Tag: Tutorial

How to… Paint Tomb Kings – max results for minimum effort

In honor of the new, and rather delish Tomb Kings release last weekend, I wanted to post up a ‘how to’ article on painting up your undead forces in double quick time in readiness for battle.

As you may have seen in the current issue of White Dwarf, they give you some ideas for different techniques for painting your skeleton warriors. They look great, but are rather in-depth, probably too much so for those of you, like me, who are not only a full time computer masher during the day, but also a full time dad and part time rock star. My point being, you don’t have too much free time to paint.

Part the first:

Once your skellywags have been assembled (arguably the most time consuming part of this) you’re going to want to spray undercoat the little buggers. I’ve used Duplicolor Sandable Primer, matt white, which costs about $6 from any auto store, and is far superior to the expensive shite that Games Workshop tout as spray paint. I leave them overnight to dry, although they are dry to the touch in a few minutes, but I’m usually doing something else, yay for multitasking.

You should be looking at a nice, white skellie, yes? Good, then we can move onto…

Part the second:

Get a pot of Devlan Mud*, insert your wash brush, or other larger brush, then liberally slap it on all over the mini. I tend to do a second coat on things like the face and ribs, as they have the most detail. Try not to pool it if possible. Set aside to dry. I have been working on a unit of horse archers, as you can see. The GW washes dry, so by the time I have washed one, moved on to the second, the first is already dry.  You’ll already start to see things taking shape, thus:

Some of you out there may choose to stop at this stage, which is fine, but they still need to pop a little bit, IMO. This leads us nicely into…

Part the third:

This is where your little creepers will come to (un)life.  Get your brush that you use for drybrushing, open your Bleached Bone paint and drybrush them. This will give that extra dimension to them (whoah! 3-D!). It’ll pick out the ribs and facial features a little more, plus give them a little more ‘dry’ and sun bleached feel. You could even add another drybrush step here with Skull White, which I did, as I do it on just the face and ribs, very lightly:

The bone parts are done! Simple, eh?

Part the fourth – details:

You’ll still need to paint your quivers, bows and other bits after this, but again I keep it simple. For the bows I use a Mechrite red base, washed with Devlan Mud. The quivers with Hawk Turquoise washed with Devlan Mud (this is to give the overall feel of wear and dirt over a couple of centuries). The quiver flap and straps are base coated in Chaos Black, and a quick line highlight of Greatcoat Grey (PP3) and then Codex Grey . DONE! You can add details like hieroglyphs and what not, but the aim of this is to be quick, right?

Part the fifth – finishing touches:

Base ‘em! I use a pumice filler for the bases, as it looks like that dry, parched desert ground. Once it’s applied then dried, it’s basecoated with Snakebite Leather, then drybrushed with Bleached Bone, then a little bit of Skull White. Add a couple of tufts of desert flock and you should have a nice looking painted unit, ready to deal some serious arrow violence on your enemy:

 

Following this should get you your mass troops done in next to no time, allowing you to spend a bit more time on your character figures.

Let me know how you get on – good luck!

*I just bought a new pot of Devlan Mud the other day, as my other pot had run out. To my dismay, I find that it’s a slightly different shade, and almost looks like it’s got either Ogryn Flesh or Gryphonne Sepia in it. Bollocks!

From the mighty halls of Asaheim

‘Come my brothers, come walk with me
to the new worlds across the Great Sea
In Asaheim our destinies lie
as warriors at The Emperors side…’

I decided to take a step out of my current projects and do something completely different. I have some odds and sods that I picked up off Ebay, like Deamonettes, Chaos Warriors and whatnot, just odd minis, not whole units, so I could change things up once in a while. I Also thought it would be a good way to push myself in terms of techniques and strive to get me up to a higher standard. So, reaching into my drawers (hehe) I pulled out this chap and set to work.

I’ve always had a bit of a soft spot for Space Wolves, being a frustrated viking myself, so I was pretty intrigued as to how he was going to turn out. I debated at first whether or not to go with dark grey armor, or the lighter ice blue/grey armor. I settled on the latter, as so much of my other stuff is supergrimdark so the change of pace was quite satisfying.

