Varanguard work in progress 2

I had some time off work this week (yay!) so I was able to make some more progress on the Varanguard.

Everything still very much WIP at this stage. (It’s starting to feel like this project will never end!) Since last week I’ve at least got paint on every part of the mount, painted the base and made a start on the rider. I’ve worked on the OSL a little, but I’m still not particularly happy with it yet.

For the bronze metals I’ve used a base of balthasar gold, painted the recesses with black and highlighted with fulgurite copper and then speed metal from Scale 75. It’s the first time I’ve used fulgurite copper and like the other new (slightly more expensive) metallics in the citadel line it’s very very nice to use. I’m not sure what they’ve done differently with these paints but they have a distinctive smell when you open the pot – reminiscent of alcohol based paints. I’ll probably still push the highlights a bit further. I still need to work on the steel areas anyway.

I spent quite a lot of time painting the various horns and teeth using the same colours I used on the hooves. There are another six horns that I haven’t glued on to the mount yet because I know if I do then I’ll just keep catching them while I work on other bits!

The legs on the rider haven’t been shaded or glazed yet, so you can see the difference that these steps make when comparing to the armour on the mount. Mind you, the mount’s armour isn’t completely finished either! I tend to leave final highlights until the end because of my tendency to accidently rub them off or catch them with another colour. I’ll probably add some battle damage too.

That’s probably my last post for this year, since I don’t expect to have much hobby time until the new year. I hope everyone reading this has a great Christmas (if you celebrate it) and a fantastic 2017.

 

 

 

Varanguard work in progress

A few weeks ago I shared a very early WIP of the Varanguard from Warhammer Age of Sigmar I’ve started painting. Here’s how it looked then:

I’ve been able to make a bit more progress recently, although I’ve had slightly less time for hobby stuff than usual. I’m deliberately taking my time over this and the model is quite large with loads of detail so it’s very slow going! It feels good to be back trying to paint at my highest level though, as it has been quite a while.

Here’s how it looks as of this morning. I don’t consider any element finished yet, although some parts are obviously more advanced than others. Once I’ve given all the areas a basic highlight and shade (which isn’t too far off now) I’ll be going back to refine things.

For the object source lighting on the armour I’ve applied 1:1 trollslayer orange and white, then 1:1 trollslayer and flash gitz yellow with lots of white using the technique I described here. I’ve glazed with pure evil sunz scarlet, trollslayer and flash gitz and also applied some of these glazes to some of the flesh. I’ll paint the lava base fairly soon and then I’ll be able to glue the miniature in place and refine the OSL, as it’s still quite rough at the moment.

I’ve decided to use some true metallics on this piece as I like the extra impact they can give. For the bits I’ve painted so far I’ve used a base coat of VMA gun grey, shaded with black into the recesses and highlighted with stormhost silver. I’ll be pushing the highlights further later and may glaze some colour into the shadows later.

For the hooves I basecoated with VMC chocolate brown and black, shaded with black and highlighted with golden shadow and yellowed bone from reaper. I’m keeping to quite orangey browns so it fits with my colour scheme.

Hopefully more progress to come this week!

Griff Oberwald

The recent re-release of Blood Bowl had me digging through my big pile o’ boxes to find my antique copy of this classic game and convince myself that I really didn’t need to succumb to new shiny syndrome and buy a copy of the new version!

I have the old school plastic human and orc teams (badly) painted so I was able to crack them out and have a couple of games with my wife. It was great fun but it occurred to me that it would potentially be even more fun to introduce some star players. More digging ensued and I discovered my 22 year old Griff Oberwald. Apparently at some point in the past I had painted him black and red and then decided to strip this off because he was in a very sad state! Clearly I couldn’t let this legend of the Blood Bowl field languish like this so I decided to bring him out of retirement.

Painting this miniature reminded me just how lucky we are these days – the cast was definitely a lot rougher than my rose tinted spectacles had led me to believe! Consequently I wanted to strike a balance and make him look decent without spending too long over something that’s never going to be perfect. Total time here was about 15 hours which I think is fairly reasonable considering there’s a bit of freehand work.

I used this opportunity to test the scale 75 flesh paint set that I acquired a while ago. My overall impression was favourable although I think it would be good to try these paints out on a larger area of flesh. I knew that they needed a lot of shaking before I bought the set but I did find this aspect of using them very tedious, and it definitely slowed me down a bit! Nice range of colours though.

I also shaded the gold using the gloss version of reikland fleshshade. I like the way that it doesn’t dull the metallic paint but I found that it lacked a bit of contrast so I still ended up revisiting most of the recesses with paint. It’s useful, but definitely not a magic bullet.

Hopefully Griff will be taking to the field soon, although my wife will probably use him so I may end up regretting this little project!

Storm of Sigmar: Blood Warriors

I have finished painting the contents of the Storm of Sigmar box! Granted, not particularly well, but it is satisfying to have completed a small project like this. I hope to get a couple of trial games in over the next few weeks. And now I know that I can get stuff painted to a reasonable standard while sitting on the sofa of an evening it opens up all sorts of exciting possibilities…

I stuck to the same colours I used for the blood reavers, although obviously there’s far less flesh on display with these guys. I love the dynamism of the running guy, although the one with the beard is a great sculpt too. Not so keen on the tooth axe and the gaping maw of the bloke in the middle.

Here’s a shot of everything in the Storm of Sigmar box. 13 miniatures completed! I can give myself a pat on the back and have a celebratory mince pie. 😉