Dragon Forge Bases Tutorial

Painting Dragon Forge 'Lost Empires' and 'Parched Earth' bases.


Continuing my irregular series about bases, basing and well general tips I will take you through the process I use to paint the two types of bases I use. I use these for my Grey Knights and Skitarii respectively, however at some point I am going to modify some to combine elements of the two so it doesn't look weird if I field the two armies together in an Apocalypse game. Also you may notice that I use, almost exclusively, the old GW paint colours. Feel free to swap them for their current near match brethren.
So leading Straight on from this post:
At this point you should have your bases cleaned and primed, as per my previous post. From here I am going to walk through the steps I take to paint the two types of bases.

First up the 'Parched Earth' bases:

This method is a fairly fast way to paint these well balanced and very detailed bases. I chose to do them slightly darker tones to balance out the bright steel, white and red colours that dominate the colour scheme of my Grey Knights. To make them more traditional sulphur desert coloured you could perhaps swap the Charadon Granite for Iyanden Darksun and the Devlan Mud for Gryphonne Sepia.

1) Thin down some Charadon Granite so that it is about the same consistency as paint you would airbrush with. Liberally wash this into the cracks in the base. Once this is dry sticky brush the base with 1:2 Reaper Dark Blood:Charadon Granite (Base Mix).

2) Sticky brush the base with 1:2 Deneb Stone:Base Mix.

3) Heavily Drybrush patches with 2:1 Deneb Stone:Charadon  Granite. The Idea here is to add natural looking changes to the colour of the ground just like real soil. Final Drybrush highlight in patches with Deneb Stone.

4) Paint any metal junk with Boltgun Metal and pick out any rocks with a Heavy Drybrush of Adeptus Battlegrey.

5) Stipple the metal bits of debris rather heavily with Blazing Orange to simulate rust. Highlight the rocks in streaks with 1:1 Adeptus Battlegrey:Astronomicon Grey and then edge highlight them with pure Astronomicon Grey.

6) Wash the base with 1:1 Devlan Mud:Water wash. The trick here is to put a blob of pure Devlan Mud on the base and then spread it out with water to create more random lighter and darker patches of ground.

7) When the wash is dry paint any crystals with Liche Purple and then highlight with 2:1 Liche Purple:Tentacle Pink (you can make Tentacle Pink by adding Space Wolf Grey to Liche Purple). Make sure to add some crystal light retraction streaks on each facet. Successively highlight this with 1:1 Liche Purple:Tentacle and then pure Tentacle Pink. Thinly glaze the crystals with 1:1 Leviathan Purple:Water to blend the highlights together.

8) Add fine spot highlights to the crystals with pure Skull White. Add a few random Boltgun Metal chips to the debris to simulate newer chipping.

9) Paint the rim of the base Chaos Black, and pin the model in place. Then when dry coat with clear Matt finish if you prefer to do so. Yes, the one at the bottom left is ready to have the miniature pinned on.

10) Lastly pick out the crystals with clear gloss varnish.



'Lost Empires' Bases

This is a fast and relatively good looking method I developed to paint these bases when I realised I had over four hundred Skitarii miniatures to put on bases. Because of the rapid nature of painting these there are a few steps missing photos, sorry for that.
For best results the bases are painted separately from the miniatures as mentioned in this post:

1) Wash the stone blocks and on patches on the gravel with 1:1:4 Asurmen Blue:Reaper Deep Ocean:Water.

2) Drybrush heavily with Deneb Stone.

3) Drybrush with P3 Morrow White.

4) Redefine some wash patches with Step 1 wash mix.

5) Wash gravel bits with 1:1 Devlan Mud:Water mix.

6) Pick out details with Reaper Deep Ocean.

7) Highlight details with Reaper Marine Teal.

8) Wash any black details twice with pure Badab Black.

9) Paint the rim of the base Chaos Black, and pin the model in place.

10) Coat the mini with clear finish and you are done.


So there you have it, an easy way to paint two of the available sets of bases from Dragon Forge.

