One of the most difficult things about hobbying is finding time to sit down and paint – many things can get in the way such as work and everyday life, but sometimes you get that wonderful period where you can just sit down and devote yourself to your hobby. The period in this case was of course the Platinum Jubilee weekend – in my case, four straight days with nothing in the way of some hobby time. And let's face it, I'm not exactly short of models to paint...
I also noticed that over the last few months, I've almost entirely focused on painting Good models, such as my Last Alliance army for the GT and my Rohirrim for Seven Stones and the Belegaer Sea events. The only Evil models I've painted are my battle company for the Community Challenge and my Mordor force for the GT – it was therefore time to rectify that!
One of the largest models in my backlog is The Watcher in the Water – I've had this model sitting in my painting queue for nearly two years; the closest I've got to finishing it in that time was assembling and undercoating it - other than that, it's sat in the cupboard for ages. So, time to give it some paint! Green is its most predominant colour, so I decided to go for a fairly dark, murky green. I started with a basecoat of Death Korps Drab, before applying a wash of Agrax Earthshade. I then drybrushed layers of Death Korps Drab, Castellan Green, Loren Forest and finally Karak Stone as a very light, final highlight. I was really happy with how this turned out – the skin (or hide or whatever it actually is – could be anything!) looked nice and dark, perfect for a water dwelling monster.
The fleshy areas – the underside of the tentacles and around the face – were fairly easy to paint. I started with Bugman's Glow, washed this with Reikland Fleshshade and they added thin highlights of Cadian Fleshtone and Kislev Flesh. The last parts of the Watcher were the claws, eyes and teeth, which were done simply by painting them with Black Templar Contrast Paint. The last thing to do was to paint the dead dwarves littering the base – I matched these to my Balin's Expedition force, including giving one of them a dark green cloak, matching the Oin, Champion of Erebor model I converted for the force – Oin is slain by the Watcher according to the books, so this added a nice themey touch at the same time – the Watcher was now done, ready to emerge from the depths!
Next up were some more models that had sat in my pile of shame for ages – a selection of Gundabad models – half a dozen Berserkers, two Ogres and two Warbats. Flesh was the most predominant colour here, and I wanted them to have the somewhat pale skin they have in the films, so that they stand out from the regular warriors. Fortunately, I was watching the Hobbit trilogy as I was painting these models, so I had a handy reference right in front of me!
The skin was painted with Kislev Flesh, before being washed with Reikland Fleshshade. I then layered the skin with Kislev Flesh and then Flayed One Flesh on the Bats and Berserkers, whilst drybrushing the same colours on the Ogres. The Ogres also have some bump-like growths on their skin, which I went over with Contrast Basilicanum Grey, before highlighting them with Stormvermin Fur. The Bat's wings were also tricky, but I found Contrast Guilliman Flesh over Rakhearth Flesh worked out pretty well and gave me a very nice looking membrane texture. With the models done, I based them to match my existing Gundabad forces – I now had a nice little force that might make their way onto the table at a future event.
The bank holiday might have been over by this point, but I carried on delving into my painting queue. The next models I turned my attention to were a pair of Dweller in the Dark models, which are best described as somewhat smaller, but almost as deadly Balrogs. The kit comes with two different heads and different arm poses, so it was fairly easy to make them look different. Whilst they may look tricky to paint at first, the techniques I used were actually pretty simple. For the fiery areas, I applied a wash of Casandora Yellow over a white undercoat. I then thinned down some Fuegan orange and applied that over it, before doing the same thing with Carroberg Crimson, thinning the wash even further. The end result was an excellent fiery effect achieved with minimal effort.
The next stage was the most time consuming – painting the black skin. I used Abaddon Black, then drybrushed it with Stormvermin Fur. It was a case of taking my time and being careful not to go over any of the fiery areas with the black – I did however keep some orange paint to hand for touch ups just in case – it was inevitable that my brush would slip at some point.
For their wing texture, I decided on two different approaches. I used Contrast Basilicanum Grey on both models, but kept the original white undercoat for one model, and used Rakhearth Flesh as a basecoat for the other. The different end result again helped in making two similar models look different on the tabletop, meaning it would be a lot easier to keep track of them in games. With the wings done, I picked out the teeth and claws with bone colours (a nice contrast to the dark skin), painted up the stonework and dead dwarves on their bases (again tying the colours to my Balin's Expedition force), and they were done!
With the Dwellers done, I decided to turn my attention to several more Moria models that were sitting in my painting queue. I’d picked up a warband of Moria Blackshields when Defence of the North was released, along with a couple of Warg Marauders. These would be perfect additions to my Moria army, so I painted them up too. I then managed to find Groblog lurking in the queue, so he also got a paint job!
With the additions to my Moria force done, I had now passed the milestone of 150 models painted for the year! Still a long way to go in terms of actually clearing my backlog, but definitely a decent effort so far. There’s also a couple of tournaments on the horizon - perfect motivation to get some more models done!
No comments:
Post a Comment