In playtesting my most recent Lizardmen list, I discovered that I needed a few tokens to help keep track of things.
3 markers for Wyssan’s Wildform and 1 Blot “Stalker” Toad marker. I’m doing the ground starting with Stegadon Scale Green, then mixed that with some SW Heavy Body Black and then just the Heavy Body all over.
This is the state of my latest Old Blood model, 2 days before OFCC.
I don’t feel as though he’s going to be the shining star of my army. >.< If I’m lucky, he’ll get a quick wash to bring down the garish tones, but I also don’t want to get him to close to “done”, in case I forget that he actually needs finishing.
Actually, I think a quick black wash over most of the model, and some drybrushing over the Agrellan Earth will help the model at least not stand-out among the rest of the riders.
Here are some colours:
It’s pretty old hat at this point.
I like having skirmisher movement trays, since 8th edition Fantasy has skirmishers less skirmishy and more ranked. I’ve done these before, so it was a relatively easy task to undertake. In addition to the simple drybrushing, I did an under layer of SW Flesh Wash, Guilliman Blue and Waywatcher Green to try to bring some other tones than just grey to them.
The other difference was that I used the Vallejo Lava instead of gluing pebbles to them. So much easier, and just as nice looking. I did press a few pieces of gravel into the lava goop, to try to bring more different textures.
I think they are a little more interesting now. Still just lumps of rock though. 😛
Started with Secret Weapon Flesh Wash. I mixed this 1:1 with water. In the end, it went all over every part of the rippers, but it wasn’t slapped on randomly. I worked to pull the paint from the highlighted areas to the shaded areas. The hope is that when it dries this way, that there will be a semi-translucent gradient from highlight to shade. It won’t work out this way, and will require specific work to highlight, and then specific work to “mid tone”, but it’s a good start.
This dried slightly glossy (ugh) and occasionally in a little to much of a strong edge, where I wanted a smooth gradient.
Then I mixed the SW Flesh Wash with Snakebite Leather to make a slightly less translucent paint and again went over the parts with those strong edges to smooth them out, and to darken more.
(also did just a simple black wash:water 1:1 over the skinks, because it’s really messy and is part of the “simple” method of painting my skinks. Wasn’t going to highlight-up-glaze-down on them.)
The spots are Snakebite Leather, with less water than the glazes to make it slightly more opaque. Then I mixed that with Rhinox Hide to get an middle layer, then just Rhinox Hide. Still trying to paint the middle of each spot/layer so that it looks a little more blended than just “brown on orange”. I was trying to emulate this photo a bit, but I’m happy that the wings are a lot darker than that reference image.
I still have a little bit of shading to do on the undersides of them.
Next I’m going to do some highlighting – raise up the body/limbs a bit in tone, and the edges of the wings. Once that’s all done, it’s onto the skinks (who should be relatively easy compared to painting 24 of them…).
I’ve got one more painting project to get started on before OFCC, but I think that at worst he’ll just get a basecoat and then hidden in the ranks somewhere…>.>
I was in a rush and forgot to post the colours I used for the basecoat of these guys. I don’t really post this stuff for you to read, because I’m sure it’s the most boring thing. You come here for the photos, I know you do.
I actually write about colours for two reasons — because it helps me reason out what I did and what I should have done, and also so that I can remember in 2 years what on earth I was doing!
The ground is just drybrushed Codex Grey. It’ll be drybrushed Fortress Grey in a bit. The skink has a base of Codex Grey, with Mephiston Red feathers, shield and spots, Dwarf Bronze metal stuff and Snakebite Leather strap stuff.
The rippers started with white primer (I’m 90% white primer these days) and then a “glaze” of Blazing Orange. If I had a choice, I wouldn’t have “glazed” it…but when you have a dried up pot of paint and need that colour, you add water until it works. Which wasn’t as strong a pigment as I’d have preferred. It doesn’t matter, because the skin on these guys is going to have a lot more layers than the base-highlight-wash-highlight of the 24 skinks. I added some Snakebite Leather to the orange with still a good amount of water, and added that to the front of the wings, and the recesses. Then just plain Snakebite.
I forgot to do this next part before taking the photo, so it isn’t shown. The tops of muscles and back of the wings I did a coat of Blazing Orange mixed with Ushapti Bone — it turns out that this is a pink colour. That was a happy accident, because it turns out that this looks pretty good when done in small doses! I did another layer of just Sunburst Yellow with water, again on the highlighting areas.
I say that this is all “basecoat”, because it’s all pretty slapdash at this point. The shading and highlighting phase will clean up the colours and edges a lot.
No photos this time!
I’ve been working on these guys all day. I thought about going with a darker colour scheme, as with the rest of the non-humanoid lizards in my army, but I was just so drawn to the bright orange on all of the marketing material and I had to do it.
I love the little hats on the skinks! I hate the little collars on the rippers…
Also depicted here is the movement tray I built for them and will paint at the same time as their bases for efficiency. 🙂
I haven’t painted Lizards in a long while. I could say that my Old Blood was the actual last one, but I don’t know if he counts, just because volume of models is an important factor.
Here’s a pile of skinks. 24 of them. My god that’s a lot of models.