I spent 10 hours (roughly) on this chap, but I’m very pleased with the results. I have to pick up some of this adhesive stuff to apply the decal to the shoulder pad. I’d forgotten how much I hated water slide decals, especially for shoulder pads. Trying to apply a flat surface to a rounded one will ineveitably lead to frustrating creases. I remember Dethtron telling me about this stuff you paint over the decal which basically fuses the membrane to the surface of the mini.

This was the recipe I used for my Space Wolf:

Armor:

Basecoat with a 1:2:1 mix of Space Wolf Grey, Shadow Grey and Codex Grey. Wash with Devlan Mud in the armor recesses. Don’t worry about being tidy! The add progressivley more Space Wolf Grey to the base mix and paint the armor plates, concentrating more on the outer edges to get that defined edging.

Bones: 

Base coat of snakebite leather. Devlan mud wash over the basecoat. Re-apply snakebite leather on the higher parts to begin your highlights. Add bleached bone to this for your highlights. Take this all the way up to bleached bone, or even skull white, depending on how ‘bright’ you want it. 

Yellow areas: 

Base coat of Tausept Ochre, add some skull white to this and paint a layer on. Wash with devlan mud and gryphonne sepia (concentrate more on the edges). Add skull white for highlights. 

Eagle/helm trim: 

Base coat is a 1:1 mix of shining gold and scorched brown. Wash with devlan mud. Add layer of shining gold on the high points. Add mithril silver to this for highlights. 

Jewels: 

Scab red base coat, followed by blood red, add vomit brown to the blood red for highlights finished with a dot of skull white. 

Shoulder pad rims: 

Base coat of Bolt Gun Metal, washed with devlan mud. Mithril silver to give worn look to the very edges.

As always, comments and criticisms are always welcomed!

When Cannons Fade is rapidly approaching its 2nd birthday (seriously, where has the time gone?) and there may be a few changes going on around here. I’ll reveal more on or around November 7th, along with some self indulgent ‘looking back’ at WCF since it’s inception.

Cheers!

Paul

How to… make your own movement trays.

With my first game of WFB looming rapidly on the horizon I picked up a pack of the plastic movement trays that GW produces. They’re ok, for models with bigger bases, but I wanted to create my own.  I’ll be playing Tomb Kings, and as such, will be using minis with smaller bases. Now, anyone who has seen the TK minis will see how spindly they are. This can prove to be a bit of a pain in the arse when it comes to moving them around, and I didn’t want to be wasting time arranging them properly everytime they marched around the battlefield.

Dutifully I went to JoAnne Fabric and picked up some mounting card. I already had foam card at home so I already have everything I need. Initially I was thinking of using just the foam card but realized that the skellies would practically be standing head and shoulders above the other minis. Hence the thinner and stronger mounting card.

With the mounting card, draw around your base. Do this for your frontage and your depth, depending on what size unit you’re fielding. As I will be making this for a unit of 10 skellie archers, frontage will be 5 with a depth of 2:

Once you have your base measured up, cut it carefully from the sheet of card. Keep the lines as straight as possible. This one became my ‘master’ so I can use it for making more bases whenever I needed. From here we draw around this again onto the mounting board. Then we draw a bigger box around it. This extra spacing will be where our lip runs around the edge of the base:

Cut this from your  sheet of card. You now have your base which encompasses the 10 bases, plus the lip around the edge. Everyone following this ok?

Now, to the foam board. Trace around the larger base you just cut. then, lay your original template (the 10 base one from step one) on top. Make sure the spacing around the edge is roughly equal then trace around it. Then you’ll need to cut (very carefully) this centre piece out. You should end up with something that looks like a licence plate holder:

Get some all purpose clear glue and glue your foam card license plate holder to the mounting card base. You should be looking at something similar to the picture above. Don’t worry if it doesn’t look perfect, we’ll be messing with that in a moment. I stuck my unit in it, just to give it a test fit:

Now, grab yer scalpel, or other sharp knife. We need to trim the edges down to give a more natural appearance, thus:

You’ll see now why it wasn’t a big deal if it didn’t all look totally straight, as you’ve changed it now anyway. You can be as zealous or reserved as you like here, it’s all down to personal preference.

