Painting Skin and a Couple of Scavvies

 Last post, Lasgunpacker asked for any tips on painting skin. To be honest, I find this quite hard, and it's not something I enjoy much, especially where you've got big open expanses of skin, as with ogres or trolls. So, here's what I know about painting Caucasian, ie white, ie pink skin.

I start with a layer or two of Army Painter Tanned Flesh, which is a dark flesh, not-quite-terracotta colour. Then I'd put a wash of shade of (usually) Strong Tone, or much-thinned chestnut ink. I think the chestnut looks slightly more wholesome, but both are basically suitable for healthy flesh. For iller flesh, or big expanses, I might also wash with a bit of very thinned down purple. Occasionally, I might even put little washes of a thinned-down drab military green on raised points of the flesh, partly to "calm down" the highlights and partly to suggest unhealthiness. I'd use something like Model Color Russian Uniform Green for this. As with all these things, approach cautiously and don't go nuts. 

Then, as per standard with these things, I'd re-paint Tanned Flesh over the bits of the skin that aren't especially shadowed. I would then add increasing amounts of Model Color Rosa Salmon for highlights.  You could use a bone colour to highlight, but I don't think it works quite as well. Obviously, you have to be more careful with large, smooth areas than you would with small faces with a lot of ridges, so that the change in colours remains fairly smooth. Eventually, you're working up to a pretty light pink (but not an electric one, obviously). You can use this to represent knuckles and joints on the model's hands as well as lines on the face.

I never used to paint lips on male models, and used to see it as a sort of stylised way of showing that a model was female. These days I think it depends on the miniature. I would mix a tiny bit of red into a 50/50 mixture of Tanned Flesh and Rosa Salmon, and put it on the lower lip (but not the upper) of the miniature. Occasionally, I've used a similar mix to suggest age and/or drunkenness on models' noses and cheeks. You can also use a very thin glaze of watered-down Carroburg Crimson for this. 

Anyhow, I painted a couple more weirdos for my gang of horrible Necromunda scavvies. I thought it would be fun to make one of each of the mutations in the Outlanders army list. 

The tall guy on his own represents the "spikes" mutation, which makes sense as he's got a lot of spikes. He is a Mantic plague zombie model, with a Mantic zombie head. The body was made out of that awful plastic-resin stuff that Mantic have used in the past, which somehow manages to hold sharp detail but not look very good. It took a while to scrape off the mold lines, and I'm sure I missed some bits.

The second model represents the "three arms" mutation, or possibly "two heads". I find some of the old metal scavvy miniatures a bit too cartoony, and thought that it would be better to split this model into two guys. I went for the classic combo of a small devious guy being carried by a big dim one.

The lower chap is a Mantic ork, with 40k ork arms and a Stargrave head. The upper chap is a Perry Miniatures Afghan, still on his little plastic base, with a Stargrave head and Frostgrave arms. I think they work quite well together, although it was hard to get a picture that actually shows what they are.

So, there we go. I've not painted much, but I'm working on a few things. Hopefully I'll have some full Bretonnian knights soon. 

Random Space Weirdos

 Just a few weird space randos this week.

The crocodile man is a Mantic orc body with Frostgrave demon arms and a Stargrave head. The base model isn't great and I'm not sure why I've got it, but as ever, removing the head helps a lot.

The thug next to him is based on a Wargames Atlantic Boxer Rebellion body, with Games Workshop arms and a Ghost Archipelago head. Getting the arms and head to sit properly with the body was quite difficult. 

Then we've got a lady and robot, vaguely inspired by Jayne Cobb from Firefly and K2SO from Star Wars. "James" has a Bolt Action US marine body, with arms and head from Stargrave.

The robot is based on a model from the Warlord Games Terminator Genysis game. I know nothing about this game, except that the film was apparently awful, and that Warlord were virtually giving the game away. I've got a few sprues of these T-100 models, and they're pretty darn ropey. I gave it new arms, including one from a Perry armoured knight, and a GW Skitarri head. It's come out alright, really.