Until next time
Cheers
Subby out



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Dragon Forge Bases Review

WIP Coteaz and Grey Knights Project

WIP Coteaz Part 2

WIP Coteaz Part 2

Continuing my running series after a bit of late night painting last night and tonight I managed to get the armour and cloak finished on Coteaz. It is a struggle getting the washes done because it is raining here at the moment and so the humidity is making them take forever to dry. Oh well that is life. On with the Show!

These next couple show him with his cloak finished, leaving me all the other bits to go. I chose purple for two things. First it goes well with the Turquoise armour and secondly it is a colour related to Royal or Imperial Power, thus making Coteaz's ties to the Throne of Terra more obvious.

I used the following technique to paint the Purple Cloak on Coteaz:

1) Over a Black undercoat layer Liche Purple.

2) Wash twice with 1:3 wash of Badab Black:Leviathan Purple.

3) Layer highlight with Liche Purple.

4) Wash with 1:1 Water:Leviathan Purple.

5) Layer highlight with 1:1 Liche Purple:Warlock Purple.

6) Layer highlight with 1:1:1 Liche Purple:Warlock Purple:Morrow White.

7) Layer highlight with 1:1:2 Liche Purple:Warlock Purple:Morrow White.

8) Final wash glaze with 1:1 Water:Leviathan Purple.

Cheers till next time

Subby out.

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WIP Coteaz and Grey Knights Project

WIP Coteaz and Grey Knights Project

Continuing the Trend that I began with the Doomknight and Landraider I wanted to get myself re-enthused with the hobby. Having a couple of days free per week now, I have a bit of a chance to get some work on my Grey Knights.

So the other day I decided to unpack and check out exactly what I have in the cupboard for the army.

The Minitures I have to work with so far are as follows:

2 x Brother Captain Stern (White Metal) (Will be converting one into Drago for a bit of fun options)

24 x GKs Terminators (White Metal) (5x 3/4 painted)

38 x GKs Power-Armoured (inc 5x Plastic MPK minis)

42 x Adeptus Arbites (Counts as Warrior Acolytes)

6 x Arbites Cyber Mastifs (Counts as Arco-Flagellants)

1 x Inquisitor Coteaz (White Metal, Cleaned, Currently being painted)

1 x Inquisitor (White Metal)

2 x Gun Servitors (White Metal) (1x Painted)

2 x Death Cult Assassins (White Metal) (Cleaned ready to paint)

16 x Inquisitorial Warband Assorted (White Metal)

1 x Vindicare Assassin (White Metal) (cleaned, recently paint stripped)

1 x Eversor Assasin (White Metal)

1 x Grey Knights Venerable Dreadnought (Converted Plastic Ven-Dread, Painted and Finished)

2 x Nemesis Dreadknights

1 x Land Raider Redeemer (Forgeworld Parts, Converted)

1 x Stormraven Gunship (Converted Pilot, magnetised weapon options, partially painted)

So Yeah I have a little bit of work ahead of me.

And while looking for Grey Knights Epic Miniatures (yes for madness.... MADNESSSS.....!!!), I found the following Inquisitor Coteaz miniature for sale.

For a long time I have put off painting my Coteaz miniature because I didn't want to do the traditional colour scheme for him. So this caught my interest, as it was both different and well executed. However I like to use somewhat darker colours, especially on characters who have questionable morality. Yes I know very grim dark....
So yesterday after lunch with the girlfriend I stopped at the not so local friendly gaming store to do a bit of painting (here-after NSLFGS). Ostensibly I was to have a night off and had planned to make it to Pubhammer that evening (yes my gaming club runs its meeting in a pub!), but at around 3:30 I got the call to see if I wanted a shift so I only got this far with Coteaz. Not I could have said no to the shift and kept painting, but hell extra money is always good.

Anyways I used the following technique to paint the armour:

Turquoise Blended Armour:

1) Undercoat Black

2) Base colour all the armour Reaper 'Deep Ocean'

3) Wash armour with 1:1:1 Asurmen Blue:Thraka Green:Badab Black

4)Wet Blended highlights with Reaper 'Deep Ocean'

5)Wet Blended edge highlights with Reaper 'Marine Teal'

6) Spot Highlights with 1:1 Reaper 'Marine Teal':P3 'Morrow White'

If in Stage 4 you let the highlights get to wide you can re-blend into the darker shading using glazes of the wash from Stage 3.