We need to texture it now and you can do that one of two ways. First is to mix sand and PVA wood glue and paint this all over, or, if you want a quicker solution like me, you may have some ‘pumice’ which is available from most hobby stores. So, brab a brush and liberally slap it all over the outer ridge:

And you should end up with something like this:

The final stage is simple. You paint them! Paint them whatever color you need. As mine need to look all desert like, I start with a basecoat of Snakebite Leather:

Then a drybrush of Bubonic Brown and then finally Bleached Bone yields these results:

Thats it! you are done! I made 3 straight off, so I could put 2 units of skellie archers and a unit of Tomb Guard in them. They’re looking pretty sweet, and help give the army a uniform look.

Hope you liked this tutorial. More coming soon!

Paul

Weathering my Chimera APC

After reading a rather informative article from my buddy Colin, or as he is known in other circles, ‘Dethtron’, I decided to try out his technique for weathering vehicles. I thought I would try this out on my Chimera, and although I was missing one paint that Colin recommended, P3 Umbral Umber, I figured I would just do the dozer blade and see how it would turn out.

I think weathering works for nearly all tanks, and works well. There are some others that I feel probably would benefit from not having as much, if any, of these weathering effects as I feel it may detract from the paint job. I think that this works well for Guard stuff. The jury is still out, for me, on whether I want to do this on my Sisters or Marine vehicles. We’ll see.

Anyhoo, its pretty simple After I had painted my hazard stripes on the dozer blade, I took an old sponge from one of the mini blister packs and ripped a piece off. I first used black and stippled it on all over, to show where the wear and tear had taken the paint down to the undercoat. I was already excited at how this was turning out, so I eagerly busted out the boltgun metal and repeated the process. I concentrated more on the edges to show where general use had taken the paint down to the metal.

I am, so far, very pleased with the result:

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I won’t be doing as much with the rest of the vehicle. I went a little overboard on this as I figured it probably gets the brunt of the hard work. I’ll probably put a couple of bullet marks on there as well.

Thats it! Thanks to Colin, who, under the moniker of Dethtron, can be found with his rapier wit over at his blog ‘Dick Move’ (yes really!) for showing me this stupidly simple, but effective method of weathering. I’ll be sure to put more pics of this APC up as I get more done on it.

Cheers!

Paul

Tomb Kings archers

Completed 8 Tomb Kings archers, the first of my first Warhammer Fantasy Battle army! I’m quite pleased with the results, so the rest should be a snap to do. My buddy Colin lent me this pot of pumice stone filler type stuff, which I panited onto the bases for a realistic sandy/desert type effect (Thanks Colin!). The Skellies are relatively easy to do:

  • Spray undercoat in white
  • Liberal wash of Devlan Mud all over (be as messy as you like, but make sure you get all the nooks!)
  • Drybrush Menoth White Base (or equivalent, e.g. Bleached Bone)
  • Drybrush with Menoth White (or equivalent. You want a slightly off-white)
  • Hey presto – painted bones!

And for the blue parts:

  • Undercoat with Hawk Turquiose
  • Wash with blue ink
  • Wash with Devlan mud
  • Add Menoth White to Hawk Turquoise for some simple edged highlights

And for the gold/brass bits…

  • Basecoat Shining Gold
  • Wash of chestnut ink
  • Drybrush of Shining Gold
  • Light drybrush of Brass Balls
  • Tadaaaaa!

The red was simply Mechrite red base, then highlighted with 1/1 mix of Mechrite and Blood red. I didn’t focus too much on these highlights, as this is supposed to be a quick army to paint. Blacks were simply line highlighted with Greatcoat Grey with a thin line of Codex grey to finish.

For the bases:

  • Basecoat Graveyard Earth
  • Drybrush Menoth White Base
  • Light drybrush Menoth White
  • Snakebite Leather for the base edges (two coats required for this, else the white will show through.)

Here they are:

C+C welcome!

Cheers

Paul