The Warhammer Models Thread III: A Brush With Death

[smoke prism]

Hi guys, I'm wondering how to paint a few things:
•A charring (for armour) and blistering (for flesh) effect.
•Realistic fire
•Realistic blood.

[Grim Portent]

•Realistic blood.

Fresh blood or old dried blood? Blood on it's own or blood with chunky gore and such? There are a few different effects you can go for with blood and they have different techniques.

[smoke prism]

Fresh blood or old dried blood? Blood on it's own or blood with chunky gore and such? There are a few different effects you can go for with blood and they have different techniques.

Fresh blood (chunk free) and dried blood.

[CreganTur]

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For the above blood I did the following (for the color):
-used some Water Effects as a base
-Used a little Red Ink, dark red, and rust brown
-very lightly swirled the colors together in the water effects (you should probably use the red ink first for some light color, then add the other colors after you have a base uniform red)

This allows for the variation in color you see in my blood. It also allows you to play with thickness.

The strings of blood were accomplished by careful placement of mono-filament which the blood was coated over.

Tamiya Clear Red is also a good base color for blood.

Dried blood takes on a more rust color, so a very dark brown and light rust brown are good colors to work with.

Realistic Fire

Find a picture of a very large campfire and study the colors. Look at
-what color is the heart of the flame
-what color does it fade to as the flames fork out to tips
-copy that for your fire

Charring for armor

Most armor/metal turns black, but if you look at something that often gets to high heats you will notice a patina of other colors.

Whenever I paint the nozzle of a flamethrower I always glaze inks going from purple to black to simulate this patina of color. Dark browns and blacks will cover the soot and charring on the metal

Blistered Skin

If we're talking 1st degree burn blisters, then the blisters go from angry red at the outer edges to an almost skin-toned whiteness near the center.

[smoke prism]

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For the above blood I did the following (for the color):
-used some Water Effects as a base
-Used a little Red Ink, dark red, and rust brown
-very lightly swirled the colors together in the water effects (you should probably use the red ink first for some light color, then add the other colors after you have a base uniform red)

This allows for the variation in color you see in my blood. It also allows you to play with thickness.

The strings of blood were accomplished by careful placement of mono-filament which the blood was coated over.

Tamiya Clear Red is also a good base color for blood.

Dried blood takes on a more rust color, so a very dark brown and light rust brown are good colors to work with.


Find a picture of a very large campfire and study the colors. Look at
-what color is the heart of the flame
-what color does it fade to as the flames fork out to tips
-copy that for your fire


Most armor/metal turns black, but if you look at something that often gets to high heats you will notice a patina of other colors.

Whenever I paint the nozzle of a flamethrower I always glaze inks going from purple to black to simulate this patina of color. Dark browns and blacks will cover the soot and charring on the metal


If we're talking 1st degree burn blisters, then the blisters go from angry red at the outer edges to an almost skin-toned whiteness near the center.

Thanks .

[Jormengand]

•Realistic fire

Red, drybrush the lower parts of the fire orange, drybrush the higher parts of the fire bright yellow. I don't have pics as I have no camera with me, but it ends up fairly good if you do it well. Using wash paints might work, but I haven't tried it.

[CreganTur]

I used to work from home, which meant I could paint anytime I had downtime. That's no longer the case with my new job, so I needed a way to easily transport my painting stuff. Did some designing, spent a weekend in the wood shop with my father-in-law, and this is the result.



Got to use it at work today, and it works great. Gives me a nice work area. With the fold down work area I also don't have to worry about protecting where I work with newspaper or anything, which means setup is a breeze.

[Cikomyr]

Hi. Someone has suggestion as to how to paint white horses? No need for them to be perfectly immaculate. Just realistic white horses?

I tried already using advices and vids from the net, but the results were not... what I wanted.

[Grim Portent]

The biggest problem with white is shading in my opinion. You could try a very pale grey, apply a black wash to darken the recesses and then drybush white over the raised areas.

[Destro_Yersul]

The biggest problem with white is shading in my opinion. You could try a very pale grey, apply a black wash to darken the recesses and then drybush white over the raised areas.

I feel like washes are never a good option when working with white. I prefer to work up from a base colour without doing any washes. Depending on the desired effect, either light blue, light grey, or a sort of pale cream colour. Bleached Bone is what I use for that, but since they renamed the paint range I don't know what any of the new colours are. Foundation paints or whatever they're called now are also super useful. Blue works best for armour. For horses, I'd use grey, myself.

Thusly:

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[Penguinizer]

I agree with working up to white. I did the same for the off-white for my Deathguard army. I started with a layer of brown over black basecoat. I heavily drybrushed two layers of progressively lighter brown/white mix and topped it off with a heavy drybrush of Pale Wytch Flesh.

