Hi everyone, here's the first update proper of 2012.

So, on the painting and modelling side I'm still plugging away on the Archers. At the moment I'm trying to sort out shading the cloth. I'm not planning to be doing anything megafancy here - just enough to hopefully satisfy the facist painting police that some shading has been done should the issue come up when painting is being assessed at a tournament.

The pictures below shows one of the models I'd applied shading to (using Asurman Blue wash) next to one without.





Just in case you're having any problems telling which is which, the one with no shading is the one on the right. While it might be more obvious in this photo it's not quite so obvious in normal room lighting (these photos were all shot under normal room lighting but I've corrected the colour balance). When I was at the club last week I showed these two to fantasyfreak and had to tell him which was which when shown at arms lenght.

So, the issue is that while the shading is visible in the right lighting, there needs to be more contrast for it to show up. Next up I've tried: the Dark Blue and the Sky Blue shade from the foundry sets of paint I've got and GW Royal Blue.

The photos below were supposed to be showing one of each but I appear to have picked up two models shaded with the Dark Blue (middle and right on the front facing, middle and left on the rear facing). I think one of them was shaded with slightly more watered down paint than the other which is why I picked one up thinking it was shaded with Royal Blue.





As I've found before with the Foundry shade, it looks more natural in the right light but not strong enough at anything other than around arms length away. On the other hand, I think the Dark Blue is possibly going a bit too dark...

In other hobby and gaming news, I got two games in last week.

The first was at the club against Orcs and Goblins which saw me clock up my first win against OnG in easily a couple of years. It was quite close most of the way through with both of us suffering first turn miscasts - my Arch Mage lost thee spells just leaving him with Mind Razor (which he didn't manage to cast in any subsequent phase) while an Orc Shaman lost both his levels, leaving just a Savage Orc L2.

Two Mangler Squigs tied up most of my shooting plus the the Ruby Ring of Ruin for the bulk of the other turns. I ended up having to charge a unit of 81 Night Goblins with my Dragon Princes and Sword Masters to stand a chance of doing anything, following up in my next turn with my Spearmen containing the Arch Mage and BSB, making use of their ranks to cancel out the Steadfast of the Goblins. In what was probably a mistake I pursued with the Dragon Princes while reforming the Spearmen to face the flank of a block of Savage Orcs and face down one chariot while reforming the two surviving Sword Masters to face towards a second chariot. (The mistake I think I made was using the DPs to pursue rather than the Sword Masters)

Next turn the chariot went into the front of the Spearmen while an Orc Warboss on Wyvern went into their flank. Meanwhile the Savage Orcs charged the Archers who I'd hoped to put Mind Razor on but failed due to using one dice too few (I kept forgetting my Arch Mage had lost level). The Archers got smashed with the Savages nearly overrunning off the board. My BSB challenged the Warboss on the Wyvern (who'd already lost a cheeky wound to shooting from a depleted unit of Archers) and did a wound, dying in return to the Orc's attacks but fortunately denying a stomp on the unit as well as any Overkill from the Wyvern. The Spearmen killed off the chariot.

In my half of the turn my White Lions, who'd been held up by Manglers in front of them, charged a lone troll which they easily beat and ran down, taking them away from the Savage Orcs. The by now sole surviving Sword Master charged the other chariot, beat it and chased it off the board. In the Spearmen combat I challenged with the Spearmen champ and actually managed to killl the Warboss. The Wyvern did the wound required to kill him but, thanks to Thunderstomp being ASL, couldn't do more and so lost the combat to be run down.

We called the game there as it was unlikely that the Savage Orcs were going to get into combat but it was a reasonably big win to me.

Second game was 1000 points of Skaven vs Empire. This was the first time I've used the Skaven and in fact the only Skaven model I used was the PLague Wind Mortar from Island of Blood. Everything else was proxied using High Elves. Anyway, as I was more interested in seeing what the toys did than anything I was running a Plague Priest, BSB, two blocks of Clan Rats with one having a PWM, Plague Monks with Banner of Pestilence, a Plague Claw Catapault and Warp Lightning Cannon.

