Put Paint On Model

The translucent effect on her legs is something I haven't tried before, and the execution here is a bit rough but it's working very well at tabletop distance. Very happy with how that's coming out.

These models - Ardboyz from the Age of Sigmar Ironjawz range - are a good one for showing off a pretty typical version of my basic tabletop standard. I push the boat out a bit more than this for some things, and I could cut some corners and simplify this down (my Eldar are a bit less in depth), so this is a good baseline - especially as this kit in specific is the runaway winner for my most painted this year, with 25 done and 26-30 in here.

(It's a testament to how marinated I am in this stuff that it only occurred to me this week that "ardboyz" might be read suggestively.)

So, we start with a coat of black primer. (I use other colours for some things but I like the deep shadows and it's a good base for metals, so a good pick here and increasingly often my default.) I'm doing a batch of five - the unit actually comes in blocks of 10, and another five were the last thing through, but this is the right amount for my attention span, so I don't start hating the world, everything in it and paints in specific halfway through doing one colour. Let's not talk about how I learned that from doing a batch of 14 Eldar Guardians. Some fiddlier models get smaller batches and characters (that is, notable individual heroes, rather than large groups of interchangeable troops) I tend to do one at a time, but these come in bulk.

The first thing I do on these is block in the metal. This is a very messy step, so I do it first and expect to just cover up with the rest. I'm drybrushing here - a small amount of paint on a stiff brush, flicked or scraped across to catch the higher points, getting us this nice uneven hammered-iron texture.

Then I block in the other of the two biggest areas on these, and this time the deepest: the skin.

The exaggerated muscles of these models mean I get a lot out from putting in a fair bit of attention on the skin - that'll take up a good chunk of the total painting time, but that's a tomorrow problem.

First, a purple shade (a translucent wash that adds a tint but doesn't entirely overpower the underlying colour):

Then I go back over with the original base colour, leaving the recesses as a purple-ish shadow:

And finally highlight up with a thin coat of a lighter green.

And then we add a highlight. I don't put a lot of time into getting the layering just so, but it gets a bit of depth.

But with the addition of some warmer mid brown, it pops out - the contrast with the rest of the cloth is doing a lot of work here. The leather's one of the main spot colours on these, although I'll be adding more soon.

The red and bronze are there to add some ornamentation and visual interest - and to thread the needle of making the models look like disparate individuals, with a few general points of consistency but a lot of variety, while using the same colours to make the unit (and the army as a whole) have a sense of visual cohesion. When I get to some "this year's output" photos at the end of the month you'll see a bit more of that!

Highlights on steel, red and bronze, filling in some trinkets, and doing the nails was a lot of today's session, along with covering up slips (particularly skin green on armour plates, and leather brown on hands).

(A lot of people have opinions on what to do for rims - I like dark grey as a neutral one that helps fit in if I end up playing these on a board that's a totally different colour!)

These models - Ardboyz from the Age of Sigmar Ironjawz range - are a good one for showing off a pretty typical version of my basic tabletop standard. I push the boat out a bit more than this for some things, and I could cut some corners and simplify this down (my Eldar are a bit less in depth), so this is a good baseline - especially as this kit in specific is the runaway winner for my most painted this year, with 25 done and 26-30 in here.

(It's a testament to how marinated I am in this stuff that it only occurred to me this week that "ardboyz" might be read suggestively.)

So, we start with a coat of black primer. (I use other colours for some things but I like the deep shadows and it's a good base for metals, so a good pick here and increasingly often my default.) I'm doing a batch of five - the unit actually comes in blocks of 10, and another five were the last thing through, but this is the right amount for my attention span, so I don't start hating the world, everything in it and paints in specific halfway through doing one colour. Let's not talk about how I learned that from doing a batch of 14 Eldar Guardians. Some fiddlier models get smaller batches and characters (that is, notable individual heroes, rather than large groups of interchangeable troops) I tend to do one at a time, but these come in bulk.

The first thing I do on these is block in the metal. This is a very messy step, so I do it first and expect to just cover up with the rest. I'm drybrushing here - a small amount of paint on a stiff brush, flicked or scraped across to catch the higher points, getting us this nice uneven hammered-iron texture.

Then I block in the other of the two biggest areas on these, and this time the deepest: the skin.

The exaggerated muscles of these models mean I get a lot out from putting in a fair bit of attention on the skin - that'll take up a good chunk of the total painting time, but that's a tomorrow problem.