After that I did a watered down wash of seraphim sepia that I poked at to get it to look uneven but that doesn't really apply in your case.

[Elhann]

Throw another vote for "start with grey, work up to white". Maybe add a little light blue to the grey.

Other than that, these are the last things I've painted

[bluntpencil]

I'm planning on making a Storm Wardens Space Marine force, the Chapter from the Deathwatch game.

It will largely be a Scouts + Elites force (lots of Scouts, some Scout Bikers, plus an Honour Guard Deathstar in a Stormraven), but I've a problem:

The shoulder pads. I don't trust my freehand painting to be good enough.

Any advice on how to mould the 'shield with lightning bolt' design they've got going on?

[Grim Portent]

I'm considering getting some Maxmini drake cloaks for my Alpha Legion and I'm wondering if anyone has had experience buying from maxmini and can tell me what kind of quality to expect?

[mistformsquirrl]

Hey all! So, my IG project fell through awhile back, I may pick it up again later, but right now I'm looking at building and painting a Sisters Command Squad for the new codex. Specifically I just want to do the command squad at present as an art project more than anything.

That said, I have a few questions before I get started ordering parts:

1) I want to paint them with silver armor and blue cloth - the blue cloth I think I can handle; but does anyone have any hints for making a silvery-steel looking armor? I'm kind of an amateur at this (okay seriously an amateur at this; my painting is awful) - and so my first instinct is just "get silver paint" - but surely that's not the right way to do it; and I want to make this squad look outstanding.

2) Here's the tricky bit - I know the Sisters models are all metal, which is going to make converting them difficult. That said... I want them all equipped with close combat weapons - specifically power swords (like I said this is mostly an art project). Anyone have a decent idea how to pull that off without breaking the bank? The Sisters themselves are going to be pretty darn expensive as is, and adding extra sprues is just going to push it that much higher; but I'm willing to shell out a fair bit to make this happen.

[Requizen]

Threads like these make me realize how bad my paint jobs are... and I play Necrons lol.

[Jormengand]

1) I want to paint them with silver armor and blue cloth - the blue cloth I think I can handle; but does anyone have any hints for making a silvery-steel looking armor? I'm kind of an amateur at this (okay seriously an amateur at this; my painting is awful) - and so my first instinct is just "get silver paint" - but surely that's not the right way to do it; and I want to make this squad look outstanding.

Black, dark grey, light grey, light grey, silver. If you're using GW paints, then Imperial Primer, Mechanicus Standard Grey, Dawnstone and Ironbreaker should do the trick.

2) Here's the tricky bit - I know the Sisters models are all metal, which is going to make converting them difficult. That said... I want them all equipped with close combat weapons - specifically power swords (like I said this is mostly an art project). Anyone have a decent idea how to pull that off without breaking the bank? The Sisters themselves are going to be pretty darn expensive as is, and adding extra sprues is just going to push it that much higher; but I'm willing to shell out a fair bit to make this happen.

Hmm... the only things I can think of that might work are the Black Templar upgrade pack which contains a sword, an axe, two more sheathed swords (maybe have them taking the swords out of their sheathes?) and two chainswords which could be converted into power swords with a little green stuff, the Sanguinary Guard which comes with three power swords, though two are two-handed, and two axes, though one is two-handed, or converting the Boneswords or Storm Guardian Close Combat weapons into imperial power swords, though that wouldn't be easy.

[Rizhail]

M'kay, so I'm working on an ambitious project: building a Dark Eldar Wych Cult that will be heavy on the conversions and unconventional models. I'm confident in most of the work I'll be doing (lots of kitbashing, really), but there are a few things I'm looking at doing I could use some advice/help on if anyone is interested.

1) One of my beastmaster squads will be using saurus models (WFB lizardmen troops) in place of khymera (because GW beast models are so damned expensive). I want to replace the typical primitive shields and weapons that the saurus have standard with bits looted from other 40k armies. Specifically, I'm looking at using a lot of Imp Guard/Space Marine chain and power weapon bits, along with storm shields/combat shields from SM and the large top parts of Tau drones for the shields. Having never actually seen a saurus model in person, can anyone give me a sense of the scale of those models? I've been led to believe they're sized similar to other human-sized WFB models, but haven't really had a good comparison. I may have to rethink the conversion here if the parts I'm looking at using are way off scale from the saurus. And if anyone has any other suggestions for good looted weapon/shield bits, I'd love to hear 'em. The theme of this squad is 'alien slaves with looted gear'; they're going to look very ragtag, so the more fun bits suggestions, the better.

