Before we start your going to need your inks and washes. I've collected a few colours now for a reasonable variety. I don't want to waste time mixing colours if I can help it. The aim is to do one quick coat and thats all.
As I've been playing a bit of Heroquest with my son recently I am using the Adventurer minis for an example. Usually I just paint the same type of figure to minimise colour changes between figures, less colour changes meant less time! So this will be a comparitively slow job.
The process can basically be boiled down to 4 steps: White basecoat, skin, clothes, metal.
Step 1: White basecoat.
It has to be white otherwise the colours won't show!
Next job is the skin. Get your skin wash (I've used Vallejo skin wash here) and apply it to the exposed flesh areas. Once this is done give the still wet wash a quick dab with your finger, being careful not to put your now inky/washy print on the pristeen white on the rest of the mini. This adds a slight highlight to the raised areas. Don't use a tissue as this has a tendency to soak up some of the wash from the non-hightlight areas, which we don't wont.
Let the skin dry, and then your chosen apply colours to the other parts of the figures. Have a reasonable amount on the brush, as we want dark pools of colour in the recesses, but the ink/wash should sit more thinly on the raised areas, automatically giving you a highlight that would be missed using conventional paint. As ink takes longer to dry than your normal paint do one colour on one mini then move onto the next to give more drying time. Also try to colour areas of the mini that are not adjectent to each other, as this lets you keep progress moving along without risking the inks running into each other at the junctions. Multiple layers of ink (either when the first one is dry or wet) can produce some intereting effects if you fancy. As a note I ink chainmail black in preparation for Step 4.
Step 4: Metal.
Get your metalic paints and paint the metal areas of the figure. No, no - stop shouting "cheat" ( I'm listening to Slayer on 11 so I can't hear you anyway!). I said it was using inks and washes - I didn't say excusively. As these are for Heroquest (ie a bright high fantasy setting) I just leave the metal bright and shiny.
Have fun.
4 comments:
The one caveat with this method is that you will, almost certainly, forget how you ever painted any other way. The Citadel Inks had exactly that effect on me: I have no idea how we managed before Badab Black and Devlan Mud came out. Maybe there's something in them that affects memory. Maybe they're just good.
Nice work with these, and perfectly adequate. It's always good to remember, that you aren't comparing the fast-painted minis to the pro-painted stuff you see all over the net, but instead to the unpainted plastic. A simple, effective paintjob like this one here is a huge leap in style and eye candy.
Keep up the good work,
Mikko / Dawn of the Lead
@Von: I haven't tried the Devlan Mud, but will be heading out to the get some of the "new" GW washes in the near future after seeing some of Tristan's results. It'll have to be pretty good to beat Vallejo's Sepia though...
@dawnof...: Exactly. I quite often work to a "better than it was" philosophy. The excellent painting you see round the web can be both inspirational or demotivating (depending on mood)
I've always been tempted by these techniques, but never had the guts to leave the old faithful ones behind. Plus, if I thought it could look better done another way, I would follow that path (whether I achieve it or not, it's the attempt that counts!)
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