3 Citadel Tribesmen (improving my verdaccio technique)

To continue my Barbarian warband, I bought these three oop Citadel Tribesmen on ebay for £1 each plus packaging, a proper bargain in these days of higher prices for nostalgia. I see these three as initiates for the warband, not yet fully blown Barbarians, mostly because they wear trousers and also because the scale of these 80's sculpts is slightly less heroic than the other miniatures I have already painted. I also decided to go for some black hair, as this is much more in the Frank Frazetta style and looked good having all three (brothers?) looking similar as the sculpts seemed to dictate this. There's a bit of Frank Zappa about the left guy too.

I went for my usual slightly rusting metal look and decided to have some exploration of how to work mostly with browns for their clothing, including a range of different leather appearances on the hide shield to the left. 

Here's the crew all posing their best pose for the photoshoot:

I again experimented with the verdaccio style of under-painting skin tones green, thinking I could refine it and speed it up from my previous attempts on Thrud. Which I think I managed, but make your own mind up; the process:

1. Over a white undercoat I liberally applied some Camoshade with a touch of washing up liquid to help it flow. (no photo here) 

2. I then built up a series of lighter highlights, adding white to the Camoshade in the raised areas

3. Then over the highlighted green I applied a very dilute glaze of a Citadel Contrast flesh tone. This was made up of some of the paint, some additional water, medium and a touch of washing up liquid. Here you can see it halfway through application. 

4. I then highlighted up with some very thin applications of a very pale flesh tone (Elf Flesh and a lot of white, thinned) 

5. I then reapplied a few glazes of warmer reds over the nose, lips, ears and cheeks, elbows and knuckles. Basically those areas that looked too pale and needed warming up. 

6. A small, very dilute purple wash in the eye sockets and then I could work on all the details.

And there we go! I have five more models to go for the warband - I would like to do a Frazetta inspired conversion of a Barbarian leader on a sabre toothed tiger and I already have a couple more old Citadel sculpts and a converted shaman ready to paint next, so until next time...

New barbarian recruits

On my last post I forgot to mention my love of Frank Frazetta's art and how my h this was inspiring my ideas for a Barbarian warband, well I've painted some more, hopefully evocative of his style.
Three more to be precise, added to the warband; another Hasslefree model, but this one with a ice dynamic running pose, a Red Box game miniature with a head swap (the original looked far too small and besides I had this nice Spacewolf head going spare in my bits box) and a Reaper Bones wild dog to finish off:

And so you can see where some of my I spiration has come from, some classic Frazzeta:

The start of a Barbarian Warband

This is all going to be about musculature and flesh-tones. To help me with this project I have gone full method acting; last night I re-watched Schwarzenegger's "Conan the Barbarian", I've started reading Robert E. Howard's titular book (not enjoying it so far), I had a protein shake this morning for breakfast and I'll be hitting the gym tonight (maybe). Oh and I've [carefully] looked for different skin tone painting techniques that I can try out on so many scantily clad Barbarian models.

You saw my Bob Naismith Thrud and friend and here I've gathered a couple of his friends that I have previously from Hasslefree Miniatures as well as a Citadel "fan" and a Reaper Bones leopard:

To add to these, I've captured a couple of very cheap old Citadel lead Tribesman from ebay (£1 per model!), Big Momma and a Dwarf beserker, also from Citadel, another Hasslefree model with a nice dynamic pose and a Red Box games (which I've head-swapped) model too. Additionally a plastic kitbashed model to create a Shaman and another Reaper Bones wolf. I'll share these next time if I can find time between my gym and protein shake routine.

Gaslands! Tamiya Half-track (1:35)

I've added another vehicle to my 40k motorcade (for Rogue Trader or from Gaslands!), this time an historical model pimped up with some sci-fi, kit-bashed additions.
The main model (1:35) is an excellent Tamiya, German half-track - a vehicle that has a whole host of detail and tiny bits of plastic on it's sprue to keep you challenged when constructing. The wheels and tracks are all moveable, but I decided to glue them in place to make painting a bit easier. I think the larger scale just about works. The additions to the build include an Ork gun (rear) and skull, a metal lasergun (?), bits from a computer motherboard, pieces of lego, rolled greenstuff, plasticard plating and other futuristic bits that I found that I believe are from Ramshackle Games.

Here you can see it with a Bob Olley Rogue Trader miniature that I had forgot to paint for a recent painting challenge:

I've put the half-track alongside my other 1:43 scale vehicles here, which looks like the start of a larger scale Gaslands! crew:

And here you can see the kitbashing in progress:

The painting itself was incredibly straightforward. Primed grey, pin wash with brown/black oil paints, quick highlight one with a light grey and then highlight two with the light grey and some white. Some rust and oil stains were added with appropriate colours diluted down and applied in vertical streaks for the rust and splattered on for the oil.

A mix of dry pigment and matt medium was then slathered on to the lower parts of the vehicle, starting with the tracks to show the terrain it has been driving through.

Next up, I'll go back to my Hotwheels scale cars!