2) I haven't been able to find a good picture of scourge bits, specifically the wings and torsos. I'm looking at mixing scourge and wych bits to create a proxy beastmaster squad, with more typical scourges acting as the beastmasters with winged wyches playing the role of khymera. The problem is that I'm not sure if standard wych torsos and scourge wings will fit together well without having seen how the bits work on the scourge model. Can anyone who has built scourges chime in on how the wings/torsos link up?

[CreganTur]

1) I want to paint them with silver armor and blue cloth - the blue cloth I think I can handle; but does anyone have any hints for making a silvery-steel looking armor? I'm kind of an amateur at this (okay seriously an amateur at this; my painting is awful) - and so my first instinct is just "get silver paint" - but surely that's not the right way to do it; and I want to make this squad look outstanding.

Paint the armor silver.
Put on a coat or two of Babab Black wash to darken everything, especially the recesses.
Use thinned silver paint and carefully reapply your highlights

[mistformsquirrl]

Thanks CreganTur, Jormengand <^-^> that helps immensely.

[Grim Portent]

~snip~

1) I think Saurus stand about the size of Beastmen Gors, which makes them a similar scale to space marines.

2) Scourge torsos have a special slot on either side of the back to stick the wings into so wyche torsos wouldn't really work. If you're willing to go with a different look then you could just use scourge torsos and wych legs. Pretty much all the plastic dark eldar parts are able to be swapped round.

[Rizhail]

1) That's good to hear. With marine bits being extremely plentiful on ebay and amongst the gaming groups I frequent, that should make the conversions cheap and easy. I wasn't looking forward to relying purely on eldar/IG scale weapons to keep the right scale.

2) That's mildly disheartening to hear. How big a slot are we talking here? A small spot for a thin tab, a slot that runs all the way down the back with a large tab on the wings? If the former, I might try cutting a slot myself to get the right look. Otherwise, yeah, I'll need to go with something like you suggested. I'll admit that's one of the reasons I love the D.Eldar range: nearly everything can be swapped. Even the finecast models are designed to be able to use the plastic parts from other kits.

[Cikomyr]

Here is my Prototype Horse

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[LCP]

@Rizhail: Saurus plastics are man-sized, but don't Khymerae take 40mm round bases? Saurus will look pretty titchy on those. They might be the same height as marines, but they don't have the same bulk - their arms and legs are quite slender.

Regarding winged wyches - I don't know about the Scourge kit, but I've seen the wings from the plastic Tyranid Gargoyles used to great effect to make Harpies and Furies in Fantasy. The conversions I saw used Daemonette bodies as the base, but I imagine it would work just as well with wyches or the new Witch Elves. Plus you get twice as many pairs of wings in the box.

[Jormengand]

@Rizhail: Saurus plastics are man-sized, but don't Khymerae take 40mm round bases? Saurus will look pretty titchy on those. They might be the same height as marines, but they don't have the same bulk - their arms and legs are quite slender.

Interestingly, saurus arms fit almost perfectly onto SM shoulders, but they are indeed quite thin.

[Rizhail]

@Rizhail: Saurus plastics are man-sized, but don't Khymerae take 40mm round bases? Saurus will look pretty titchy on those. They might be the same height as marines, but they don't have the same bulk - their arms and legs are quite slender.

Khymerae do indeed go on 40mm bases, which is what I'll be using for the conversions. I'll be filling in the extra space on the bases with terrain or fun, extra bits (skinks carrying extra weapons for the saurus, enemy corpses, etc). I'm thinking I'll just have to bite the bullet and get a saurus box and some marine bits to do a comparison at this point. If the marine stuff proves too bulky, I'll need to find some other parts to use. Unfortunately, wych boxes don't have much beyond knives and wych weapons, so there's not much from those I can use for the saurus. >.<

Regarding winged wyches - I don't know about the Scourge kit, but I've seen the wings from the plastic Tyranid Gargoyles used to great effect to make Harpies and Furies in Fantasy. The conversions I saw used Daemonette bodies as the base, but I imagine it would work just as well with wyches or the new Witch Elves. Plus you get twice as many pairs of wings in the box.

Hmm... that wouldn't be a bad plan. And the extra nid bits will be useful, since I'm going to be using some as trophies for the beastmasters and a few other units. I'll have to check around and see if anyone has done the wych w/ garg wings conversion and see how it looks.

Though I might rejigger a few things and use witch elves instead (love the new sculpts!). I've already got a box incoming I'm planning to use for some wych conversions, but they might look better as the winged set. I'd consider ordering a lot more of them if they didn't cost $60 a damned box.

[Meeki]

This is supposed to quote cikomyr.

Nice! I like the brown around the hooves.

Do you prime our models? Are you using a thick pain to pain the white?

