Re: The army of Tsunami (TG painting guide/blog 4/11)
Hi folks!
I have gotten so much great feedback and PMs asking for color recepies and so on for my TGs i posted earlier, that i decided to do a little step by step thing on them. However, i have not painted the models yet, so i thoght i would combine the tutorial, with a bit of blogging ...within the blog. anyway, the plan is that i add some more pictures to the guide as i go along. this will help motivate me to finish this batch of TGs and hopefully you guys will like it too. I will update this post as i go along, but i guess i will bump the topic too as i update. Here we go!
I started by priming this guy white. the reason is very simple: i ran out of black spray half way through the batch so i chose to do the rest white rather than to run and buy another can. also, it doesnt matter very much what color you do as long as you cover it up properly. When i am done with the model i will take a pic of it next to one of the black primed guys.
I glue on the leg and head to the model, but keep the arms separate for now. i find this to be easier, but you do whatever floats your boat.
For the painting i started with knarlock green and added maybe 10-20% of black to it. I painted this on, making sure to cover all of the skin. I dont care the slightest if it goes on any non-skin parts, but it will look terrible if i missed anything and ended up with a white gap. better too much than too little. Dont do a very thick layer though, just make sure to cover it all.
After that i added quite a lot of bleached bone (maybe 30%?) to the blend and did a rough drybrush over the entire skin, covering much of it.
Lastly, i did a finer drybrush with rotting flesh. this time i made sure to have very little paint on the brush so it would only catch the very raised areas. I did all of the above painting with the brush you can see in the pic. its a pretty big and very cheap one (6 euro for 15 of them!).
The skin isnt done yet, but i will not do the rest of the steps till later. Some other colors should be added first.
UPDATE!
OK, so this took a bit longer than i had wanted. lots of other stuff to do... Lets continue:
Next i did the shields (the pink on them anyway). I started with a layer of mechrite red as a start. then i added bleached bone in two stages for highlights and drybrushed them on. first layer is more of a "wet brush" since it covers basically everything except the deep recesses. After the drybrush was dry, i applied a liberal wash of a 2:1:1 mix of baal red - badab black - water. This should look like a good red wine before applying it. Once that was dry (takes a long time, so i painted other stuff in between) i did a very careful edge drybrush with bleached bone with just a dot of mechrite red in it. This gives a very high contrast pink color, and that is what i am aiming for. I also use this technique on my beasts, like my stegadon. works very well.
Next i started on the areas of bone and spikes and claws. I started by painting them in Khemri brown. This layer wont show very much, but it will shine through a bit and give an effect on the spikes that i really like. Then i covered the helmet in bleached bone, and the spikes and claws were painted more carefully, leaving a bit of the brown showing. These are not done yet, but other stuff needs to be painted before i can move on with them.
Now, i went for the gold. I started by basecoating all of it with iyaden darksun. This is a pain in the @$$ and as usual, my painting spirit was all gone after i was done. However, it pays off in the next step, where i covered it in just one thin layer of vallejo glorious gold. citadel gold works too, but i think this one has a bit better coverage. If you look closely, you can see that the layer isnt really even, but it will not matter when it is all said and done. If i had not basecoated with darksun i would have to do several coats here.
SMALL UPDATE:
I did the magic step. The washing. Actually, i first painted the straps and other leather parts with calthran brown, but i didnt take a separate pic of that. I think that i will do this with scorched brown in the future, because i want the leather parts to be as unobtrusive as possible. The shouldnt draw focus, and a darker color will probably be better. Anyway, i washed the skin and leather parts with badab black, probably mixed roughly 2:1 with water. This is a very liberal wash and it will take like an hour to dry. i made dinner meanwhile. afterwards, i inked the gold and bone areas with devlan mud (again, probably 2:1 mixed with water). In the future, i will do it in reverse order, since the devlan mud can show a little bit near the gold areas on the skin, and you dont really want that. It is a liberal wash and will take a long time to dry. I went to bed meanwhile
This is basically as far as you might want to go on regular units, but these are elites, so i will add some more highlights and details. but that is for next update
!!! It's really great to have yet another L-O member make his way to the What's new today daily post. It really says something about the quality of painters we have in the community!