First, a purple shade (a translucent wash that adds a tint but doesn't entirely overpower the underlying colour):

Then I go back over with the original base colour, leaving the recesses as a purple-ish shadow:

And finally highlight up with a thin coat of a lighter green.

And then we add a highlight. I don't put a lot of time into getting the layering just so, but it gets a bit of depth.

But with the addition of some warmer mid brown, it pops out - the contrast with the rest of the cloth is doing a lot of work here. The leather's one of the main spot colours on these, although I'll be adding more soon.

The red and bronze are there to add some ornamentation and visual interest - and to thread the needle of making the models look like disparate individuals, with a few general points of consistency but a lot of variety, while using the same colours to make the unit (and the army as a whole) have a sense of visual cohesion. When I get to some "this year's output" photos at the end of the month you'll see a bit more of that!

Highlights on steel, red and bronze, filling in some trinkets, and doing the nails was a lot of today's session, along with covering up slips (particularly skin green on armour plates, and leather brown on hands).

These models - Ardboyz from the Age of Sigmar Ironjawz range - are a good one for showing off a pretty typical version of my basic tabletop standard. I push the boat out a bit more than this for some things, and I could cut some corners and simplify this down (my Eldar are a bit less in depth), so this is a good baseline - especially as this kit in specific is the runaway winner for my most painted this year, with 25 done and 26-30 in here.

(It's a testament to how marinated I am in this stuff that it only occurred to me this week that "ardboyz" might be read suggestively.)

So, we start with a coat of black primer. (I use other colours for some things but I like the deep shadows and it's a good base for metals, so a good pick here and increasingly often my default.) I'm doing a batch of five - the unit actually comes in blocks of 10, and another five were the last thing through, but this is the right amount for my attention span, so I don't start hating the world, everything in it and paints in specific halfway through doing one colour. Let's not talk about how I learned that from doing a batch of 14 Eldar Guardians. Some fiddlier models get smaller batches and characters (that is, notable individual heroes, rather than large groups of interchangeable troops) I tend to do one at a time, but these come in bulk.

The first thing I do on these is block in the metal. This is a very messy step, so I do it first and expect to just cover up with the rest. I'm drybrushing here - a small amount of paint on a stiff brush, flicked or scraped across to catch the higher points, getting us this nice uneven hammered-iron texture.

Then I block in the other of the two biggest areas on these, and this time the deepest: the skin.

The exaggerated muscles of these models mean I get a lot out from putting in a fair bit of attention on the skin - that'll take up a good chunk of the total painting time, but that's a tomorrow problem.

First, a purple shade (a translucent wash that adds a tint but doesn't entirely overpower the underlying colour):

Then I go back over with the original base colour, leaving the recesses as a purple-ish shadow:

And finally highlight up with a thin coat of a lighter green.

And then we add a highlight. I don't put a lot of time into getting the layering just so, but it gets a bit of depth.

But with the addition of some warmer mid brown, it pops out - the contrast with the rest of the cloth is doing a lot of work here. The leather's one of the main spot colours on these, although I'll be adding more soon.

The red and bronze are there to add some ornamentation and visual interest - and to thread the needle of making the models look like disparate individuals, with a few general points of consistency but a lot of variety, while using the same colours to make the unit (and the army as a whole) have a sense of visual cohesion. When I get to some "this year's output" photos at the end of the month you'll see a bit more of that!

These models - Ardboyz from the Age of Sigmar Ironjawz range - are a good one for showing off a pretty typical version of my basic tabletop standard. I push the boat out a bit more than this for some things, and I could cut some corners and simplify this down (my Eldar are a bit less in depth), so this is a good baseline - especially as this kit in specific is the runaway winner for my most painted this year, with 25 done and 26-30 in here.

(It's a testament to how marinated I am in this stuff that it only occurred to me this week that "ardboyz" might be read suggestively.)

So, we start with a coat of black primer. (I use other colours for some things but I like the deep shadows and it's a good base for metals, so a good pick here and increasingly often my default.) I'm doing a batch of five - the unit actually comes in blocks of 10, and another five were the last thing through, but this is the right amount for my attention span, so I don't start hating the world, everything in it and paints in specific halfway through doing one colour. Let's not talk about how I learned that from doing a batch of 14 Eldar Guardians. Some fiddlier models get smaller batches and characters (that is, notable individual heroes, rather than large groups of interchangeable troops) I tend to do one at a time, but these come in bulk.

The first thing I do on these is block in the metal. This is a very messy step, so I do it first and expect to just cover up with the rest. I'm drybrushing here - a small amount of paint on a stiff brush, flicked or scraped across to catch the higher points, getting us this nice uneven hammered-iron texture.

