Blog bOdziO Wolf's Miniature Painting

A batch of Cold Ones appeared to invade and eat rats like never before
Apart from pouring water effects and adding a shrub here and there I call these guys done and all the remaining basing work will be done after I paint and attach the Sauruses.



HIGHLIGHTING
I must proudly say that after painting a seventh cold one (six in the picture, first one done post above) I finally figured out which paints to use to produce a nice contrast xD.
The key ingredient, at least for Vallejo, seems to be mixing in off-white/bone-white color (Vallejo Bonewhite in this case) and doing two passes of highlighting (1 part of base color and 1 part of Vallejo Bonewhite for first pass and 1 part of base color and 2 parts of Vallejo Bonewhite for the second pass).
Previously I tried also Vallejo Escorpena Green which at first sounded like a great idea, but if I wanted to increase the contrast even further the Cold One started to look like a Skaven warp-stone. Most of the models were done with this paint, hence they are slightly less "contrasty", because I had to stop at some point. I purposely did not repaint them to see various paint effects and have some biological diversity



LAYERING ON TOP OF A WASH
One additional thing that annoyed me during the process was the fact the Games Workshop Biel Tan Green is not only glossy, but also makes other paints (especially already misbehaving light colors) to flow around, so as a workaround I had to repaint 70% of the model (minus the recesses and bottom parts) with the base color. Once that was done the highlighting process was a breeze.

SKULLS
I think this doodad was not present in my previous posts, but I made them the quickest way possible:
* basecoat with Vallejo Bonewhite
* wash with Games Workshop Agrax Earthshade
* highlight with Vallejo Bonewhite again like 4 times (I think I over-diluted this paint haha)

 

All the cold-ones are turning out great!

 

STANDARD BEARER OF MANY FEATHERS
No lizard legion can work without a guy holding something shiny up in the air, thus some guy has to muscle up and pick a huge, gold and feather adorned piece of wood (or is it foam?). Also its the gold and feathers that make you a (lizard)man



SAURUS: BODY
A new experiment there. Namely used the Games Workshop Drakenhof Nightshade instead of my own decoction and I like how it interacts with Vallejo Turquoise base coat very much! And its not even glossy! Bonus points! There is also a second layer of Vallejo Turquoise again to light up the Saurus again and a highlight layer of 1x Vallejo Turquoise + 1x Vallejo Dead White mix.



BANNER AND WOODEN ACCESSORIES
All the browns are Vallejo Mahogany brown which I think looks better than Vallejo Beasty Brown + Black mix I used before. Possibly due to the fact all browns from Vallejo are already multi-pigment and separate pretty quickly leaving you with weird coverage. Gold is my usual gold trick, with a small difference of using Games Workshop Agrax Earthshade on all banner for convenience. Greens are Vallejo Ger Camo Light Green, washed with aforementioned shade, repainted with main color when needed and touched up by Vallejo Escorpena Green (note thin down that paint greatly).

BANNER AND WOODEN ACCESSORIES: FEATHERS
This part is a damn joy to paint as you can pour all colors of the rainbow in it haha. Triple colored feathers are: Vallejo Blood Red, Vallejo Orange Fire, Vallejo Sun Yellow. Quadruple colored feathers also involve Vallejo Escorpena Green. Transitions are done by mixes of neighboring colors and painting the mixture on both existing colors. Since you new layer is translucent it will effectively give 4 distinct colors on the borders. Some colors like orange need more coats though, so I had to touch up here and there (I heard it was called art or something ).

 

DRUMMER OF EPIC METAL
Brutal blasts were heard when the lizard drummer appeared on the swamps of Lustria sending his enemies backs into shivers and his friends in epic head-bang mood before engaging their foes.



SHIELD
I had some additional fun free-handing a dinosaur footprint on the shield, done with Vallejo Bonewhite. This also required some pre-design in a graphic program, a few trials on a piece of paper and we have something an artistic Saurus could slap with a bit of paint himself .



DRUMSTICKS
I wanted a somewhat stone look, so I painted the spheres with Vallejo Heavy Bluegrey splashed a ton of Games Workshop Nuln Oil and drybrushed with Vallejo Deadwhite.

 

REGULAR SPEARS
Now I'm basically painting regular spears in batch of 2, so I thought I can also upload first batch as well

I did some small change to the spear tip to make it obsidian blackish with Vallejo Sick Green and Vallejo Escorpena Green edge highlights to make it stand out more

 

GRYMLOQ

The Carnosaur is my first attempt at zenithal priming which I did with assistance of two spray cans: Games Workshop Chaos Black and Games Workshop Corax White



Then I proceeded to basecoat giving him reds from Vallejo Blood Red, blacks from Vallejo Black. Underbelly was done with a mix of 2x Vallejo Bonewhite and 1x Vallejo Dead White. I also used some mix of 2x Vallejo Blood Red and 1x Vallejo Black to paint some additional scales in order to dither the transition between white and red.

 

GRYMLOQ PART II
After a month or so of painting and tears over messed up wash on white and highlighting (never try to do washes on large, white-ish parts of the model) the Carno is considered done. Obviously needs basing and KroqGar, but that is in some progress.

 

I like how he turned out!

Controversial to go with green ropes, looks a bit like they used vines to strap every thing into its place. Cool looking

Grrr, Imrahil

 

Wouldn't that suit the jungle setting well? Haha. I admit I heavily inspired the color scheme from Total War concept arts, and those green dyed ropes/vines looked perfect there

 

Beautiful!

