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

[Bloggard]

fabulous.

best I think I've seen the minis from that game looking - particularly overall / en masse.

by gum, I dislike this whole KS thing of games being available for a while (if you can fathom what's actually being offered, and for what price ... and how long it'll take ...) to then disappear from retail ...
although I suppose I'm missing the point really ... and without KS most of these products wouldn't have existed at all.

you did well picking up that collection for al decent price.

[Anatoli]

Thanks for the kind words guys!
Finished Conan as "Amra the lion", guard captain and Thak this weekend. As you may notice it was something of a crimson theme as I happened to mix that on my wet palette from various colors and thought it would fit the rest of the collection - that is being painted a bit more desaturated/gritty rather than bright red.

The guard captain was a bit of a back-and-forth situation. I knew I wanted his armor to be black. And initially all the fabric was super yellow, but as I laid the last brush stroke with that color, I realized that the color combination looked like a sports outfit.... I repainted everything with crimson red to better tie him in with the guardsmen.

The next couple of miniatures which I will start with next is the miniature weird alien miniature of Thog, Conans lion and the sea monster Thaug. I have some ideas for the huge monster that involve oil inks and AK streaking grime to make them look like proper horror creatures. Some acrylic inks that I ordered should also arrive on Monday and will try those out through my airbrush on these large surfaces.

[tancrede]

Amazing job, sir !! 
Love the attention you gave to the minis, even if rank and file like pirates or men at arms !

[Anatoli]

Thank you! I had originally planned on perhaps rushing through the many minions such as guards and pirates, but found them enjoyable to paint even though they had identical poses most of the time. I think it also helped that I tried something different in terms of technique and color for each group. For instance, I wanted the Picts to be pale but with clearly defined muscles and dark contrasts, the pirates to be a bit more tanned, guards to appear desaturated in their uniform color, skeletons to have pastel colored fabric and rusty equipment and the mummies to have very dirty wrappings.

I can say as much, having an airbrush has saved me tons of time. I was on the fence on getting one for so many years, but have used it quite a bit over the last couple of months. And for this project it has been a super time saver in terms of undercoating models with various colors, laying down base colors directly with the airbrush (for instance the red garments on the guards are airbrushed red, washed with army painted Soft Tone and highlighted with LifeColor tanned flesh).

I also picked up a few new ideas from various YouTube painters over the past months which I really wanted to apply on this Conan project. I just recently started experimenting with AK Interactive streaking grime which is an enamel wash that you thin down 50-50 with white spirit. This can be used with an airbrush to properly coat miniatures in a dark even layered wash. You let it sit for some 10 minutes and then you go over the miniature with a brush, and Q-tops or makeup sponges dipped in white spirit and either dissolve or rub away the enamel layer allowing your acrylic basecoat to shine through. It gives superb and quick results which basically only requires you to basecoat the miniature in basic colors (the brighter the better), wash the model and then once dry some 20-30 minutes later - you only add highlights or additional airbrishing steps with regular paint.

I was also recently introduced to acrylic inks, these are like "super airbrush paints". Incredible coverage, superb contrast, extremely soft layers and no risk of visible small particles as opposed to regular acrylic paint. You thin the ink with some acrylic paint thinner and you are good to go. Excellent for creating shadows from below on miniatures or just adding super high contrast color to surfaces.

Feel free to ask more if you want to know about the above and I'll link you some valuable and informative videos

Last night I put some paint on Conan's lion which is a bit big in comparison to a normal man (the hyenas are also out of scale). I also painted the alien monster "Thog". Thog was painted using the AK interactive streaking grime over airbrushed base colors followed by some airbrushing and drybrushing. There is no way I would be able to get this result with a brush in under the total 2 hours it took me to paint this mini.

Next up is the sea monster/kraken "Thaug" (there are 3 monster with similar names in the game Thak, Thog and Thaug ). Still thinking about the best color choice for this beast. I saw some pictures of a pale version with black eyes which looked quite good and may do something similar myself.

[Anatoli]

Btw, a picture of some of the special paints I am using. Liquid Pigments that I used on the skeletons from GreenStuffWorld, then some acrylic inks from an arts store and the AK interactive streaking grime.

I tried making my own grime using Humbrol enamel paints, but it turned to shit and I had to clean the miniatures in white spirit to completely remove it. AK interactive streaking grime costs as much as a single pot of humbrol paint and contains 3 times as much. The reason I bought the Humbrol paint at all was because they had it in my local arts store so I would not have to wait for online delivery.... Don't use humbrol enamels, they have changes a LOT in their formula since I last used them 20+ years ago.

I also purchased proper oil paints (Van Gogh brand, also from my local arts store) but have not yet tried it out more than a small experiment. I think I would want to try them out on a larger minature first - I have some larger display miniatures that will be used for further experiments once Conan is all painted up. However, I may try to mix some oil washes as my small experiment with that yielded good good results.

[darthfozzywig]

Wow! Great job across the board.

[Eric the Shed]

gorgeous stuff well done

[has.been]

Lovely work there.

[Tactalvanic]

stunning work and excellent choice in colours, look forward to your pale version of the sea monster, from the sunless depths, were no one gets a good tan

[majorsmith]

Some excellent painting there

[gibby64]

Really amazing effort! That's a HUGE game with some amazing sculpts.

[Reed]

So much good stuff! Truly astounding.

And yes, I'm also a fan of using oils. I've tried both using them as washes and for wet blending, which has allowed me to cut times when doing certain parts.

[Anatoli]

Thanks again for the interest and very kind words guys! It means a lot 

This evening I finished painting "Thaug" which is a multi part huge sea monster. Did this in 2 evenings, and it started out a bit iffy. I had looked at pictures of deep-sea fishes (anglerfish in particular) to get color inspiration. I began base coating and layering various colors, and then coated the whole thing in streaking grime. So far so good, but then I think I overdid it with white spirit as the model was bleached to a point where the streaking grime was almost gone. Worth mentioning that white spirit over AK interactive streaking grime cures real matt and faded so a stark contrast and bright colors are needed.

Anyway, airbrushed back most of the colors, and was able to salvage a bit of the "dirt" from the streaking grime. In the end 97% of the miniature was painted with an airbrush, just added some partial edge highlights on the tentacles and some parts of the creature itself.  It was harder to take good pictures of it than to paint it though... Now, could it be painted to a higher standard and with more detail? Yes - but... you use this model in like 2 scenarios out of 60 so for that alone I was content with this as my end result.

[Pattus Magnus]

Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water! Great job on that, I could see using it for lots of games - the watcher in the water for LotR, or a sea monster near Innsmouth for Cthulhu games, spring to mind. I appreciate hearing your experiences with the white spirit and weathering pigments and will keep it in mind if I try to do something similar.

[blacksoilbill]

That is a disturbingly good paint job!