I used the P3 White Primer on them, because I was near a shop that sold it and needed more primer. I don’t know if it’s the primer, or my application of it, but they are decidedly fuzzy in places. Disappointment.
For the basecoat, it’s just Codex Grey, Mephiston Red (definitely my favourite colour now), Dwarf Bronze, Snakebite Leather and Ushapti Bone. I slapped it on, and once again felt miserable about myself. Logic dictates that one day I’ll realize that they’ll look much better after washing, glazing, shading and highlighting, but in the meantime I just keep making myself feel bad about my basecoats.
This guy is like an entire series of painting seminars in one model. I painted a Force Weapon design, based on some Grey Knight swords. I painted some NMM, while trying to make the robotic hand look entirely different from the well-used bronze of the rest of his metal. I painted OSL from the strange orb in the middle of his palm. I finally got Mr. Wappels shaded basecoat working out ok on his base. It’s glorious.
Here’s some photos!
I used the same technique on his scales as I did for my Blood Bowl Kroxigor. Mephiston Red, Badab Black, Blood Red edges, then Ushapti Bone (watered) edges, then Sunburst Yellow (watered) edges. In the middle I went over it with Lamenters Yellow to try to make the Ushapti slightly yellow, and the red slightly orange and I think it’s ok. Part of the problem is that the scales should look worn and old, but there is a very fine line between worn, and just crappy looking. Sometimes I get it, sometimes I don’t. 🙂
The yellow was really simple. After I had finished darkening the green, I painted some Sunburst Yellow into the cracks. This was probably the wrong way to go about it – since I stood the dangerous chance of painting straight yellow on my nice dark rocks. But it worked out, and then I watered some Blazing Orange to glaze over, and it worked great!
This was a lot of work. And I almost gave up at one point because it wasn’t working, and then, suddenly out of nowhere, it started to come together. Back and forth. Back and forth. I’m disappointed in how the photo makes the edges look, but with eyes, even from up close it’s pretty nice looking! (Actually, I bet the photo is just shadows on the wrong spot…could probably have solved it by shooting from a slightly different angle).
I’m not certain I got NMM correct, but I did an ok job and it had the effect I wanted in the end.
The OSL is…Warpstone Green, then lighten that with Ushapti Bone. Then water the crap out of my last highlight colour and be very careful not to let the colour pool in any area. I also used the GW Glaze Waywatcher Green, but I’m to impatient for that…I think I’d need 6-7 layers of that stuff to see a difference.
I’ve been sitting on that carnosaur rider model for a few months, and Pete’s been telling me that I should have my Old Blood on a Cold One for years, so here we are. Finally a model worthy of being the Chief Lizard of my guys!
It’s unfortunate when I get behind on my writing and ahead on my photos, because I don’t quite remember what was going on in this photo anymore. 🙂 There is a very real chance that a lot of this was just black and dark yellow washes over the model. I purposefully didn’t do anything to the blade or the gauntlet, for reasons you’ll see later.
The base worked out much better than it has before, and I think it’s because of the pits I carved into the putty. Last time I had used the Sotek Green and highlighted up by adding Ushapti Bone to it. Then I did exactly as I had done for my Horrors, and used a black wash on it until it wasn’t bright green anymore. After this was done, the base looks like hardened, pitted stone. It has a greenish tinge to it, but overall it’s a dark colour that someone could look at and say “yup, that’s black”. I think I added some Codex Grey as well.
I’m hoping to have some awesome photos of this guy very soon, because he is turning out amazing, I’m really happy with him!
Miranda is out of town this week, so instead of having a nice breakfast with her in the morning, I’ve been painting.
After I finished building him, this guy looked a little silly. I mean, he’s meant to look like a decent size on top of the new carnosaur. But whatever, just because his tail is the same size as his mounts doesn’t mean anything…I built him as Kroq-gar, because if you can put a giant halberd and alien robotic arm on your dinosaur, you should do so.
It turns out that my last cold one hero, I failed at documenting so I had to figure this paint scheme out from the model. Then it turned out that my case was locked and that the keys were over there. So I grabbed another cav from a nearby case and went to town.
I’m using the same base painting technique as the Horror units, because I believe that when I do it right, it will look black, without actually being black. I’m still going to fill the crevasses with orange and yellow, but the rock starts with Sotek Green.
I bought a bunch of new paints to replace drying ones last week, and picked up Steel Legion Drab, which I used on the plants. They look good and dying already!
The cold one has Shadow Grey skin, Ushapti Bone chest, scales and claws. All of the gold is Dwarf Bronze. The chest on my test model goes to something like Fiery Orange and then back to the Bone, but I think I should pull out my BSB to see what I did there – probably not stark orange and bone. 🙂
The dude on top is Mephiston Red scales (I love that colour), Codex Grey skin, Ushapti Bone spikes and claws and helmet, and Dwarf Bronze doodads.
I painted the tip of the halberd in Ice Blue, and I’m hoping to have some sort of OSL crackling energy thing going on there. The Hand is Codex Grey. I was thinking of trying a NMM, but we’ll see if I have the patience to figure that out this weekend.
Later!
