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!

Bob Naismith: A diorama

I've completed a little diorama, which is in fact a homage to Bob Naismith's Citadel sculpts. To the right is the familiar and imposing figure of Thrud and to the left is a dynamically posed fighter from the same period of time in GW's history; both painted using a verdaccio under-painting technique.

The always excellent Jean-Baptiste over at Leadplague has set a few "Oldhammer" sculptor based challenges recently and my two miniatures are for the #Naismithery version, presented here on a small scratch-built dioramic base.

Positioned like this, the two characters appear to show that Thrud's fighter friend is battling adversaries who are climbing the stairs whilst our hero considers how to open the door:

Whilst here, he us being attacked by the fighter, perhaps out of frustration! 

Either way to the two wonderful sculpts and poses were a delight to paint (even with a few interesting muscular anomalies) and will possibly be the start of a Brabarian warband for Mordheim or the like.. Here's a few close-ups of the Fighter;

And for completeness, Thrud:

Oh and I took a few photos of my scratch-build for the small dioramic base, using just insulation foam, a few bitz from the box, a couple of cocktail sticks and a mold of a door I had previously bought many years ago:

Thanks for looking!

Thrud (and painting in verdaccio)

The iconic Citadel Thrud, long admired by me and one of those miniatures that I was always keen to get and paint, even though he was much more expensive than I would have liked. When I had the lump of lead in my hand, I contemplated my approach to painting him; I felt he deserved a slightly different approach to my usual style and process, partly because it is Thrud and also because there are such large areas of skin to paint. I searched for some other examples of painted Thruds and found some to be way too smooth, almost disguising and flattening the sculpt, or some that were too sinewy and textured, mkaing the anatomy look a little too awkward. So I aimed for something in between. 

It also struck me as an opportunity to experiment; I remember from my Art History degree a technique used by Renaissance and pre-Raphaelite painters where they would under-paint the skin tones with a green hue, known as "verdaccio", which would help create the illusion of veins beneath the skin and to cool down some of the warmer skin tones.

Here's the finished model which I'm very happy with:

My image research led me to an example of verdaccio as seen on Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel ceiling painting:

And here is the processes in getting there using this green under-painting:

Over a white primer I washed in a diluted Athonian Camoshade (a little washing up liquid added to help it flow). A second darker wash was added to the recesses/shadows.

Once dry a subsequent wash of Darkoath flesh was applied

I then started building up my layers of highlights using very dilute applications of Elf flesh with increasing amounts of white. This helped blend some of the warm reds into cold greens.

This creates quite a washed out effect (although the lighting here hasn't helped)

So I glazed with both warm flesh tones over the highlights and cold green for the shadows

Final highlights were then applied very sparingly.

I think the experiment was quite successful although I probably hid too much of the green under-painting with my layers. It's definitely a technique I would like to explore further and I have a Marauder Giant that has been primed years ago that may be the ideal candidate. For now I am currently painting a second Bob Naismith miniature as a companion for this Thrud and I've already made a little scenic base for them both. More on this next time. 

Gaslands!

It was only a matter of time before I started a new project and that may as well be at the beginning of the year. Cheetor's excellent blog introduced me to the game Gaslands! and I particularly liked how he had used the contents of the Hot Wheels advent calendar as a starting point for a load of 1:65 car converting craziness.

So I'm in. Up to my neck. I love converting and kit-bashing and trash-bashing so this is right up my desolate, post-apocalyptic highway. First of all I've already got a couple of 1:43 cars that would work for the game on a larger-than-Hotwheels-scale, namely my Fighting Fantasy Freeway Fighter and Helsreach Arrabella projects:

And for Christmas I received a 1:35 Tamiya half-track:

Which I've built:

And which is now in the process of getting a sci-fi/apocalyptic makeover. This will join the two previous vehicles to make my 28mm Gaslands team.

Of course I'm not stopping there. I found a bunch of my son's Hotwheels cars and I've started building another team in 1:65 scale, using some 40k bits and the excellent Implements of Carnage from NorthStar Figures. My first two cars:

Primed:

And undercoated in rust colours:

Oh and it won't stop there, here's the other cars I've collected to transform into post-apocalyptic Gaslands machines (you may notice a familiar looking orange car there...):

I shall keep you posted....