❤ 🖌 Miniatures

I had the most satisfying Saturday evening; painting my first Necromunda gang model in a very long time (pictured, incomplete).

My good friend brought around his paint collection, which Games Workshop discontinued but I believe are available now as Coat d'arms paint. Old as they were, a thorough shake and they are still in good working order 😁.

I've been watching a lot of tutorials and reading on-line guides, but all of that pretty much went out of the window. I was using a plate palette for the most part, though the tendency to paint directly from the pot or lid was sometimes too tempting. That was the way we used to paint stuff, after all.

I began with a Citadel Mechanicus Standard Grey primer, which is a spray paint. That was certainly interesting to apply to a gray plastic! The colour was less glossy, and a different shade to the plastic under the base. So I could clearly see the back was not covered, but never mind.

I started out by painting the trousers, using a mixture of a leather colour and black, about 1:1-ish. My initial layer came out okay, but I noticed straight away that the layer was grouping towards the creases; and that's with the primer layer. So I felt it necessary to increase the density of the paint. After this, dark went on well. So I continued onto the upper part of the shoes.

During application of my bespoke dark leather colour, the whole lot dried out on my palette. I managed to extend the life of my mixture with additional water, but then had to balance the dilution by adding more paint. I think that a wet palette would help with this issue. It should keep the mixed paint wet and consistent enough to allow for completing painting the colour — and hopefully any touching up necessary.

Next I moved onto the haft of the Axe. For this I used a slightly thinned leather colour, which seemed to separate and sink into the recesses of the model. So I moved onto the shin pads. I wanted a solid red colour as the base, which was washed out with the gray backing. Another coat improved this, but it turns out that I should have considered underpainting. Luckily, the use of gray as a primer rather than black made this less of a problem.

After this, I moved onto metallics. I'm not sure if this was the best option, but I have based all the metal parts with Boltgun Metal. My thought was to darken this, layering of rust-like colours and applying an oil wash similar to nuln oil. I'm not sure if this will work, and the model above has not yet had this process applied.

Finally, I applied an elven flesh to the skin. My thought process was that a civilization exposed to the darkness of the underhive would likely present a pale complexion. The aim is to apply shadow and highlight effects to give depth to the model, and possibly a flesh wash to calibrate the flesh tone and accentuate the musculature of the model. Fortunately I'm just testing new ideas on this particular model and so it's not the end of the world!