• Spray Army Painter “Army Green” spray primer
• Ink with Badab Black
• Drybrush with Knarloc Green
• Drybrush Kommando Khaki

That was the armour sorted, and then I moved on to battle damage and mud etc. The battle damage was simply painted on with black, and then again with Boltgun Metal. Various browns were used to drybrush on the mud effect around the bottom and “shadows” which not only gives it a muddy feel but also general dirt.

All I did after that was finish off the details – gund, metals, lights, scroll etc. The fist icon on the door was done in freehand, which I roughly drew on in pencil before painting it as a guide.

I wanted something very clean and simple, and I’d gone through some concepts that were quite dark and moody and others that were a bit overcomplicated. At the end of the day the main focus of this blog is odds and ends of me posting about what I’m interested in, so I decided to strip  pretty much everything out and even hid the menu, so it basically is just me rambling. Oh and Leicester’s skyline in the background – had to be done!

Check out the extract here

Website re-design for The Retreat Company is now live!

After some tough games and much head scratching from the tournament organiser I managed to squeeze into the top slot with 3 caster kills, grabbing myself a nice shiny winners coin.

Next stop the UK Masters in Birmingham in two weeks time…

Cool Mini Or Not Voting

Ebay Auction

The Lizardmen army book doesn’t really include anything other than different types of blue, and searches on the net only seem to bring up blue and green. I was thinking green just to be different from blue, however after painting a test model I thought to myself “I might as well just be painting orcs!”. The next try was turqoise, which turned out too dark and too complicated to paint lots of troops. I’ve been contemplating white, red, orange, yellow… even black!

Today though I had a change of heart. I think I’ve realised why I didn’t like any of my ideas – I like blue Lizardmen. There are a few key points I’ve been considering for the scheme and blue seems to tick them all – easy to paint, they’ll look coherent and I wanted a bright army without being garish. Blue has always been easy for me to paint and do well, maybe its my painting style or maybe its just the amount of blue things I’ve painted in the past – who knows. But I think I’m settled now, having painted a test model and happy with it!

I have been experimenting with inks and drybrushing and sprays, all in search of speeding things up, forgetting one thing – why change what’s broken? I have a technique for painting blue flesh, so I’ll stick to it. And because its a technique I already know, its not really that much slower. The whole model took just under 2 hours to complete, and if I’m batch painting 3 or 4 at a time that’ll be reduced even more as most of the time was spent letting things dry.

So for now here’s the test model, I still need to decide on bases, however I’ll paint those in bulk anyway. I’ll also get up a guide to how I’ve done these at some point.

As I’m in a festive mood, here’s a picture of santa… enjoy!

What you need:
White Spray
Gryphonne Sepia
Bleached Bone
White
Black
Blood Red
Fiery Orange
Gloss Varnish

First off spray the whole thing white, then give it a Gryphonne Sepia wash. Back in the day I used Chestnut Ink, but Sepia seems to be Chestnut Ink in disguise, and it dries nicer – so it’s all good! Once this is dry drybrush it with Bleached Bone, followed by a light drybrush of pure white. Now comes the lengthy but ultimately satisfying part. All the carapace and talons etc are painted black. Then, Blood Red is used to paint the edges in a “line” method. Five coats of Blood Red are done, getting progressively closer to the edge. This gives a blending effect towards the edge of all of the carapace. Finally a spot of Fiery orange is painted on some of the very edges – only a very small amount! To finish it off the red is given a gloss varnish, which gives it a deeper and more solid look.

Here are some WIP shots as it stands right now, I’ll put finished pics up once it’s done!