Painting a barbarian

Introduction

With the reboot of our MAGUS adventures, we now have new characters - some needing painted miniatures! This miniature was part of Dungeons & Dragons: The Legend of Drizzt Board Game.

Painting

Prime 

In black, not shown, as I got overzealous, and by the time I took the first picture, the barbarian was already rocking this awesome ochre-yellow hair.

Hair

A couple of layers of ochre are needed to cover the black primer. Follow up with brown wash (Agrax Earthshade) for that dark blond effect.

Furs

I wanted to experiment with a technique I caught in a tutorial for the fur. Start with a brown basecoat (and paint the skin areas while we're at it), then add patches of another brown (I only had leather brown at my disposal) throughout the fur areas.

Follow up with a generous dose of Agrax Earthshade. This is supposed to mesh the browns together while still creating a varied and contrasting effect.

Skin

Apply fleshtone wash (Reikland fleshshade) to the skin areas.

Finish the fur and other details

The finishing touch on the fur is a bonewhite drybrush. Apply with variance, to increase contrast.

I also painted the hammer before moving on. Brown for the wooden handle, gunmetal for the head; then black wash; then edge highlight with the original colors and just a hint of silver on the edges of the hammer.

Face

The tried and tested method to paint eyes: paint the eyeballs white, then black wash to make it stand out from the face; then paint the eyeballs white again, taking care to leave a contour of black; then drop some color with the tip of the brush for the iris. I decided to give the guys a Nordic look, having blond hair and blue eyes.

I used the same technique to pick our the eyebrows in ochre-yellow (except the eyebrows don't have irises, hehe). Then I dropped a bit of black wash with a detail brush to pick out the mouth.

Back to the fur

I wasn't super pleased with the fur, so I went over it with a drybrush again. 

It doesn't look bad, but it is a bit bland. If I would do this again, I would apply this technique only to parts of the fur, or switch browns on some parts, or do some edge highlighting after on some parts. By the time I realized all this, I had already varnished the model, and wasn't going to go back to painting it. So I tried to do something different to at least make the base stand out.

Basing

Start with the cracked earth base, as for the Chaos Chosen and the fighter.

Stick on larger pieces of cork.

Then fill the gaps with rocks. Although in this case, do leave some spaces uncovered.

Basecoat in reddish brown.

Heavy brown drybrush.

Black wash in the recesses, then overall brown wash (Agrax Earthshade).

Brown edge highlight.

Very thin bonewhite edge highlight.

Correct the side of the base by painting it black.

Now, for the fun part!

Mix 1:1:1 baking soda, PVA glue and white paint as per this tutorial.

Apply it to the base. Boom! Snow effect.

Finished

Painting a female human fighter

Introduction

A model from Dungeons & Dragons: Castle Ravenloft Board Game, this time painted up for DnD. And yes, I know that the game description says she's a rogue, but rogues don't wait scale mail. Fighter it is.

Prime

Prime in black. This time, I had a bit of brown paint left over after painting another model, and applied it here before it dried. I also had other leftovers, so I applied gunmetal and black wash to the metallic parts (armor, bracers, swords).

Painting

Basecoat

I discovered that brown is a good basecoat for any light yellowish tone. So, as it is already customary, basecoat in brown all the leather (boots, belt), skin and hair areas. Below, the skintone basecoat is already applied over the brown.

Ochre goes over the brown for the hair.

Before applying washes, there are some areas that need highlighting: leather brown edge highlight on the boots and belt, yellow highlights on the ochre hair.

I also applied black wash on the belt to pop out the details before the brown wash meshes together the colors.

Painting the cape

I have gotten used to - in fact, this is one of the things that keeps painting interesting - that every miniature (or squad of miniatures) presents a new kind of challenge. If it doesn't by itself - such as this fighter, potentially just plain metal and leather surfaces - I look for something. This time, I thought of doing something new with the cape. I am not used to painting large cloth surfaces, so here goes. As I said, there's nothing else striking or unusual in her clothing, so I looked for something to contrast well with sandy blond hair. Let's go for a red cape.

Start with a dark red base.

Mix dark red with black (2:1), apply in the recesses, then use a second, damp brush to feather out the color towards the edges.

Mix dark red with bloody red (1:1), apply to the edges, then feather out towards the recesses.

Finally, edge highlight the edges with bloody red.

A suitably realistic and gritty appearance for a battle-worn, but still impressive cape.

Washes

Sepia wash (Seraphim sepia) on the hair.

Fleshtone wash (Reikland fleshshade) on the skin areas.

Brown wash (Agrax Earthshade) on the leather areas.

Highlights

Edge highlight the skin areas with the original skintone, to reestablish the color. I wanted to keep her skin pale.

Yellow highlights on the hair - same reason.

Gunmetal and silver highlights on the metallic areas.

Face - as usual, white eyes, then black wash on the eyes and mouth, then white again on the eyes, and finally the pupils. Bright blue eyes complete the look.

Basing

I decided on a cracked earth base, suitable for any dungeon-dwelling adventurer (same as for the Chaos Chosen).

Glue on pieces of cork and rocks to emulate the cracked earth.

Base in reddish brown.

Heavy brown drybrush.

Black wash in the recesses and on ground level, then overall brown wash (Agrax earthshade).

Brown edge highlight.

Bonewhite edge highlight, only on the tips of the large rocks.

Complete the base with a black ring on the edge of the base.

Finished!

Painting a black panther

Introduction

My DnD group has a shape-shifting druid, and I needed a break after painting all the armor trims on the Chaos Chosen, so let's go for black fur! This miniature was part of Dungeons & Dragons: The Legend of Drizzt Board Game.

Painting

Painting the fur

After a black primer, I did not bother to paint the whole model in black just for the sake of it. So let's go for that fur! I watched some tutorials asserting that black fur should be highlighted in greenish blues, but I wasn't convinced, so I looked up pictures of real animals.

What do you know! Bluish hues!

I edge highlighted the body with a green-blue mix. It sits well on black but is barely visible.

For the next highlight, I added white to the mix. Now this really stands out, but is too much of a contrast.

So I toned it down with a black wash, then drybrushed some of the previous color back on for this subdued, more natural look.

Painting the face (and claws)

Two coats of dark red basecoat the inside of the mouth.

Throw in some pink for the highlights.

Bonewhite on the fangs and eyes. Again, I looked to the picture of a panther above to realize that the white of the eyes aren't exactly white.

Light blue irises complete the feline look.

Brown basecoat, then bonewhite highlights on the claws.

Basing

My usual woodland basing technique. 

Paint the base green in case it shows through anywhere, then throw on some soil...

Then some grass...

Apply the PVA glue sealant. Wait for it to dry a bit, Add some bushes. Apply more PVA glue sealant on them, too.

Finished!

Unfortunately, my brave smartphone camera decided that it can't handle this much black on a model, and took some very bad photos. I tried to balance quality with quantity, but I think the details can be seen better in the above in-progress pictures. See for yourself.