Unfortunately I didn't get much chance to play with the toys as the WLC blew up first turn and the Plague Claw followed the next turn. I forgot I'd given the Plague Priest the Talisman of Preservation so only took a 6+ Ironcurse Icon ward save from a mortar shot and took a wound. The Plague Monks, despite being depleted, still did a number on 8 Knights plus a Warrior Priest who'd charged them thanks to re-rolls from the Banner. In chasing down the Warrior Priest (who was all that was left of the unit) my Plague Priest died to a dangerous terrain test as he was pursuing through a wood. The unit then got flank charged by some Great Swords. I was a bit unsure about the pursuit to be honest but I could just see the Warrior Priest rallying, denying me the points for the general, and then the Monks getting shot to pieces by the enemy mortars. If I hadn't forgotten about the 4+ ward save I would have still had the Plague Priest for the combat with the Great Swords an would probably have done enough wounds to ensure a draw, allowing a combat reform next turn.

In the end I took a bit of a pasting, losing one Clan Rat unit and the only other points I got were 18 Flagellants, whose champion held up the other unit of Clan Rats for three or four combat phases single-handedly due to me not being able to roll any 4+s, thus stopping the Clan Rats being able to make it into combat with the Great Swords fighting the Plague Monks.

Anyway, as I was more interested in seeing what the toys did than anything.....

Unfortunately I didn't get much chance to play with the toys as the WLC blew up first turn and the Plague Claw followed the next turn.

Sounds to me like you found out what they do


With the shading, I actually think the first incarnation looks the best.
To be fair when you showed me the model last week it was from pretty far away and I could tell when I got a bit of a closer look.

Fantasyfreak wrote:With the shading, I actually think the first incarnation looks the best.
To be fair when you showed me the model last week it was from pretty far away and I could tell when I got a bit of a closer look.

Hmm... Of course, it would be the slightly more fiddly one to do (due to having to avoid pooling the paint) that looks best...

Oh well, whichever way I go I'm not going to get finished anytime soon

cerebros wrote: I'm not planning to be doing anything megafancy here - just enough to hopefully satisfy the facist painting police that some shading has been done should the issue come up when painting is being assessed at a tournament.

To be honest you'd probably get away with just throwing a wash on the bow and you'd be done, the fact that you've got eyes and individuallly highlighted scales on the armour would be most of the way there. Couple of areas which to the imediate eye need some work:

Helm, no shading between the crest detail bit and the main helm.
Wristbands, again just hit a wash over this and you're done, it'll define the detail without significantly changing the colour.
Bow, flat monocolour at the moment, a wash will define the edg where it hits the metal and break up that colour a little.

With those three very quick steps I'd call it better than a lot of the tabletop stuff you'll see out and about.

For the blue have you considered painting the fabric in the darker blue colour (probably the middle of the three) and then applying the lighter colour as a highlight on the raised parts. Just a slightly different technique but it's how I prefer to work.

Looking good though, now bash out the rest of them already!

I agree with dave, the paint job as it stands is so neat and clean that it seems a shame not to spend a couple of mins per model with some washes, the fact that you've picked out the individual arrows, scales, and bits on the quiver detail etc with a very crisp look means that you're a butt-hair from a huge step up in quality for a little time investment.

I'd add the arrow flights to the list, not sure what colour wash though, maybe devlan mud +blue or something, it looks like the one on the right in the first pic is done with dheneb and the one on the left skull white (possibly), dheneb goes very nicely with sepia also.

Keep it up, en masse they'll look great!

Byron

hi guys,

As the firewall at work seems to have forgotten to block HH for the time being I'll do a quick reply.

Basically the Archer models I'm working on at the moment are ones I had painted up but, like with a lot of my army at the moment, I wasn't really happy with the standard of the painting and so I'm redoing them to try and achieve a standard I can live with. (I probably forgot to say that in one of the earlier posts in this blog)

Because they're just being redone I'm painting over what was there before instead of stripping and starting from scratch (that way if I don't get the time to completely redo them at work before the next tournament to go I'm not going to be up all the night before trying to get them up to minimum standard).

Based on my experience of painting the models so far I've tried to do repaint in order of what goes wrong most first. To that end I've done the red trim, then the base coat on the metal, the bows and cloth. I'm now at the stage where I'm starting to think about washes and shading but I'm looking to do the cloth first and then go onto the rest (hence why I've not yet washed the wristbands or done any shading on the the helmet crests).


