Highlights on Ecthelion

I finished highlighting Ecthelion, taking a different tack from what I'd done with the Warriors. With the Warriors, I had done some pretty subtle stuff, then washed them, and found that I couldn't actually see the results as much different from a single basecoat and a wash. Too much work for not enough return.

So here was Ecthelion before the new work. I had done a similar technique to the Warriors with the cloak, but you can see the rushed single highlight on the black tabard. This picture was taken using my daylight bulbs.



The first thing I did was go over the top of the cloak's ridges with a straight Blood Red. The cloak was built up from several layers of thinned down Scab Red and Red Gore, then I washed it with a light black wash. The Blood Red highlight really popped out the cloak. The pictures below, taken with my halogen lights, don't show this really well - it has kind of pixelized the paint job.



Next I laid two stark highlights onto the tabard. The first highlight I think was Adeptus Battlegrey, so the second and third highlights were Codex Grey and Fortress Grey respectively. You can see this results in a very stark highlight, almost making the black look striped.



While this did make the model pop, it was TOO over the top to fit in with the rest of my force. So I decided to give the black a heavy wash of Badab Black. When I first put it on, I didn't really see any difference. But when I came back and looked at it this morning, it had dried and smoothed out the stark highlight very nicely. So I think I'm going to stick with this method for the Guards of the Fountain Court's cloaks as well.



The main thing that this experience is showing me is how much I already miss my daylight bulbs. I need to figure out some way to jury rig my lights for the dining room table area I have to use now.

First Fountain Court done to minimum standard

OK, so my test model for the Guards of the Fountain Court is done. I am pretty happy with it, but I'm going to have to determine how to do it more quickly than the hour and a half or so that it took me to do. Assembly lining it should help, but some parts are just going to take a while.

So I started off with a coat of Khemri Brown, a tan Foundation Paint, covering the areas that will be white. Nexxt I put down some Bleached Bone - I had to put a couple coats down on the flatter areas - keeping light colors smooth is a huge pain. I tried to keep the darker Khemri showing in the low areas.



Following that, I put down Skull White, again in some cases having to put down a second, more watery coat of paint to smooth things out. The feathers on the helmet did take a significant amount of time here.



I then put down Dwarf Bronze on areas that would be metallic gold, including on the edges of the shoulder plates. I then put down Shining Gold. The Bronze is a key element to put on first, because without it the Gold looks thin and streaky. I'm going to have to pare this back - the armor edges were a huge pain in the rear to get right, so I'll probably just stick to the helmet and the tabard. I also had to put some Ogryn Flesh wash on the decoration on the helmet then flat highlight with Shining Gold, since the texture wasn't very deep and the paint was thick. Next time I'll just put down the wash over the Bronze. I also put black paint into the areas along the gold to separate it from the white cloth.



Next came putting black on the shield, including taking the time to put some black between the branches on the shield. This does make the shield look nicer, but I'll only do that on all the models if I'm flush on time. Not bloody likely at this point. I also put a black wash over the chest armor, which brought the tree out nicely - it kind of looks like a Spiderman symbol while painting it...



Finally, I highlighted the black cloth with a mix of black and Shadow Grey. This was the hardest decision for me, since I really wanted to black to look black, but in the end I thought tying the highlights into the rest of the force would work. I then painted the skin inside the helmet with Tanned Flesh, painted the eyes white, dotted the pupils with black, and highlighted the flesh with Dwarf Flesh.



At some point, I want to improve the highlights on the cloak, highlight the metallics, and put a design into the gold trim. Oh, I need to paint the spear shaft brown as well, but that's a must do. I'll probably do that later tonight or tomorrow. I think next up will be converting Ecthelion.

Sense of urgency restored

Well, I found out on Thursday evening that there would be another tournament this weekend, but I put off doing almost anything about it until this morning. That's right, this morning, specifically around 5:30 am. At that time, my army looked like this:



To back up a bit, the tournament was being held at Games Workshop in Alamo, CA. Well, this is a good venue, but there are always limitations to playing in a GW store, which I am personally familiar with from having managed one and running many tournaments there. In particular, store hours is a big issue. In this case, the store was open from 12 noon to 6 pm. Also odd was the points level: 650. Upon prompting the manager, it turns out the rounds would be 1:45 long. Ooooo-kaaaaay. Grand Tournaments run 2:30 for 600 points, why would this be shorter rounds and more points? I made a quick decision that I wasn't going to paint any more models than I had planned on for the 500 point tournament, so I needed to crap some painted models. I decided on the following list:

Gandalf the Grey

Damrod

17 Warriors of Minas Tirith with shields
4 Warriors of Minas Tirith with shields and spears
4 Citadel Guard with spears
4 Rangers of Gondor
7 Rangers of Gondor with spears

Eomer with horse and shield

5 Riders of Rohan (1 with bow, 1 with throwing weapon)

This made things easier because all of my Rohan are painted. Plus I didn't want to bulk out the army heavily so I could play it faster. And I already had my hands full painting the above models.