Lastly I will be putting all of these on Dragon Forge 'Parched Earth' Bases. :D

So there you have it.

Cheers All

Happy Chinese New Year!

Subby

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Warlord Titan Project Update

This is the toe of a Titan...

That I refused to make multiples of by scratch building.

A while back I asked the question of what to cast the multiples from and settled, after a bit of discourse, on resin. So now Macca and I have a lot of toes for our two Titans, some half completed feet and the masters for the pistons (no pictured below). All the Designs are done and the major construction is under way. I managed to snavel bits out of lots of people so details shouldn't be and issue. I do have to cast another 60-ish missile tips for the multi-launcher and another 180 pistons.

more pics now...

Six toes for one foot.

Twenty-Four toes for both titans

The internal support structure in the feet.

Just how big the feet really are, yes that is a chair...

The Piston Moulds need re-engineering as I am having issues with the pours so that will happen first thing tomorrow... unless it is raining again in which case I will be washing my car.

Quick Commissions

Sometimes you need a little something to break the tedium of painting and sculpting, something you have not done in a while.
For me it came this last week in the form of a quick little commission from a gamer at the FLGS.
More particularly they wanted me to colour match some minis to an already painted army that he did not paint himself.

OK so it took a little experimentation but in the end I nailed it. Happy client, more minis on the way from him (actually about another 8 to be precise).

here are a few quick snaps of the first cab off the ranks. His Defiler for his Chaos renegades force. I do apologize for the photo quality, these were hastily snapped at the FLGS before the client headed home with it. If you want a closer look the larger sized pics can be found in my Deviant Art Account Galleries, as I try to keep file sizes and load time down for my fellow bloggers.

The Front

The Back

Left Side

Right Side

From the top down

So this lifted my spirits a bit, sometimes you just need a break from one thing for a while to another.

Productive Afternoons

It has been a little while since I posted anything on the progress of the Titan Project so I thought I would pop a quick post up to share the results of the hour I spent this long weekend on it (yeah so I had a whole lot of other things going on).

So I got the main structural supports cut out and ready to glue to their cross members (not pictured!).

As you can see this little Sternguard Veteran is wondering just what trouble is "Over there!"

Anyhow I have the cad about 90% nailed, just gotta finalise the turret mounts for the shoulder weapons (which I have sketched) and the thighs, which are going to need a little revision from my sketches. Then it is a whole lotta cutting, glueing sanding and painting before the second weekend in November.

In case you are wondering 'Is that a kitchen table?!?'...

Yes, Warlord Titans are big when the are accurately scaled.

As always have fun.

Subby

Can You Name That Theme Song? - FTWCP

This is a Happy Khorne Dreadnought...

Why is this KD so happy? Why does he have his hands thrown in the air in praise to the Dark Gods?

Because He gets to come out of the Gaming Case to kick off this post about choosing a theme for your army. This dreadnought, that I put together and converted when the plastic dreads were first released, shows a few important things about theme.

1) You can easily use random bits, green stuff and some plastic-card to convert a vehicle to match up with the theme of your army. Once you do this you can then quickly paint it to match the paint scheme.

2) You don't have to neglect the base, even if it is pre-molded.

In this instance I have added a slightly modified Skeleton to complete the skull that was on the base to begin with. I also added some grass made from old paint brush hairs to break up the whole thing with some spot colors.

Below I will give examples of both of these methods and various combinations of the two. Including the extension of these methods to objectives and Game Specific miniatures.

This Red Corsairs Rhino shows another way to enhance the theme of your army. While not extensive the conversions make this miniature unique. While I have scratch built this particular bit of Red Corsairs Iconography from plastic-card there are many upgrade kits out there to add similar bits to you miniatures to make them yours. While I could have painted this on (indeed I painted a larger one on the top hatch), I thought it would stand out more if I did it this way.

Moulded details, brass etch bits and themed conversions can be easily used to quickly make an army yours. I many cases these details can also make the miniatures both easier to paint, and you can add extra painted detail to the raised parts without fear of messing up the other details.