If you go back a few dozen pages in this blog you'll see my Spearmen with my original metal scheme. On the helmets (and the chest plates as well) I'd painted in Boltgun Metal and then the rays on the crest/chest in Mithril to get a really good contrast between the two bits. Ideally I'm looking to achieve something similar with the new scheme - as I've used Chainmail as my metal base the final contrast isn't going to great but should still stand out when done.

Dave wrote:Bow, flat monocolour at the moment, a wash will define the edg where it hits the metal and break up that colour a little.

Do you have any suggestions for which wash might work best? I did try doing a wood pattern on the bows but couldn't consistently get a good result which is why at the moment it's just a flat colour.

Dave wrote:For the blue have you considered painting the fabric in the darker blue colour (probably the middle of the three) and then applying the lighter colour as a highlight on the raised parts. Just a slightly different technique but it's how I prefer to work.

I did try that but I don't think it works that well with these particular models (although it could be down to my painting ability). When working out where to paint the shadows I've been holding a model in strong light to see where the shadows fall and then painting those areas.

The issue I found was that if I was doing the shade first then the normal colour I was essentially painting almost the whole skirt again in the lighter colour. The only part of the cloth that seems to have a decent amount of depth for shading is on the arms - the skirt part is quite flat.

Doing it the other way may work better on the HE models where there is more depth to the skirt part and I'll be sure to try it again there.

Byronic wrote:I'd add the arrow flights to the list, not sure what colour wash though, maybe devlan mud +blue or something, it looks like the one on the right in the first pic is done with dheneb and the one on the left skull white (possibly), dheneb goes very nicely with sepia also.

Yes, the one on the right is in Dheneb Stone which is the colour I'll be using. I haven't actually gone back to make sure all the shafts and flights are to the same standard yet - I think I started on that while I was trying to figure out what I wanted to do on another area and then forgot to finish the job

cerebros wrote:On the helmets (and the chest plates as well) I'd painted in Boltgun Metal and then the rays on the crest/chest in Mithril to get a really good contrast between the two bits. Ideally I'm looking to achieve something similar with the new scheme - as I've used Chainmail as my metal base the final contrast isn't going to great but should still stand out when done.

Sounds like an awful lot of work, I just hit everything with washes and let their consistency do all the work for me!

cerebros wrote:

Dave wrote:Bow, flat monocolour at the moment, a wash will define the edg where it hits the metal and break up that colour a little.

Do you have any suggestions for which wash might work best? I did try doing a wood pattern on the bows but couldn't consistently get a good result which is why at the moment it's just a flat colour.

Depends on what shade you're after, want to give it some texture but not darken it too much 2:3 devlan mud:gryphonne sepia. Want it a lot darker just go straight devlan. Want a redish tinge go with Ogryn Flesh.

cerebros wrote:I did try that but I don't think it works that well with these particular models (although it could be down to my painting ability). When working out where to paint the shadows I've been holding a model in strong light to see where the shadows fall and then painting those areas.

Cool, if you've tried it then ditch it, no point in rehashing what doesn't work for you just because I prefer working that way, as an aside you might want to try mixing some badab black into your blue wash on the fabric, might give you greater definition without needing multiple steps, 1:3 badab:asuryman possibly?

From what I've read I don't seem to paint the same way as a lot of warhammer painters. I hate black undercoat, make liberal use of dry(ish) brushing and sod the details, washes will sort most of it out. I try to limit my pallette and detail painting to a bare minimum in order to get my speed of painting up to an acceptable level. So your painting individual scales just strikes me as madness, but it clearly works.

Those archers look real pristine like a pansy elf should:)

On a very quick side note, I've also been getting on with some building of, er, buildings.

Have started sticking together my Dreadstone Blight, although I have to say that I'm not terribly impressed with this kit at the moment.

Don't get me wrong, it should look great when it's done, but the wall segments didn't fit together as they came out of the box and I've had to spend ages scraping away to try and make things fit. The first floor comes in two segments and these don't want to stick togther and the stairs don't seem to make enough contact with the outer wall to stick to it.

All in all, it looks like I'm going to be doing a lot more pinning on this than I thought I'd have to.

The fulcrums seem to have been a bit meh compared to GWs normal quality. I recently put the garden of morr together and barring the fence round the outside all the bits fitted together utterly seamlessly.