So back to 5:30 am. I knew my ride would be arriving around 10:30, so I had a total of 5 hours to crank out as much of this army as humanly possible. Oh, and get dressed and showered. Preferably not in that order. I figured I could get a passably painted army done in that time. Time to work on the Zen of the Tank Brush!

First step was an overbrush of Boltgun Metal on all of the armor. I love Boltgun Metal. It comes out nice and dark in a drybrush, but it's bright enough when block painted to look like steel. Twenty minutes later, my warriors looked like this:



This was a nice overbrush, achieved by putting a small amount on the tank brush then dragging it in circles on the palette until it could be seen through. By the way, I have found that a tile palette is a very, very useful tool. For a while I used a plastic one, but it was hard to clean and of limited use. But here's a look at what my palette looked like after loads of overbrushing.



One shortcut that I also decided upon was to just drybrush the shields metallic instead of going white. I can touch them up later if I really want to. Note the difference between the drybrushed shield and emblem and the overbrushed armor:



Next, I overbrushed the armor of the Citadel Guard with a smaller brush. This took me about five minutes.



By the way, I did take pictures with a couple different light arrangements. You can see all the pictures if you really want to at my Photobucket account.

A couple minutes later, I had the Guards armor washed with Badab Black, and by 6:40 I had all of my models washed black, including some on the rangers for emphasis of the textures.





Next, I did the overbrush of the two extra rangers, and tried to do a tank brush overbrush on them without using the tankbrush. This didn't work so well. Instead it left big swaths of Bestial Brown over the model. Hopefully I can shade that out later. After that, I block painted Boltgun Metal onto everyone's weapons. Here was the status as of around 7:20:




At this point, I took a break to shower, get breakfast, and type up my list. This also let the washes thoroughly dry.

I was back at the grind around 8:00. I did a heavy drybrush of Chainmail over the entire warriors armor, and this came out very nicely. Unlike the overbrushes, I removed some of the paint via a paper towel this time. I liked it so much I just decided to do the exact same thing with the Citadel Guard. Here is a shot of two of them, the left after the Chainmail drybrush and the right with washed Boltgun overbrush.



I also gave the shields of all the warriors a nice drybrush of the Chainmail to highlight their trees. Here was my army around 8:30:



I next threw a light drybrush of Mithril Silver onto the symbol detail, particularly the trees and gull wings on the helmets. I also did some onto the upper shoulders and raised arms. This is as of 8:45:



At this point, the messiest parts are done. In order to really make these guys look done, I needed to get their bases looking good. A couple of things about basing: First, you need to choose a base that complements the model but doesn't distract. With a pretty light model, I prefer a darker base. With a dark model, I'll go for a lighter base. In this case, I'm doing Scorched Brown bascoat, Graveyard Earth midtone, and Bleached Bone highlight. This step was the biggest pain. I'd already done the basecoats, but I have a really hard time doing good mids and highlights. The best ones are controlled overbrushes which leaves plenty of paint up higher and the darker color beneath showing. I always either seem to smear tons of paint over the bae or dust the base so lightly it's almost invisible. I finally managed to get something decent around 9:15:



Next step, skin. I'm starting to feel the crunch now, and I'm also sitting around in my bathrobe still. I just decide to get some Tallarn Flesh on now, and if I can shade it later then great. I whip out one of my kolinsky sable brushes and apply the flesh to my models. Around 9:30 I had this:



Now I took a brief break to pack up everything I needed (other than the models I was working on) and get some clothes on.

One note about my brushes. You may have noticed from my painting station that I have two sets of brushes in it. On the right on standard GW brushes, and on the left are some brown handled brushes. These are Vallejo brand kolinsky sable brushes. A couple of years ago I wouldn't really have been good enough to use these guys. They are incredibly precise – in fact sometimes it's hard to get everything you want covered if you're not very careful about it. For this reason I use my GW brushes when I want good general coverage, since they tend to slide down into crevices and flow around the model, while I use the kolinsky brushes for all of my detail work.

I sit back down around 9:45 and get to work on the cloth of the warriors. About ten minutes later, I had:



I decided against shadowing or washing – I just didn't have enough time to do a good job. Much more important was covering appropriate areas with black paint, such as the Citadel Guards' cloaks and the warriors shields. This took some time – I used the GW Large Brush for the cloaks (coverage), and the Vallejo #1 brush for the shields (control). With minutes until 10:30, I grabbed the Iyanden Yellow from my paint rack and put it onto the trims of the Citadel Guards. At almost 10:30 exactly, I had this:



I packed up and went to the tournament. I brought along some washes and my static grass in order to get some more work done with the models. Once we got there, I did manage to get static grass onto all of the models, and here they are, along with their Rohan buddies, on the first table:



Whew! From black models to gaming quality in 5 hours. I was quite pleased with myself. Over the next few days, I'll improve them, adding shading and highlights, plus making the details better. I'll write a report on the tournament itself in a little while.