 

GRYMLOQ'S BASE

A small terrain piece for the big boy. As always I tried to use as much I can from materials available around such as sand, shells, pieces of wood, actual stones and tea leaves!

 

Great stuff! Your Grymloq looks fantastic, especially the transition with the handpainted scales turned out great! Are you planning to use water effects on the base? It's giving me the impression of a lagoon.

 

I actually used a small amount of water effects on the slope going downwards one of the base edges, which very hard to depict on a photograph unfortunately. I didn't want this particular base to be fully water-based like the Saurus Knights are, but just give a little (hope when I make the rider I will be able to make better photos of it haha).

Hand-painted scales is something I saw on Total War concept arts and I totally had to have them

 

Looking forward for that!

And they look awesome, it's a great effect!

 

KROQ GAR
And finally the Kroq Gar himself, featuring my "lets try OSL while having no idea how to do it" as well as couple of new techniques I just learned!



THRONE: STONE
The key to make the stone look was to aggressively polish with coarse grained sand-paper to get a rough surface. Basecoat with Vallejo Heavy Bluegrey then use Games Workshop Nuln Oil wash over it. For the final effect drybrush with a mix of Vallejo Heavy Bluegrey and Vallejo Dead White was applied.

THRONE: TUSKS
Here I tried the technique with layering instead of getting messy with black/brown washes I can't make to work on larger surfaces. This is actually dead simple: Basecoat with Vallejo Mahogany Brown, then place with each layer having more and more Vallejo Dead White mixed in. To add more color I washed the whole tusk surface with Games Workshop Seraphim Sepia then quickly wiped the wash from those parts of the tusks facing upwards.



KROQ'GAR: UNDERBELLY
As most of the lizard simply uses the same techniques I did with the Saurus Knights I will only write about the underbelly. This is a non-wash painted one which uses very similar technique to the horns, but instead of adding Vallejo Deadwhite I added in Vallejo Bonewhite in order to highlight towards more saturated color.

KROQ'GAR: SPEAR
Tried some object source lighting here, but I am unsure about the effect. What I did is leaving no undercoat of brown to have this part of the spear visibly lighter before applying the usual double coat of Vallejo Polished Gold. In the recesses the Vallejo Light Yellow was used and on the light centres the Vallejo Deadwhite again. Glow effect was drybrushed Vallejo Light Yellow and overhighlighted Vallejo Silver. By overlighlighted I mean messier highlight than usual to have those parts of gold visibly lighter.

 

Damn, that's great painting on that miniature! Awesome!

 

Thanks man, it was a ride

 

ORANGE SKINK ALPHA BRAVE BERSERKER FROM THE SPAWNS OF PURE IMBA
Something always I wanted to try was to tackle on yellow/orange range, so as a break from usual blue here is the hero of the inter-dimensional battles to come!



BODY
Here is a the experimental part from which I got an inspiration from Goobertown Hobbies video. Whereas he paints with an airbrush I don't have one so I had to improvise.

First try was with Games Workshop Druchii Violet wash acting as the shade undercoat, but as the wash contains quite a bit of blue the ending result was more towards brown than orange, lesson learned - only mix warm tones in terms of overlaying as well. What I needed then was a warmer color towards pink. There is currently no such wash, so had to make one.
Second try was a self made wash being a mix of Vallejo Blood Red and Vallejo Pale Flesh (light pale pink) giving a pink I wanted. I diluted the mix with a bunch of water and addition of a Vallejo Retarder. Did a couple of glazes to smooth the transitions if needed in the end as well.

As for overlay color I chose Vallejo Sun Yellow which coverage is so bad that makes for a perfect ink/filter. Resulting color is now what we see on a Skink



CREST
Crest is a Vallejo Orange Fire basecoat, Games Workshop Seraphim Sepia as wash, then Vallejo Sun Yellow as highlight (after few milion layers you actually see some of that yellow haha). Finishing touch is a couple of glaze layers of Vallejo Blood Red.

BACK SCALES
Went with basecoat by Vallejo Blue Violet then gave a careful wash of Games Workshop Druchii Violet. Highlighted with a mix of 1x Vallejo Blue Violet and 1x Vallejo Dead White. I think for the future I should dilute it less so the lines are more visible, but it looks ok enough for that experiment skink.

WEAPON AND ACCESSORIES
Tried some TMM effect on the blade with Vallejo Blue Green as a basecoat and gradual highlights with more and more Vallejo Dead White added to the mix. Painting TMM on a model is still 10x harder than doing the same on digital tablet. Must train more.

 

Lot of contrast! Good idea for an alpha.

 

KROXIGORS
So resin. They say its hard (it is), but it also allows you to experiment in some different painting styles so here I tried some more messy and scale heavy style of painting. Kroxigors react to zenithal prime surprisingly well... as well



BODY
Vallejo Heavy Blue washed with Games Workshop Drakenhof Nightshade give a nice base to work against with mix of Vallejo Heavy Blue and Vallejo Glacier Blue (in various proportions).
White sections are same as Kroq Gar belly which is Vallejo Mahogany Brown and gradually working highlights with mixed in Vallejo Bonewhite.
Orange is mostly Vallejo Fiery Orange painted over white sections and finished with mix of Vallejo Fiery Orange and Vallejo Deadwhite.



WEAPONS
Only "new" thing here I think is the patterns done with Vallejo Blue Green and Vallejo Sick Green to make this a marble-like fantasy obsinite stone look.