Then I block in the other of the two biggest areas on these, and this time the deepest: the skin.

The exaggerated muscles of these models mean I get a lot out from putting in a fair bit of attention on the skin - that'll take up a good chunk of the total painting time, but that's a tomorrow problem.

First, a purple shade (a translucent wash that adds a tint but doesn't entirely overpower the underlying colour):

Then I go back over with the original base colour, leaving the recesses as a purple-ish shadow:

And finally highlight up with a thin coat of a lighter green.

And then we add a highlight. I don't put a lot of time into getting the layering just so, but it gets a bit of depth.

But with the addition of some warmer mid brown, it pops out - the contrast with the rest of the cloth is doing a lot of work here. The leather's one of the main spot colours on these, although I'll be adding more soon.

These models - Ardboyz from the Age of Sigmar Ironjawz range - are a good one for showing off a pretty typical version of my basic tabletop standard. I push the boat out a bit more than this for some things, and I could cut some corners and simplify this down (my Eldar are a bit less in depth), so this is a good baseline - especially as this kit in specific is the runaway winner for my most painted this year, with 25 done and 26-30 in here.

(It's a testament to how marinated I am in this stuff that it only occurred to me this week that "ardboyz" might be read suggestively.)

So, we start with a coat of black primer. (I use other colours for some things but I like the deep shadows and it's a good base for metals, so a good pick here and increasingly often my default.) I'm doing a batch of five - the unit actually comes in blocks of 10, and another five were the last thing through, but this is the right amount for my attention span, so I don't start hating the world, everything in it and paints in specific halfway through doing one colour. Let's not talk about how I learned that from doing a batch of 14 Eldar Guardians. Some fiddlier models get smaller batches and characters (that is, notable individual heroes, rather than large groups of interchangeable troops) I tend to do one at a time, but these come in bulk.

The first thing I do on these is block in the metal. This is a very messy step, so I do it first and expect to just cover up with the rest. I'm drybrushing here - a small amount of paint on a stiff brush, flicked or scraped across to catch the higher points, getting us this nice uneven hammered-iron texture.

Then I block in the other of the two biggest areas on these, and this time the deepest: the skin.

The exaggerated muscles of these models mean I get a lot out from putting in a fair bit of attention on the skin - that'll take up a good chunk of the total painting time, but that's a tomorrow problem.

First, a purple shade (a translucent wash that adds a tint but doesn't entirely overpower the underlying colour):

Then I go back over with the original base colour, leaving the recesses as a purple-ish shadow:

And finally highlight up with a thin coat of a lighter green.

And then we add a highlight. I don't put a lot of time into getting the layering just so, but it gets a bit of depth.

These models - Ardboyz from the Age of Sigmar Ironjawz range - are a good one for showing off a pretty typical version of my basic tabletop standard. I push the boat out a bit more than this for some things, and I could cut some corners and simplify this down (my Eldar are a bit less in depth), so this is a good baseline - especially as this kit in specific is the runaway winner for my most painted this year, with 25 done and 26-30 in here.

(It's a testament to how marinated I am in this stuff that it only occurred to me this week that "ardboyz" might be read suggestively.)

So, we start with a coat of black primer. (I use other colours for some things but I like the deep shadows and it's a good base for metals, so a good pick here and increasingly often my default.) I'm doing a batch of five - the unit actually comes in blocks of 10, and another five were the last thing through, but this is the right amount for my attention span, so I don't start hating the world, everything in it and paints in specific halfway through doing one colour. Let's not talk about how I learned that from doing a batch of 14 Eldar Guardians. Some fiddlier models get smaller batches and characters (that is, notable individual heroes, rather than large groups of interchangeable troops) I tend to do one at a time, but these come in bulk.

The first thing I do on these is block in the metal. This is a very messy step, so I do it first and expect to just cover up with the rest. I'm drybrushing here - a small amount of paint on a stiff brush, flicked or scraped across to catch the higher points, getting us this nice uneven hammered-iron texture.

Then I block in the other of the two biggest areas on these, and this time the deepest: the skin.

The exaggerated muscles of these models mean I get a lot out from putting in a fair bit of attention on the skin - that'll take up a good chunk of the total painting time, but that's a tomorrow problem.

First, a purple shade (a translucent wash that adds a tint but doesn't entirely overpower the underlying colour):

Then I go back over with the original base colour, leaving the recesses as a purple-ish shadow:

And finally highlight up with a thin coat of a lighter green.