Gandalf is done

Here he is, my early scale Gandalf in all of his glory. Oh, I do need to finish his base now that I think about it.





This is a try to get a shot of his face - a side effect of having such a cool hat is that you can hardly see the model's face and it's almost impossible to take a picture of it. This was the best shot I could get.



I had most of the model done already and just had to get the flesh done. I did the layered method on this one. I put on Dark Flesh, then Tanned Flesh, next Dwarf Flesh, and finally a light highlight of 50/50 Dwarf and Elf Flesh. One thing that I've found is that hands in particular look really flat without some flat painting to give it a little extra pop. On the back of your hand you can see the bones creating a little ridge. Well, that's pretty much invisible in real life, but on a mini a light highlight there really brings the hand to life.

I also tried a blue wash on Glamdring, and I'm not sure how it turned out. I may give another highlight of Mithril Silver over the edges to return the metallic edge to it.

Test warriors complete

When I started painting heaps of models for Games Workshop in one of their hobby centers, my manager introduced me to the amazing technique he called "The Zen of the Tank Brush." So I got the main things I'd need for this project:



The idea of the "Zen of the Tank Brush" is to do an overbrush of the entire model with the tank brush. An overbrush is very similar to a drybrush - in fact most people who think they are drybrushing are actually overbrushing. The difference is in the amount of paint on the brush. For both techniques you need a dry brush - moisture on the brush will lead to paint going down into the crevices of the model, which you definitely don't want here. For overbrushing you put a little of the paint on and remove enough that there are no glops. However, if you drag the brush across a surface color still shows up immediately. This lays enough paint onto the model that you've got a smooth basecoat without going too far into the recesses. So you just drag the tank brush over the entire model a couple of times and you've got a partially shadowed basecoat! It takes a little practice - too much paint and you get a messily block painted model, and too little and you get the powdery appearance of a drybrush. The beauty of it is that with a tank brush you can effectively overbrush a large number of models in a few minutes. That leaves you free to complete the details if you're not too picky about the highlighting, and if you are just do a lighter version a second time.

I tank brushed the primed model with Boltgun Metal, but I think I actually didn't have enough paint on the brush, because the model came out a little powdery. So for comparison I grabbed another one of my spearmen which had a more solid coat of paint on him. This also gave me the opportunity to test some other ideas side by side. My second step was using the GW black wash over both models. After that dried, I used the tank brush to drybrush on some more Boltgun Metal, followed by another light drybrush of Chainmail just to see if it mattered. I saw a small difference, but nothing big. Next I grabbed a small drybrush and hit the chest tree, the wings on the helmet, and edges of the plates with Mithril Silver. This gave the models a very nice highlight. I also liked the effect of the more solidly painted model - the first model had a definite powdery appearance. I also will pretty much have to use other models for my actual army, as it became blindingly obvious that I hadn't removed the mold lines from these guys.

I next decided to see how the models would look with and without washes over their cloth. I experimented with another metal ranger I had lying about, and found that the wash really worked well as a glaze to pull the highlights together. I played around with the warriors as well, first putting a basecoat coat of Fenris Grey, a Foundation paint, onto their cloth. Instead of layering up, I layered down, enhancing the shadows of the cloth. The next layer was a 50/50 mix of Shadow Grey and black (using two drops each from my Vallejo bottles), and the bottom layer was the same mix with another three drops of black added. I finally put a black wash over the first model's cloth while leaving the second model unwashed.

Next I did the shields. I've almost always seen these done in metallics to match the armor, but I wanted to actually have them be white as it says in the books. OK, the books say that only the Guard of the Citadel (which GW split up into the Guards of the Fountain Court and the Citadel Guards) bear the arms of Elendil, but heck with it - they're on the shields, so I'm painting them white. I covered the entire shield in black to cover the drybrushing up, then used the side of my brush to barely hit the detail on the tree with Astronomicon Grey, another Foundation Paint. Well, the first model had much lower detail than the second model and I ended up smearing paint all over it. I next put a layer of white on, then went back and touched up the black around the tree and between the branches when I could manage it.

My next task was to experiment with faces. For the first model, I just slapped on some Tallarn Flesh (Foundation paint), then used the Ogryn Flesh wash. The other one I did a three layer process of Dark Flesh, Tanned Flesh, and Dwarf Flesh. This was a huge pain in the rear inside that tiny helmet space and ended up looking sloppy and unhighlighted. Well, easy looks better, so I'm going with that!

Finally I tidied up the details and based the models, and here they are! The model on the left is the original one with the drybrushed base coat and the washes, the one on the right is the unwashed cloth and face.





By the way, pictures of my step-by-step work are located at my Photobucket account.

Well, with the result of this test, I think I'm going to go with a heavier basecoat of Boltgun and make liberal use of the washes. I'll put building more spearmen into the "like to do" priority list, along with converting some non-spearmen. After all, if I don't need the spearmen, why build them now?