With white it's better to do multiple layers, either use a little bit of water or paint thinner for model paints to water down the white if you are using a thick paint. Paint white parts with a few thin layers, it will even out the look a bit more.

Judging from the brush strokes I can see a bit, it looks unprimed. I'm not sure if that is true or not, as horses in the GW range tend to have very smooth, featureless rumps. This makes having even coloration important pre-highlighting.

One hint on painting with white, where it meets other colors, use a darker color, such as a gray, to separate the two. You can either paint the horse gray, as mentioned earlier, and just not paint the white all the way to the other colors, like the saddle and reins, or you can use a wash and thing, longer brush to apply a wash to the crevice.

Between the purple reins, use a dark purple wash, carefully applied, or a black wash carefully applied. Also, do not be afraid to paint in the muscle definition of the horse with a darker color! You can always lighten it if need be with a layer of thinned white paint.

[Grim Portent]

2) That's mildly disheartening to hear. How big a slot are we talking here? A small spot for a thin tab, a slot that runs all the way down the back with a large tab on the wings? If the former, I might try cutting a slot myself to get the right look. Otherwise, yeah, I'll need to go with something like you suggested. I'll admit that's one of the reasons I love the D.Eldar range: nearly everything can be swapped. Even the finecast models are designed to be able to use the plastic parts from other kits.

There are two slots, one on either side of the back just behind three prongs that jut out from the scourge torso in front of the wings. The slots are maybe 1-2 mm wide and run down the length of most of the back as I recall. The wings have a narrow tab that fits into the slots so they can be glued in place.

I don't know how well cutting the slots into a wych would work. The easiest thing to do would be to get a box of wyches and a box of scourges and judge for yourself, but I personally would just do a torso swap.

[Cikomyr]

This is supposed to quote cikomyr.

Nice! I like the brown around the hooves.

Do you prime our models? Are you using a thick pain to pain the white?

I actually did primed the model. With white spray paint...

With white it's better to do multiple layers, either use a little bit of water or paint thinner for model paints to water down the white if you are using a thick paint. Paint white parts with a few thin layers, it will even out the look a bit more.

Judging from the brush strokes I can see a bit, it looks unprimed. I'm not sure if that is true or not, as horses in the GW range tend to have very smooth, featureless rumps. This makes having even coloration important pre-highlighting.

I applied first a rather dark grey coat over the white primer, then applied watered light grey in order to make sure you could see the brush strokes. The point of the strokes is to give the illusion of the horse's hair, and have relatively uneven coloring. I did 3 layers of that.

I then applied white highlights over the rump. Again, I purposely made sure brushstrokes would be seen. I then applied dark grey wash over the whole thing, with a second thing white wash layer over the non-shadowed parts to blur the strokes a bit.

One hint on painting with white, where it meets other colors, use a darker color, such as a gray, to separate the two. You can either paint the horse gray, as mentioned earlier, and just not paint the white all the way to the other colors, like the saddle and reins, or you can use a wash and thing, longer brush to apply a wash to the crevice.

I think that's what I did.. a bit sad it doesn't come off as is.

Between the purple reins, use a dark purple wash, carefully applied, or a black wash carefully applied. Also, do not be afraid to paint in the muscle definition of the horse with a darker color! You can always lighten it if need be with a layer of thinned white paint.

I did addded a dark purple wash to the rein/saddle and armor, as well as a brown wash to the nose, the lower legs and the yellowish hairs (altough I did two layers of wash for the legs). For the upper-hair, I also decided to drybrush them white.

[CreganTur]

The mobile painting station has been getting a lot of work lately. I've been using it to work on minis over most of my lunch breaks, so I thought I'd show off the multiple concurrent projects I have.

First up, is a sale project. I bought the Island of Blood box a while ago to paint up for sale on ebay. I am close to finishing the Sword Master of Hoeth squad:

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As you can see, I still have a bit left to do. I am really proud of how the banner turned out.

I also run a Pathfinder game for my gaming group. In our last session the party was ambushed by some griffon riders. Due to the amazing quick thinking of the party's Erudite, they captured the 2 griffons and the Crusader has tamed them. Because of that, I've started working on the griffon I got from Bones 1:

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I'm also working on the Bones paladin with the flaming sword. He represents the character I was playing in our 1-off 13th Age adventure. I wanted to do a saffron orange, but my color is a bit off. Also, my camera apparently HATES orange as it is not that red, nor that badly blended in real life.

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Finally, I'm working on painting up parts of the translucent green ghost wall:

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I'm using the brand new bone color triad from the new paint set from Bones 1. I'm not sure if I'm happy with the way the skeletons look. Something seems off and I can't tell what it is.