Nothing much else to report for now. I've got a couple of smaller projects on the go, and progress continues on the Bretonnians. They're looking quite decent so far!

Peasant Progress:

Men at Arms: 20

Archers: 18

Foot Knights: 15

Squirty Bottle Moon Buggy Conversion

 So, new year, new picture, or something like that. The photo at the top of the blog is actually the Stanley knife (or box cutter, if you're in the US) that I use for most of my cutting and conversion work. I gather that you're meant to use a craft knife, and maybe I'd get better results if I did, but I've found the Stanley knife to be very reliable and robust over the years. And I've wiped my brush on it so many times that it's starting to look like a work of abstract art in itself. I'm sure the Tate Gallery would love it...

When converting (and writing, for that matter) I often find that I have an idea kicking around in my head for ages, and it just takes the right moment for it to come out and take form. To be more precise, you know those trigger-activated, squirty bottles that you get for shower cleaner, disinfectant spray and the like? Ages back I thought that the head of one of those would make a good cockpit and I've been trying to work out how to do it ever since. 

I saved one, cut it down a lot, and wondered how to make it work as some kind of vehicle. My first thought was as the front of a flyer, but I lacked parts to really make that work. I also had a bit of plastic tube that had probably been to top of a pot of glue, which fitted nicely behind the "cockpit" and could be some sort of engine...

After that, I rubbed the whole thing down with fine sandpaper, so that glue and paint would take to it more easily, and added wheels. Two were old Ramshackle tyres, and I've no idea where the smaller pair came from. It began to have a smooth, slightly retro moon-buggy look.

I added lots of details from thin plasticard bent to shape, and leftover model tank bits. GW provided an aerial for the roof, from a Tau part. 

Then it was time for painting. I went with a basic off-white, with red panels and a black front canopy that is presumably made of some kind of two-way glass. This helped break up the shape of the squirter a bit more. I don't often wish that I had an airbrush, but getting a half-even coverage and some kind of shading was really hard. I ended up using a mixture of glazing, conventional painting and sponging, and it's still far from perfect.

That said, I do rather like the end result. I kept the weathering fairly minor, but added a few chips to suggest use. Here is the end product.

And here's a picture with a couple of space adventurers for scale. Broom!

A Champion for the Knights

When I stated the Bretonnian project, I thought that painting knights would be much like painting harlequins or space marines: doing one would prepare me for the other. Actually, that's not the case. The Bretonnian knights are bigger, of course, and use large blocks of colour (and, supposedly, transfers, which I've not got and have never used). My own feeling is that Bretonnian knights look better when they are painted in very bright, simple colours. I've used red, blue, green, black and the two "metals", white and yellow. Blue/white and red/yellow make for very strong contrasts.

The newer plastic knights have shield-shapes on their horses' barding, which break up the models but do add a new level of fiddly details (likewise the strips of chainmail sticking out from under the cloth). Personally, I like the cleanliness of the older models. In fact, I feel that when painting knights, the less grimdark, the better. No wonder that GW didn't know what to do with the Bretonnians for so long.

A further point about painting knights: once they're in a unit, and because they'll be viewed from above, generally, the colour on the back of the horse's head and its upper body is the colour that they'll be seen to be by an observer. So, if you want a varied unit, that's worth considering. 

Anyhow, I painted a leader for the Battlemasters unit. He's also a Battlemasters model, although he's from a slightly different knightly unit than the other knights. I had quite a job getting him to sit on his horse and some trimming and bending of his legs was required.

The "weaved" pattern on his barding is done by first painting a grid, as I would do for harlequins, then painting in the blue diamonds. Then I delete some of the lines to give an "over and under" look before painting yellow. The shading strengthens the effect that some of the lines are going underneath others.

And here is the whole unit. Charge!