Some miniatures for Song of Blades and Heroes (undead warband for Mordheim)

[Hobgoblin]

Thanks! He is at least an improvement on his counterpart from page 2 of this thread, so that's progress, I suppose!

I'm hoping all the scrawled detail on the cloth will somehow make him look more "giant" when he's based up. I'm going to have a go at making the ground he's standing on blackened with glowing embers.

[DivisMal]

The beastman is a great idea and he looks stunning!

[Ragsta]

You can see the development of your painting skills from page 2, certainly, and the first attempt was already pretty solid. This one looks good - if you wish to keep him flexible for 28mm then go without some other figs on the base but I have a suspicion that you have rather many figures that could do this too, and it would be cool to see some other figs on his base

Haha and now I've browsed your first few pages again! Have you stopped using gloss varnish? I can't really tell... And now you have me wondering if I should try it on a smaller force or two

[Hobgoblin]

You can see the development of your painting skills from page 2, certainly, and the first attempt was already pretty solid. This one looks good - if you wish to keep him flexible for 28mm then go without some other figs on the base but I have a suspicion that you have rather many figures that could do this too, and it would be cool to see some other figs on his base

Cheers! Yes, I think I'll go with some crawling things on his base - I'm thinking of pinkish little beastmen, so in 15mm or 28mm, they could be the infant pandas of the chaotic world (or indeed infant broo).

Haha and now I've browsed your first few pages again! Have you stopped using gloss varnish? I can't really tell... And now you have me wondering if I should try it on a smaller force or two

No, still using it! I wondered whether or not to go with matt for the 10mm stuff, but I liked how they looked in gloss. The based wolfriders, orcs and lizardmen are all glossed up. I know it's heresy, but I think most miniatures look better in gloss - it covers up the mistakes and lends depth to the colours. And you also get a nice contrast with the matt base. With the 10mm stuff, it just makes them look slightly more alive, somehow - perhaps the suggestion of gleaming steel and sweating limbs?

That said, the Vallejo gloss varnish isn't the glossiest and is probably towards the satin end of the spectrum.

[Ragsta]

Interesting, personally I really like the Matt varnish stage of painting my figs- it seems to bind my colour schemes better than when without. From what you're saying perhaps gloss has the same result, or at least similar. I'll try and experiment for myself, thanks for the info

[Hobgoblin]

Here's an experiment in speed painting. We had some friends staying a few weeks ago, and their kids really enjoyed playing SOBH with ours. So I promised to paint up a couple of warbands for them. I've got quite a few of these skaven kicking around, so thought I'd start with them. I also wanted to try out some super-quick speed painting, to get the project done reasonably quickly. To that end, I went with black undercoat and a really quick, "dumbed down" technique. These took all of an hour and a half, start to finish, last night. Given that, I'm quite pleased with the results and will aim to get a few more done shortly.

This technique - nothing more than simple dry brushing and tinting for the most part, and with just a layer, a highlight and a wash on the focal points (the flesh) - is a massive time-saver. It would be ideal on miniatures that have only the head and hands exposed. I'll be experimenting with it some more.

I also rebased some of my Copplestone trolls for 10mm, and got the first lizard riders based up too.

[Jagannath]

Those skaven look great - do a lot of your painting involve 'tinting'? It's got a great, subtle look that I really like... super effective.

I'd love to see one of those Skaven before you start the tinting stage, be interested to see how heavily they're drybrushed...

[jambo1]

Lovely painting again, the Skaven are really top notch.

[Grumbledook]

Very effective painting on the Skaven, can't believe how little time they took.

Love the Trolls.

[Hobgoblin]

Thanks, chaps!

Those skaven look great - do a lot of your painting involve 'tinting'? It's got a great, subtle look that I really like... super effective.

I'd love to see one of those Skaven before you start the tinting stage, be interested to see how heavily they're drybrushed...

Yes, lots of 'tinting' - a thin wash of paint before either an ink/glaze or just some simple highlights. I generally undercoat in white, then wash with Citadel's Agrax Earthshade, then drybrush in white and then tint and wash as required, with some highlights on top.

For the skaven, though, I undercoated in black (Citadel's rather watery Imperial Primer, which worked surprisingly well), then drybrushed grey, then drybrushed white. I then painted the weapons and armour with with thinned-down metallic paint and gave them a wash in Citadel's Nuln Oil. After that, I used very watered down red paint for the clothing and washed all the wood in Agrax Earthshade. Those stages took hardly any time at all. I didn't do anything else to the wood or cloth, so it was just one wash over the drybrushing.

For the flesh, I used paint that was less thinned down - Kislev Flesh, thinned slightly with water but still reasonably opaque. I then quickly highlighted it with Witch Elf Flesh (a very pale colour that I find tremendously useful for highlighting almost anything). This degenerated into drybrushing for the tails. When that was done, the flesh got a very thin glaze of whatever the Citadel blood 'special' paint is called, and that was that. I used the Nightshade dark-blue wash for the eye sockets, then painted the eyes white, then red, then gave them a wet dot of yellow. For the teeth, I mixed an ochre-yellow with bone, painted them in, then highlighted in bone and white. It was the most finicky stage but was very quick. I splashed a bit of the blood paint around the mouths before doing the teeth. A bit of black lining/tidying and it was all done.

To illustrate the dry brushing, here's a chaos warrior that I started painting with the skaven, but stopped working on when the colour schemes diverged. We'll see how he turns out later. I'd just painted in the metals, so most of him is just black primer + grey drybrush + white drybrush.

[Severian]

Just to echo what has been said: those skaven are first rate. The flesh is especially good.

And thanks for the explanation, which is most helpful. Last night I picked up a paint brush for the first time in almost three months, so this may be a good time to try to work on my technique a bit...

[SotF]

I like the look of the Chaos Warrior there, the concept looks like one that would work great with an arctic basing scheme

[Jagannath]

Thanks for such a detailed explanation - works really well, I've got a few minis I might try it on.

[Hobgoblin]

Thanks, all. I'll post some step-by-step shots of the chaos warrior.

I got the second stand of orcs based up last night; that gives me a full Mayhem unit - the third complete "square":

[Hobgoblin]

Here's the chaos warrior after 20 minutes or so of thin washes. The horns here will be analogous to the flesh on the skaven - thicker, more opaque paint (though still thinned down a little).

I've blocked in some of the shield in white to do paint in flames.