This is SGT Cromarte, named for the eponymous school teacher terminator from the TV Series. He started as an off hand remark and was made reality with a head swap and some icon filing. He was painted to to match the scheme for the rest of my scouts. Here the theme of the character is derived from the fluff behind the rules. He represents a hard-bitten veteran who has seen some serious action (represented by his bionics and old school rank insignia), that has been tasked with training the new recruits. A simple slate base with some muted greys and a gaunt skill add to the look by making it look like his camo cloak really would help conceal him.

Here is Cromarte with a few of his WIP pals. If you look at the middle mini you will notice a chunk of Cities of Death building. Small off-cuts and other bits that you would otherwise not use can be quickly used to add character to your bases. In this case I am steadily re-doing my whole marine army (except my Deathwatch Kill Team), in bases that suit my city terrain. As the scouts are newer additions to my marines they get the whole treatment from the start, the rest will get soaked in water until the white glue is soft enough to remove the old flock. They will also get updated highlights and some paint re-touches.

Doing it this way can revive your interest in an army you may have otherwise abandoned for various reasons. In my particular case my marines were never really themed other than "Vanilla" Marines that I use to learn the new rules with each Edition. This way it will encourage me to game more often with them, and I can revisit some of my favourite miniatures without buying a whole new army. On top of that it encourages me to get the crew over more often to game with my terrain, rather then meeting at our not-so-local-friendly-gaming-store.

The scout on the right is the result of my need for just one more scout to finish the army. In this instance I had a couple of choices. I could have sculpted a pair of legs, as I had the rest of the body as leftover bits. Instead I chose to do a neat little theme base where the scout appears to be climbing out of some industrial piping after cutting the mesh covering open.

Here is an example of basing two different armies the same to suit a purpose. In this case the Deathwatch Brother Captain on the left has a resin base from Back-2-Base-ix. The Genestealer on the right has a plastic base that has had textured plastic-card added to match the resin one. Both have been painted as if they were on starship. I themed these bases this way because these models are used as alternate forces for both Kill Team and Space Hulk. As per my previous example with the scouts I have themed that bases to match the majority of the terrain they will be used upon. This isn't to say that these models would be out of place on a Cities of Death or Necromunda table either.

The strategic application of scratch built bases to match some resin ones that you have run out of, especially if the amount you need is less then one packet of resin ones, will keep money in your pocket. I will also save you the headache of trying to work out what to use the, now excess, resin bases for.

Pre-cast bases such as the one on this Forgeworld Moderati need not be boring. A simple addition of some flock, in this case some snow flock, in addition to some strategic washes can really bring a little theme or story to life.

This guy and his two friends I use as objective markers. The theme is that they have just climbed out of the wreck of their steed and the oil and other hot fluids have stained the snow he is walking across. Simple little themes like this can be conveyed by strategic use of the base to create micro-dioramas.

In my last post I showed this guy. Here I have have used the light colours of the base to counter-balance the dark colours of the Skitari. Also the theme of ancient unexplored ruins presented by the design of the bases brings to mind the omnipresent background theme of the Adeptus Mechanicus searching ruins for lost STC fragments.

A close-up of one of the weapons platform sized resin bases from Dragonforge, the strategic use of symbols on bases can also add to the them of your army. If you regularly face a particular opponent or army you can add little bits of their icons and armour to your bases for a bit of fun. Both players could even use these like kill markings, adding one every time a mini "kills" a character or special unit. Just a little fun added into the game for everyone that can bring hobby back to rewarding those "Cool" moments that good gamers have during games.

Here are the rest of the bases ready to have Skitarii mounted on them, using the same set of resin bases for the whole army makes sense as no matter how incongruous the units are, the bases will tie the army together thematically. When doing this, especially if using the counter-balance of colours method, it is often a good idea to paint the bases separate from the minis. Barring any elaborate posed that require the minis to be on their bases, it can make the painting quicker as you need not worry so much about "not keeping to the lines."

Lastly here is a group shot of my Thousand Sons Army. This is diametrically opposed in how the army is themed to the last example. Here the theme of the miniatures has dictated the choice of both the force composition and the bases. Theme armies like this, and any cult army is especially susceptible to this path, are built around the colour scheme and army choices. However, in keeping with the sorcerous theme, the bases have been basically sanded and painted in dark browns and blacks to represent land blasted by the unnatural energies of the warp.

