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quality mini's. However, this painting method will yield an excellent table top army. I
also want to show some other people the technique of layering. It took me a while to
actually try it, but it works very well. I got the technique from the book "How to Paint
Citadel Miniatures."
Layering is a technique for someone with more patience then skill. It's not very hard, it
just takes a subtle touch with the brush, and some good brush control. Miniatures, altho
they're 3 dimensional, appear flat, unless you enhance them with proper painting. So, we
paint in where the shadows and highlights should go.
In photoshop, we'd blur the final step, but we can't do that in real life
When viewed up close, the hard edges do look fake, but most figures won't be viewed so closely. The
next step up skill-wise is blending. Blending is mostly the same thing, but there are no
hard edges. It's extremely hard and extremely time consuming.
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First, I assembled the minis, glued sand to the base, and base coated them with Bleached
Bone. I painted the base, drybrushing grey then white over the sand. I then washed the
base in Flesh Wash, and painted the edges with Dark Angel Green.
I then washed the figures in black, then a mix of black and Flesh Wash, and then just plain
Flesh Wash.
I then went over the flesh with Beastial Brown, and painted the eyes red. I used multiple
thin coats, and left some of the innermost darkest spots showing thru.
Over that, I painted "poison flesh" from Vallejo. Like in my above example, I made sure to
leave a little bit of the bottom layer showing.
and the back
Next I made a custom mix of pale flesh and poison flesh, to get a pale skin tone.
I think he's a bit too contrasty, so I gave another Flesh Wash. This tied the colors in
better.
Over that, I did an even paler mix of the skin color.
At this point, the skin tones are pretty much done. The pictures on most monitors will be
bigger then the actual figure is, so it looks like a sloppy paint job. When viewed on a
table top, however, it's a very neat effect.
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Next was the hair, weapons, and horns.
I painted the weapons, armor, and fur chaos black. I used a light yellow color on the belt
and hairbands.
I drybrushed the hair in grey, to make it stand out a little more.
I thought that looked a bit too grey, so I gave it a wash of thin black paint. I also put
a wash in between the fingers, in the mouth, to make them stand out a little more.
Black is hard to do without making it look grey. I didn't want an "old man" beastherd, so
I left the highlighting very subtle. I also painted besital brown into the center of the
belt and hairbands, leaving the yellow on the edges. I find it easier to do this, then the
traditional method of painting the highlight color along the edges.
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Next, I painted the weapons silver, along with the armor on his wrists and the tip of his
horns. The rings on the swords were picked out in "beaten copper", along with the gen on
his chest, and the edges of the wrist armor.
On top of the silver, I painted flesh wash. This gives the metal a bronzy look. I don't
think feral beastmen would keep their armor clean and shiny, so this dirties it up a bit.
I saw an interesting technique in White Dwarf. To make his nurgle army look like they had
diseased weapons, he sprinkled salt on them while the paint was drying. I wanted to try
it, see if I could make the swords look corroded.
That's with the salt, and afterwards
Not quite the same result, but it's certainly not a clean, neat weapon. It looks more like
the rusted chunk of iron a beastman would carry.
[pagebreak]
As a unit on the battlefield, their colors tie them in together, and they look coherent. I
plan on adding some static grass, but otherwise, the color scheme I used on this page will
be used on all of them.
Layering is pretty simple, and gives dramatic results. It's much better then just painting
flat colors and trying to use washes and drybrushing.
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