then lots of oil washes and oil paint. Will probably take at least a full day or two before they are ready for highlights and detail work.

[Little Odo]

The acolytes look very good - great colour scheme, well executed. The deep ones are coing along nicely too. Looking forward to seeing them finished.