Sunday 25 March 2012

Brevik's Marauders: Basic Warband Complete

So, maybe a day earlier than expected, my fledgling warband is complete.  It's only the start though as I'm having a few ideas about some extra characters, but Brevik Dragonslayer and his small group are ready for the fight (not bad for a quick and dirty paint job).


I hope they give off the "classic" fantasy look I was aiming for.  I've tried to avoid the "Grimdark" look I seem to veer towards on a lot of my miniatures, and intentionally kept things a bit brighter.  The first step in doing this was to use a grey undercoat - I don't know why I don't use this more often.  This was particularly good for models with a lot of exposed skin, fur and iron/steel detail (so...barbarians then).


The gold and iron are pretty much my standard way of doing things, the only slight difference with the iron was that I blended in some Charadon Granite as an extra shadow in places (e.g. Brevik's sword near the hilt).  I tried to keep the gold as bright as possible, to act as the bright points on the miniatures.


The skin was pretty straight forward on all the models:
  • Base:  Tallarn Flesh
  • Shade:  A sparing wash of Ogryn Flesh (on Breggan and Juggo this was Gryphonne Sepia, but I wanted them to have a slightly different flesh tone)
  • H1:  Tallarn Flesh
  • H2:  1:1 mix of Tallarn Flesh and P3 Ryn Flesh
  • H3:  Ryn Flesh
On Mad Ulf the wash went on a little too heavy, and the highlights aren't as neat as they should be, but on the rest it works pretty well, even really close up.


This was my first proper attempt at stubble (they're barbarians, when do they get time to shave?), and it worked better on Ifil, than it did on Ulf and Brevik, but it's pretty easy to do:
  • Base:  1:1 mix of Adeptus Battlegrey and Tallarn Flesh
  • Shade:  Diluted Devlan Mud - this was important to tone down the grey and blend it in to the skin colour
  • Highlight:  1:1 mix of Tallarn Flesh and Codex Grey
The jewels on the helm were tiny, and I nearly painted them as iron studs, but decided it was worth the effort to paint them as jewels.  I didn't give them a coat of gloss varnish this time, as I'm not convinced it helps.


For Breggan and Juggo's hair, and Mad Ulf's cloak, I went for the wash and careful drybrush approach - you can probably guess Khemri Brown, Devlan Mud and Dheneb Stone were used. ;)

There are a couple more characters to add, a Thief/Rogue type and a Sorceror, once those are done I'll post them up with more of the back story.

As always, comments and criticism welcome!

7 comments:

  1. Nice work!
    I think definitely managed to avoid the grim-dark and captured a nice Fantasy feel to these guys.
    I really like a grey undercoat for everything except white armoured models.

    Ron, FTW

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  2. Congrats Andy, I really like these. I think you've nailed the look you were going for. I tend to go very high-contrast in my painting so it's great to see this lighter approach. I look forward to seeing the remaining models complete.

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  3. Great looking models. I'm a big fan of this brighter look and I'm enjoying getting down to layering some shiny paints on my Dreadfleet ships when I get the time. One day I'll get them all painted up. Baby steps, Pete, baby steps.

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  4. Thanks guys, really appreciate the comments. :) I'm glad the lighter look is approved of, it's nice to have alternatives. I was getting into a bit of a rut with painting, so this has got me back on track and enthused again.

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  5. Figs look great - is this for mordheim or ?

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  6. Thanks Tristan, this is for "Get the Girl, Kill the Baddies", a WIP skirmish ruleset from Andy Hoare:
    http://andyhoare.blogspot.co.uk/
    http://dl.dropbox.com/u/35946127/gTgV7%20Playtest4.1.pdf

    They could work for Mordheim too though. :)

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  7. Fantastic stuff, and many thanks for the shout!

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