So I leave you with a few tips and things to ponder about theme and armies. Hope you enjoy.

A big thanks to Ron for sending this topic out as I had been thinking about this for a while and wondered if I should write it down.

A also want to apologise for the poor quality of some of the pictures in this post, my digital camera's auto focus was playing up today, I may have to get it looked at.

Hive Tyrant W.I.P

So I have liked Nids for a long time, in fact I have had an army of them for every codex, plus a Genestealer Cult Army back in the far of mists of time. This time around I had planned to only do a small army, this was spurred on by the fact that I was given a couple of unassembled plastic Carnifexes in trade for some work, which I added some forgeworld Stonecrusher parts to for "the look." I already had one done up as a Screamer Killer which I added to a resin base. He came up so far I think.

click to zoom

The biggest thing I wanted was a ridiculously cool Hive Tyrant. I know alot of people like the metal one, and the way things are going there will be a plastic one eventually. But to me there are two things wrong with it.

Firstly it is a serious pain to assemble, my buddy Luke almost cries tears of blood when you ask him how much fun it was to assemble his. I do not want that pain.

Second, beside the awesome that is the Carnifex kit and the sweet that is the plastic Trygon the meat Tyrant is like a wee baby man, in fact it reminds me of Napoleon with his little man syndrome.

So my solution was in the words of my mate Red "freakin insane!"

Behold the first snaps of the WIP of my Hive Tyrant.

click to zoom

click to zoom

click to zoom

Yes it did start life as a Trygon kit, I modified the head and added a few spikes here and there, the head-spike and tail spike are the smallest digging claws in the arms set, I used the nowmal Trygon tongue with the T-Prime head and tail pieces. I used the ball socket part of the central torso where it joins the hips and bulked out around the hex attachment end this with cheap filler epoxy ribbon before pinning on the tail and some armour plates shaved off the upper tail section of the original kit. I then did the green stuff details. I also used green stuff to fill in the previously hollow tail sections and blend this smoothly into the hips.

The arms are all magnetised, with the scything talons stock standard, and the custom heavy venom cannon you can see half sculpted. I have built it around a piece of aluminium pipe I found in the local hobby shop that is kind of egg shaped in cross section.

Here I am using a new sculpting medium I hadn't tried before from Privateer Press' P3 range. It is quite smooth and holds detail well. My one gripe is that if it is wet with water it will not, unlike greenstuff, stick to another bit of itself that is still un-set. In fact it is difficult to get it to stick to anything when wet, but as soon as there is no surface moisture it will stick to everything. (you, its packaging, the sculpting tool, the table, the random sprue on the desk...)

Once you get used to it is is however quite good. A little tip is to keep it in the freezer so it will come out of its packaging, to which it is otherwise inseparably stuck.

I have also started on the legs, and with nothing large enough on hand I am slowly sculpting the individual sections, which I will double using resin castings as per the hoof that is already done. the thighs will have to be completely sculpted however as there is no way to mirror them. As you can see I have used my spare standard Trygon head pieces as the thigh carapace.

I am thinking of maybe extending the back vents/spore chimneys (what the hell are those things anyhow?), but I am not committed to it until I see how well the legs balance the rest of the figure.

What is the biggest tip I can give about sculpting Nids?

To get nice smooth organic curves use a burnishing tool, one of the ones with a little ball on the end of it, or as pictured use my preferred tool. A length of brass rod with the end rounded and polished. Using it you can more easily smooth off large areas of organic flesh, add the little muscle striations where flesh meets carapace, do the little round indents that there are on nids and lastly easily sculpt the rib detail.

Also do the cross ribs one way first and then when these have set do the perpendicular bone detail. As this will prevent the making of a real mess. Finally add you circular flesh indentations after you have smoothed out the flesh section you are doing them on but before the sculpting medium sets as they will be a part of the surface rather than an addition, making them look more natural/organic.

How do I rate the P3 sculpting epoxy?

About 7/10 as it is pretty good but is a pain to get out of that package unless you keep it in the freezer, you can overlook the other parts as it hold detail nicely.

How do I rate the new Trygon kit?

8/10 It has pretty limited poses, but with magnets and patience you can set it up so you can alternate between your beasties of choice. In the end I love it so much bought two!