Painting a unit in NMM and need some advice

[Grey Mouser]

Couple questions

I am painting a unit of 10 Barbarian females. A combined unit of the now defunct IKOR and a couple of reaper figs to fill in.

So here goes,

I want to paint them in NMM and I have seen some tutorials on the subject most suggest a yellow ochre color, an earth tone, and a buff or pale sand color maybe even with a white for a highlight. These are all blended togethor to make a nice gold with white light highlights.

So how come when I look at these tutorials I always see an appropriate orange color (never mentioned in the tutorial) and when does that get added?

I am assuming it is layered dark to light? Or maybe the colors are washed on?

I am also interested in a decent SENMM technique if anybody can direct me to a decent tutorial. Although to me that looks more like chrome and I have a hard time picturing with that on anything but a Hoplite who has spent many hours polishing his metal or a Hotrod.

Last but not least the Hair. Obviously Barbarian females scream Blonde hair and if I use the Ochre colors for the NMM then how do I get the Blonde hair to not match. I have looked at this site and I noticed other people have the same problem.

 

[Ritual]

I would ditch SENMM and focus on doing a regular NMM well enough. SENMM takes a lot of time to do well and you will have areas where it will be very difficult to do an accurate SENMM.

For gold the quickest way, I find, is to use Snakebite Leather as a base. Then shade it with either black (for a cold greenish gold) or dark brown (for a warmer more \"red\" gold). Then highlight it using Bleached Bone or VMC Ivory and finally a bit of white for the brightest reflexes (use this sparingly though...).

If you want to do blonde hair that differs in colour from the gold I suggest you base it with Graveyard Earth or similar. Shade it carefully with a darker brown and highlight it with Bleached Bone or VMC Ivory and finally some white.

 

[Grey Mouser]

Yeah I believe you are correct about the Senmm I have looked at it and it would be fine for a single mini but its gonna be a pain on a unit of 10. I tried painting a breast plate in that style and quickly threw the figure into the stripper bucket after the attempt got too convoluted.

I think I saw something similiar to the blonde hair on the darksword miniatures website.
http://www.darkswordminiatures.com/gallery/set9Fighter.htm

I\'d kinda like to know how the armor was done specifically what the redish color is.

 

[Ritual]

Originally posted by Grey Mouser
Yeah I believe you are correct about the Senmm I have looked at it and it would be fine for a single mini but its gonna be a pain on a unit of 10.

My thoughts exactly!

Originally posted by Grey Mouser
I think I saw something similiar to the blonde hair on the darksword miniatures website.
http://www.darkswordminiatures.com/gallery/set9Fighter.htm

I\'d kinda like to know how the armor was done specifically what the redish color is.

I can\'t be certain, of course, but I wouldn\'t be surprised if that mini was painted like I described, or in a very similar way.

 

[SkyDancer]

Careful shading of the hair is the operative word here. It\'s too easy to screw up and make it look like it\'s been striped or chunked by a cosmetologist (hmm, barbarian cosmetologist, that brings up some funny imagery). Anyway, I\'ve had fairly good results with blonde hair by using a magic wash of green ink (yes, green ink. I didn\'t believe it either until I finally tried it). Make sure it\'s pretty dilute; you want a hint of green color in the recesses of the hair chunks (not really strands, are they?)